Socio-technical Transformations Research Articles

Governance of Digital Transformation: As observed in two cases of military transformations

The transformation of a modern socio-technical system is challenging. Notably, the digital transformation of an enterprise's business or operational model is an arduous journey toward success. Recent studies illustrate that 70% of business enterprise digital transformations fall short of their objectives. Without revenue-based performance indicators, the digital transformations of military organisations are, if possible, even more challenging. However, governance methods should assist in the complex transformation of interrelated features like human behaviour, business processes, information, data, and technology. Are they applied, and how feasible the standard Information and Communications Technology (ICT) governance methods are in supporting digital transformation in the defence sector?
 
 The paper studies how feasible the contemporary ICT -governance methods are for military organisations while executing digital transformation. The research implements the action research method since the researcher has participated in two journeys of military transformation. First, a review of these two cases shows the military utilisation of the governance methods and models. Second, the standard methods are reflected against the most challenging transformation problems to see if they could provide support. Third, the methods are challenged by the range of variety in complex system transformations to test their flexibility.
 
 Based on the research on two digital transformations, military enterprises seem to fall short in applying central ICT governance standards and methods. Therefore, they are not getting the best available support. Secondly, the contemporary governance methods do not address all the pain points in military transformation. Hence, the utilisation degree and transformation benefits are not well correlated. Thirdly, modern governance tools are inflexible in addressing various situations, transformation goals, and organisational maturity. In summary, the research surfaces some new gaps within the contemporary ICT governance toolbox when applied to the complex socio-technical transformation in the defence sector.

Towards Sustainable Urban Food Systems: Potentials, Impacts and Challenges of Grassroots Initiatives in the Foodshed of Muenster, Germany

Solving fundamental sustainability challenges in our food systems requires political, institutional and socio-technical transformations. Indeed, sustainability transitions are needed. In this paper, we explore the role of civil society in the form of bottom–up grassroots initiatives in the transition towards a sustainable urban food system and examine their potentials, impacts and challenges in the foodshed of Münster in Germany. To this end, relevant initiatives in Münster have been researched and mapped according to explicit criteria, and case studies have been compiled for two of them using questionnaires, interviews and desk research: a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm Entrup 119 and an urban gardening initiative GrüneBeete e.V. The results indicate that many initiatives in Münster focus on education and information, i.e., raising awareness, rather than offering material alternatives. Six initiatives were studied in more depth using desk research and a questionnaire. Key leverage points identified by the initiatives are in policy, education, networks and communication. Two of these were studied as cases. We see these transition pioneers as paradigmatic role models, providing room for experimentation, social learning and empowerment.

Information Systems Research for Smart Sustainable Mobility: A Framework and Call for Action

Transportation is a backbone of modern globalized societies. It also causes approximately one third of all European Union and U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, represents a major health hazard for global populations, and poses significant economic costs. However, rapid innovation in vehicle technology, mobile connectivity, computing hardware, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered information systems heralds a deep socio-technical transformation of the sector. The emergence of connected, autonomous, shared, and electric (CASE) vehicle technology has created a digital layer that resides on top of the traditional physical mobility system. This article contributes a framework to direct research and practice toward leveraging the opportunities afforded by CASE for a more efficient and less environmentally problematic mobility system. The authors propose seven overarching dimensions of action. These range from designing real-time digital coordination mechanisms for the management of mobility systems to developing AI-powered real-time decision support for mobility resource planning and operations. Per each dimension, concrete angles of attack are suggested which, we hope, will spur structured engagement from both researchers and practitioners in the field.

Can Adult Education Boost Sustainability Transitions? Some Evidence from Farmers and Teachers

Sustainability transitions are long-term processes that involve interactions among societal groups and promote co-evolutionary socio-technical transformations aimed at addressing crucial sustainability challenges. Although the focus of relevant work is often on groups, sustainability transitions also require personal transformations. Can adult education be a vehicle for promoting such transformations? In the present study, we attempted to answer this question by examining whether participation in sustainability-related adult education programs (AEPs) leads to the development of sustainability awareness, formation of sustainability-related values, construction of sustainability empathy, and initiation of pro-sustainability action among individuals. Following a quantitative research design and drawing upon data from farmers and teachers, we compared attendees and non-attendees of AEPs on the above-mentioned constructs. The analysis revealed that attendees scored significantly higher than non-attendees in awareness, values, empathy, and action. A series of hierarchical regressions confirmed the association between participation and the outcome variables, also showing no effects of demographic factors on the models. These results underscore the potential contribution of sustainability-related adult education to individual transformation, thus suggesting that targeted adult education interventions can facilitate sustainability transitions.

A just transition: Insights from the labour unions of a steel locality (Taranto, Italy)

The just transition (JT) perspective has gained a generalized attention in recent years in conjunction with the increasing pressures that Western societies are under to green their economies as a way to address climate change. In this perspective the role of trade unions (TUs) is central as they are encouraged to drive the socio-technical transformation to avoid the intensification of the dilemma between the protection of jobs and the protection of the environment. The article explores the way in which TUs thematize the challenge of the JT in a specific locality – Taranto, Southern Italy – and in one of the most carbon-intensive sectors – the steel industry. Although they share common concerns, different positions emerge in relation to the nature of the challenge and the possible pathways to greening steel production in the area. Yet, trade unions are still elaborating the question of the role that they are called to play in it.

The Politics of Market Change towards Sustainability: Revisiting Germany’s Policy Support Framework for Renewables

Legislative efforts for renewables-based energy decarbonisation hinge upon the support and commitment from different stakeholders holding often conflicting positions regarding disruptive processes of socio-technical transformation. However, the evolving acceptance of market actors on the policy-driven promotion of renewables over time remains under-scrutinised. Simultaneously, despite growing attention to power and politics in sustainability transitions, limited efforts remain invested for elucidating the political-economic nature of the market-based selection environments they are operationalised through, highlighting the need for a more systematic comprehension of the “politics of selection”. To address these shortcomings, this paper provides a more refined understanding of the role of policy-driven markets and its participating agents in facilitating/hindering innovation diffusion and broader (system-wide) sustainability transitions. To do so, it showcases a longitudinal case study of the politics underlying Germany’s evolving feed-in policy support framework for orchestrating a market-mediated diffusion of renewables (1980s–2020). Based on policy analysis and semi-structured interviews, the study traces the changing acceptance and ensuing strategic (re)actions of market actors to the emergence and evolution of Germany’s market for electricity from renewable energy sources. Results show how different market participants effectively shape the selection environments they operate in by proactively contesting/deluding the design features of the support policies organising their economised relations (e.g., market entry conditions, exchange rules, remuneration levels, pricing schemes, etc.). Such efforts are undertaken through legal means and market framing strategies targeting the affordability of policy support costs, coupled with the strategic use of policy instrumentation as a vehicle to further expand/retain their market shares to the detriment of competing actors.

Together we're smart! Flemish and Dutch energy communities' replication strategies in smart grid experiments

Increasingly, energy communities engage in smart grid experiments to explore new ways to collectively generate, consume, store, manage, and trade energy. Transition literature puts forward that replication of such experiments is essential for socio-technical transformation. However, in practice many experiments remain rather isolated events that fail to contribute to sustainability transitions. Moreover, while the literature points to the importance of replication, there is little attention to how replication occurs in practice and on the perspectives of actors involved. This paper reports on action research done to explore together with Dutch and Flemish energy communities what replication of community-based Virtual Power Plant (cVPP) experiments means in practice and how this can be achieved. In line with literature, the energy communities considered replication of cVPP as an iterative and multi-dimensional process that includes collective exploration of meaning, searching for necessary resources, building competencies, and implementation of the necessary technological building blocks. In light of identified challenges, the energy communities articulated two strategies, both aimed at collaboration with similar initiatives to pool resources (including shared digital technology). This was considered a viable strategy to confront the current context that is characterized by (institutional) uncertainty and ambiguity. Although the literature distinguishes between growth and replication of experiments, the identified strategies show that this distinction is less clear in practice. ‘Pure’ replication was not considered as the way forward. Rather, it appears that combining replication and growth processes provides opportunities for wider diffusion of the cVPP concept beyond the few resourceful frontrunner energy communities.

Climate Governance Antagonisms: Policy Stability and Repoliticization

AbstractIn this forum, we highlight a discord in strategies around climate change policy and politics. On one hand, there is widespread concern for the pursuit of climate policy stability: stability in the design of policy and institutions, but particularly making policy and institutional development irreversible. However, much recent literature has revived an insistence on the inevitability of political conflict for pursuing the often large transitions needed to mitigate and adapt to accelerating climate change. Here, addressing climate change requires conflict, to weaken the power of incumbent actors that have blocked ambitious climate policy enactment for decades. Scholarship deploying each perspective tends to explicitly accept the need for radical sociotechnical transformations to address the climate crisis, but each entails radically different approaches to how to pursue decarbonization. The article outlines a research agenda focused on thinking about how these two apparently contradictory dynamics in climate politics interact, to advance our understanding of what sorts of strategies might open up political space for rapid transformations.

Infrastructuring ageing: Theorizing non-human agency in ageing and technology studies

Scholars of ageing and technology are becoming increasingly interested in how technology and ageing can be seen as mutually constitutive, an in­terest that is beginning to form new research agendas, alliances and fields of their own. Different concepts have been used to theorise and analyse this relationship of mutual construction. This article explores a concept from Science and technology studies, which has not previously been put in direct relation to ageing, namely the concept of infrastructure. It pro­poses the notion of “infrastructuring ageing” as a theoretical-analytical approach for studying the mutual constitution of ageing and technol­ogy. This approach implies slightly new versions of, or attentions to, the non-human actor, agency and socio-technical transformation, and opens up to fresh ethnographic views on the social, material and techno-political transformations of ageing.

The Role of Farmers’ Umbrella Organizations in Building Transformative Capacity around Grassroots Innovations in Rural Agri-Food Systems in Guatemala

Family farmers and grassroots innovations can enable transitions to more sustainable food systems. The study explores the roles umbrella farmers’ organizations play in building transformative capacity through grassroots innovations in rural food systems in Guatemala. An analytical framework based on the notion of transformative capacity and socio-technical transitions is used to explore the specific factors enabling and limiting the transformative potential of grassroots innovations in a rural setting. A case study in rural Huehuetenango, Guatemala is presented, using interviews and focus groups discussions with relevant stakeholders engaged in the development process. Perceptions from interviews and focus groups discussions highlight the catalyst role played by the umbrella farmers’ organization as the main enabling factor to increase transformative capacity of grassroots innovations. The umbrella organization plays a key role in enabling farmers to pursue socio-technical transformations and in moving grassroots innovations outside a niche sphere. It contributes to creating coherence towards a common sustainability vision, supporting innovation and experimentation, and providing technical assistance around core development processes. In addition, it navigates across different levels of agency (households, communities, networks, and institutions) and different interaction scales (local, department, and national). However, gender and multi-generational gaps have been identified as limiting factors that would require further analysis.

The Socio-technical Adoption of Dry Toilets at a Public University in Mexico City (prototype)

This paper reports the findings of a two-year project on the relationship between a university community and its sanitation issues, the potential benefits of decentralized urban sanitation, and methods for transforming university culture regarding these topics. Using a public university in Mexico City as a case study, the research included three phases: diagnosis, training, and promotion; design and building a dry toilet prototype; and evaluation. The phases were facilitated through interdisciplinary participatory methodologies. Our approach achieved a significant socio-technical transformation. We also discovered great interest in alternative sanitation systems within Mexico City. This research may help inform interdisciplinary and participatory interventions involving these systems.

Hope for Our Technological Inheritance? From Substantive Critiques of Technology to Marcuse’s Post-Technological Rationality

This paper explores the promise that Herbert Marcuse found in late modernity’s technological inheritance—his “other side” to his critique of technological rationality. With the goal of beginning to recover Marcuse’s desire for technological reform and a more hopeful project for a contemporary critical philosophy of technology, the paper first situates and contrasts Marcuse’s double-sided critique of technological rationality with the mostly negative critiques of modern technology exemplified by Heidegger, Adorno, and Horkheimer. Rather than offer concrete possibilities for socio-technical transformation, Heidegger, Adorno, and Horkheimer’s pessimistic views of technology tend to lead towards resignation in our late-modern fate. The paper then meditates on Marcuse’s “ambivalence theory of technology”—the notion that technologies are neither neutral nor inherently deterministic but, rather, politically and socially inscribed and entangled within webs of social struggles where their designed intentions are worked out and often reappropriated in actual use by users. The paper then looks at how Marcuse’s ambivalence theory can help in understanding the possibilities for re-valuing the technological base of advanced capitalist society within re-materialized values of love, joy, refusal, and sensuousness. Illustrating the continued relevance of Marcuse’s analysis for today’s radical left, the final section of the paper presents six key historical-conjunctural moments in Marcuse’s writings on technology that could be seen as prefiguring contemporary examples of technological reform and liberation from exploitative and alienating modes of life. Some of the newest social movements against neoliberal global capital, this final section argues, touch on elements of Marcusean-like re-rationalized and re-sensualized technological and organizational transformations.

COPING WITH THE DYNAMICS OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY: POSITIONING URBAN EXPERIMENTATION PLATFORMS AS TOOLS FOR POLICY MAKING

Abstract. This research considers the creation of resilient organizational models of urban governance to foster urban sustainability. Building on large-scale urban experimentation initiatives, we identify relevant factors in establishing urban experimentation with the help of digital platforms as a means to support such resilient organizational models. Our findings suggest that digital platforms help establish urban experimentation platforms (UXPs) as a core means to innovate towards urban sustainability. UXPs utilize digital platforms to coordinate policy measures and stimulate collective intelligence in order to reach a sustained local socio-technical transformation process. Based on these empirical findings, we use a systems lens to decompose urban experimentation into interconnected sub-systems and then describe some characteristics of their dynamic interaction. Our goal is to develop a System Dynamics model and simulations to support urban public authority decision makers in formulating and implementing policy interventions towards urban sustainability.

The cyanide revolution: Efficiency gains and exclusion in artisanal- and small-scale gold mining

Since its advent at the end of the nineteenth century, cyanide processing facilitated the intensification and global expansion of industrial gold mining. Today, there are important indications that artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is on the verge of a similar cyanide revolution: while ASGM is typically associated with mercury-based processing, mercury amalgamation is increasingly replaced with, or complemented by, cyanidation. Relying on evidence from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Burkina Faso, we demonstrate how this transition is having a deeply transformative impact on ASGM communities. On the one hand, cyanidation produces clear efficiency gains. Together with rising gold prices, it is fueling a dramatic expansion of ASGM by enabling the profitable extraction of lower-grade gold deposits. On the other hand, it contributes to the emergence of new and often highly unequal labor and revenue-sharing arrangements. More broadly, these findings demonstrate the highly uneven impact of socio-technical transformations. Consequently, the growing number of efforts to intervene in the technological make-up of ASGM, usually in the name of efficiency and sustainability, should be wary of having unintended consequences.

Transformative governance of innovation ecosystems

Transformative innovation policy has recently emerged at the intersection of innovation and socio-technical transition research. It has provided valuable heuristics to guide policy; but it has also led to the recognition of major challenges in the management of uncertainty and complexity. In this paper, we address these challenges by linking transformative innovation policy with research perspectives from (i) complex adaptive systems, (ii) ecosystems, and (iii) adaptive and participatory governance. Specifically, we develop a conceptual framework for transformative governance, which seeks to improve the adaptiveness and resilience of the ecosystem and orchestrates socio-technical transformation based on the balanced presence of diversity, connectivity, polycentricity, redundancy and directionality. We also present an illustrative example by applying the framework to a Finnish policy reform in which the lack of balanced attention to the ecosystem features catalysed major shortcomings in an emerging innovation mobility ecosystem. Finally, we explore the implications for the design of individual policies and policy mixes which arise from the recognition of complexity and the holistic policy impacts on the ecosystem and society at large.

Integrating Behavioural Aspects in Energy System Modelling—A Review

Many countries worldwide have adopted policies to support the expansion of renewable energy sources aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, combating climate change, and, more generally, establishing a globally sustainable energy system. As a result, energy systems around the world are undergoing a process of fundamental change and transformation that goes far beyond the technological dimension. While energy system models have been developed and used for several decades to support decision makers in governments and companies, these models usually focus on the techno-economic dimension, whereas they fall short in addressing and considering behavioural and societal aspects of decisions related to technology acceptance, adoption, and use. In fact, it is often the societal dimension that comes with the greatest challenges and barriers when it comes to making such a socio-technical transformation happen in reality. This paper therefore provides an overview of state-of-the-art energy system models on the one hand and research studying behavioural aspects in the energy sector on the other hand. We find that these are two well-developed fields of research but that they have not yet been integrated sufficiently well to provide answers to the many questions arising in the context of complex socio-technical transformation processes of energy systems. While some promising approaches integrating these two fields can be identified, the total number is very limited. Based on our findings, research gaps and potentials for improvement of both energy system models and behavioural studies are derived. We conclude that a stronger collaboration across disciplines is required.

Interrogating China’s Global Urban Presence

ABSTRACT This paper examines the socio-economic and geopolitical outcomes associated with infrastructure development across multiple scales. Starting from the premise that planetary socio-technical transformations in this vein have distinctly national drivers, we focus on the urban agency of Chinese-led investment. The paper explores how different forms of infrastructural development generated by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affects transformations in the political and material fabric of cities and their host regions. We approach BRI-related infrastructural practice through three interconnected optics – discourse, instruments, and politics – so as to interrogate the articulation of projects linked to the BRI within the material site of the urban. Based on theorisations of infrastructure from an urban perspective and a critical review of literature on the BRI itself, we develop three illustrative case studies at different spatial scales and within different geographic contexts – in Pakistan, Central Europe and the UK. To examine the cases as well as their embeddedness in broader debates on the topic, we use a systematic review methodology relying on a wide variety of sources. We offer comparative and relational perspectives on the manner in which these relatively diverse cases demonstrate China’s role as a global urban actor.

The Role of Territorially Embedded Innovation Ecosystems Accelerating Sustainability Transformations: A Case Study of the Transformation to Organic Wine Production in Tuscany (Italy)

Over the last few years, there has been a growing concern among academics and practitioners about the slow pace in which sustainability transformations unfold. While most socio-technical transformations tend to happen over extended periods, research shows that unless some dramatic changes are introduced, we are risking damaging the critical earth systems that sustain human life. In this context, understanding why and how transformations happen at a much faster pace in certain places than in others is of crucial importance. This paper investigates the rapid transformation of Panzano, from traditional wine production to organically produced wine. Using a combination of document analysis, participant observation, and face to face interviews in Panzano in 2019, this article examines the role of the territorially embedded innovation ecosystems facilitating this fast transformation. The study looks at place based-structural preconditions and different forms of agency at different stages in the transformation. Our findings illustrate that a place-based agency is paramount for accelerating sustainability transformations.

A Tecnologia Social e sua Contribuição para a Educação em Ciências

A Tecnologia Social é caracterizada como um produto, técnica e/ou metodologia reaplicável e desenvolvida com a participação da comunidade para a resolução de problemas sociais/socioambientais. Nesse sentido, investiga-se a apropriação de alguns pressupostos teórico-metodológicos da Tecnologia Social por parte dos sujeitos da comunidade local e escolar, que participaram da seleção e implementação de uma Tecnologia Social, em busca da superação de uma demanda local na comunidade do Iguape, no município Ilhéus, BA. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa foi organizada em duas etapas: a) reunião com os moradores do bairro, para discutir a demanda socioambiental local e selecionar uma Tecnologia Social; b) implementação de uma Fossa Séptica Ecológica na comunidade em colaboração com os moradores. As informações foram obtidas por meio de videogravações realizadas durante a reunião e a implementação da fossa e entrevistas semiestruradas com os moradores que participaram de todo o processo. A análise se deu por meio da Análise Textual Discursiva tendo como referência duas categorias a priori: i) coaprendizagem e reaplicação; e ii) processos de tomada de decisões e autonomia. Dentre os resultados, constatou-se que a construção da fossa possibilitou a integração entre o conhecimento popular e os científicos, propiciando a reaplicação da TS na comunidade local, além da transformação sociotécnica, que se deu por meio de um processo colaborativo. Além disso, evidenciou-se que a TS tem um significativo potencial para contribuir na seleção de conteúdos e conhecimentos para o currículo escolar, como os da área de Ciências Naturais.

Multi-stakeholder participation for sustainable delta management: a challenge of the socio-technical transformation in the management practices in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT In Bangladesh, participation discourse has officially become part of the objectives of the government and international agencies for water management projects since the mid-1990s. At the same historical timeframe, originating from indigenous knowledges Tidal River Management (TRM) has been formalized as a less structural and more natural management intervention to prevent the severe water-logging in the South-west region in the Bangladesh delta. It theoretically constituted a form of participation in the delta management system involving local community groups with government and management authorities. However, multi-stakeholder participation is still very challenging in practices. Even community management approaches are not sustained in delta management practices in Bangladesh. In this research, a socio-technical transformation is defined through a participatory research in the south-west coastal area having both qualitative and quantitative evaluation of changes in the delta management system brought about by TRM practices. This article also analyses the current problems besetting organized community participation in existing management practices and suggests the ways of developing effective multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) with respect to sustainable management goal in deltas.