Socio-technical Community Research Articles

Analysis of E-commerce Based on Digital Economy through Smart Society in the Management of Village-Owned Enterprises

This research is descriptive research to describe the reality and complexity of social e-commerce based on the digital economy through the smart society of village-owned enterprises in Tanggetada District, using a purposive sampling technique. The research will be conducted in 3 village offices in Tanggetada Sub-district, namely Tondowolio, Palewai, and Lamedai villages. The research instruments are observation, questionnaire, interview, and documentation. Smart society measurement is carried out by observing and collecting information using the ecosystem of village-owned enterprises related to community welfare and the ecosystem of financial transactions of village-owned enterprises. The results of the study obtained that the three villages in Tanggetada sub-district have village-owned business entities with various types of businesses that have been run, basically, the three villages have planned the development of e-commerce in a sustainable manner, based on information showing that in general, the Smart Society Analysis Mapping in Tanggetada Sub-district is at >2.5 to 3.25 (Good), a humanist and dynamic relationship is realized in the socio-cultural and socio-technical community as a reference for the creation of productivity, communicative, and interactive with digital systems both physical and virtual in harmony. The creative economy has contributed to exploring the potential in raising the level of the creative economy in the Tanggetada sub-district.

The communicative constitution of atomization: online prepper communities and the crisis of collective action

AbstractAs environmental and societal crises increase in numbers, severity, and urgency, online forums for so-called “doomsday preppers” have seen a concomitant surge in membership. Beginning from the perspective of communicative constitution of organization, we explore the sociotechnical communities that emerge on such forums. Methodologically, we use netnographic observations to show that online prepper communities are organizational, in the sense of being networks of communicative episodes that use common narratives to build identities around material objects and physical practices. However, the online prepper communities do not move from the enactment of organization to acting as organizations. This observation leads us to conceptualize online prepper communities as atomizations whose communicative constitution does not entail a capacity for collective action, but only manifests the similarity of disparate individuals. The communicative constitution of atomization, we argue, is symptomatic of an underlying social logic, which promotes individualized responses to collective problems.

A federated pre-event community resilience approach for assessing physical and social sub-systems: An extreme rainfall case in Hong Kong

Comparative community resilience ranking illuminates resources prioritization in the pre-disruption mitigation process. Nonetheless, previous researchers address community resilience assessment in isolated manner by considering the technical side or social capabilities only. The myopic results generated from the solely designated assessment can be misleading and may affect the subsequent resilience building efforts. More importantly, a single modeling paradigm is insufficient to capture the disparate characteristic of interconnected socio-technical sub-systems in a community. This paper proposes a federated approach to assess the pre-event socio-technical community resilience. It assembles the topological-based evaluation, physics-based performance simulation, and multicriteria decision analysis into a unified framework whereby the results derived from the topological and physics-based methods are treated as inputs for the subsequent multi-criteria decision analysis model to generate comparative socio-technical community resilience ranking. A practical case in Hong Kong is used to demonstrate the applicability of the federated approach. Using the holistic socio-technical assessment results in the illustrative case, mitigation resources can be sensibly prioritized. The strategic implications indicate that the comparative resilience ranking outperforms the results produced by models focusing on the technical or social aspect only. Since the federated approach integrates the strength of multiple models when investigating the static structures and dynamic behaviors of complex socio-technical systems at the community level, it can lead to more reliable and balanced decision making process.

Technological Impacts in Socio-Technical Communities: Values and Pathologies

Communities and societies are known to achieve key benefits, such as trade growth, risk mitigation and resource sustainability [1], by following and observing conventionally-agreed and mutable rules (e.g., norms and laws). We focus on democratic societies-where citizens can contribute to changes in these governing regulations (directly or indirectly), which then apply equally to all [2], [3]. However, the unrestricted self-interested, or power-seeking behavior of some members may progressively deform such society; for example the iron law of oligarchy [4]. Consequently, scholars of socio-political sciences have identified defense mechanisms that help protect societies against such phenomena [3], [5]. These include comprehensible1 transparency, responsible engagement, and the perceptible impact of pro-social contributions.

Musical Chameleons: Fluency and Flexibility in Online Remix Contests

Musical Chameleons: Fluency and Flexibility in Online Remix Contests

Intra-organizational Knowledge Transfer: How language and hierarchy matter

This study investigated how differences in native language as well as position within a sociotechnical community hierarchy impact intra-organizational knowledge transfer. Since knowledge transfer r...

The social environment model: Small heroes and the evolution of human society

Traditional “realistic” theories of social action, whether based on the individual gain heuristics of capitalism or the collective class struggles of communism, cannot explain the massive volunteerism of online socio-technical collaborations like the Wikipedia project. Based on the idea that a social system is an environment within an environment, this paper argues that people in society are subject to both self- and social-interest directives, from natural and social world environments respectively. However, social dilemmas arise when these directives conflict. That people resolve social dilemmas by anchoring one directive then operating the other explains why the "social invention" of free markets was so successful, and further implies that socio-technical communities are a new social form, beyond capitalism and communism, which we call "free-goodness". This model attributes the evolution of humanity to parallel technical and social evolutions. For example, the first civilizations that emerged from hunter-gathering thousands of years ago had to discover not only agricultural technology, but also the "golden rule" by which people cease to pillage each other. Socio-technical systems today continue that tradition, of taking humanity to a higher level, by combining social and technical advances.

A Way Out of the Information Jungle

The emergence of community-oriented Information and Communication Technology platforms, e.g., forum software or wikis, the penetration of media in society has increased. In academia, forms of communication and cooperation to share knowledge are changing under open Web 2.0 conditions. In this regard, teaching and learning scenarios are moving towards technology-enhanced lifelong learning communities. This contribution presents the results of a longitudinal study of a Socio-Technical Community (STC) launched in 2002. The STC, which supports the study organization as well as teaching and learning in higher education, has been evaluated from its founding to its sustainable development and transformation phase in 2009. The study shows results in three specific areas: The learners’ satisfaction with the STC, the type and quality of use, and if the STC is a helpful support for students to progress through their studies more efficiently than without an STC. The central conclusion is that spaces for computer-mediated communication are important for students regarding informal learning about organizing their own studies. Informal learning with a socio-technical community is more effective than without due to its individualization of learning in large groups.

Dynamics of social roles in a knowledge management community

With the emergence of community-oriented Information and Communication Technology (ICT) applications, e.g., Wikipedia, the popularity of socio-technical phenomena in society has increased. This development emphasises the need to further our understanding of how computer-supported social group structures change over time and what forms emerge. This contribution presents the results of a qualitative field study of a Socio-Technical Community (STC). The STC is described from its founding (in 2001) to its sustainable development (in 2006) as well as its transformation phase (2007–2008). The design-based research approach revealed changes of social structures by social roles within the STC over time. The central conclusion is that such STC’s – networks of computer-mediated communication and human interaction – evolve a specific kind of social structure, which is formal rather than informal. The results indicate that a group evolves from an informal trust-based community with few formal roles to a STC where the social mechanisms, and not the software architecture, supports knowledge management processes.

Web 2.0 goes academia: does Web 2.0 make a difference?

Web 2.0 is often attributed with a high potential to address today's challenges in knowledge management and distributed collaboration. This is due to the focus on innovative and creative sociotechnical concepts that are strongly influenced by informal communication and collaboration. This development has already reached industry. Using the term 'Enterprise 2.0', different possibilities to use social software in enterprises are researched. But also in academia, cooperation to generate new knowledge and add it to the scientific discourse may radically change under open Web 2.0 conditions. In addition, teaching and learning scenarios might be moved towards technology-enhanced lifelong learning communities. In this article, we will give an overview of the influence that Web 2.0 has on academia and what innovative forms of cooperation might emerge from this. Before we focus on academia and show the potential of Web 2.0 in this domain, we first describe Web 2.0 as a sociotechnical phenomenon and show how technical and social systems differ in order to define Sociotechnical Communities (STCs) and the criteria for them.

Groundwater Contamination in the United States

Seldom has the sociotechnical community been more ready for a broad overview on an environmental issue than it is currently for a book on the subject of groundwater contamination in the United States. Many individuals, organizations, and institutions are asking: How much of our nation's groundwater resources are contaminated? Is our groundwater contamination problem getting worse and what is the longterm prognosis? What are the most significant causes of groundwater contamination and what are the most promising cures?