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Workers in community organisations in Amsterdam and Bogota daily use smartphones for personal reasons. However, smartphone apps have been outside their organisational reach. Thus, our paper explores sociotechnical systems’ opportunities to bridge community organisations and female migrants to macrosystems such as healthcare systems. Our selected community organisations, Casa Migrante in Amsterdam and Kilombo Yumma in Bogota, were born out of serving peer migrants from Latin American and Afro-Colombian backgrounds. Their services provide support to female migrants who suffer abuse and poverty. Built on cultural practices and social structures of their own, these organisations live on the periphery of macrosystems. They struggle to be appreciated and integrated into macrosystems and digital networks. Thus, our paper highlights the core of their services, using asset-based design, and translates their social capital into sociotechnical systems such as smartphone apps. This is intended to reveal, consolidate and integrate their efforts into wider systems.

Due to the large use of resources and waste generation, the transition to a circular economy (CE) has become a major sustainability-related topic in construction. Intentions to achieve circularity are shared widely, but developments are slow in practice. This study identifies systemic barriers to the circularity transition from a social-technical systemic perspective. We used the Mission-oriented Innovation System (MIS) framework to provide insights into the problems and potential solutions underlying the circularity mission, the structure of the system and the system dynamics. Based on the analysis of a wide range of policy documents and twenty in-depth interviews with stakeholders in the Dutch infrastructure sector, three vicious cycles were identified that form persistent barriers to the transition: (1) the CE contestation cycle given the contested nature of the circularity mission; (2) the knowledge diffusion cycle given the need to adopt and diffuse knowledge; and (3) the innovation cycle when it comes to procuring and upscaling circular innovations. These barriers all relate to processual, organizational and institutional challenges rather than to technological ones. This indicates that construction managers, policymakers and researchers in the field of infrastructure circularity should shift their focus from specific circular solutions to creating appropriate conditions for changing current and introducing novel processes that facilitate circular ways of doing things.

Workers in community organisations in Amsterdam and Bogota daily use smartphones for personal reasons. However, smartphone apps have been outside their organisational reach. Thus, our paper explores sociotechnical systems’ opportunities to bridge community organisations and female migrants to macrosystems such as healthcare systems. Our selected community organisations, Casa Migrante in Amsterdam and Kilombo Yumma in Bogota, were born out of serving peer migrants from Latin American and Afro-Colombian backgrounds. Their services provide support to female migrants who suffer abuse and poverty. Built on cultural practices and social structures of their own, these organisations live on the periphery of macrosystems. They struggle to be appreciated and integrated into macrosystems and digital networks. Thus, our paper highlights the core of their services, using asset-based design, and translates their social capital into sociotechnical systems such as smartphone apps. This is intended to reveal, consolidate and integrate their efforts into wider systems.

The increased complexity of modern sociotechnical systems (STS) necessitates the need for a manageable representation of their attributes, to augment our understanding and enable the development of ways through which we can increase their effectiveness, efficiency, and safety. Although many of the methodologies developed in the Human Factors domain map and investigate system properties and network structures, the inclusion of the temporal dimension in the analysis of STS remains limited. In this paper we present how modeling and visualization of STS can be augmented with the incorporation of temporal interaction analysis techniques that enable a micro-level, fine-grained analysis of data. We provide an overview of temporal analysis techniques by breaking down their main function, requirements, types of research questions they can address, and the visualization properties they offer, attempting to enhance their use in system analysis. This overview can assist researchers in selecting an analysis technique, enabling the incorporation of temporality in STS analysis, and helping towards the design of improved and safer systems and interventions. © 2021 The Authors. Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries published by Wiley Periodicals LLC

The stability of physicians’ authority over patients despite decades of changes in medicine conflicts with newer institutionalist accounts of professionals as change agents rather than instruments of reproduction. We analyzed whether the cultural scripts that twenty-one residents used to justify their approach to a new change, the electronic health record (EHR), signaled a leveling of the patient-physician hierarchy. Residents are intriguing because their position makes them open to change. Indeed, residents justified using the EHR in ways that level the patient-physician hierarchy, but also offered rationales that sustain it. For the latter, residents described using the EHR to substantiate their expertise, situate themselves as brokers between patients and the technology, and preserve the autonomy of clinicians. Our findings highlight how professionals with little direct experience before a change can selectively apply incumbent scripts to sustain extant structures, while informing newer institutionalist accounts of professionals and the design of EHR systems.

"Sharing economy" and "collaborative economy" refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, digital platforms and forms of work that characterise contemporary life: from community-led initiatives and activist campaigns, to the impact of global sharing platforms in contexts such as network hospitality, transportation, etc. Sharing the common lens of ethnographic methods, this book presents in-depth examinations of collaborative economy phenomena. The book combines qualitative research and ethnographic methodology with a range of different collaborative economy case studies and topics across Europe. It uniquely offers a truly interdisciplinary approach. It emerges from a unique, long-term, multinational, cross-European collaboration between researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, geography, business studies, law, computing, information systems), career stages, and epistemological backgrounds, brought together by a shared research interest in the collaborative economy. This book is a further contribution to the in-depth qualitative understanding of the complexities of the collaborative economy phenomenon. These rich accounts contribute to the painting of a complex landscape that spans several countries and regions, and diverse political, cultural, and organisational backdrops. This book also offers important reflections on the role of ethnographic researchers, and on their stance and outlook, that are of paramount interest across the disciplines involved in collaborative economy research.

The exploitation of so-called insiders is increasingly recognised as a common vector for cyberattacks. Emerging work in this area has considered the phenomenon from various perspectives including the technological, the psychological and the sociotechnical. We extend this work by specifically examining unintentional forms of insider threat and report the outcomes of a series of detailed Critical Decision Method (CDM) led interviews with those who have experienced various forms of unwitting cybersecurity breaches. We also articulate factors likely to contribute firmly in the context of everyday work-as-done. CDM’s probing questions were used to elicit expert knowledge around how decision making occurred prior, during and post an unintentional cyber breach whilst participants were engaged in the delivery of cognitive tasks. Through the application of grounded theory to data, emerging results included themes of decision making, task factors, accidents and organisational factors. These results are utilised to inform an Epidemiological Triangle to represent the dynamic relationship between three vectors of exploit, user and the work environment that can in turn affect the resilience of cyber defences. We conclude by presenting a simple framework, which for the purposes of this work is a set of recommendations applicable in specific scenarios to reduce negative impact for understanding unintentional insider threats. We also suggest practical means to counteract such threats rooted in the lived experience of those who have fallen prey to them.

The aim of the present work was to investigate the current state of the art concerning factors affecting physical and mental health and well- being of workers using collaborative robots (cobots) in manufacturing industries. A scoping review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines to identify studies aimed at investigating potential factors affecting workers’ physical and mental health and well-being during human-robot collaboration. Each identified factor was classified using the SHELLO (Software-Hardware- Environment-Liveware-Liveware-Organization) conceptual model. Strengths and limitations of such an approach were outlined. A total of 53 papers were included in the scoping review. In 35 papers at least one risk factor referred to the SHELLO Liveware-Hardware interaction, followed by factors concerning Liveware-Software (16 papers), Liveware-Liveware (11 papers), the Liveware intrinsic factor (10 papers), Liveware- Organization (8 papers), and Liveware-Environment (8 papers). Most of the factors classified within the L-H interaction related with physical well- being, while factors classified in the remaining SHELLO interactions were mainly associated with mental and psychological well-being. The scoping review provided a structured overview of factors affecting physical and mental health and well- being of cobot workers. The SHELLO model proved to effectively highlight human factors relevant for the design of future generations of cobots and can be used to provide a systemic approach to investigate human factors in other complex sociotechnical systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the model is applied in the field of human-cobot interaction.

By studying the early development stages of the free-to-play game Valorant (Riot Games, 2020), this research draws connections between game studies and recent platformization research. Traditionally, game scholars have treated the game industry as focused on selling premium-priced games. An alternative approach presents games as services that attempt to foster a long-term relationship with the player base. This paper zooms in on the latter, by studying the role of livestreaming in the service model of digital games. This sheds light on how service games can become intertwined with participatory modes of production, which benefits the longevity of service games. It points to a situation in which games, users, and platforms together make up one coherent system. The deployment of sociotechnical system scholarship identifies mechanisms that have been put in place to facilitate the interaction between users and platforms. With that in mind, this paper presents a qualitative content analysis of Twitch streams using a transcription method in which content creation is considered vital to the proliferation of the platform ecosystem. This work contributes to a growing body of literature bridging the fields of platform studies and game studies by taking into account the extended cultural practices and paratexts of both livestreaming and videogames.

By studying the early development stages of the free-to-play game Valorant (Riot Games, 2020), this research draws connections between game studies and recent platformization research. Traditionally, game scholars have treated the game industry as focused on selling premium-priced games. An alternative approach presents games as services that attempt to foster a long-term relationship with the player base. This paper zooms in on the latter, by studying the role of livestreaming in the service model of digital games. This sheds light on how service games can become intertwined with participatory modes of production, which benefits the longevity of service games. It points to a situation in which games, users, and platforms together make up one coherent system. The deployment of sociotechnical system scholarship identifies mechanisms that have been put in place to facilitate the interaction between users and platforms. With that in mind, this paper presents a qualitative content analysis of Twitch streams using a transcription method in which content creation is considered vital to the proliferation of the platform ecosystem. This work contributes to a growing body of literature bridging the fields of platform studies and game studies by taking into account the extended cultural practices and paratexts of both livestreaming and videogames.

The modern world is evolving rapidly, especially with respect to the development and proliferation of increasingly intelligent, artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-related technologies. Nevertheless, in many ways, what this class of technologies has offered as return on investment remains less impressive than what has been promised. In the present paper, we argue that the continued failure to realize the potential in modern AI and AI-related technologies is largely attributable to the oversimplified, yet pervasive ways that our global society treats the relationship between these technologies and humans. Oversimplified concepts, once conveyed, tend to perpetuate myths that in turn limit the impact of such technologies in human society. To counter these oversimplifications, we offer a theoretical construct, which we call the landscape of human-AI partnership. This construct characterizes individual capability for real-world task performance as a dynamic function of information certainty, available time to respond, and task complexity. With this, our goal is to encourage more nuanced discourse about novel ways to solve challenges to modern and future sociotechnical societies, but without defaulting to notions that remain rooted in today’s technologies-as-tools ways of thinking. The core of our argument is that society at large must recognize that intelligent technologies are evolving well beyond being mere tools for human use and are instead becoming capable of operating as interdependent teammates. This means that how we think about interactions between humans and AI needs to go beyond a “Human–or–AI” conversation about task assignments to more contextualized “Human–and–AI” way of thinking about how best to capitalize on the strengths hidden within emergent capabilities of unique human-AI partnerships that have yet to be fully realized.

The aim of this article is to identify the main efforts deployed by a techno-epistemic network in the construction and positioning of an energetic imaginary that’s renewable and civic in Chile: the “Energy 2050”. The methodology of the study is qualitative with a bibliographic review design. Empirically, we conducted a thematic analysis on the secondary information from the techno-epistemic network developed by Chile’s Ministry of Energy between the years 2014-2018. The analysis shows that members of the network, through the sociotechnical understanding of energy, managed to “dehydroAysenize” the electricity field, develop an energy policy and position a new socially, politically and technically validated imaginary that promotes an energy transition towards the year 2050. Finally, our discussions with the scientific literature allows us to provide a background for a new study subject related to the implications of socio-environmental conflicts or controversies in sociotechnical imaginary., El objetivo de este artículo es identificar las principales gestiones desplegadas por una red tecnoepistémica en la construcción y posicionamiento de un imaginario energético renovable y ciudadano, “Energía 2050” en Chile. La metodología del estudio es cualitativa con un diseño de revisión bibliográfica. Empíricamente, se realizó un análisis temático a la información secundaria procedente de la red tecnoepistémica conformada por el Ministerio de Energía de Chile entre los años 2014-2018. Los resultados, evidenciaron que los miembros de la red, a través de una comprensión sociotécnica de la energía, consiguieron “deshidroAysenizar” el sector eléctrico, elaborar una política energética y posicionar un nuevo imaginario validado social, política y técnicamente que impulsa la transición energética al año 2050. Finalmente, la discusión con la literatura científica, nos permite entregar antecedentes de un nuevo objeto de estudio relacionado a las implicancias de los conflictos o controversias socioambientales en los imaginarios sociotécnicos.

New York City was one of the hardest-hit areas in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 and strategies to prevent and respond to outbreaks were incipient. Social distancing created additional challenges. As such, people turned to digital technologies to find creative ways, not only to keep in touch with their loved ones, but also to find help and to assist strangers in need. In this essay, we describe how individuals and organizations in New York City used digital technologies to monitor and share information on COVID-19, to provide support for vulnerable people, and to get medical devices to those in need. Using the concepts of citizen science, mutual aid, and digital sociotechnical systems, we make three arguments. First, digital sociotechnical systems have a unique capacity to enroll and connect people—including strangers—over long distances, therefore enabling participation in mutual aid initiatives despite strict social-distancing limitations. Second, pre-existing mutual aid initiatives supported by digital sociotechnical systems demonstrated high adaptability and were quickly repurposed for COVID-19 mutual aid. Lastly, mutual aid initiatives, confronted with certain limitations of digital sociotechnical systems, engendered innovations and calls for transformations toward more inclusive systems. Time will tell whether these emerging transformations outlast the disaster itself and enhance long-term community resilience.

Community enterprises may play pivotal roles in sustainability transitions but have received limited attention in the transitions literature. This paper proposes a framework for theorising the challenges that community enterprises face as they scale up due to the rising institutional complexity of their organisational model, combining the institutional logics of community, market, and corporation. We conceptualise the upscaling processes of community enterprises by distinguishing between the community volunteerism phase, the niche creation phase and the niche expansion phase. We formulate nine propositions on how institutional complexity arises and on possible mechanisms to manage it in each phase of the upscaling process. Our theoretical framework is supported by empirical research on carsharing and renewable energy initiatives in Western Europe. The paper concludes with some avenues for further research on community enterprises in sustainability transitions. Community enterprises may play pivotal roles in sustainability transitions but have received limited attention in the transitions literature. This paper proposes a framework for theorising the challenges that community enterprises face as they scale up due to the rising institutional complexity of their organisational model, combining the institutional logics of community, market, and corporation. We conceptualise the upscaling processes of community enterprises by distinguishing between the community volunteerism phase, the niche creation phase and the niche expansion phase. We formulate nine propositions on how institutional complexity arises and on possible mechanisms to manage it in each phase of the upscaling process. Our theoretical framework is supported by empirical research on carsharing and renewable energy initiatives in Western Europe. The paper concludes with some avenues for further research on community enterprises in sustainability transitions.

ObjectiveHiring medical scribes to document in the electronic health record (EHR) on behalf of providers could pose patient safety risks because scribes often have no clinical training. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of scribes on patient safety. This included identification of best practices to assure that scribe use of the EHR is not a patient safety risk.Materials and MethodsUsing a sociotechnical framework and the Rapid Assessment Process, we conducted ethnographic data gathering at 5 purposively selected sites. Data were analyzed using a grounded inductive/hermeneutic approach.ResultsWe conducted site visits at 12 clinics and emergency departments within 5 organizations in the US between 2017 and 2019. We did 76 interviews with 81 people and spent 80 person-hours observing scribes working with providers. Interviewees believe and observations indicate that scribes decrease patient safety risks. Analysis of the data yielded 12 themes within a 4-dimension sociotechnical framework. Results about the “technical” dimension indicated that the EHR is not considered overly problematic by either scribes or providers. The “environmental” dimension included the changing scribe industry and need for standards. Within the “personal” dimension, themes included the need for provider diligence and training when using scribes. Finally, the “organizational” dimension highlighted the positive effect scribes have on documentation efficiency, quality, and safety.ConclusionParticipants perceived risks related to the EHR can be less with scribes. If healthcare organizations and scribe companies follow best practices and if providers as well as scribes receive training, safety can actually improve.

The transfer of market power in electric generation from utilities to end-users spurred by the diffusion of distributed energy resources necessitates a new system of settlement in the electricity business that can better manage generation assets at the grid-edge. A new concept in facilitating distributed generation is peer-to-peer energy trading, where households exchange excess power with neighbors at a price they set themselves. However, little is known about the effects of peer-to-peer energy trading on the sociotechnical dynamics of electric power systems. Further, given the novelty of the concept, there are knowledge gaps regarding the impact of alternative electricity market structures and individual decision strategies on neighborhood exchanges and market outcomes. This study develops an empirical agent-based modeling (ABM) framework to simulate peer-to-peer electricity trades in a decentralized residential energy market. The framework is applied for a case study in Perth, Western Australia, where a blockchain-enabled energy trading platform was trialed among 18 households, which acted as prosumers or consumers. The ABM is applied for a set of alternative electricity market structures. Results assess the impact of solar generation forecasting approaches, battery energy storage, and ratio of prosumers to consumers on the dynamics of peer-to-peer energy trading systems. Designing an efficient, equitable, and sustainable future energy system hinges on the recognition of trade-offs on and across, social, technological, economic, and environmental levels. Results demonstrate that the ABM can be applied to manage emerging uncertainties by facilitating the testing and development of management strategies.

Fortgeschrittene Anwendungen der Künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) werden im kommerziellen und im öffentlichen Sektor übergreifend eingesetzt, um Daten zu klassifizieren, Verhaltensweisen vorherzusagen und Entscheidungen zu treffen. Expert:innen sind sich heute einig, dass solche KI-Systeme immense wirtschaftliche, soziale, politische und ökologische Auswirkungen haben. Doch viele der jüngsten institutionellen Bemühungen, diese zu bewerten, sind konzeptionell diffus, fokussieren zu eng auf technische Aspekte, vernachlässigen den sozialen Kontext und werden auf dichotome Narrative reduziert. Wie lassen sich angesichts von Bedeutung und Einfluss dieser soziotechnischen Systeme die interdisziplinären Faktoren dieser KI-Systeme analysieren, die eine transformative Wirkung auf unsere Gesellschaft, unser soziales Gefüge haben? In dieser Dissertation erläutere ich den von mir entwickelten Begriff des Code Capital. Er verortet die Konzeptualisierung von KI-Systemen als neue Manifestation von Kapital in der Forschungstradition zu unterschiedlichen historischen Kapitalformen und beschreibt einen interdisziplinären Ansatz des Zusammenwirkens immaterieller und materieller Faktoren und Konfigurationen, die über die Auswirkungen eines KI-Systems entscheiden. Mit Hilfe des gleichnamigen CODE-Frameworks ermöglicht mein analytischer Ansatz eine Beschreibung und Bewertung von KI-Systemen entlang von vier Dimensionen - Conception, Operations, Data und Environment -, um die spezifischen Ausprägungen und Auswirkungen eines jeden Systems zu interpretieren und einzuschätzen. Um die Anwendbarkeit meines Ansatzes zu testen, habe ich CODE-Analysen von zwei KI-Systemen unter Verwendung qualitativer und quantitativer Methoden durchgeführt. Meine erste Fallstudie analysiert die empirischen Ergebnisse einer repräsentativen Mehrländerumfrage (China, Deutschland, Großbritannien, USA) zur Akzeptanz von bereits implementierten KI-gestützten Gesichtserkennungstechnologien. Meine CODE-Analyse veranschaulicht die Erklärungskraft des Frameworks: Sie zeigt, dass soziale und kulturelle Voraussetzungen die Technologieakzeptanz von Gesichtserkennungssystemen prägen und das Design der KI-Systeme entscheidenden Einfluss darauf hat, wie das System genutzt wird. Meine zweite Fallstudie über synthetische Text-to-Speech-Technologien untersucht das Code Capital eines Systems in der Designphase, um zu zeigen, wie das Framework auch als Instrument zur Steuerung des Entwicklungsprozesses eingesetzt werden kann. Die Ergebnisse machen deutlich, wie wichtig die Vorhersage und Eventualfallplanung für die Prävention von potenziellem Missbrauch ist, z. B. für das Risiko des Identitätsbetrugs. Beide Fallstudien zeigen auch, wie wichtig es ist, von Beginn an bei der Gestaltung materieller Features und dem Sammeln von Trainingsdaten das Kriterium der diversen Repräsentation unterschiedlicher sozialer und kultureller Kontexte anzuwenden. Darüber hinaus zeigen sie, wie zentral sowohl die sorgfältige Konzeption (C) als auch die Berücksichtigung der Umweltdimension (E) sind, wenn es um die Auswirkungen eines sozial eingebetteten KI-Systems geht zwei Dimensionen, die in den bislang existierenden Ansätzen eher unterrepräsentiert sind. Mit Hilfe des CODE-Frameworks können Akteure aus dem technologischen wie auch dem gesellschaftspolitischen Sektor nun auf ein verbindendes Bezugssystem zurückgreifen, das ihnen helfen kann, KI-Systeme besser auszugestalten und ihre potentiellen Wirkungsweisen besser zu verstehen oder gar zu antizipieren., Advanced techniques in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been applied in commercial applications and public service across sectors to classify data, predict behaviors, and orchestrate choices. Today, experts agree that AI systems have immense economic, social, political, and environmental implications. But many recent institutional endeavors to assess them have been conceptually diffuse, overly focused on technical aspects at the cost of socialized context, and fueled by dichotomous narratives. Given the outsized influence of these sociotechnical systems, how can we capture the interdisciplinary factors that lead to their transformative effects on our social fabric? In this dissertation, I introduce my original notion of Code Capital, an interdisciplinary account of the intangible and material configurations that comprise an AI systems source of impact. Through the eponymous CODE framework, this new concept allows an analysis along four dimensions - Conception, Operations, Data, and Environment to express bespoke circumstances of each system, bringing to the fore its normative forces. To test the applicability of my approach, I conducted CODE analyses of two real-life AI systems using qualitative and quantitative techniques. For my first case study on facial recognition technologies, I present empirical results from a cross-country survey I conducted with a team of researchers that underline the need to contextualize AI systems in their social embedding. My subsequent CODE analysis of a particular deployed system illustrates the frameworks explanatory power for impact. I show how even thoughtful objectives risk producing unwanted outcomes and that the selection of material features has decisive effects on how the system is used. In my second case study on synthetic text-to-speech technologies, I examine the Code Capital of a system in its design phase to demonstrate how the concept can be used as a tool to guide the development process. My results show the importance of forecasting and contingency planning for potential misuse, such as the risk of identity fraud. Both case studies also emphasize the need for considering diverse representation in material design and training data to ensure inclusive participation and harm mitigation for users. Moreover, they demonstrate how centrally both the Conception and Environment dimensions contribute to the range of implications of a socially embedded AI system, which sets Code Capital apart from dominant existing approaches. Through the instructive CODE model, relevant stakeholders from the technological as well as the socio-political realm can employ a shared ontology to better anticipate and understand AI systems, with Code Capital as the novel descriptor of their potential power.

This thesis focuses on how the implementation context for a surgical telementoringservice can be understood as a complex, adaptive sociotechnical system.Teleguidance was a service for remote surgical consultation in Endoscopic RetrogradeCholangiopancreatography (ERCP), a highly specialized clinical procedure.The solution had been developed in a participatory design setting andhad also been successfully trialed in a pilot study. It was to be deployed atfour additional hospitals, but differences between the implementation contextswould make it challenging to understand clinical outcomes, and could also affectmatters such as adoption.This thesis includes four papers which converge on user needs and the sociotechnicalimplementation context for teleguidance. The aim was to demonstratehow a sociotechnical systems oriented approach could be used to identifyfactors that could interact with the implementation. The first paper describesan investigation of attitudes and expectations among end-users and other stakeholders.The second paper shows how modelling the sociotechnical work systemmade it possible to investigate and proactively identify issues that might influenceimplementation and adoption. The third paper explicates methodologicalaspects of modeling the domain. The fourth paper describes a study designed tocapture early reactions to working with the system. Seen together, the researchrepresents a design science approach, that proposes that the implementationcontext can be viewed as a complex, adaptive system, and provides examplesthat show how focusing on user and stakeholder needs and wider context ofuse is a viable approach for supporting the implementation and evaluation oftelemedicine systems in complex settings. Denna avhandling växte fram ur ett större telemedicinprojekt vid Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset, Innovationshubben för vård på distans. Där hade man utvecklat en tjänst kallad teleguidance. Teleguidance utformades för att möjliggöra kirurgisk konsultation på distans i ERCP, en högspecialiserad endoskopisk procedur. Lösningen hade utvecklats i en deltagande designmiljö och hade också framgångsrikt testats i en pilotstudie. Den skulle sättas in på ytterligare fyra sjukhus, och en klinisk studie planerades för att utvärdera resultaten. Det var dock uppenbart att det fanns skillnader i hur ERCP genomfördes på de olika sjukhusen, vilket med stor sannolikhet skulle påverka införandet. De fyra artiklarna som ingår i avhandlingen är konvergerande studier om det organisatoriska och sociala sammanhang i vilket teleguidance skulle introduceras. Syftet var att ta fram en flernivåanalys av de faktorer som påverkar arbetet med ERCP, och som kan förväntas samverka med implementeringen av teleguidance. Det första steget var att undersöka attityder och förväntningar hos slutanvändare och andra intressenter. Det andra steget var att modellera det sociotekniska arbetssystemet för att undersöka och proaktivt identifiera faktorer som kan påverka implementering och införandet av telemedicintjänsten. Det tredje steget var att fånga tidiga reaktioner på att arbeta med systemet. Sammantaget representerar forskningen ett proaktivt tillvägagångssätt för att identifiera organisatoriska konsekvenser av att introducera nya digitala tjänster i en komplex vårdmiljö. Studierna visar exempel på tillvägagångssätt för att aktivt få en djupare kunskap av användarnas och intressenternas behov samt implementeringskontexten vid teknikinförande, vilket är avgörande för att stödja de anpassningar som krävs för framgångsrik implementering i komplexa miljöer. Resultaten är avsedda att bidra till området digital hälsa genom att ge praktiska exempel på hur sociotekniska metoder kan bidra vid design, implementering och utvärdering av nya teknologier som är avsedda att driva förändringar i sjukvården. QC 2022-02-02

As the use of AI systems continues to increase, so do concerns over their lack of fairness, legitimacy and accountability. Such harmful automated decision-making can be guarded against by ensuring AI systems are contestable by design: responsive to human intervention throughout the system lifecycle. Contestable AI by design is a small but growing field of research. However, most available knowledge requires a significant amount of translation to be applicable in practice. A proven way of conveying intermediate-level, generative design knowledge is in the form of frameworks. In this article we use qualitative-interpretative methods and visual mapping techniques to extract from the literature sociotechnical features and practices that contribute to contestable AI, and synthesize these into a design framework.

The maritime industry is undergoing a transformation driven by digitalization and connectivity. There is speculation that in the next two decades the maritime industry will witness changes far exceeding those experienced over the past 100 years. While change is inevitable in the maritime domain, technological developments do not guarantee navigational safety, efficiency, or improved seaway traffic management. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted the Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) concept to define autonomy on a scale from Degrees 1 through 4. Investigations into the impact of MASS on various aspects of the maritime sociotechnical system is currently ongoing by academic and industry stakeholders. However, the early adoption of MASS (Degree 1), which is classified as a crewed ship with decision support, remains largely unexplored. Decision support systems are intended to support operator decision-making and improve operator performance. In practice they can cause unintended changes throughout other elements of the maritime sociotechnical system. In the maritime industry, the human is seldom put first in technology design which paradoxically introduces human-automation challenges related to technology acceptance, use, trust, reliance, and risk. The co-existence of humans and automation, as it pertains to navigation and navigational assistance, is explored throughout this thesis. The aims of this thesis are (1) to understand how decision support will impact navigation and navigational assistance from the operator’s perspective and (2) to explore a framework to help reduce the gaps between the design and use of decision support technologies. This thesis advocates for a human-centric approach to automation design and development while exploring the broader impacts upon the maritime sociotechnical system. This work considers three different projects and four individual data collection efforts during 2017-2022. This research took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Warsash, UK and includes data from 65 Bridge Officers (navigators) and 16 Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) operators. Two testbeds were used to conduct the research in several full mission bridge simulators, and a virtual reality environment. A mixed methods approach, with a heavier focus on qualitative data, was adopted to understand the research problem. Methodological tools included literature reviews, observations, questionnaires, ship maneuvering data, collective interviews, think-aloud protocol, and consultation with subject matter experts. The data analysis included thematic analysis, subject matter expert consultation, and descriptive statistics. The results show that operators perceive that decision support will impact their work, but not necessarily as expected. The operators’ positive and negative perceptions are discussed within the frameworks of human-automation interaction, decision-making, and systems thinking. The results point towards gaps in work as it is intended to be done and work as it is done in the user’s context. A user-driven design framework is proposed which allows for a systematic, flexible, and iterative design process capable of testing new technologies while involving all stakeholders. These results have led to the identification of several research gaps in relation to the overall preparedness of the shipping industry to manage the evolution toward smarter ships. This thesis will discuss these findings and advocate for human-centered automation within the quickly evolving maritime industry.

Users of sociotechnical systems often have no way to independently verify whether the system output which they use to make decisions is correct; they are epistemically dependent on the system. We argue that this leads to problems when the system is wrong, namely to bad decisions and violations of the norm of practical reasoning. To prevent this from occurring we suggest the implementation of defeaters: information that a system is unreliable in a specific case (undercutting defeat) or independent information that the output is wrong (rebutting defeat). Practically, we suggest to design defeaters based on the different ways in which a system might produce erroneous outputs, and analyse this suggestion with a case study of the risk classification algorithm used by the Dutch tax agency.

The rise of remote workers in a wide array of industries from manufacturing to surgery has led to the proliferation of telecommunications devices to support these future work practices, aiming to gain greater access to expertise that is often distributed across locations. However, current telecommunication systems provide limited support for team knowledge sharing, i.e., the process within which team members collectively contribute to developing a shared understanding of the work, through which expertise, or in-situ knowledge is acquired. The objective of my dissertations research is to develop a systematic understanding of the impact of proper use of a tele-instructional technology, through applying a set of pre-identified communication skills, on team knowledge sharing in telementoring tasks, where a local trainee is acting upon objects mentored by a remote trainer. With a thorough examination of the trainee and trainer's discourse in distributed training, this dissertations demonstrates that effective use of the pointing and drawing tools, and engaging the trainee in the decision making makes the team knowledge level grounding process more efficient by increasing the trainers' expansion of the knowledge and taking the trainees' perspective, followed the trainees' increased provision of relevant action and answers in response to trainees inquiries. On the other hand, the unmet needs of two-sided virtual engagement, co-ownership over the virtual space, and recall impair trainees' proactive behaviors contributing to the knowledge co-construction. I propose socio-technical implications for addressing the observed needs. My findings contribute to expanding our understanding of what needs to be implemented in an effective telementoring environment.

This article argues that the sociotechnical context in which near-surface geothermal energy is embedded draws out its characteristic of being temporarily depletable. Thereby, the minimization of unavoidable side effects, such as cold plumes, which result from the social constitution of geothermal energy, is a crucial area of consideration. Using the situation in Germany as a touchstone, we discuss how cold plumes and interferences from neighboring ground source heat pumps test the limits of the existing regulatory framework, requiring negotiations between different knowledge sets stemming from areas as diverse as planning law, geology, cultural habits, and engineering. This makes the operation of geothermal energy highly uncertain and continuous negotiations on sustainable modes of extractions a pressing issue.

Using a systems analysis approach, the authors analyse forced child labour incidents in Indian cottonseed farms in the years 2003/04 and 2014/15, and explore the role played by human factors in contributing to the illegal use of child labour in the Indian agri-food sector. National policies on labour welfare and rights are reviewed through the case studies used as a lens to explore wider issues associated with forced child labour in supply chains. The study highlights the evolution of organised crime in India with regards to the reliance on forced child labour, using the four conceptual dimensions of modern slavery established by the UK Home Office in 2017. The study does identify limitations and flaws associated with designing policies based on a "work-as-imagined" philosophy and demonstrates how the use of maturity modelling can explore how exploitation, corruption and organised crime is framed and can become more formalised over time.

Sleep loss has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and an increase in accidents, all of which are among the leading causes of death in the United States. Population-scale sleep studies have the potential to advance public health by helping to identify at-risk populations, changes in collective sleep patterns, and to inform policy change. Prior research suggests other kinds of health indicators such as depression and obesity can be estimated using social media activity. However, the inability to effectively measure collective sleep with publicly available data has limited large-scale academic studies. Here, we investigate the passive estimation of sleep loss through a proxy analysis of Twitter activity profiles. We use \Spring Forward" events, which occur at the beginning of Daylight Savings Time in the United States, as a natural experimental condition to estimate spatial differences in sleep loss across the United States. On average, peak Twitter activity occurs 15 to 30 minutes later on the Sunday following Spring Forward. By Monday morning however, activity curves are realigned with the week before, suggesting that the window of sleep opportunity is compressed in Twitter data, revealing Spring Forward behavioral change.

The study investigated the factors that influence the adoption of collaborative robots in the manufacturing sector in Russia from sociotechnical, organizational, and economic point of views. The study was driven by the increasing technological innovation in the manufacturing sector, especially in the use of robots and collaborative robot applications in daily manufacturing, flexibility, and operations activities. The study was a quantitative, descriptive survey that relied on primary data from respondents with varied experiences in the manufacturing sector in Russia. The study employed a total of 351 respondents selected for their insights into the application of robotics in the manufacturing process in Russia. The model adopted for the study was tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), reliability, and validity analysis. The hypotheses of the study were evaluated using partial least-squares analysis. The results revealed that the adoption of collaborative robots was influenced by organizational factors and economic factors. Perceived performance improvement was significantly influenced by collaborative robot adoption and sociotechnical systems. The study recommended that the stakeholders in Russia’s manufacturing sector should improve their training, management support, perceived innovativeness, and prior experience to enhance the adoption of collaborative robots and flexibility in design.

The technostress model has introduced different factors to consider when assessing how information and communication technologies impact individuals in different work settings. This systematic review gathers evidence regarding associations between occupational exposure to technostress and health or work outcomes. In addition, we highlight typical methodological constraints of the technostress model. We conducted electronic literature searches in June 2020 (PubMed, PubMed Central, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycInfo, PsycArticles) and independently screened 321 articles. We report on 21 articles meeting eligibility criteria (working population, technostress exposure, health or work outcome, quantitative design). The most frequently examined techno-stressors, i.e., factors of technostress, were techno-overload and techno-invasion. Techno-stressors were consistently associated with adverse health and work outcomes, apart from a positive impact on work engagement. However, studies may be subject to considerable conceptual overlap between exposure and outcome measures. Future technostress research would benefit from reducing heterogeneity in technostress measures, assessing their external validity and focussing on specific techno-stressors.

As AI systems are integrated into high stakes social domains, researchers now examine how to design and operate them in a safe and ethical manner. However, the criteria for identifying and diagnosing safety risks in complex social contexts remain unclear and contested. In this paper, we examine the vagueness in debates about the safety and ethical behavior of AI systems. We show how this vagueness cannot be resolved through mathematical formalism alone, instead requiring deliberation about the politics of development as well as the context of deployment. Drawing from a new sociotechnical lexicon, we redefine vagueness in terms of distinct design challenges at key stages in AI system development. The resulting framework of Hard Choices in Artificial Intelligence (HCAI) empowers developers by 1) identifying points of overlap between design decisions and major sociotechnical challenges; 2) motivating the creation of stakeholder feedback channels so that safety issues can be exhaustively addressed. As such, HCAI contributes to a timely debate about the status of AI development in democratic societies, arguing that deliberation should be the goal of AI Safety, not just the procedure by which it is ensured., Pre-print. Shorter versions published at Neurips 2019 Workshop on AI for Social Good and Conference on AI, Ethics and Society 2020

In many countries, as part of an attempt to decarbonise, electricity systems are changing to accommodate more distributed energy resources. Distributed energy resources involve a more active role for energy users, when power is generated and stored behind the meter, and demand is reduced or shifted in time. Assuming that rules, firm structures, technologies, and end-user practices co-evolve, public policy and regulation will influence the decisions of firms and end-users, and vice-versa. This thesis asks how a specific set of rules, namely electricity retail market design is related to the wider adoption of distributed energy resources. For decades, electricity firms operated as vertically integrated monopolies with an exclusive license in a region. Since the 1990s, policymakers in several jurisdictions chose to restructure the industry to enable end-users to choose between competing electricity providers separated from distribution networks. In other places, policymakers chose to retain a regional monopoly in electricity retailing or introduced competition without unbundling of distribution networks. Therefore, electricity retail market designs vary across jurisdictions today. This thesis analyses these differences by asking, “what is the political significance of electricity retail market design institutions for decentralised energy transitions on the demand-side?” The ‘political’ is defined as the realm of contestation and of varying distribution of resources and opportunities. ‘Transition’ dynamics are conceptualised through a socio-technical ‘multi-level-perspective’ lens that focuses on co-evolving realms of public policy, technology, and practices of firms and end-users. The thesis analyses ‘transitions’ as changes in these various spheres. The focus is on studying decision-making by policymakers, incumbent electricity companies, and innovative ‘newcomer’ firms. Empirically, the thesis studies electricity transition processes in two phases. First, it examines restructuring reforms in three US states - Massachusetts, California, and Texas - in the early 1990s, where new rules and electricity firm structures were created. Secondly, the thesis analyses business models, to study recent and ongoing processes of innovation that lead to increasing adoption of distributed energy resources behind the meter. The thesis’ methodology is qualitative, and data came primarily from the US, Europe, and Australia. The main sources were publicly available documents; interviews with observers, policymakers, industry experts, company representatives, and other key informants; as well as field notes prepared at industry conferences. The analysis used two different approaches: firstly, the contested and hence political nature of electricity retail market design was explored through discourse analysis. Secondly, the analysis of business model evolution compared processes of building business models in jurisdictions with different electricity retail market designs. This allowed analysing how electricity retail market design influenced the access to resources and opportunities for demand-side resource providers and their customers. The research finds that there are three main contested assumptions that underlie different electricity retail market designs. Firstly, there is disagreement about the meaning of efficiency and welfare, along with assumptions about what type of institutional arrangement can best achieve these aims. Secondly, there are disagreements between those who frame electricity as a special type of service that requires different rules, and those who believe it should be treated similarly to other products. Thirdly, framings of what constitutes meaningful ‘choice’ differ between those who privilege individual market choices over collective choice by policymakers. Depending on these different framings, actors highlight different problems as important and propose varying policies as solutions. These underlying assumptions are reflected in current debates about how institutional frameworks should evolve. Additionally, the research found that electricity retail market design influenced DER newcomers’ access to resources and opportunities in some cases: in jurisdictions without dedicated policy-support, electricity retailers and their customers were able to realise standardised DER projects, such as micro-generation, distributed storage, and simple demand response measures, where market conditions were otherwise favourable. These findings contradict the literature criticising electricity retail competition as hampering the emergence of distributed energy. At the same time, the findings refute literature that suggests competition is important for innovation in energy services. The research found that for many types of distributed energy business models, electricity retail market design does not play a significant role because the business models rely on revenue streams and customer channels independent of electricity retailers. As long as there is adequate policy support for resources behind the meter, electricity retail competition is not a necessary condition for distributed energy service business models to prosper. Different types of DER newcomers and customers can benefit from varying types of electricity retail market design. Competition enables those newcomers and customers with the necessary understanding and capabilities to benefit from a greater range of options in tariffs, contracts, and contestable functions. Retail monopoly reduces the options and thereby the complexity which can be better for newcomers and customers with fewer resources and capabilities. The study also found that competing retailers have not successfully promoted bespoke, tailored energy services which require more in-depth analysis of a customer’s premises, outside of regulatory obligations. This means that competition in retail does not drive these deeper, specially tailored distributed energy projects. This finding supports literature suggesting that on-going policy support is necessary, especially to improve building energy efficiency. Finally, the research did not find evidence to suggest that competition and unbundling of distribution network companies hamper implementation of well-designed policies to promote demand-side resources. Therefore, distributed demand-side transitions can occur under all kinds of electricity retail market designs. This thesis therefore makes an important contribution to literature on energy services and electricity retail market design. It investigates business model innovation comparatively, after recent technological change and decarbonisation policies have improved the prospects for demand-side energy resources. Moreover, it makes a valuable contribution to policy practice and literature on socio-technical transitions in electricity by analysing the history and politics of retail market design with a focus on discourse and contested assumptions.

This work explores multiple, competing sociotechnical imaginaries of smart cities in Oxford. I worked with two main groups in the field, Smart Oxford and Cyclox, the former the official smart city initiative of The City of Oxford, and the latter, a grassroots political pressure group for cycling in and around the city. Each group presented very distinct visions of the future, each imagining and mobilising data and science and technology in extremely different ways. Over the course of my fieldwork and post fieldwork analysis, drawing on the distinct and dynamic social and material conditions across the city, I observed multileveled and contested dimensions of smartness and found that smartness is messy, subjective, and never neutral. There are no core values or tenets that necessarily apply to smart practices or ideals across the board. This being the case, the different sociotechnical imaginaries at work in the city each work to mould different ideas of what it means to be ‘smart’, and what ‘smarter’ futures ought and ought not to look like. Further, each different imagining comes with distinct visions, assumptions, values, and perspectives of what data is, how it can and should be mobilised, and what futures are attainable and desirable. This work adds to findings that follow the most recent call in smart city literature to move beyond the critique of unrealised ideals, and to study what is actually happening on the ground, exploring how smartness plays out in practice, and what it means for ordinary citizens’ everyday lives and practices to live in ‘smart cities’. It also highlights the challenges around smart city realisation and manifestation, offering a case that explores a less than fully successful attempt at smart city world building by an official smart city initiative with an officially endorsed narrative.

Humanoid sex robots seem to challenge the human–machine distinction because one way to engage with them is to entertain the illusion that they are human and appropriate for intimacy. This inclination is intentionally induced by robot designers, and several narratives envision and claim that robots of the future will be indistinguishable from humans. Taking an anticipatory ethics approach and using critical discourse analysis, we argue that current discourse about sex robots does not adequately recognize the sociotechnical nature of humanoid sex robot development. We challenge the idea that the human–machine distinction will inevitably dissolve because of technological advancements. Recognition of the social influences on technological development is key to understanding the coherence, or lack thereof, of many narratives of the future that are currently put forward.

Purpose This paper aims to discuss the nexus between two societal (sub) systems of housing and energy supply to shed new light on the key institutional barriers to socio-technical energy transition in the built environment. The key research question is to explore if and how key patterns of institutional elements associated with energy retrofit and energy supply are combined, co-evolved and played out in the housing system, leading to an alternative energy transition pathway in the built environment. Design/methodology/approach A comparative case study of residential buildings in the Swiss cities of Basel and Sion is conducted to map retrofitting policies and practices in a wide range of buildings (e.g. multi-family and single family) that each requires a particular constellation of institutions, actors and artefacts. Findings The key finding is that the regulative institutions support energy transition in each urban form/housing type. However, the co-evolution with normative and cultural-cognitive institutions does not play out very clearly in the housing system. One reason is that the norms and cultures are deeply rooted in the practices exercised by business community and households and therefore they need a longer time frame to adapt to a new regulation. Research limitations/implications The policies and actions to increase the rate of housing retrofit are discussed in the specific socio-political context of Switzerland. Therefore, the results of this study might not be applied in other contexts with different conditions, limiting the possibility for analytical generalization. The case study can generate only context-specific knowledge, which might be valuable only to cities with similar conditions. This paper addresses theoretical, methodological and policy challenges in scaling-up retrofit projects by taking a holistic and integrated approach to the systems of housing and energy supply. Practical implications It would have been necessary to find out how the introduction and enforcement of new energy policies and regulations (regulative institutions) have changed the norms and building practices (normative institutions) used by actors from housing industry and the attitudes and energy consumption behaviour of the households (cultural-cognitive institutions). Nevertheless, information about normative and cultural-cognitive institutions require more primary data in the form of interviews with organizations and households, respectively, which goes beyond the scope and resources of this study. Originality/value Insights from different strands of literature (institutions and sustainability transition) are combined to understand if and how retrofitting practices go along with other elements of urban sustainability including architectural, technical, socio-cultural and economic factors.

Personal data have become a central asset for multiple enterprise applications and online services offered by private companies, public organisations or a combination of both. The sensitivity of such data and the continuously growing legislation that accompanies their management dictate the development of methods that allow the development of more secure, trustworthy software systems with focus on privacy protection. The contribution of this paper is the definition of a novel requirements engineering method that supports both early and late requirements specification, giving emphasis on security, privacy and trust. The novelty of our work is that it provides the means for software designers and security experts to analyse the system-to-be from multiple aspects, starting from identifying high-level goals to the definition of business process composition, and elicitation of mechanisms to fortify the system from external threats. The method is supported by two CASE tools. To demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of our work, the paper shows its applications to a real-world case study.

By studying the early development stages of the free-to-play game Valorant (Riot Games, 2020), this research draws connections between game studies and recent platformization research. Traditionally, game scholars have treated the game industry as focused on selling premium-priced games. An alternative approach presents games as services that attempt to foster a long-term relationship with the player base. This paper zooms in on the latter, by studying the role of livestreaming in the service model of digital games. This sheds light on how service games can become intertwined with participatory modes of production, which benefits the longevity of service games. It points to a situation in which games, users, and platforms together make up one coherent system. The deployment of sociotechnical system scholarship identifies mechanisms that have been put in place to facilitate the interaction between users and platforms. With that in mind, this paper presents a qualitative content analysis of Twitch streams using a transcription method in which content creation is considered vital to the proliferation of the platform ecosystem. This work contributes to a growing body of literature bridging the fields of platform studies and game studies by taking into account the extended cultural practices and paratexts of both livestreaming and videogames.

Aviation is the fastest growing but also the safest mode of transport. International aviation organizations give the highest priority to safety while creating aviation regulations. Therefore, a safety management system (SMS) has been created. Two approaches to assuring safety in aviation may be distinguished: Safety-I and Safety-II. Safety-I is the standard approach, focused on processing the information about malfunctioning features and system elements. On the other hand, Safety-II is a new approach to safety management, based on identifying the elements or functions of the system that work properly, which enables the system to confirm resilience to undesirable effects. One of the methods utilized for the Safety-II approach in order to study complex sociotechnical systems is the FRAM (functional resonance analysis method). The method is focused on analysing daily activities in various conditions in order to create a model of work performance. The models created based on the FRAM can be used for risk analysis, accident investigations and predicting possible future events affecting aviation safety. This method allows us to simulate system constraints and uncertain states. It can also be used as support for the air traffic safety management processes based on the Safety-II approach. The following article presents a developed FRAM model for the transfer of control over aircraft. This model constitutes an example of a coordination scheme limited to basic activities of air traffic control (ATC) services, providing a general framework for the construction and operation of the FRAM model.

The paper presents an approach for implementing inscrutable (i.e., nonexplainable) artificial intelligence (AI) such as neural networks in an accountable and safe manner in organizational settings. Drawing on an exploratory case study and the recently proposed concept of envelopment, it describes a case of an organization successfully “enveloping” its AI solutions to balance the performance benefits of flexible AI models with the risks that inscrutable models can entail. The authors present several envelopment methods—establishing clear boundaries within which the AI is to interact with its surroundings, choosing and curating the training data well, and appropriately managing input and output sources—alongside their influence on the choice of AI models within the organization. This work makes two key contributions: It introduces the concept of sociotechnical envelopment by demonstrating the ways in which an organization’s successful AI envelopment depends on the interaction of social and technical factors, thus extending the literature’s focus beyond mere technical issues. Secondly, the empirical examples illustrate how operationalizing a sociotechnical envelopment enables an organization to manage the trade-off between low explainability and high performance presented by inscrutable models. These contributions pave the way for more responsible, accountable AI implementations in organizations, whereby humans can gain better control of even inscrutable machine-learning models.

Are animals technology? Rodent trainers in Tanzania readily think so. This suggests that thinking about rats as technology can help scholars of the environment see that nature is always being transformed through social practices that rework environmental histories.

The suspension of major sporting competitions due to the global COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on the sporting industry. As such, a successful and sustainable return to sport will require extensive modifications to the current operations of sporting organizations. In this article we argue that methods from the realm of sociotechnical systems (STS) theory are highly suited for this purpose. The aim of the study was to use such methods to develop a model of an Australian Football League (AFL) club’s football department. The intention was to identify potential modifications to the club’s operations to support a return to competition following the COVID-19 crisis. Subject Matter Experts from an AFL club participated in three online workshops to develop Work Domain Analysis and Social Organization and Cooperation Analysis models. The results demonstrated the inherent complexity of an AFL football department via numerous interacting values, functions and processes influencing the goals of the system. Conflicts within the system were captured via the modeling and included pursing goals that may not fully reflect the state of the system, a lack of formal assessment of core values, overlapping functions and objects, and an overemphasis on specialized roles. The current analysis has highlighted potential areas for modification in the football department, and sports performance departments in general.

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Specifying a normative multiagent system (nMAS) is challenging, because different agents often have conflicting requirements. Whereas existing approaches can resolve clear-cut conflicts, tradeoffs might occur in practice among alternative nMAS specifications with no apparent resolution. To produce an nMAS specification that is acceptable to each agent, we model the specification process as a negotiation over a set of norms. We propose an agent-based negotiation framework, where agents’ requirements are represented as values (e.g., patient safety, privacy, and national security), and an agent revises the nMAS specification to promote its values by executing a set of norm revision rules that incorporate ontology-based reasoning. To demonstrate that our framework supports creating a transparent and accountable nMAS specification, we conduct an experiment with human participants who negotiate against our agent. Our findings show that our negotiation agent reaches better agreements (with small p -value and large effect size) faster than a baseline strategy. Moreover, participants perceive that our agent enables more collaborative and transparent negotiations than the baseline (with small p -value and large effect size in particular settings) toward reaching an agreement.

In this study, I illustrate the sociotechnical perspective of the Operator 4.0 factory, where advanced Industry 4.0 technologiessuch as robots, the internet of things, virtual reality-are deployed to collaborate with operators and help them to their activities within manufacturing organisations. There is a lack of studies exploring how Operator 4.0 factory operates through the interplay between technologies and workers. I address this gap by conducting a systematic literature review employing the sociotechnical theory. This theory sees an organisation as a work system, composed of social and technical systems and helps understand how the work system operates. Thus, I portray the novel role of Operator 4.0, the enabling technologies of the Operator 4.0 factory and the challenged to implement them, and the instrumental and workforce benefits. The results show that studies are focused on both systems meaning that operator 4.0 plays a crucial role in this factory in conjunction with Industry 4.0 technologies. Organisations adopting such production systems experience instrumental benefits related to a more efficient production process and better workforce conditions. I conclude by proposing some future research avenues.

Many promising telemedicine innovations fail to be accepted and used over time, and there are longstanding questions about how to best evaluate telemedicine services and other health information technologies. In response to these challenges, there is a growing interest in how to take the sociotechnical complexity of health care into account during design, implementation, and evaluation. This paper discusses the methodological implications of this complexity and how the sociotechnical context holds the key to understanding the effects and outcomes of telemedicine. Examples from a work domain analysis of a surgical setting, where a telemedicine service for remote surgical consultation was to be introduced, are used to show how abstracted functional modeling can provide a structured and rigorous means to analyze and represent the implementation context in complex health care settings.

The field of science and technology studies (STS) has introduced and developed a “sociotechnical” perspective that has been taken up by many disciplines and areas of inquiry. The aims and objectives of this study are threefold: to interrogate which sociotechnical concepts or tools from STS are useful at better understanding energy-related social science, to reflect on prominent themes and topics within those approaches, and to identify current research gaps and directions for the future. To do so, the study builds on a companion project, a systematic analysis of 262 articles published from 2009 to mid-2019 that categorized and reviewed sociotechnical perspectives in energy social science. It identifies future research directions by employing the method of “co-creation” based on the reflections of sixteen prominent researchers in the field in late 2019 and early 2020. Drawing from this co-created synthesis, this study first identifies three main areas of sociotechnical perspectives in energy research (sociotechnical systems, policy, and expertise and publics) with 15 topics and 39 subareas. The study then identifies five main themes for the future development of sociotechnical perspectives in energy research: conditions of systematic change; embedded agency; justice, power, identity and politics; imaginaries and discourses; and public engagement and governance. It also points to the recognized need for pluralism and parallax: for research to show greater attention to demographic and geographical diversity; to stronger research designs; to greater theoretical triangulation; and to more transdisciplinary approaches.

Annotation. The purpose of the article is to theoretically summarize the mechanisms of modern hybrid socio-economic war from the standpoint of behavioral economics. The choice of socio-economic war as an object of measures of influence on the development of socio-technical systems of activity is substantiated. Methods. The concept of development of socio-technical systems is proposed, which is determined by the objective involvement of the behavioral economy in the process of designing such systems. The Results. An approach of external behavioral interaction with the society was created, to ensure the development of socio-technical systems and to integrate the regulation of such development in the pre-industrial era. Scientific novelty. New is the generalization of views on the development and maintenance of socio-technical systems in terms of conducting and using the results of research, design and expert work at all stages of the life cycle of such systems. The practical significance. New insights into the behavioral mechanisms of hybrid socio-economic warfare contain skills in dealing with the flow of continuous behavioral information about economic development. The interpretation of meaningful, procedural and effective information is brought to the level of approach to the theoretical assessment of the reliability of the socio-technical system of activity., Мета. Метою статті є теоретичне узагальнення сучасних механізмів гібридної соціально-економічної війни з позицій поведінкової економіки. Обґрунтовано поведінкове підґрунтя гібридної соціально-економічної війни в якості об’єкта заходів впливу на сучасний розвиток соціотехнічних систем. Методика. Запропоновано концепцію розвитку соціотехнічних систем, яка детермінована об’єктивною залученістю поведінкової економіки до процесу проектування таких систем. Результати. Створено підхід зовнішньої поведінкової взаємодії з соціумом, забезпечення розвитку соціотехнічних систем та інтегральної регуляції такого розвитку в надіндустріальну епоху. Наукова новизна. Новим є узагальнення поглядів на забезпечення розвитку та супровід соціотехнчних систем с точки зору проведення та використання результатів дослідницьких, проектувальних та експертних робіт на всіх стадіях життєвого циклу таких систем. Практична значимість. Нові уявлення про поведінкові механізми гібридної соціально-економічної війни містять навички роботи потоками неперервної поведінкової інформації про економічний розвиток. Трактування змістовної, процедурної та результативної інформації доведено до рівня підходу до теоретичної оцінки надійності соціотехнічної системи діяльності.

Even though miscarriages are a common experience, there remains a discrepancy between the information needed after a pregnancy is lost and the information received. We explored the reasons for this gap as part of an eight-week online study with 42 participants who experienced a miscarriage. Common online sources of information were forums, blogs, and Facebook. Participants were interested in general information about miscarriage, counselling resources, others' experiences, and information from health care providers. Barriers to information access were both external (e.g., difficulty locating resources) and internal (e.g., self-blame or stigma). We map these information needs and barriers to a generalized miscarriage timeline crafted from participants' individual experiences and discuss implications for the design of sociotechnical systems to support people through miscarriage and beyond.

Sociotechnical systems (STSs) rely on the collaboration between humans and autonomous decision-making units to fulfill their objectives. Highly intertwined social and technical contextual factors influence the collaboration between these human and engineered elements, and consequently the performance characteristics of the STS. In the next two decades, the role allocated to STSs in our society will drastically increase. Thus, the effective design of STSs requires an improved understanding of the human-autonomy interdependency. This dissertation brings together management science along with systems thinking and uses a mixed-methods approach to investigate the interdependencies between people and the autonomous systems they collaborate within complex socio-technical enterprises. The dissertation is organized in three mutually exclusive essays, each investigating a distinct facet of STSs: safe management, collaboration, and efficiency measurement. The first essay investigates the amount of work allocated to safety-critical decision makers and quantifies Rasmussen's workload boundary that represents the limit of attainable workload. The major contribution of this study is to quantify the qualitative theoretical construct of the workload boundary through a Pareto-Koopmans frontier. This frontier allows one to capture the aggregate impact of the social and technical factors that originate from operational conditions on workload. The second essay studies how teams of humans and their autonomous partners share work, given their subjective preferences and contextual operational conditions. This study presents a novel integration of machine learning algorithms in an efficiency measurement framework to understand the influence of contextual factors. The results demonstrate that autonomous units successfully handle relatively simple operational conditions, while complex operational conditions require both workers and their autonomous counterparts to collaborate towards common objectives. The third essay explores the complementary and contrasting roles of efficiency measurement approaches that deal with the influence of contextual factors and their sensitivity to sample size. The results are organized in a structured taxonomy of their fundamental assumptions, limitations, mathematical structure, sensitivity to sample size, and their practical usefulness. To summarize, this dissertation provides an interdisciplinary and pragmatic research approach that benefits from the strengths of both theoretical and data-driven empirical approaches. Broader impacts of this dissertation are disseminated among the literatures of systems engineering, operations research, management science, and mechanical design. Doctor of Philosophy A system is an integrated set of elements that achieve a purpose or goal. An autonomous system (ADS) is an engineered element that often substitutes for a human decision-maker, such as in the case of an autonomous vehicle. Sociotechnical systems (STSs) are systems that involve the collaboration of a human decision-maker with an ADS to fulfill their objectives. Historically, STSs have been used primarily for handling safety critical tasks, such as management of nuclear power plants. By design, STSs rely heavily on a collaboration between humans and ADS decision-makers. Therefore, the overall characteristics of a STS, such as system safety, performance, or reliability; is fully dependent on human decisions. The problem with that is that people are independent entities, who can be influenced by operational conditions. Unlike their engineered counterparts, people can be cognitively challenged, tired, or distracted, and consequently make mistakes. The current dependency on human decisions, incentivize business owners and engineers alike to increase the level of automation in engineered systems. This allows them to reduce operational costs, increase performance, and minimize human errors. However, the recent commercial aircraft accidents (e.g., Boeing 737-MAX) have indicated that increasing the level of automation is not always the best strategy. Given that increasing technological capabilities will spread the adoption of STSs, vast majority of existing jobs will either be fully replaced by an ADS or will change from a manual set-up into a STS. Therefore, we need a better understanding of the relationships between social (human) and engineered elements. This dissertation, brings together management science with systems thinking to investigate the dependencies between people and the autonomous systems they collaborate within complex socio-technical enterprises. The dissertation is organized in three mutually exclusive essays, each investigating a distinct facet of STSs: safe management, collaboration, and efficiency measurement. The first essay investigates the amount of work handled by safety-critical decision makers in STSs. Primary contribution of this study is to use an analytic method to quantify the amount of work a person could safely handle within a STSs. This method also allows to capture the aggregate impact of the social and technical factors that originate from operational conditions on workload. The second essay studies how teams of humans and their autonomous partners share work, given their preferences and operational conditions. This study presents a novel integration of machine learning algorithms to understand operational influences that propel a human-decision maker to handle the work manually or delegate it to ADSs. The results demonstrate that autonomous units successfully handle simple operational conditions. More complex conditions require both workers and their autonomous counterparts to collaborate towards common objectives. The third essay explores the complementary and contrasting roles of data-driven analytical management approaches that deal with the operational factors and investigates their sensitivity to sample size. The results are organized based on their fundamental assumptions, limitations, mathematical structure, sensitivity to sample size, and their practical usefulness. To summarize, this dissertation provides an interdisciplinary and pragmatic research approach that benefits from the strengths of both theoretical and data-driven empirical approaches. Broader impacts of this dissertation are disseminated among the literatures of systems engineering, operations research, management science, and mechanical design.

Background Digital Health Information Systems (HIS) have potential to improve the finances of healthcare organisations in lower income countries through better tracking of patients and procedures, more timely billing, greater professional accountability and more informed decisions. However, little is known about how HIS influence these processes in such settings or how contextual and social factors mediate their implementation and impacts. Objectives This study investigated whether, and through what mechanisms, the implementation of a modular HIS influenced revenue capture from patient billing in a large referral hospital in Malawi, drawing on the perspectives of complex sociotechnical systems, health system strengthening and ICT for good-governance. Methods Retrospective mixed-methods case study involving documentary analysis of management reports, interviews with informed respondents and descriptive analysis of revenue data over an 8-year period. Key implementation stages were mapped against changes in patient revenue and triangulated with interview data to obtain a rich picture of the project over time. Results Trends in measured revenue were obfuscated by fluctuations in data recording procedures, government reimbursement for patient services, patient traffic (due to public health interventions) and inflationary instability. Interviewees reported that the system had improved hospital finances through introducing greater transparency and accountability, thus preventing illicit practices such as informal payments. However, triangulating qualitative and quantitative data revealed that introducing the HIS had little effect on revenue (or possibly the reverse) until independent Ward Clerks were introduced to operate the systems’ billing and payment functions, thus reducing opportunities for entrenched practices to be replicated digitally. Conclusions Although it was not possible to draw firm conclusions about the effect of the HIS on billing and finance, qualitative findings from our study, coupled with data triangulation, align with other research indicating that HIS can help to improve efficiency and accountability in healthcare organisations, but that technology alone is unlikely to suffice. Further research is needed to understand the role of HIS as enablers of financial good-governance in low income country settings, to more robustly evaluate their impacts on work practices, efficiency and sustainability, and to understand the complex contextual and socio-cultural influences mediating these effects.

Ethics is inherently a multiagent concern. However, research on AI ethics today is dominated by work on individual agents: (1) how an autonomous robot or car may harm or (differentially) benefit people in hypothetical situations (the so-called trolley problems) and (2) how a machine learning algorithm may produce biased decisions or recommendations. The societal framework is largely omitted. To develop new foundations for ethics in AI, we adopt a sociotechnical stance in which agents (as technical entities) help autonomous social entities or principals (people and organizations). This multiagent conception of a sociotechnical system (STS) captures how ethical concerns arise in the mutual interactions of multiple stakeholders. These foundations would enable us to realize ethical STSs that incorporate social and technical controls to respect stated ethical postures of the agents in the STSs. The envisioned foundations require new thinking, along two broad themes, on how to realize (1) an STS that reflects its stakeholders’ values and (2) individual agents that function effectively in such an STS.

In this paper, we investigate how managers enhance sense-making during technological changes in safety-critical industries. Implementation of new technologies is not a linear and predictable process. Technologies evolve faster than we can fully prepare for. This means that new challenges are introduced into the sociotechnical system in which the technology is embedded, leading to shifts in paradigms, interpretation, and business practices. These new technology-induced changes have been less the focus of previous work on sense-making compared to the more traditional paradigms and core practices. In this paper, we focus on the managerial role in these changes. We examine the relevant literature on technological change implementation and organizational sense-making in the past three years and use thematic analysis to capture the main themes plausible within the scope of the paper. Several themes and sub-themes are derived and presented. The resulting themes shed light on what the managers need to be aware of and do to support and enhance the sense-making process during technological changes, which leads to empowerment of the employees to do their own sense-making and maintain reliable operations.