Socio-Technical Issues in Organizational Information Technologies

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/110001

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

When Blue Meets Digital: Exploring the Digital Journey of District Heating Workers
(2025-01-07) Festila, Maria; Gahrn-Andersen , Rasmus
In this paper, we broaden the discussion on work digitalization beyond the confines of the traditional office setting and knowledge work at the center of recent IS and organizational research. As perversive digitalization and computing are increasingly present in what are typically referred to as ‘blue-collar’ industries such as agriculture, construction, or maintenance, understanding the sociomaterial particularities of work in these settings becomes crucial for integral theories of digital work and organizing. Referencing findings from an ethnographic study on the digital journey of district heating maintenance workers in Denmark, we bring to the fore the importance of bodies, materiality and ‘messy’ sites in how digital mediation impacts the embodied performance of skilled work. We discuss how the digitalization of maintenance practices gives rise to a hybrid class of skilled workers by expanding occupational knowledge and boundaries and creating new work specializations, thus blurring the boundaries between white-collar and blue-collar work.
Creating an Encouraging Context: A Systematic Literature Review of Contextual Factors to Manage Technical Debt
(2025-01-07) Reis, Camilla
When the culture and processes of software development companies do not support technical debt management, unintentional technical debt accumulates in the system and becomes excessive. Encouragement, dedicated time, and proper processes can reduce and avoid unintentional debt, and the skill of contextual ambidexterity can be applied by creating an encouraging context that supports technical debt management. However, existing literature discussing which contextual factors are required to achieve this skill is scarce, and practitioners call for approaches to reduce and avoid technical debt. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 48 papers to identify contextual factors for achieving contextual ambidexterity in knowledge-driven contexts. The results reveal seven categories of core and support contextual factors. This paper informs small- and medium-sized software development companies which contextual factors establish an encouraging context, and it theoretically examines the IT managers’ responsibility for technical debt management.
Paper was never the problem: The paperless idea as a persistent symbol for organizational digitalization and sustainability
(2025-01-07) Bomark, Sara; Öbrand, Lars; Westergren, Ulrika
This study problematizes the long-lived assumption that eliminating paper and becoming paperless contributes to organizational digitalization and sustainability efforts. By identifying paperless as a trope in discourse and a norm in practice, we show how the strive for paperless drives digitization of a paper-based logic rather than creates conditions for digital value creation. A sense of doing good when reducing paper, combined with neglecting opportunity costs related to digital technologies can also create adverse effects on sustainability as well as simplify the complexities of converging digitalization efforts with sustainability outcomes.
The Role of FCEs in Facilitating Digital Capability Development
(2025-01-07) Paavola, Lauri; Julkunen, Saara
Field-configuring events (FCEs) play an ever-increasing role in coordinating the digital transformation of the world. We investigated the role of FCEs in educating HR managers and thus facilitating digital capability development within a large cooperative organization. Whereas the current literature views the factors related to the organization of FCEs as the key determinants of their impact, our longitudinal analysis illustrates how the role of FCEs is highly relational and dependent on participants’ need for change.
Overcoming the AI Opacity in ESG Reporting: A Digital Platform-based Knowledge Boundary-Spanning Perspective
(2025-01-07) Vieru, Dragos; Plugge, Albert
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting has become increasingly important for organizations after the introduction of EU directives. The development of ESG platform functionality is impeded by the scattered knowledge across different stakeholders and the absence of crisp regulatory standards. Artificial intelligence-based systems, such as algorithms integrated with ESG training, can potentially transform investment by providing precise and relevant information. Adopting an Action Design Research methodology, we use four effective knowledge boundary-spanning (EKBS) mechanisms to illuminate the practices of a team of three actors (a platform owner, a complementor, and a platform user) co-designing an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) tool for ESG reporting in the context of a multi-boundary digital platform. Our data analysis suggests that using EKBS mechanisms is essential for ensuring explainability and trust in AI-based tools.
A Multilevel Mechanism-Based Model of Human Agents, Machine Agents, and Offerings’ Collective Outcomes on Digital Platforms
(2025-01-07) Jiang, Jinglu; Rivard, Suzanne; Cameron, Ann-Frances
We propose a model of how the attributes of a product or service offered on an e-commerce digital platform affect this offering’s collective outcomes (e.g., total sales). The model is based on the premise that the representation of offerings on contemporary e-commerce platforms is shaped by human agents (e.g., customers and providers) and machine agents (e.g., the platform's internal algorithms and external bots). While some agents directly adjust an offering’s representation—like modifying its price—others indirectly impact its attractiveness through actions such as reviews and search results manipulations. The multilevel mechanism-based model posits that an offering representation displayed at the macro level—the platform—affects micro-level individual human and machine agent perceptions and actions. It explains how the results of micro-level agent actions coalesce at the macro level into an offering’s collective outcomes. The model explains human agents’ actions with social mechanisms and machine agents’ actions with computational mechanisms.
Introduction to the Minitrack on Socio-Technical Issues in Organizational Information Technologies
(2025-01-07) Vieru, Dragos; Westergren, Ulrika; Vidolov, Simeon; Plugge, Albert

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