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The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically examine a model of cloud-based human resource information systems (HRIS) adoption by small businesses based on the technology–organization–environment model (Tornatzky & Fleischer, 1990).

This study utilized a survey of 41 small- to medium-sized enterprises in the northeastern United States to examine what HR functions were being supported by cloud-based HRIS and the relationship between three technology factors, three organizational factors, and three environmental factors, and their relationship with the adoption of cloud-based HRIS.

Findings indicated that small businesses are most likely to implement cloud-based HRIS to support day-to-day HR operations. In addition, the findings indicated that top management support (positive), vendor support (positive), and anticipated growth (negative) were each related to organizational adoption of cloud-based HRIS.

The study illustrates how the adoption of a cloud-based HRIS is motivated by different factors than those underlying the adoption of other types of information systems. Executives and small business owners will need to adapt their strategy when considering cloud-based HRIS compared to other types of systems.

Given that small- to medium-sized organizations are the backbone of most global economies, findings from this study can help support society by helping these businesses better understand how to best consider the factors that will support the implementation of cloud-based HRIS.

This chapter represents one of the first to empirically validate a model of the factors affecting adoption of cloud-based HRIS by small businesses.

This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant observation conducted among analytics workers at a digital publishing network, I find that analytics workers appear paradoxically autonomous and empowered by management while being bound by ever-evolving, calculative cloud-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). Workers appear free to “be creative,” while ever-evolving ICTs exert unpredictable control over work. Based on this finding, I argue that sociology’s tendency to take organizational boundaries and technological stability for granted hampers analyses of contemporary forms of work. Thus, sociologists of work must extend outward – beyond communities of practice, labor markets, and the state – to include the ever-evolving, infrastructural, socio-technical networks in which work and organizations are embedded. Additionally, research on the experience of immaterial labor suggests that ICTs afford pleasurably immersive experiences that bind workers to organizations and their fields. Complicating this emerging body of research, I find workers acutely frustrated by these unpredictable, ever-evolving, cloud-based ICTs.

As the size of the population is growing and the capacity of the planet Earth is limited, human beings are searching for sustainable and technology-enabled solutions to support society, ecology and economy. One of the solutions has been developing smart sustainable cities. Smart sustainable cities are cities as systems, where their infrastructure, different subsystems and different functional domains are virtually connected to the information and communication technologies (ICT) and internet via sensors and devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), to collect and process real-time Big Data and make efficient, effective and sustainable solutions for a democratic and liveable city for its various stakeholders. This chapter explores the concepts and practices of sustainable smart cities across the globe and explores the use of technologies such as IoT, Blockchain technology and Cloud computing, etc. their challenges and then presents a view on business models for sustainable smart cities.

The unpredictable distribution of globalization has directed the world economy and revealed the need to establish cooperation in all business processes. This global structure also highlights the necessity of designing an agile supply chain that is capable of continuous information sharing during end-to-end transportation for the purpose of creating sustainable connections. In this process, various strategies enhanced with contemporary information and communication technologies have been developed to create a fast and accurate data-sharing network between logistics service providers and supply chain parties. However, unlike the short-term interruptions experienced in the past, COVID-19 has caused unprecedented problems in the dynamics of most economies. In eliminating these problems, it has been seen that information communication technologies, which provide the advantage of digital visibility in normal operations, need to be redesigned with the technology of the autonomous age. To meet this requirement, Industry 4.0, a revolutionary conceptual trend that started roughly a decade ago but that has become considerably more widespread during COVID-19, has been integrated into business models as a key concept that governs intelligent transformation in the chain. This process, which is today considered a compulsory intelligent transformation rather than an alternative method, has however led to some conflicts, especially in adaptation, expertise, and security subjects. This chapter of the book evaluates, within the scope of cybersecurity and workforce in logistics services, the conflicts created by the digital solution methods that have been integrated into business models to reduce the negative effects of COVID-19.