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This multiple case study investigates the impact of technology on organizational change in public libraries. Over the past 12–15 years, public access computers (PACs) have been introduced into public libraries. Once these PACs were connected to the Internet, they attracted patrons who had not previously used public library services. The main themes around which this study was organized relate to the implementation of technology with facilities and services, city government, and people. The main research questions were following: (1) How has public library culture changed since the introduction of computers for patron use? (2) What adjustments were necessary to deal with the influx of computers and other technology in public libraries? (3) Have PACs changed the way the libraries are organized and how they are staffed? The findings of the study included how technology influenced changes in staffing in the public libraries. Each of the libraries has undergone a culture shift due to the introduction of technology. One of the shifts is the change of the reference desk from general reference to the addition of a help desk with reference responsibilities. Another concern of the directors was constantly funding the upgrades necessary for software and hardware that technology requires. As not all of the directors have supportive city government, this can be problematic. Finally, the facilities where the public libraries were housed had undergone changes either through renovations or through new buildings to accommodate technology and the infrastructure needed to support it.

The study of the diffusion of innovations into libraries has become a cottage industry of sorts, as libraries have always provided a fascinating test-bed of nonprofit institutions attempting improvement through the use of new policies, practices, and assorted apparatus (Malinconico, 1997). For example, Paul Sturges (1996) has focused on the evolution of public library services over the course of 70 years across England, while Verna Pungitore (1995) presented the development of standardization of library planning policies in contemporary America. For the past several decades, however, the study of diffusion in libraries has tended to focus on the implementation of information technologies (e.g., Clayton, 1997; Tran, 2005; White, 2001) and their associated competencies (e.g., Marshall, 1990; Wildemuth, 1992), the improvements in performance associated with their use (e.g., Damanpour, 1985, 1988; Damanpour & Evan, 1984), and ways to manage resistance to technological changes within the library environment (e.g., Weiner, 2003).

The Libraries are in an era where changes come with high speed and much intense issues, and this seems to be as a result of the 4th industrial revolution. These emerging issues come in the form of changes that are not supposed to be overlooked by the library managers. These are changes libraries and Librarians have to be knowledgeable about. This chapter will address the impact, issues, challenges and controversies, prospects and how libraries should adapt, embrace and redesign their services, spaces and roles to accommodate this change on the Libraries. Existing research in the 4th Industrial revolution tends to focus on the challenges without much prospects and little or no evidence that researchers have approached how the libraries should accommodate and harness this revolutionary changes for improved library services provision. Therefore, this chapter aims to provide how the 4th industrial revolution affects the library and how libraries can harness the industrial revolution for enhanced services provision.

Digital transformations represent an increasingly salient empirical phenomena for institutionalists studying the processes by which institutions evolve, erode, or otherwise change. Yet, there have been few meaningful attempts to engage with insights from the information systems (IS) literature, despite digital innovation and diffusion falling squarely within its domain. This essay makes an initial attempt at integration by offering a two-by-two framework which crosses salient theoretical categories within the IS and institutional literatures. From the former, we draw on concepts of system acceptance and resistance, and from the latter, we draw on concepts of institutional maintenance and change. Each quadrant in our framework represents user responses happening because of, in reaction to, or toward various institutional dynamics. We illustrate each quadrant with data collected as part of a study of digital transformation in the field of public healthcare in Australia. We use our illustrative case to open up research questions which researchers might use to frame their own studies of digital transformations as a form of institutional change. We conclude with a discussion of what other theoretical advances or insights might be yielded from greater collaboration between institutionalists and IS scholars. This essay contributes to the nascent study of digital transformations as a form of institutional change through examining how complementary concepts of the IS and institutional literatures might be used simultaneously to understand the intersection of digital innovation and diffusion and the institutional arrangements governing the fields which they change.

This chapter addresses how small businesses resist city regulations by using material things, by making craft knowledge claims about material things, and by letting material things organize their political activity. Chefs successfully resisted a foie gras ban in Chicago, where political resistance shaped the production and use of material things. Bakers successfully resisted a trans fat ban in Philadelphia, where material properties of things structured political resistance. We bring together analytic tools from the sociology of culture and science and technology studies to demonstrate how materiality can be both an instigator and an instrument of legal and political resistance.

A vast amount of research has been carried out to help us understand the main factors influencing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) performance. Although the existing body of knowledge focuses mainly on macro-level factors, there is an increasing interest from scholars and practitioners in understanding the micro-foundational factors occurring at individual and team levels. This chapter focuses on the importance of emotions – a central facet in individual reactions to workplace events – in M&A processes. To this end, the authors carried out a multi-phased search for articles on micro-foundations in M&A settings published by Business and Management (B/M) and Organizational Behavior and Psychology (O/P) journals. The authors reviewed 41 papers and used the circumplex model to identify and categorize 19 themes related to individual emotions involved in M&A processes in terms of positive/negative valence and high/low activation. The findings show that scholars mainly assume a risk mitigation perspective and focus on themes related to change resistance (negative emotions with high activation) by providing prescriptions on how negative emotions could be mitigated to avoid eroding acquisition performance. Hence, the authors suggest that (a) there should be more efforts to integrate different streams of literature, namely between the strategic and operational/behavioral areas of knowledge and (b) future research should focus on understanding how positive emotions like change proactivity (positive emotions with high activation) might be essential to enhance acquisition performance.