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Existing research on how professionals manage after-hours connectivity to work has been dominated by studies on the strategies/practices individuals develop. In these studies, mobile technology is perceived as a tool or an enabler that supports otherwise human-centric connectivity decisions. This view sees technology as separate or external to the organisation, missing out on its nuanced role in shaping connectivity decisions. Our study aims to bring technology back into the sociomaterially imbricated context of connectivity and to unpack its parameters.

Drawing on data collected from documents and semi-structured interviews, we adopt the framework of “sociomaterial imbrications” (Leonardi, 2011) to understand the social and material parameters that influence connectivity management practices at two different academic institutions in Saudi Arabia.

The study identifies a set of social and material parameters (organisational, individual, technological and situational) that imbricate to shape, collectively and not individually, professionals’ connectivity management practices. Connectivity decisions to change practice (such as decisions of where, when or why to connect) or technology (how to connect) are not as distinct as they appear but originate from, and are founded on, imbricated sociomaterial parameters. Our study further suggests that connectivity decisions are shaped by individuals’ perceptions of sociomaterial imbrications, but decisions are not solely idiosyncratic. The context within which connectivity decisions are taken influences the type of decisions made.

Connectivity management emerged from sociomaterial imbrications within a context constitutive of four interacting parameters: organisational, technological, situational and individual. Decisions around the “how” and the “what” of connectivity – i.e. the practice of connectivity and its underpinning technology – originate from how people perceive sociomaterial imbrications as enabling or constraining within a context. Individual perceptions account for changes in practice and in technology, but the context they find themselves in is also important. For instance, we show that professionals may perceive a certain technology as affording, but eventually they may use another technology for communications due to social norms.

The purpose of this research is to study how compliance evaluation becomes performed in practice. Compliance evaluation is a common practice among organizations that need to evaluate their posture against a set of criteria (e.g. a standard, legislative framework and “best practices”). The results of these evaluations have significant importance for organizations, especially in the context of information security and continuity. The author argues that how these evaluations become performed is not merely a “social” activity but shaped by the materiality of the evaluation criteria

The authors adopt a sociomaterial practice-based view to study the compliance evaluation through in situ participant observations from compliance evaluation workshops to evaluate organizational compliance against a information security and business continuity criteria. The empirical material was analyzed to construct vignettes that serve to illustrate the practice of compliance evaluation.

The research analysis shows how the information security and business continuity criteria themselves partake in the compliance evaluations by operating through (ventriloqually) the evaluators on three strata: the material, the textual and the structural. The author also provides a conceptualization of a hybrid agency.

This research contributes to lack of studies on the organizational-level compliance. Further, the research is an original contribution to information security and business continuity management by focusing on the practices of compliance evaluation. Further, the research has theoretical novelty by adopting the ventriloqual agency as a hybrid agency to study the sociomateriality of a phenomenon.

In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.

This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.

Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).

Information infrastructures can enable or constrain how companies pursue their visions of sustainability reporting and help address the urgent need to understand how corporate activity affects sustainability outcomes and how socio-ecological challenges affect corporate activity. The paper examines the relationship between sustainability reporting information infrastructures and sustainability reporting practice.

The paper mobilises a socio-technical perspective and the conception of infrastructure, the socio-technical arrangement of technical artifacts and social routines, to engage with a qualitative dataset comprised of interview and documentary evidence on the development and construction of sustainability reporting information.

The results detail how sustainability reporting information infrastructures are used by companies and depict the difficulties faced in generating reliable sustainability data. The findings illustrate the challenges and measures undertaken by entities to embed automation and integration, and to enhance sustainability data quality. The findings provide insight into how infrastructures constrain and support sustainability reporting practices.

The paper explains how infrastructures shape sustainability reporting practices, and how infrastructures are shaped by regulatory demands and costs. Companies have developed “uneven” infrastructures supporting legislative requirements, whilst infrastructures supporting non-legislative sustainability reporting remain underdeveloped. Consequently, infrastructures supporting specific legislation have developed along unitary pathways and are often poorly integrated with infrastructures supporting other sustainability reporting areas. Infrastructures developed around legislative requirements are not necessarily constrained by financial reporting norms and do not preclude specific sustainability reporting visions. On the contrary, due to regulation, infrastructure supporting disclosures that offer an “inside out” perspective on sustainability reporting is often comparatively well developed.

This paper explores the orchestration of digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

The study applies the activity theory to explorative multiple case studies. Observations of innovation activities in five business cases take place at two large international organisations.

The results underline five logics of action that drive digital innovation: (1) digital transformation, (2) technology translation, (3) catalyst agents, (4) digital thread and (5) empowerment. Further, the case study organisations highlight the importance of developing a sustainable culture capable of continuously adopting new technologies, processes and infrastructure that will allow the management of digital innovations.

The study empirically shows the motivations and challenges in orchestrating digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

This paper aims to identify and prioritize the needs of coworking members. The authors focus on maintaining the existing members rather than attracting new ones.

The authors use two phases and multiple methods. The first phase focuses on a qualitative approach using observations and interviews to uncover and formulate the members’ needs. The second phase focuses on prioritizing the needs using a quantitative approach.

The authors discovered 19 member needs from the coworking spaces. Based on an online survey, the authors classified those needs into three main Kano model’s categories.

The resulting member needs and their strategic priorities provide a useful basis for coworking providers to direct their improvement efforts towards achieving greater member satisfaction.

The purpose of this article is to critically analyze the existing literature on internal social media (ISM) within the context of internal communication, aiming to provide a more nuanced understanding of the roles of ISM and its potential implications for communicative practices.

Drawing on a problematizing review methodology, the article conducts a critical analysis of a selected body of literature with the aim of problematizing assumptions that form the foundation of existing theories and constructs in the literature on ISM communication.

The article points out two interrelated critical issues that might constrain our understanding, scholarly conversation and theoretical development of the roles of ISM communication in organizations: (1) Philosophical inexplicitness; (2) Ontological inconsistency.

Assuming a communication perspective, the article contributes suggestions for future research on ISM in the context of internal communication, calling for research to: (1) explicitly consider the epistemological implications of philosophical positions, including the view of technology; and (2) foreground meaning creation processes as the analytical point of interest.

Despite being a seminal explanation of the workforce emotional experiences, capable of mapping the path from the antecedents to consequences, affective events theory (AET) only offers a “macrostructure” of a working environment. To date, little is known about the universal features of the work environment that may guide the understanding of imperative work aspects triggering employees’ emotions at work. Hence, the study proposes and validates that Stafford Beer’s viable system model (VSM) can provide a holistic view of the organizational work environment, enabling a comprehensive understanding of work events or factors triggering workforce emotions.

First, the VSM structural layout is used to fill in the “macrostructure” of the “working environment” in AET to diagnose the functional and relational aspects of the work and the related work events occurring within. Using a deductive approach, 31 work events were adopted to determine the impact of VSM-based work environment events on the employees’ emotional experiences and subsequent work attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (citizenship behavior). To field test the proposed nexus of VSM and AET, the survey was conducted on two hundred and fifteen employees from 39 different organizations. PLS-SEM tested the explanatory power of the suggested VSM’s systemic approach for understanding the affective work environment in totality.

The findings confirmed that the VSM metalanguage provides a holistic view of the organizational functioning and social connectivity disposing of affective work events, helpful in assessing their aggregate influence on employees’ emotions and work-related outcomes.

The findings identify how employees' emotions can be triggered by everyday work operations and social relations at work, which can affect their extra-role behaviors and necessary work-related attitudes.

The study utilized Beer’s VSM framework based on the systemic principle of “holistic view” for ascertaining the affective work environment and its related features holistically, which filled in well the macrostructure of “work environment features” with micro-structures of organizational inter-related aspects which are yet to be known in AET – a seminal explanation for managing workforce emotions.

The purpose of this study is to develop a model for investigating the sharing of harmful messages by employees using social media using the conspiracy theory from a socio-legal perspective. This study also examines the moderating role of different demographic parameters such as age, gender and education toward sharing harmful messages using social media.

Using the conspiracy theory and social impact theory as the foundation of this study, the authors developed theoretical model and validated it using the structural equation modeling technique with 342 participants from various organizations across Europe and Asia. The study also used different statistical measures to understand the demographic impacts toward sharing harmful messages.

It was found that epistemic, existential and social motives significantly and positively influence employees’ inappropriate message-sharing and seeking behavior, which in turn influences them to share harmful messages on social media. The study also indicates that there are some moderating impacts of employee demography toward sharing harmful messages using social media platforms.

This study investigates the antecedents of sharing harmful messages using social media by employees. The present study could be useful for the organizations leaders as well as policymakers and legal fraternity. The study uses a limited number of feedback to validate the model. Also, this is a cross-sectional study which is another limitation of this study.

This study has proposed and validated a theoretical model by using the conspiracy theory as well as the social impact theory which is unique. Moreover, this study adds value to the existing literature on the harmful impacts of social media and its societal impacts. Besides, the validated model of this study has a high explanatory power which is another uniqueness of this study.

Circular economy advocates innovations that upcycle wastes in the food supply chain to generate high added-value materials. These innovations are not only disruptive and green but also they are often initiated by startups, leading to the emergence of novel open-loop supply chains connecting actors in food and non-food sectors. While earlier research has highlighted the need to seek legitimacy for disruptive innovations to survive and grow, little is known about how these innovations occur and evolve across sectors. This paper aims to elaborate on this mechanism by exploring the function of the circular economy as a boundary object to facilitate legitimacy-seeking strategies.

An exploratory multiple-case research design is adopted and features food waste innovation projects with multi-tier supply chains consisting of a food producer, a startup and a buying firm. The study is investigated from the legitimacy and boundary object lenses.

The findings proposed a framework for the role of a boundary object in enabling legitimacy-seeking strategies for novel food waste innovations. First, the interpretative flexibility of the circular economy affords actors symbolic resources to conduct manipulation strategy to achieve cognitive legitimacy. Second, small-scale work arrangements enable creation strategy for the new supply chain to harness moral legitimacy. Finally, pragmatic legitimacy is granted via diffusion strategy enabled by scalable work arrangements.

This paper provides novel insights into the emergence of food waste innovation from a multi-tier supply chain perspective. It also highlights the key role of the boundary object in the legitimacy-seeking process.