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Sociotechnical systems theory (STS) does not address in full the implications of the team‐context relations, despite its open systems character. There is a need to open STS into a sociotechnical business systems (STBS) theory and practice. We observe three interrelated aspects that are important for STBS. First, the design of the production structure is a traditional STS aspect. Second, the design of the control structure on the team level needs an elaboration compared with STS. The third aspect is the social‐dynamic alignment. We describe the mini‐company concept and argue that this concept is a specification of STBS covering the three aspects. The case of the implementation of mini‐companies in a Dutch manufacturing plant illustrates the strengths of the concept.

Theories of sociotechnical change seek to understand technology as both material and social artifacts. Actor‐network theory (ANT) offers an approach to sociotechnical change that has been criticized for emphasizing a micro‐level analysis of political strategies at the expense of larger social and cultural processes. This paper presents an approach to sociotechnical change that links the enrollment process of ANT with broader social practices, through the concept of inclusion in multiple technological frames. Inclusion in different technological frames is used to explain the sources of enrollment strategies in the early personal digital assistant (PDA) industry. Two case studies of PDA evolution (Psion, led by David Potter, and Palm, led by Jeff Hawkins) are used to illustrate the link between enrollment strategies and inclusion.

This study aims to provide a new overview and opportunities of blockchain (BCT), financial technology (fintech) and knowledge management (KM) over the past ten years. Its focus is on their potential to drive new value creation and innovation processes within the digital landscape of the tourism and hospitality.

This systematic literature review and sociotechnical approach employs a literature analysis, analyzing and synthesizing 62 relevant articles published in the past decade form e-databases (Web of Science and Scopus).

This study reveals that researchers frequently discuss the potential advantages and challenges of BCT, fintech and KM in this industry. These include establishing systems that prioritize transparency and traceability, addressing blockchain security concerns, enhancing financial transaction efficiency and trustworthiness, and promoting innovation and improvement through KM strategies. Furthermore, this review suggests that the application of blockchain, fintech and KM has the potential to create new markets and opportunities in the tourism and hospitality industry. This study provides insights into the state and implementation of technology-based and knowledge-based for tourism and hospitality in times of crisis and digitization era.

Shifting to new lens (refers to sociotechnical theory), from technology adoption strategy, it is important to stay updated with emerging technologies such as BCT and fintech and upcoming technologies trends must align with tourism and hospitality business objectives, customer expectations and market demands. From the socio-dimension, KM is not confined to technological tools alone. Instead, it is a strategic approach that emphasizes fostering a culture of open communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing within the team of tourism and hospitality industry.

Through a literature review approach, this study establishes a new foundation in tourism and hospitality such as analyzing research gaps, understanding benefits and challenges, supporting methodologies/theoretical frameworks and informing the future research opportunities. Additionally, a novel contribution is the inclusion of sociotechnical approach that is allocated into socio or knowledge resources perspective (knowledge management), and technical or technology perspective (blockchain and fintech) that drives tourism and hospitality innovation.

For various reasons many organisations are currently introducing the new ways of working (NWW). By now, this occurs on such a large scale, that it becomes relevant to investigate whether the new way of working leads to the best way of working: are the measurements taken by NWW really resulting in pursued outcomes? NWW claims to make working more effective, efficient but also more enjoyable for the organisation as well as the employee (Bijl, 2007). In practice, it seems that more pragmatically reasons lead to changes in the way of working. In many cases this concerns the elimination of fixed workplaces, combined with the possibility to work from home or elsewhere, facilitation of working with new ICT, and establishing an organisational culture which aims at employee autonomy and goal attainment.

To answer the question whether the NWW approach offers sufficient tools to provide effective solutions for occurring objectives, we compare NWW with a scientifically established construct regarding work design: Sociotechnical systems (STS) (Kuipers et al., 2010). We chose STS not only because it is a comprehensive approach to work design (all aspects of managing and organising are addressed), but also because the ambition is similar to NWW. STS considers, next to the ‘quality of the organisation’ (which is central to most work design approaches), also the ‘quality of work’ and ‘quality of employment relationships’ as outcome criteria. With incorporating the latter two, STS distinguishes itself from many other work design approaches and fits to the philosophy of NWW as mentioned above. Important foundations for the NWW approach are the quality of work as well as the willingness to organise teamwork.

The comparison of NWW and STS reveals as most important finding that the NWW approach misses a coherent theoretical foundation for the design of organisations. NWW focuses on loose aspects of organisations, like workspace, work design, management, organisational culture and competences. This is also evident in the scientific research focused on NWW: many studies examine the impact of a specific measure (e.g. introduction of flexible workspaces) on specific aspects of the organisation (e.g. social cohesion). Due to the lack of a work design approach no framework exists to test whether the introduction of NWW fits to the organisation and how work is organised and divided. It is our statement that NWW can only be effective once a good theoretical foundation is provided for NWW and once a clear work design approach is deducted.

Simultaneously, the NWW practices provide so many relevant practical experiences on skills and information underlining the potential of STS. Currently, STS mostly is focused on work in industrial organisations. STS and NWW have the potential to mutually extend each other, while tools may be developed with which new ways of working lead to the best way of working for organisations.

An increased level of self‐organization, particularly in autonomous work teams, is widely believed to be a necessary part of a successful firm and a factor in many modern restructuring initiatives. This article investigates the limitations of self‐organized groups and surveys these limitations from two important perspectives: (1) limits that are inherent to the production structure and equipment, and (2) limits that relate to the firm’s workforce. With respect to the first issue, the predictability of markets and the standardization of production situations provide strong reasons for limiting the opportunities for self‐organization. In terms of a firm’s workforce, problems such as learning capability, motivation, identity, ambition, and prestige must be taken into account before introducing self‐organizational practices. Additionally, the delegation of authority, the resulting redundancy of middle managers and the relevant compensation for the workers concerned must also be considered. In conclusion, self‐organizing teams relate to many constraints, all of which should be considered before putting these teams into practice.

The overall purpose of this paper is to explain theoretically the autonomy phenomenon of teams working within the auto manufacturing context and its implications for the technical and social aspects of group work.

Three auto component companies were studied. The procedures of a qualitative methodology were followed, adopting naturalistic observation techniques of work teams, and unstructured and semi‐structured interviews conducted with operators, supervisors and middle managers. To analyse and interpret the qualitative data obtained, the grounded theory technique was used.

In this paper 33 concepts were obtained, which resulted from the constant comparative method applied to data. The relationships between those concepts allowed the construction of a theoretical model that is settled in the “bridge” concept. This “bridge” is a metaphor that translates the process which binds operational work group goals to the needs of external clients. This process is supported by social aspects – team decision making, participation, mutual helpfulness, and social and emotional relationships, and by technical aspects – operations and information. The bridge has four pillars that are critical to the effective functioning of self‐directed teams: team facilitation, hierarchical relationships established within the teams, quality of manufactured components, and productivity achieved.

The present investigation was carried out in a specific industry, which does not allow for the generalization of the model to other industries. Furthermore, it may be questioned whether the same results be obtained if the operators of the teams observed were interviewed, not individually, but in a group situation. Other kinds of research design and other industries organized on the basis of autonomous work groups must be studied, applying the grounded theory technique, in order to compare diverse theoretical models.

The organization of the industrial automotive production based on self‐directed teams, which know the needs of external customers and to whom a high level of participation in operational decisions was given, can generate a substantial increase of working groups' efficiency and an increase in job satisfaction.

The study of teams in the automotive components industry – in a southern country of Europe – and the consequent elaboration of a specific theoretical model draws attention to the need for social research that takes into account the fact that realities are constructed by the actors who interact in a certain context. No theoretical model can ever encompass the reality of all contexts.

This study aims to analyse the influence of the pillars (hard and soft skills) of digital academic entrepreneurship on students' entrepreneurial intention.

This was done by adopting a quantitative methodology involving empirical research with a sample of 761 university students from two countries and adopting structural equation analysis to validate the theoretical model proposed.

The results indicate a direct influence between hard and soft skills and entrepreneurial intention, and a positive, indirect influence between these and entrepreneurial intention mediated by the dimensions of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) – entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Therefore, the pillars of digital academic entrepreneurship have a direct and indirect influence on university students' entrepreneurial intention.

This study also contributes to better operationalization of entrepreneurial education in university environments, since the development of hard and soft skills can be planned better based on the model proposed here. Considering the relations between the dimensions of hard and soft skills and those of TPB, this study shows there can be an influence on students' entrepreneurial intention.

In this study, a new and innovative construct is inserted in the model of entrepreneurial intention: “structural pillars of digital academic entrepreneurship” through structural equation modelling, to determine the degree of influence of these pillars (hard and soft skills) constructs on HEI students' entrepreneurial intention.

This paper aims to focus on participation in the workplace and examines the relative importance of different dimensions of job control in relation to subjective well-being and organizational commitment. These dimensions are job autonomy (within a given job), functional support (from supervisor and colleagues) and organizational level decision latitude (shop-floor consultancy on process improvements, division of labor, workmates, targets, etc.). Interaction with work intensity is looked at as well.

Measurements and data were taken from the European Working Conditions Survey, 2010. The paper focusses on salaried employees only. The sample was further limited to employees in workplaces consisting of at least 50 workers. There are 2,048 employees in the final sample, from Denmark, Ireland, The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the UK. In this paper, the focus is not on differences between countries, and adding more countries would have introduced too many country characteristics as intermediate variables.

In the regression analyses, functional support and organizational level decision latitude showed stronger relations with the outcome variables than job autonomy. There was no relation between work intensity and the outcome variables. Two-way interactions were found for job autonomy and organizational level decision latitude on subjective well-being and for functional support and organizational level decision latitude on organizational commitment. A three-way interaction, of all job control variables combined, was found on organizational commitment, with the presence of all types of job control showing the highest organizational commitment level. No such three-way interaction was found for subjective well-being. There was an indication for a two-way interaction of work intensity and functional support, as well as an indication for a two-way interaction of work intensity and organizational level decision latitude on subjective well-being: high work intensity and low functional support or low organizational level decision latitude seemed to associate with low well-being. No interaction was found for any dimension of job control being high and high work intensity.

Although this study has all the limitations of a cross-sectional survey, the results are more or less in accordance with existing theories. This indicates that organizational level decision latitude matters. Differentiation of job control dimensions in research models is recommended, and so is workplace innovation for healthy and productive jobs.

Most theoretical models for empirical research are limited to control at task level (e.g. the Job Demand-Control-Support model of Karasek and Theorell. The paper aims at nuancing and extending current job control models by distinguishing three dimensions/levels of job control, referring to sociotechnical systems design theory (De Sitter) and action regulation theory (Hacker) and reciprocity (Akerlof). The policy relevance regards the consequences for work and organization design.

Motivation theory in the 20^th century has evolved to meet the changing social, political, and economic environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the developmental path of modern motivation theory from the perspective of the Tao and the cyclical nature of Yin and Yang. We review motivation theory from the Industrial Revolution to the present. The developmental path during the past 100 years consists of seven distinct stages, each stage representing a significant shift in theory as well as a shift in the social, political, and economic environment in the United States. The dominant theme that emerges from the analysis is the discourse between science and humanity, and the revolving cycle of these fundamental theories throughout the century.

The purpose of this paper is to examine best practices of worldwide country web sites, evaluated in 2003, 2005 and 2008 by the United Nations (UN).

The paper employs statistical analysis to determine whether the electronic innovation (digitized government) exhibits linear (unitary) or curvilinear (S‐type) processes in relation to four theories of information technology (IT) and social change.

The findings are bifurcated between 2003 and 2008. In the aggregate (highest scores), worldwide countries are responding to the value‐added qualities of digitized government, defined as the transactions of e‐government and the interactions of e‐governance. Yet, the disaggregate (first adopter) best practices data reveal significant downward trends between those survey years, especially, among Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) countries. The findings indicate that neither electronic dimension predicts the other's course. They also suggest that dual curvilinear processes explain e‐government and e‐governance.

It is customary to employ random samples to verify the integrity of significance tests. In this research, however, the study population is a given (all UN members). The study universe (the whole subset) – that represents countries with the largest number of electronic offerings – and the study sample (the best practices subset) are virtually the same. It is not possible to attribute any of the outcomes to a sampling error (miscalculation). Nor is it likely to confuse conflating (mistaking) sample size and effect size (relationship strength) of the distributions.

Longitudinal (over time) studies of country web site best practices are almost non‐existent. Support for a dual curvilinear relationship between e‐government (transactions) and e‐governance (interactions) opens the way for a fuller treatment of digitized government best practices. Questioning the premise that a sustained electronic (democratizing) transformation is underway, notably, among first adopters is a compelling and critical outcome.