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This chapter presents a sociological analysis of the work involved in producing neuroimaging scans used in clinical practice. Drawing on fieldwork in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) units in hospitals and free-standing imaging centers; in-depth interviews with technologists, radiologists, and neurologists; and reviews of relevant medical literatures, this analysis demonstrates how assembly line techniques structure neuroimaging work. Neuroimages (after being ordered by the referring clinician) are created in an image production line where scans of brains, breasts, livers, and other body parts are all produced: although some facilities may focus on one area of the body, most create an array of scans. Following MRI scans as they are produced demonstrates how medical work emphasizes repetition, specialization, and efficiency – key features of mass production. On the medical assembly line, the organization of work aims to transform patients into objects – ones that multiply as scans are created and circulated. Neurologists, radiologists, and technologists are positioned as skilled workers who manage the flow of bodies and the production of knowledge with the aim of producing health or, at the very least, knowledge of illness. Patients are also actors who actively impact the imaging production process. Previous scholarship has shown that diagnostic work involves a distributed form of expertise; one that involves patients, other medical professionals, machines, and neurologists. This chapter demonstrates that the deployment and synchronization of this expertise is a form of labor, involving distinct professions, professional hierarchies, and reimbursement systems. Working conditions are central to the production of MRI scans as knowledge and contribute to the social shaping of neuroimaging techniques.

Educational technologists make significant contributions to the development, organisational embedding and service provision of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) environments, which are key enablers for mass access to flexible higher education (HE). Given the increasing centrality of this role, it is advocated that institutions investigate sustainable career structures for educational technologists. This paper aims to address these issues.

The arguments are evidence‐driven by the small body of research literature describing the role of educational technologists and contextualized by the experiences as academics and leaders of TEL projects in HE, including managing educational technologists.

The roles of educational technologists are very diverse, requiring competencies in educational leadership, both management and technical. Their career paths, backgrounds, legitimate powers and organisational locations exhibit considerable variation.

University leaders require evidence to formulate appropriate human resource strategies and performance management strategies for educational technologists. Further empirical research to analyze current issues and future trajectories relating to their aspirations, career structures, legitimate power, management and organisational contexts is proposed.

Given the strategic importance of educational technologists to information and communications technology‐driven transformation, university leaders will require evidence to formulate appropriate human resource and performance management strategies for these key academic‐related/professional staff. This paper brings together relevant literature for the first time, generates recommendations for further research and policy discussion.

One reason for the poor performance of UK industry in the management of technology is the rift between corporate decision‐making and technology as a discipline, creating a barrier to the influence of technologists on policy making. This paper presents evidence from recent secondary sources, which indicates the weak position of technologists by comparison with other specialists in organisational hierarchies. Reasons for this relative lack of organisational power can be found both in the aspirations and attitudes of technologists and in culturally‐induced organisational structures, which act to severely limit the participation of technologists in decision‐making at the highest levels. Some cross‐national comparisons are referred to. Suggestions are made for ways in which a more even balance between disciplines within UK companies might be achieved.

The purpose of this study is to describe and interpret the interpersonal and intragroup conflict experiences of staff-level employees and leaders in the medical imaging technology field, working in US tertiary care centers to extract mitigation and management strategies.

A total of 13 medical imaging technologists, who were employed in leadership and staff positions throughout the USA, offered their in-depth accounts of workplace conflict in this interpretive phenomenological investigation.

Conflict avoidance was a predominant conflict management style. This style did little to effectively manage workplace conflict. In some cases, it led to deleterious effects on individuals and organizations and created conflict perpetuation. With proper conflict mitigation and management, the conflict perpetuation cycle can be broken.

Generalization beyond the group being studied is not applicable, as it is not the intent of phenomenological research. Four leaders participated in the research study. To examine this population more completely, a greater sample size is required. This recommendation also applies to the staff technologist roles. Another limitation involved the leader/staff-level representation inequality, as well as the male–female representation. These imbalances made it difficult to effectively make comparisons of the experiences of leaders with staff-level technologists, and males with females.

Offering the medical imaging workforce emotional intelligence training, health-care administrators can invest in their leaders and staff technologists. Medical imaging schools can incorporate emotional intelligence training into their curricula. Clear policies may decrease the ill effects of change when unforeseeable occurrences result in schedule modifications. Making technologists fully aware of who is responsible for shift coverage when these events occur may reduce negative impact. Trainings in organizational change, collaboration or positivity may be warranted, depending on findings of cultural assessments. Team-building events and opportunities for employees to intermingle may also be used to improve a departmental or organizational culture.

Mitigating and managing health-care workplace conflict more effectively may prevent patient harm, thus improving the health of members of society.

According to recent studies, conflict, and the incivility that often accompanies it, has been on the increase in US organizations overall, and in health care specifically. Conflict that perpetuates can adversely affect health-care organizations and its employees. This paper offers mitigation and management strategies to prevent such consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage technologists, those who design and manage technology systems, to collectivize and get closely involved in defining the priorities of their organizations, their countries, and the world, so that responsible outcomes can arise from their labour.

The author examines this problem from three viewpoints: From a design perspective about what is missing in most design practices to build information systems that undesirable outcomes still happen; from an ethics perspective about how to incorporate values in building and managing information systems; and from a political economy perspective about why ensuring responsible outcomes from technology is not easy. The author describes several limitations faced by technologists in achieving this, ranging from gaps in the design methods in use currently, a piecemeal approach to following ethical principles in the design and management of technologies, influence of the organizational culture and structure and the wider political economy of technology itself.

The author suggests several measures to address these challenges and conclude with a call to technologists to collectivize and engage politically to influence their organizations and governments to invest in meaningful objectives for a just and equitable world, and design and manage the solutions in ethically consistent ways.

It is argued that a new paradigm of information systems is needed for digital platforms, which is grounded in ethics-based guidelines that should be followed by the designers and managers of these platforms to help ensure responsible outcomes.

Having such a paradigm is especially important in today’s winner-takes-all digital platform era because these platforms are governed by only a few people; therefore, it is imperative to build guardrails to responsibly manage these platforms, and to have technologists who design and manage these platforms to play a role in their governance.

Information systems have the potential to alter power relationships in society, and it is suggested that they should be designed to empower the weak.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is a unique perspective that draws from his personal experience as a researcher and practitioner designing technologies for social good, and examines the problem from many different viewpoints.

Purpose – The integration of librarians and technologists to deliver information services represents a new and costly organizational challenge for many library administrators. To understand how to control the costs of integration, this study uses structural contingency theory to study the coordination of librarians and technologists within the information commons.

Design/methodology/approach – This study tests the structural contingency theory expectation that an organization will achieve higher levels of performance when there is a positive relationship between the degree of workflow interdependence and the complexity of coordinative structures necessary to integrate these workflows. This expectation was tested by (a) identifying and collecting a sample of information common; (b) developing and validating survey instruments to test the proposition; and (c) quantitatively analyzing the data to test the proposed contingency theory relationship.

Findings – The contingency theory expectations were confirmed by finding both a positive relationship between coordination and interdependence and a positive relationship between perceptions of performance and degree of congruency between interdependence and coordination.

Limitations – The findings of this study are limited to both the context of an information common and the structures tested. Future research should seek to both broaden the context in which these findings are applicable, and test additional structural relationships as proposed by contingency theory

Practical implications – This study contributes to the library profession in a number of ways. First, it suggests that managers can improve IC performance by matching coordination structures to the degree of interdependence. For instance, when librarians and technologists are strictly co-located, managers should coordinate workflows using less resource-intensive policies rather than meetings. Second, the instruments developed in this study will improve the library manager's ability to measure and report unit interdependence and coordination in a valid and reliable manner. Lastly, it also contributes to the study of structural contingency theory by presenting one of the first empirical confirmations of a positive relationship between interdependence and coordination.

Originality/value – This study represents one of the first empirical confirmations of the structural contingency theory expectations of both a positive relationship between workflow interdependence and coordination, and a positive relationship between performance and coordination's fit to workflow interdependence. These findings are of value to both organizational theorists and to administrators of information commons.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how continuity and change coexist in the work of institutional actors who can combine maintenance, disruption and/or creation. Past studies mention this coexistence without an explanation.

The paper develops a perspective through literature review.

Institutional actors are both socialized into the norm-oriented space of continuity and maintenance through their reciprocal relations and associated social knowledge and roles and disciplined into the goal-oriented space of change and disruption/creation through their power relations and associated expert discourse and subject positions. Their institutional existence indicates a particular combination of reciprocity and power and thus their work includes changing degrees of maintenance, disruption and creation, depending on the nature of this combination.

The paper points out research directions on the relational conditions of the actors, which facilitate or constrain their work toward institutional continuity or change.

Organizations whose concern is to continue the existing practices in a stable environment should emphasize reciprocal relations whereas organizations whose concern is to change those practices for more effectiveness in a dynamic environment should emphasize power relations. Also, too much emphasis on either relations leads to inflexibility or instability.

The paper provides an explanation on the sources of coexistence of continuity and change in institutional work. It also contributes to the discussions on contingency of institutions, resistance productive of institutional change, reflexivity of institutional actors and intersubjective construction of institutional work.

Purpose – As the role of technology in libraries has broadened and expanded, tech-savvy librarians and non-librarian technologists are increasingly working side by side in complex digital environments. Little research has explored the key differences between these roles and the implications for the future of the Master of Library Science (MLS) and its variant degrees, particularly as technologists from various backgrounds increasingly enter the information field. This chapter contrasts the technological responsibilities of the two groups to build an understanding of the necessity of the MLS in library-oriented technology work.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Qualitative coding and text mining techniques were used to analyze technology-oriented librarian and non-librarian job advertisements, technology curriculum changes, and surveyed technology interests of current information professionals.

Findings – Findings indicate a clear distinction between librarian and non-librarian technology responsibilities. Librarian positions emphasize web design, data and metadata, technology troubleshooting, and usage of library-oriented software. Non-librarian technologists require programming, database development, and systems administration, with deeper software and systems knowledge. Overlap was noted in the areas of user experience, linked data, and metadata. Several newer trends that information professionals expressed a desire to learn – such as makerspace technologies – were observed to be poorly covered in the technology curriculum, though the MLS curriculum generally covered the tech-savvy librarians’ responsibilities.

Originality/Value – This chapter builds understanding of the current necessity of the MLS in library-oriented technology work, as contrasted against the role of non-librarian technologists, through analysis of a triangulated set of data sources covering employment opportunities, technology curriculum, and librarians’ technology interests.