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To investigate how the United Kingdom’s public museums, libraries and archives (collecting institutions) might, in the future, take strategic advantage of the dramatic changes in individual and social behaviours and expectations driven by the socio-technical determinism of the Internet since 2000.

The chapter summarises the evidence and outcomes of PhD research completed in 2015 that used the tools of hermeneutic phenomenology and systems theory to examine the current state of digital strategy within the United Kingdom’s collecting institutions and to compare this with the Internet’s fundamental drivers of change and innovation. The research sought not to predict the future, but to define the key opportunities and challenges facing collecting institutions in face of sustained socio-technical change to maintain strategic fit, delivering maximum value in the digital space.

The outcomes of the research demonstrated that libraries, like museums and archives, are ill-prepared to face continued socio-technical determinism. The key drivers of the Internet are single channel convergence, rapid innovation, instant two-way communication driving social interaction and dramatic change in the relationship between the supplier and the user. Collecting institutions, on the other hand, operate within vertically integrated silos restricting horizontal collaboration that has led to fragmentation of developments and constraints on strategy across and within the various institutional sectors. The major challenges that libraries must consider are summarised.

The research takes an approach that has never before been attempted, either in scope or depth of analysis. The conclusions may not make comfortable reading for practitioners, but they offer an agenda for new ways of thinking about how public institutions must change to sustain their strategic fit in a digital future.

The paper examines a recent example of work and employment restructuring in the Royal Navy. This involved the creation of a new employment branch (the Warfare Branch) out of two former branches: the Operations Branch and the Weapon Engineering Branch. The case study is used as a vehicle for exploring whether, and if so in what senses, technical change can be argued to have contributed to this organizational restructuring, within the wider contexts and dynamics of change.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current status of collaboration in cultural heritage preservation in East Asia, including digital projects, and to suggest practical improvements based on a cultural structuralism perspective.

Through exploratory research, the paper addresses aspects for successful collaboration in cultural heritage digitisation in East Asia.

The paper indicates the difference in collaboration of cultural heritage digitisation between regions such as Europe and the unique situation in East Asia.

If collaboration between the countries of East Asia was implemented then such a community could deal with the issues of cultural heritage by having a standard scheme or policy.

There has been little literature published on East Asian cultural heritage initiatives, particularly in the area of digitisation and digital preservation.

To explore the value and the case for designing antifragile socio-technical information systems (IS) in an era of big data, moving beyond traditional notions of IS design towards systems that can leverage uncertainty for gains.

A design science research (DSR) approach was adopted, comprising four stages, including problem identification and solutions definition, conceptual artifact or socio-technical system design, preliminary evaluation, and communication and knowledge capture.

A conceptual socio-technical artifact that identifies antecedents to antifragile IS design. When operationalised, the antecedents may produce the desired antifragile outcome. The antecedents are categorised as value propositions, design decisions and system capabilities.

This research is conceptual in nature, applied and evaluated in a single big data analytics case study in Facebook-Cambridge Analytica. Future research should empirically validate across a range of real-world big data contexts, beyond the presented case study.

Uncertainty generally results in socio-technical system failures, impacting individuals, organisations and communities. Conversely, antifragile IS can respond favourably to the shocks and stressors brought forth by periods of elevated uncertainty.

Antifragile IS can drive socio-technical systems to respond favourably to uncertainty and stressors. Typically, these socio-technical systems are large, complex structures, with increased connectivity and the requirement to generate, process, analyse and use large datasets. When these systems fail, it affects individuals, organisations and communities.

Existing IS design methodologies and frameworks largely ignore antifragility as a possible designable outcome. Extant research is limited to abstract architectural design, and approaches based on the proposition of principles. This research contributes to knowledge of antifragile IS design, by deriving a conceptual artifact or socio-technical system based on antecedent-outcome relationships that leverage uncertainty towards performance gains.

To extend the work of Rob Kling, whose research interests, and advocacy were at the center of a movement in analytical inquiry and empirical research now known as “social informatics”.

Reviews the work of those who engage in social informatics research to strengthen and further the conceptual perspective, analytical approaches, and intellectual contributions of social informatics.

The vibrant and growing international community of active social informatics scholars has assembled a social informatics resource kit that includes: perspective lenses through which research data can be viewed critically; techniques for building theory and developing models from socially rich empirical data; and a common body of knowledge regarding the uses and effects of ICTs.

The paper identifies opportunities to engage new scholars in social informatics discussions, and suggests new venues for promoting and extending the work of scholars already enrolled in the social informatics movement.

This study aims to conduct socio-technical analysis of the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem and industry, including such factors as market growth and user experiences, policy and the impact of IoT on various areas.

By applying a multi-level socio-technical framework to IoT in South Korea, this study seeks an ecological understanding of how IoT will evolve and stabilize in a smart environment.

The study shows the values influencing potential users’ adoption of IoT by integrating cognitive motivations and user values as primary determining factors. Along with user modeling, the findings reveal the challenges of designing, deploying and sustaining the diverse components of IoT, and provides a snapshot of Korea’s current approach to meeting these challenges.

The study’s findings offer a contextualized socio-technical analysis of IoT, providing insight into its challenges and opportunities. This insight helps to conceptualize how IoT can be designed and situated within human-centered contexts.

To provide a view of Rob Kling's contribution to socio‐technical studies of work.

The five “big ideas” discussed are signature themes in Kling's own work in the informatics domain, and of his intellectual legacy.

This paper conveys something of Kling's presence in social informatics (SI) thinking by focusing on a number of “big” ideas – “multiple points of view”, “social choices”, “the production lattice” (and its corollary, the problematization of the user), “socio‐technical interaction networks”, and “institutional truth regimes”.

A growing research community has demonstrated the power of SI techniques. It is essential that this body of work is sustained and developed, demonstrating how to undertake investigation and observation, that is not driven by instrumentalism but is informed by and leads to “technological realism”.

The SI corpus, exposing the dangers of naïve instrumentalism as an approach to information systems design and management, can guide practitioners on how to unpack the history of what is in view. This may be a specific technology, a social formation, or a sociotechnical circumstance. Practitioners may draw on the concepts presented, not as a prescriptive toolkit, but rather as a sensitizing frame to assist those who wish to re‐vision the workplace.

Central to the successful utilisation of computers in work, we argue, is the continuing development of a portfolio of interpretive concepts (such as STINs, regimes of truth, production lattices) that can consolidate Rob Kling's “big” ideas that are the core of this paper.

Critically reviews and compares the concepts of business process re‐engineering (BPR), which has recently addressed the issue of changing organizations through the use of information technology (IT) and socio‐technical design (STD), which has traditionally been concerned with the matching of social and technical systems, seen as fundamental to the design of computer systems in organizations. Challenges the notion that STD can humanize BPR and argues that, by promoting this association, STD experts isolate such techniques as employee participation and teamwork from wider issues related to changing managerial discourses and economic contexts. BPR is remarkable in that it goes beyond previous managerial discourses such as total quality management, particularly in how it combines IT‐induced change with “soft” ideas such as empowerment and teamwork, therefore reinforcing management control and diluting issues of power relationships. STD specialists have traditionally been dedicated to promoting emancipation and socially responsible choices, and should therefore seriously examine BPR in terms of its theoretical and ethical assumptions and its practical implications.

This paper seeks to critically review the conceptual frameworks that have been developed for assessing the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on real estate.

The research is based on a critical review of existing literature and draws from examples of previous empirical research in the field.

The paper suggests that a “socio‐technical framework” is more appropriate to examine ICT impact in real estate than other “deterministic” frameworks. Therefore, ICT is an important part of the new economy, but must be seen in the context of a number of other social and economic factors.

The research is based on a qualitative assessment of existing frameworks, and by using examples from commercial real estate, assesses the extent to which a “socio‐technical” framework can aid understanding of ICT impact.

The paper is important in highlighting a number of the main issues in conceptualising ICT impact in real estate and also critically examines the emergence of a new economy in the information society within the general context of real estate. The paper also highlights research gaps in the field.

The paper deconstructs the myths of the “death of real estate” and “productivity increase means jobs loss”, in relation to office real estate. Finally, it examines some of the ways in which ICT is impacting on real estate and suggests the most important components for a future research agenda in the field of ICT and real estate impact, and will be of value to property investors, facilities managers, developers, financiers, and others.

This article aims to focus attention on users of information technology (IT), especially mobile telephony. It focuses on what people actually say about mobile technology but also aims to pay attention to what they do not talk about, what is found in the silence, especially with new technology when much can be taken for granted. This latter is, according to Foucault, even more important to understand.

The research draws on empirical research through 11 semi‐structured interviews and interviews with five focus groups, comprising between four and eight care assistants in each group. The interviews were with three women and three men between 25‐70 years old, five female public sector middle managers and care assistants from five focus groups at social services departments in the north of Sweden. A Foucauldian approach is adopted to interpret the findings and explore how their locations within the circuits of socio‐technical networks engender uncertainty with mobile technology. The present spread of IT reinforces a belief that people are integrated into the circuits of socio‐technical networks.

The findings suggest, on the one hand, that new technologies like mobile communication can be used to organise our everyday lives, whilst, on the other, there are risks with the new technologies, which can discipline discourses.

These issues are discussed from a sociological and informatics perspective.