Digital Heritage from a Socio-Technical Systems Perspective: Integrated Case Analysis and Framework Development

PurposeThe use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is on the rise. To help advance research in this area, the authors synthesise the academic research and develop research propositions on the antecedents and consequences of AI adoption and application in the workplace to guide future research. The authors also present AI research in the socio-technical system context to provide a springboard for new research to fill the knowledge gap of the adoption and application of AI in the workplace.Design/methodology/approachThis paper summarises the existing literature and builds a theoretically grounded conceptual framework on the socio-technical system theory that captures the essence of the impact of AI in the workplace.FindingsThe antecedents of AI adoption and application include personnel subsystem, technical subsystem, organisational structure subsystem and environmental factors. The consequences of AI adoption and application include individual, organisational and employment-related outcomes.Practical implicationsA research agenda is provided to identify and discuss future research that comprises not only insightful theoretical contributions but also practical implications. A greater understanding of AI adoption from socio-technical system perspective will enable managers and practitioners to develop effective AI adoption strategies, enhance employees' work experience and achieve competitive advantage for organisations.Originality/valueDrawing on the socio-technical system theory, the proposed conceptual framework provides a comprehensive understanding of the antecedents and consequences of AI adoption and application in the work environment. The authors discuss the main contributions to theory and practice, along with potential future research directions of AI in the workplace related to three key themes at the individual, organisational and employment level.

This paper employs a multidimensional framework of the socio-technical systems theory to thoroughly examine the evolution trajectory and social impact mechanisms of judicial artificial intelligence (AI), transcending the singular perspective of technological iterations. It focuses on investigating the diverse nontechnical factors driving and constraining its development, and reveals how these factors interact with the judicial socio-environment to collectively promote the co-evolution of technology and society. The progress of judicial AI manifests not only in technological advancements but also as a complex reflection of intertwined social forces, including policy directives, economic incentives, and cultural adaptability. The maturation of judicial AI applications necessitates surpassing mere technological innovation; it requires deeply understanding and adeptly addressing challenges such as the suitability of policy regulations, the realization of economic benefits, and the integration of cultural values, while ensuring extensive engagement and acceptance among stakeholders, including governments, judicial bodies, technology developers, legal practitioners, and the public. The ultimate aim is to establish an efficient, fair, and widely endorsed intelligent judicial ecosystem.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a farfetched reality depicted in movies from decades ago.The AI revolution has begun transforming every aspect of organizational life.Business-to-business (B2B) sales organizations are among the business sectors profoundly affected by AI.Unlike previous sales technologies that disrupted B2B sales, such as sales force automation (SFA), customer relationship management (CRM), or social media platforms that--digitized and streamlined existing work routines of salespersons and sales managers-AI introduces a qualitatively different set of dynamics.Its advanced capabilities to mimic human behavior and intervein in decisionmaking, reshape traditional ways of approaching, developing, and maintaining buyer-seller relationships, reconfiguring how work sales work is organized.While sales organizations' interest in adopting AI has grown rapidly, recent industry reports reveal that the optimization of these technologies has fallen short of managerial expectations, with many forms struggling to realize the expected value from AI investments.Guided by the overarching research question "How do AI-enabled transformations reshape the socio-technical systems of sales organizations?", the thesis develops both conceptual and empirical insights by drawing on socio-technical systems theory (STS), which emphasizes that technologyinduced change cannot be understood in isolation but unfolds through interactions between people, structures, technologies, and work tasks.The thesis is comprised of three articles.Article I introduces STS as an external grand theory to the sales technology research domain to understand technology-enabled transformations holistically.By synthesizing literature across disciplines, Article I establishes the theoretical scaffolding for the thesis by foregrounding the core constructs of STS-socio-technical inertia, microfoundations, and sociomateriality.Article II empirically explores how AI reconfigures B2B sales processes across the pre-sales, sales, and postsales phases, illustrating that transformations brough forth by AI into the sales processes are recursive and uneven, characterized by tensions such as efficiency vs. contextual sensitivity of AI insights as well as managerial oversight vs. salesperson autonomy.Article III situates the analysis within the banking industry, where regulatory constraints, legacy infrastructures, and trust-based customer relationships shape how AI is integrated into customer advisory and sales practices.The findings underscore the notion that AI not only automates and augments sales tasks but also reshapes professional identities, redistributes decision-making authority, and redefines what constitutes as professional expertise.Taken together, the three articles in this thesis underline that AI-enabled transformations in sales organizations can be best understood as a sociotechnical phenomenon unfolding through five socio-technical mechanisms: centralization and power redistribution, data institutionalization and technology innovation, AI individualization and institutionalization of human-AI collaborations, identity negotiation and role reconfiguration, and legitimation of expertise and skill reconstitution.These mechanisms reveal that tensions arising from AI-enabled transformations are not mere obstacles but socio-technical entanglements that expose misalignments in sociotechnical sub-systems and that provide opportunities for sales organizations to learn and innovate.

This study explores how the Internet of Things (IoT) impacts the socio-technical system of organizations. The paper adopts a mixed methods research with a qualitatively driven approach. Data from 21 interviews with experts in the field of IoT and an online survey with 123 IoT professionals were analyzed. Leonardi’s Socio-Technical System Model (2012) was applied as a lens to examine how IoT influences the organizations’ social subsystem and how that, in turn, affects both the materiality of IoT and users’ intentionality in the technical subsystem. The results suggest transformed roles, potentially flattened hierarchies, decreased privacy, and increased transparency to be the main effects. While apparent changes in the social subsystem cause perceived threats that strongly influence users’ intentionality, they do not certainly affect IoT’s materiality. Noteworthy, however, is that irreplaceable users reportedly have the leverage to enforce changes to IoT’s materiality.

Construction Industrialization (CI) tends to improve industrial performance and contributes substantially towards global sustainability. Considering these merits, many countries and regions, including Hong Kong, have released policies to promote CI uptake. However, those policy interventions ignore the dynamic influence of stakeholders and technologies, which significantly influence the efficient management of CI. In response, this study aimed to objectively depict a real socio-technical system of CI uptake based on a representative case study in Hong Kong. Further, this study identified the critical issues associated with the CI uptake and proposed policy-related recommendations to overcome the key issues. In addition, this study proposed a novel approach based on two-mode social network analysis to facilitate the analysis from a socio-technical perspective. Theoretically, this depicts the interactions of construction industry stakeholders and artifacts within a dynamic, complex socio-technical environment, indicating a new stance for construction management. Finally, this research also provides valuable implications for the government to anticipate the impact of different CI policies on promoting its uptake within the complex socio-technical system.

Understanding how self-organization enables collective learning from information systems and socio-technical systems perspectives – A review of the research

To utilize automation or not to utilize automation, that is the question: An evaluation of how drills and procedures impact optronics mast usage from a sociotechnical systems perspective

Very high levels of automation in road traffic are accompanied by the need for teleoperation. If the driverless autonomous vehicle is not able to solve a complex driving situation, then the problem should be solved by a teleoperated intervention by getting a human into the loop. Such a system is highly complex, interacting in a socio-technical system. Therefore, in addition to the empirical research of user-centered development of teleoperated driving, an analytical and systemic approach is crucial in the first place to understand the interrelationships between the subsystems and to optimize a teleoperated driving system. This work provides a base for the systemic consideration by taking two different perspectives focusing on the work organization and vehicle operation dealing with how many vehicles can be monitored and serviced by one operator. First, a brief analytical perspective of human reliability is taken, emphasizing the appropriate definition of the operational design domain and knowledge of its variability. Second, a comprehensive systemic, socio-technical perspective is applied using the functional resonance analysis method (FRAM) for a reflexive and computational purpose highlighting effects on operator workload and traffic performance. Finally, the implications of the research results are discussed and integrated into socio-technical interactions in everyday teleoperated driving between blunt- and sharp-end factors from a safety and reliability perspective to demonstrate the complex leverage of the work organization. Overall, the insights contribute to an enhanced understanding of the complex socio-technical interactions in teleoperated driving.

Designing Effective Organizations: The Sociotechnical Systems PerspectiveDesigning Effective Organizations: The Sociotechnical Systems Perspective, by PasmoreWilliam A.. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1988, 200 pp., cloth, $36.50.

The emergence of digital technology has caused fundamental changes in the agriculture and food sectors, making digital platforms essential for facilitating knowledge sharing among stakeholders. This study reviews the role of digitalization in "knowledge exchange" within agri-food systems through a systematic literature review following the PRISMA guidelines. Using Rayyan, QDA Miner, and WordStat to process 81 articles selected from Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect, we identify emerging trends and gaps in agricultural knowledge sharing over the past few decades. Using sociotechnical systems theory, we constructed a conceptual model illustrating the relationship between a technical subsystem consisting of digital tools and a social subsystem comprising six identified stakeholder groups from government, industry, and academia. Our analysis indicates that digital technologies improve the efficiency, scale, and variety of knowledge transfers. Meanwhile, stakeholder participation facilitates the movement toward integrated technological and social subsystems. This perspective offers effective solutions for policymakers seeking to develop comprehensive digitalization strategies that integrate socioeconomic frameworks and innovation for sustainable development. Further research is recommended to explore the implications of digital knowledge frameworks on sustainability and resilience in the agri-food sector.

Supporting the study of child-drone interaction in domestic spaces is a difficult endeavour, but of value to the development of this robotic platform. This paper presents an autoethnographic study, serving as an exploratory first-person method to surface issues and opportunities in this design space. Autoethnography is increasingly popular in HCI, but to further support its application, I combine it with a Sociotechnical Systems (StS) perspective, informing the analysis and development of descriptive narratives with systems theory. This paper is based on a year-long documentation of the interaction between my family and a set of three land robots and one flying robot. I present work in the form of critical incidents and lessons learned, and a set of design opportunities for child-drone interaction to inform a research through design probe development. The combination between StS and autoethnography proved fruitful in understanding how drones may currently be brought or gifted into the home without fully considering the effects and implications of their use. Furthermore, I offer reflections on the use of autoethnography for other researchers when living and involving their family with their research material.

The implementation of rapidly evolving building information modeling (BIM) technology is widely seen to increase the level of integration within the construction sector. However, even with the plethora of research and investment in the development and deployment of BIM, its use is not mainstream construction practice and the practicality of the implementation process is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation of BIM through a sociotechnical systems (STS) perspective, with particular focus on multidisciplinary intraorganizational construction organization. The paper uses a case study approach to analyze the introduction of BIM in a multidisciplinary construction organization that has recently undergone a transition in its BIM implementation process. The STS approach demonstrates how technological implementation and its effects cannot be understood separately from the context of the implementing organization. The analysis shows that, due to the nature of the c...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption poses complex, multidimensional challenges for organizations that extend beyond technical implementation. While strategic interest in AI is rising, many initiatives struggle to scale sustainably. This paper addresses the fragmented state of AI adoption research by offering a theory-driven synthesis of the key management challenges organizations face. Based on a systematic literature review and grounded in the socio-technical systems (STS) perspective, the study identifies challenges across technological, organizational, and social domains - such as data governance, organizational inertia, skill shortages, and ethical ambiguity - as mutually reinforcing. The resulting framework highlights the systemic entanglement of these barriers, underscoring the limits of isolated interventions. This study contributes to Information Systems (IS) research by conceptualizing AI adoption as a socio-technical transformation and providing an integrative typology of adoption challenges. The findings offer a foundation for future empirical research and guide strategic decision-makers in navigating the organizational complexity of AI integration.

This paper looks at how the FitSM framework, together with Socio-Technical Systems (STS) theory, can help improve IT Service Management (ITSM) in a small software development firm. Limited resources often cause small businesses to manage services inefficiently, which leads to inconsistent delivery and dissatisfaction among clients. The study focuses on a single software company in Jakarta, where ITSM processes like incident management, change management, and configuration management were assessed. The research involved interviews with key staff, an evaluation of current practices, and a gap analysis to identify areas needing improvement. The results show that most processes are at an early stage, with some progress in Configuration Management. By using FitSM’s structured approach and addressing teamwork and communication issues through STS theory, the company can improve service reliability and efficiency. The study concludes that combining FitSM with socio-technical principles provides a practical solution for small companies to enhance their ITSM practices and overall service quality.

ABSTRACTBackground/Purpose: This paper presents the findings of an action research (AR) project to improve a health information system (HIS) at the Operating Theater Department (OTD) of a National Health Service (NHS) hospital in South East England, the UK. Methods: Informed by socio-technical systems (STS) theory, AR was used to design an intervention to enhance an existing patient administration system (PAS) to enable data entries in real time while contributing to the literature. The study analyzed qualitative data collected through interviews, participant observations, and document reviews. Results: The study found that the design of the PAS was unsuitable to the work of the three units of the OTD. Based on the diagnoses and STS theory, the project developed and implemented a successful intervention to enhance the legacy system for data entries in real time. Conclusions: The study demonstrates the value of AR from a socio-technical perspective for improving existing systems in healthcare settings. The steps adopted in this study could be applied to improve similar systems. A follow-up study will be essential to assess the sustainability of the improved system.