Towards practice-based studies of HRM: an actor-network and communities of practice informed approach

HRM may have become co-terminus with the new managerialism in the rhetorical orthodoxies of the HRM textbooks and other platforms for its professional claims. However, we have detailed case-study data showing that HR practices can be much more complicated, nuanced and indeed resistive toward management within organizational settings. Our study is based on ethnographic research, informed by actor-network theory and community of practice theory conducted by one of the authors over an 18-month period. Using actor-network theory in a descriptive and critical way, we analyse practices of managerial resistance, enrolment and counter-enrolment through which an unofficial network of managers used a formal HRM practice to successfully counteract the official strategy of the firm, which was to close parts of a production site. As a consequence, this network of middle managers effectively changed top management strategy and did so through official HRM practices, coupled with other actor-network building processes, arguably for the ultimate benefit of the organization, though against the initial views of the top management. The research reported here, may be characterized as a situated study of HRM-in-practice and we draw conclusions which problematize the concept of HRM in contemporary management literature

The Right to the Sustainable Smart City

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructures. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that seeks to involve citizens in the design of sustainable smart cities, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. We present a study involving co- designing Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities and discuss three ways in which design can participate in the right to the sustainable smart city through designing for the commons, care, and biocultural diversity

Artistic participatory video-making for science engagement

This paper uses theatre to frame reflexive discussions on the use of participatory video making for science engagement. The ‘JuxtaLearn’ research project is presented as a case-study that focuses on performance concepts such as audience, purpose, improvisation or final production as a lens for supporting technology-enabled creative exploration. Three different approaches were taken to creative participatory video making processes: co-creation by learners, as a communication tool for researchers and as a public engagement tool. Differing expectations about the timing and aim of the research process created considerable debate among the research team regarding the control of and purpose of filmmaking. It was not the topic of debate within the film that was deemed controversial, but more who, when and in what ways these debates occurred. Theatrical and HCI concepts of audience, performance ownership, improvisation and storyboarding, boundary object creation, participation and boundary creatures are foci of debate within the project

Design for the Right to the Smart City in More-than-Human Worlds

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructure processes. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper aims to add to the growing body of critical and civic led smart city literature in HCI by leveraging concepts from the environmental humanities about more than human worlds, as a way to shift understandings within HCI of smart cities away from the exceptional and human centered, towards a more inclusive understanding that incorporates and designs for other others and other species. We illustrate through a case study that involved codesigning Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities, possibilities for creating more environmentally and socially just smart cities

Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds

This paper introduces “infrastructural speculations,” an orientation toward speculative design that considers the complex and long-lived relationships of technologies with broader systems, beyond moments of immediate invention and design. As modes of speculation are increasingly used to interrogate questions of broad societal concern, it is pertinent to develop an orientation that foregrounds the “lifeworld” of artifacts—the social, perceptual, and political environment in which they exist. While speculative designs often imply a lifeworld, infrastructural speculations place lifeworlds at the center of design concern, calling attention to the cultural, regulatory, environmental, and repair conditions that enable and surround particular future visions. By articulating connections and affinities between speculative design and infrastructure studies research, we contribute a set of design tactics for producing infrastructural speculations. These tactics help design researchers interrogate the complex and ongoing entanglements among technologies, institutions, practices, and systems of power when gauging the stakes of alternate lifeworlds

Human-computer interaction for development (HCI4D):the Southern African landscape

Human-Computer interaction for development (HCI4D) research aims to maximise the usability of interfaces for interacting with technologies designed specifically for under-served, under-resourced, and under-represented populations. In this paper we provide a snapshot of the Southern African HCI4D research against the background of the global HCI4D research landscape.We commenced with a systematic literature review of HCI4D (2010-2017) then surveyed Southern African researchers working in the area. The contribution is to highlight the context- specific themes and challenges that emerged from our investigation

Creating personas for political and social consciousness in HCI design

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation