The ethics and politics of design for the common good: a lesson from Alibaug

In this chapter I argue for a socio-technical approach to technology design for the common good that addresses its ethical and political aspects. The background is that the life of marginalized people in contemporary society is challenging and uncertain. The marginalized can face health and cognitive issues as well as a lack of stability in social structures such as family, work and social inclusion. In this context, certain democratic values embedded in technology design can conceal political asymmetries and fail to deliver ethical value exchange, where value extraction is not dominated by one party but equally shared across all stakeholders. I discuss two socio-technical perspectives called human work interaction design (HWID) and Technological Frames (TF) to expose and tackle the challenges of designing technology for the common good. I introduce and evaluate an ongoing case of a digital service delivered through an app to support a fishing community in Alibaug, India. The evaluation of the socio-technical infrastructure surrounding this app is done in two parts: firstly, I use HWID to highlight inwardly and outwardly socio-technical, ethical and power relations between human work and interaction design; secondly, an argument for the use of the concept of TF to understand the constructionist and semiotic power dynamics of different groups in participatory technology design is presented. It is shown how dominant groups’ frames can construct meanings of design decisions in terms of whether they are appropriate or not. The political leverage of the scripts embedded in artefacts used in the process of design is also explained from a semiotic perspective. I conclude by highlighting the value of an ethical and political socio-technical framework for technology design for the common good with people at the margins

Micro-politics, semiotic power and infrastructural inversion: theoretical lenses for geopolitical HCI

An argument is presented for the use of the concepts of Micro-Politics and Semiotic Power by Bijker, and Infrastructural Inversion by Bowker to understand the geopolitical dynamics of career-building, knowledge and value creation in the field of human computer interaction (HCI). This is illustrated with brief references to examples of HCI academic and professional practice and dissemination in local and global contexts. It is shown how local and global micro-politically dominant groups in the HCI field can construct scripts that define quality, impact and relevance. These scripts in turn have a direct effect in career-building and what is considered valid and useful knowledge and practice. The political leverage of these scripts is therefore embedded in artefacts used for different types of transactions in the HCI field. Infrastructural inversion is finally presented as a possible framework to deconstruct and make visible these scripts and the different types of historical and political tensions inscribed in them at disciplinary, local, national, regional and global level

Emergence in Nascent Online Communities: An Affordance Perspective

Online communities like Wikipedia have the potential to transform our global society. Despite their growing importance, however, the extant literature has theorized only little about how member contribution behavior in a nascent online community emerges in interaction with the materiality of the technology platform. Studying this is critical for understanding the important early stage evolution of online communities. Without a rich history, the platform’s materiality is almost the only thing that members can use to make sense of the online community. We investigate this question by applying a mixed-method approach to a longitudinal case study of AshokaHub, a nascent global online community of social entrepreneurs. We use an affordance perspective and our findings to date suggest that the materiality of the technology platform plays an important role in the emergence of member contribution behavior in the nascent online community. Moreover, they suggest extensions to the concepts of affordances and imbrication

Connecting for a Social Good: A Multi-level Analysis of a Nascent Online Community

Online communities (OCs) such as Wikipedia have the potential to transform our global society and economy. Building and sustaining OCs, however, appears to be rather complex. Indeed, most OCs fail early on. The extant OC literature cannot fully explain this phenomenon. This thesis is thus motivated by the increasing importance of OCs and the unsolved complexities regarding building and sustaining them. In particular, it aims to answer the research question of how nascent OCs evolve and what the influences are on this evolution. To this end, it examines a longitudinal 34-months long case study of AshokaHub, a nascent global OC of social entrepreneurs, combining interview data with qualitative and quantitative data from the AshokaHub platform. Despite favourable conditions at AshokaHub’s launch and a re-launch with new functionality and curation strategies, user contributions remained limited. Drawing on the OC and social entrepreneurship literatures as well as the theories of affordances, technological frames of reference and groupware adoption, this thesis develops a multi-level model to address the research question. This model theorizes the evolution of nascent OCs and the influence of context and materiality on this evolution. It highlights that OC evolution happens as users across different social worlds within the OC continuously adopt and change their ways of using it. It also highlights that, on an individual user level, this OC evolution happens in a recursive process of framing, affordance perception and affordance actualisation that influences and is influenced by the material characteristics of the OC’s technological platform and is shaped by the OC’s context. This thesis thus contributes to the OC literature by providing insight into how nascent OCs evolve and what influences this evolution. In addition, it contributes to affordance theory by introducing the concept of a collaborative OC affordances. This concept aims to explain how collaborative affordances emerge and evolve on OCs given the generative nature of their underlying technological platforms. These findings have managerial implications as well. Good practices are identified that can support the successful start of an OC. This is complemented with a discussion on how to be situationally aware of the unpredictable evolution of an OC after its start

Competitive intelligence specialist expertise in the Zimbabwean banking sector: hidden talent? A case study of Steward Bank Zimbabwe

What has been an enduring gap in both research and practice since the McKinsey consultants first published their report on 'The war for talent' in 1998 as a response to rising competition between organisations globally, is the lack of talent management systems where professional rather than leadership talent is recognised. By focusing on the competitive intelligence specialist role, this study explores how a seemingly strategic professional role is framed in the context of organisational talent within the banking sector of Zimbabwe. It is noteworthy that the modern thinking around talent management in organisations has been dominated by research done in United States of America (US), Europe and Asia with a focus on multinational and private organisations (Thunnissen et al., 2013a: 1745). Of notable concern is the lack of empirical efforts towards talent management within the African continent, even more so in the context of the banking sector, and this study is an attempt to address this gap. By using a conceptual framework derived from a critical review of competitive intelligence specialist and talent management literature, the study uses qualitative methods to collect research data from the case study bank, namely Steward Bank. To illuminate how the research participants framed the research phenomenon, frame analysis was adopted and achieved through the analytical use of a signature matrix consisting of two elements: rhetorical framing devices and rhetorical reasoning devices. Contrary to the research expectations, in this case study, the competitive intelligence specialist activities are not embedded in specific roles but instead are dispersed across the organisations in different departments. This setup is attributed to the dispersed nature of the requisite knowledge resident in different parts of the organisation. It is clear from the findings that competitive intelligence specialist activities are recognised as a key differentiator to organisational performance, and arguably deserve to be recognised as talent. However, the formal talent management system does not recognise competitive intelligence specialist activities as organisational talent, thereby pointing to rhetorical obfuscation by participants. Furthermore, different aspects of how talent is defined emerged ranging from an innate view of talent, with some going further to attribute talent as a gift from God, to an acquired view of talent where participants suggest that the more they practice competitive intelligence activities, the more expertise they tend to gain. Based on findings of this study, it is argued that organisations will benefit more from a holistic approach to talent management, which not only includes key strategic leadership roles but also incorporates key strategic specialist roles and key strategic specialist activities similar to the competitive intelligence specialist activities. Also, both academics and practitioners need to reconsider the institutionalisation of competitive intelligence and incorporate the dispersed competitive intelligence activities approach. By successfully applying frame analysis, this study has also heightened the notion of frame signature matrix as a data analysis technique for identifying how actors frame certain phenomenon within the organisational context