Discourse and sociotechnical transformation: the emergence of refinery information systems

This thesis considers the emergence and diffusion of British Petroleum's (BP) Refinery Information Systems (RIS). Insights from the associology of translation are coupled with the Foucauldian concepts of discourse and power /knowledge in order to analyse accounts of the system provided by organisational participants. The analysis suggests that a new form of managerialism, or "new commercial agenda" is being selectively deployed both within BP and within the wider commercial world. This transformed managerialism seeks to maintain control and heighten commercialism through a re- working of hierarchical relations within the organisation. Artefacts and practices of organisational life are revealed as prime vehicles for instantiating this new agenda and BP's Refinery Information Systems are thus seen to be both a condition and a consequence of the changes underway

Material returns: cultures of valuation, biofinancialisation and the autonomy of politics

The ascent of biofinancialisation since the 1980s brought with it a culture of valuation that spread well beyond financial markets and came to pervade everyday life, subjectivity, ecology and materiality. At the same time, and as a response to the social conflicts of the previous decades, value production shifts to incorporate the extended lifeworld of working people, their networks of sociality and the commons. The article examines the conflicts that emerge from the friction of the prevalent cultures of valuation and the extensive embodiment of value production and argues that biofinancialisation alters the very material infrastructure of bodies and forms of life. What is the autonomy of politics when biofinance becomes molecularised in code and in matter

“Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions

Organizations continue to create digital interfaces and infrastructure that are designed to heighten consumers’ online visibility and encourage them to part with their data. The way these digital systems operate and the rules they are governed by are often opaque, leaving consumers to deploy their own strategies for managing their online information sharing with organizations. In this study, we draw upon Erving Goffman’s metaphor of expression games and three forms of concealment or cover moves to explore how consumers, who have been well socialized as digital natives, engage in dynamic and game-like interactions with organizations in an attempt to manage their level of online visibility and information sharing in relation, inter alia, to the ‘convenience’ and ‘benefits’ that are afforded to them. Our research is based on in-depth interviews in combination with photo-elicitation with 20 participants. Based on the insight generated, we offer a new framework, ‘Propensity to Game’ (P2G), which present the processual dynamics that characterize these consumers’ evolving and game-like engagements with organizations. These are Game Awareness, Rule Familiarization, Player Commitment and Game Play. Our work contributes with new insight into how these consumers actively engage in the orchestration of their online visibility by surfacing the nuanced and multifaceted decision-making and thought processes that they engage in when they, situation-by-situation, decide on the tactics and methods to use in their efforts to manage the data and information they share with organizations

Management knowledge in the mirror: Scholarship, fashion and Simmel

This paper explores the use of the concept of fashion in arguments about management knowledge, using the popularity of that literature during the 2000s as a case study. In order to do this, it will move through a series of linked arguments. First, that research on ‘management fashions’ has become fashionable, and that this has provided a topic for academics to write about. Second, that research on ‘management fashions’ appears to only ceremonially cite earlier work on fashion from outside the management disciplines, such as that by Simmel. Third, that this means that much research on management fashions appears to adopt an attitude which insulates its own judgements about what is mere fashion and what is well grounded science from a wider understanding of the role of fashion in social affairs more generally. We conclude by suggesting that once questions of fashionability are admitted into management epistemology, all practices and distinctions become necessarily understood in terms of imitation, including the ones in this articl

"Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: How Digital Consumers Manage Their Online Visibility in Game-Like Conditions

Organizations continue to create digital interfaces and infrastructure that are designed to heighten consumers’ online visibility and encourage them to part with their data. The way these digital systems operate and the rules they are governed by are often opaque, leaving consumers to deploy their own strategies for managing their online information sharing with organizations. In this study, we draw upon Erving Goffman’s metaphor of expression games and three forms of concealment or cover moves to explore how consumers, who have been well socialized as digital natives, engage in dynamic and game-like interactions with organizations in an attempt to manage their level of online visibility and information sharing in relation, inter alia, to the ‘convenience’ and ‘benefits’ that are afforded to them. Our research is based on in-depth interviews in combination with photo-elicitation with 20 participants. Based on the insight generated, we offer a new framework, ‘Propensity to Game’ (P2G), which present the processual dynamics that characterize these consumers’ evolving and game-like engagements with organizations. These are Game Awareness, Rule Familiarization, Player Commitment and Game Play. Our work contributes with new insight into how these consumers actively engage in the orchestration of their online visibility by surfacing the nuanced and multifaceted decision-making and thought processes that they engage in when they, situation-by-situation, decide on the tactics and methods to use in their efforts to manage the data and information they share with organizations

Are we living in a time of particularly rapid social change? And how might we know?

n an editorial for this journal a decade ago, then-Editor-in-Chief Fred Phillips asserted that social change was proceeding at hyper-speed and, moreover, that it had consequently come to outpace technological change. This paper submits these claims to empirical assay. In so doing, we address the myriad problems attendant upon determining and interpreting the sort of data that might support us in our cause. Notwithstanding the innu�merable caveats that this necessarily entails, and restricting ourselves to considering US data, we conclude that a wide range of indicators suggest that millennial Americans are not living in a time of particularly rapid social change, at least not when compared to the period 1900–1950. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the data that we have considered does not easily support a contention that significant variation in social change occurs in long wave-like cycles. The evidence is more supportive of a punctuated equilibrium model of change

Reorganizing public value for city life in the Anthropocene

Public value and city governance are fundamental notions in contemporary settings, but, currently conceived, they are not fit for the challenges presented by the proposed new epoch of geological time – the Anthropocene. Walking through the locked-down streets or calle of Venice, we face the sudden emptiness that starkly reveals the impact of human activity on the city and its waterways. Reflecting on the walk, our starting point is to problematize how a city organizes and manages public value and what actually constitutes public value. In this, we develop a new definition, ‘New Public Value for the Anthropocene Epoch’ (NPVA), which expands the notion of public value through the questions: ‘who’ is it valuable to do things for, beyond humans and economic actors, building on a relational epistemology to incorporate the planet and its biosphere; and ‘what’ is valuable to do, in order to ensure the inclusion of social, environmental, and cultural values alongside economic values. We conclude by arguing that NPVA is organized across scales in a manner that embeds global attentiveness towards local ecosystems solutions to drive the global response to the environmental crisis we all face

Reorganizing public value for city life in the Anthropocene

Public value and city governance are fundamental notions in contemporary settings, but, currently conceived, they are not fit for the challenges presented by the proposed new epoch of geological time – the Anthropocene. Walking through the locked-down streets or calle of Venice, we face the sudden emptiness that starkly reveals the impact of human activity on the city and its waterways. Reflecting on the walk, our starting point is to problematize how a city organizes and manages public value and what actually constitutes public value. In this, we develop a new definition, ‘New Public Value for the Anthropocene Epoch’ (NPVA), which expands the notion of public value through the questions: ‘who’ is it valuable to do things for, beyond humans and economic actors, building on a relational epistemology to incorporate the planet and its biosphere; and ‘what’ is valuable to do, in order to ensure the inclusion of social, environmental, and cultural values alongside economic values. We conclude by arguing that NPVA is organized across scales in a manner that embeds global attentiveness towards local ecosystems solutions to drive the global response to the environmental crisis we all face

Prof. dr. Antun Bauer - inicijator i donator Zbirke Bauer i galerije umjetnina Vukovar

This article examines the profits and practices of commercial journal publishers and argues for an appropriate response from the academic community

Lackluster Adoption of Cryptocurrencies as a Consumer Payment Method in the United States—Hypothesis: Is This Independent Technology in Need of a Brand, and What Kind?

Cryptocurrencies were supposed to replace traditional payment methods when they were invented over 13 years ago, but adoption by the general consumer is still lacking, at least in the United States. Instead, crypto is often used as a speculative investment, by illicit actors, or for use cases unrelated to everyday purchases. A literature review on general adoption barriers and interviews with experts has only unearthed factors like usability, performance, and political drivers, among other barriers. Brand as an adoption barrier is mostly missing from literature, at least for cryptocurrencies. This led to the formation of a hypothesis related to crypto’s lack of adoption as a payment method. A framework is being designed based on the technology adoption model to find out if “brand” has an impact on cryptocurrency adoption, which was paradoxically designed to be brandless and not needing any institutional trust. The intent is to focus on what “Bitcoin 2.0” might look like, and to also delve further and gauge perceptions about various types of brands getting involved in the next generation of cryptocurrencies, including traditional banks, governments, technology companies, and also some of the decentralized and hybrid consortia currently vying to get consumers to use stablecoins, nation-issued cryptocurrencies, and other forms of digital instruments. While other studies had focused on trust, early adopter usability, or performance of blockchain networks, this work intends to focus on the general consumer’s perceptions about digital money, and the types of brands and evolution of this instrument liable to increase uptak