Springer Science and Business Media LLC

The research described in this paper is undertaken under the banner of the smart city, a concept that captures the way urban spaces are re-made by the incursion of new technology. Much of smart is centred on converting everyday activities into data, and using this data to generate knowledge mediated by technology. Ordinary citizens, those that may have their lives impacted by the technology, usually are not properly involved in the ‘smartification’ process. Their perceptions, concerns and expectations should inform the conception and development of smart technologies at the same extent. How to engage general public with smart cities research is the central challenge for the Making Metrics Meaningful (MMM) project. Applying a rapid participatory method, ‘Imagine’ over a five-month period (March – July) the research sought to gain insights from the general public into novel forms of information system innovation. This brief paper describes the nature of the accelerated research undertaken and explores some of the themes which emerged in the analysis. Generic themes, beyond the remit of an explicit transport focus, are developed and pointers towards further research directions are discussed. Participatory methods, including engaging with self-selected transport users actively through both picture creation and programmatically specific musical ‘signatures’ as well as group discussion, were found to be effective in eliciting users’ own concerns, needs and ideas for novel information systems.

This study aims to analyze institutional divergence of Beckert (2010) by measuring the reframing of three constitutive principles of Digital Weberian Bureaucracy (DWB). In contrast to the studies by Gaus et al. (2017), Sofyani et al. (2018), Muellerleile and Robertson (2018), Turner et al. (2019), and Meilani and Hardjosoekarto (2020), this study explores normative and mimetic mechanisms resulting in the mixed pattern of public administration (Traditional Public Administration (TPA), New Public Management (NPM), and Post NPM), focusing on the transformation of Digital Era Governance (DEG). Employing Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) by Reynolds and Holwell (2010), combined with Text Network Analysis (TNA) by Segev (2020) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) by Borgatti et al. (2014), this study shows the micro dynamics of relationships between actors, the meso dynamics of organizations, and the absence of regulations at the macro level, all of which lead to institutional divergence in the form of fully hybrid governance (as proposed by De Waele et al. (2015)) that is also caused by normative and mimetic mechanisms. Complementing the study of DWB, this study suggests that computer literacy and programming languages are essential to be improved by future bureaucrats as social actors to achieve the success of digital transformation.

Sự an toàn của bệnh nhân trong gây mê luôn là một trong những mối quan tâm hàng đầu của người gây mê. Qua các nghiên cứu về an toàn nói chung, rõ ràng rằng nhiều tai nạn và sự cố nghiêm trọng xảy ra do các thất bại hệ thống tiềm ẩn mà rất nhiều yếu tố góp phần (Reason, 1990). Một cách lý tưởng để tiếp cận vấn đề này là trong một khuôn khổ hệ thống, chẳng hạn như teleonics, được phát triển bởi Járos và các cộng sự của ông (Cloete, 1999; Járos và Cloete, 1987, 1993). Trong khuôn khổ này, các sự kiện và quy trình trong gây mê được xem xét như một phần của một mạng lưới rất phức tạp của các hệ thống quy trình (teleons). Được giả thuyết rằng sự bất định teleonic (telentropy) trong mạng lưới phức tạp này là một yếu tố có thể dẫn đến tai nạn. Trong một bài báo trước đây được trình bày tại Đại hội Thế giới ở Toronto năm 2000, các nguyên tắc của teleonics đã được mô tả một cách ký hiệu toán học (Horváth et al., 2000). Bài báo này chứa đựng các ví dụ lựa chọn về việc ứng dụng các nguyên tắc này vào việc xác định các nguyên nhân hệ thống có thể của tai nạn trong gây mê.

This article describes the way in which the Open University is expanding its online quiz engine to enable students to draw free-form diagrams in response to a quiz question. The new quiz engine automatically marks a student’s diagram and provides feedback either instantaneously when used in formative mode or later when used in summative mode. The new quiz engine is hosted within the Open University’s quiz module, OpenMark, which interfaces to the Moodle VLE which is responsible for rendering both the question and the feedback in the user’s browser. The article outlines the general nature of the diagrams that our system has been designed to deal with. This is followed by an example of the use of the new question type as implemented within our e-assessment system. The article also briefly summarizes the results of experiments carried out on the accuracy of the automatic marker and reports on feedback from students who have used the new diagramming question type.

Industrial organizations are traditionally seen around a nucleus of large-scale mechanized facilities. In today's knowledge society, however, industrial organizations cannot be described sufficiently by mechanistic metaphors. Knowledge has become the decisive factor for corporate growth. It can be created through access to individuals' cumulative experience and wisdom. This paper proposes a model to describe industrial organizations as knowledge systems which communicate and evolve in accordance with their environments. Knowledge which has been previously unknown to an organization emerges out of the interplay of internalization, creation, distribution, and externalization of knowledge. The emergence of knowledge is seen as a self-organizing process, without intervention by the outside environment or an internal designer.

In this paper, we describe a Participatory Insider Action Research (PIAR) intervention within the Executive Committee (EC) of a large publicly funded service for people with intellectual disabilities. I was a member of this EC and had been for 20 years. The intervention ran over a two-year period and comprised three cycles of PIAR. We addressed two specific organisational issues but our work did not deliver change in these areas in a substantial sense. We identify power dynamics and role duality challenges as the core factors that contributed to this outcome and describe their effects in this under-researched domain. We finish by offering some advice for future researchers undertaking initiatives of this nature.