Smart systems and the governance of sociotechnical transformation

Éditeurs invités

• Wanhao Zhang, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
• Younghoon Chang, University of Nottingham Ningbo China
• Sameer Kumar, University of Malaya

Synthèse

Smart systems are now deeply embedded in various social contexts, functioning as sociotechnical arrangements that sense, classify, predict and intervene in everyday practices. This special issue seeks to understand how these digitally enabled systems reshape relations between humans, machines, organisations and institutions, and how they become consequential through design, institutional embedding and everyday use.

The issue addresses both how smart systems are governed and how they themselves participate in governing sociotechnical transformation. Key concerns include questions of behaviour, interaction, coordination, authority, accountability and power, particularly examining hybrid intelligence and human-AI collaboration. The special issue invites submissions examining smart systems not merely as technical innovations but as systems shaping governance, interaction and behaviour in organisational, institutional and everyday contexts.

Thèmes proposés

• Smart systems in homes, workplaces, healthcare, education, mobility, public services and platform-mediated environments
• Human-centred AI, hybrid intelligence and human-AI collaboration in organisational and everyday settings
• Conceptual, methodological and design-oriented approaches to studying governance in smart systems
• Algorithmic decision-making, coordination, compliance and accountability
• User adaptation, negotiation, resistance, appropriation and trust in relation to smart technologies
• AI ethics, information privacy, surveillance, transparency and asymmetrical power in digital systems
• Smart and digital health, care technologies and digitally mediated wellbeing
• Digital work, algorithmic management, robotic management and the reconfiguration of organisational routines
• Datafication, monitoring, prediction and automated feedback as modes of governance
• Inclusion, exclusion, vulnerability and inequality in smart sociotechnical environments
• Smart cities, digital government and platform-based public services
• Comparative, cross-cultural or interdisciplinary studies of smart systems and sociotechnical transformation