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Partnering seeks to re-cast relations between actors in projects by promoting the use of collaborative, more open, less managerial and less hierarchical relationships. The advantages of partnering for project participants include better communication leading to improved learning, more informed decision making and increased effectiveness. In this paper we draw on two case studies to show how changing commercial pressures, in the context of already fragile relationships, can quickly lead to the abandonment of partnering. Partnering contracts require a high level of commitment from suppliers, not least in resource terms, and so their potential failure must be regarded as a source of risk. To manage this risk, and make more informed decisions about the relationships they are entering into, we caution that project actors, particularly those occupying commercially weak positions in the relationship, take a hard look at the risks as well as the benefits. 

The service‐led project is driven by the demand for long‐term service provision based on the output of a conventional capital good. The project management implications of the extended timeframe for such projects are considered and the added risks and uncertainties associated with planning for an unknown future business environment. Detailed case studies of three service‐led engineering projects in the context of port facilities, high‐speed trains and sludge treatment are examined. The findings indicate that service‐led projects exist within the context of a meta‐project that encompasses a consideration of critical activities beyond the normal remit of the project manager. Aligning project stakeholders around a vision for the meta‐project becomes a key task in the successful management of the service‐led project.

Sense-making is a well-established perspective in strategic management and organization studies but to date has had little impact on the analysis of project management theory and practice. In this paper, we draw upon insights from the sense-making literature to consider the management of complex long-term service-led engineering projects, which combine the supply of capital goods or infrastructure with a long-term service provision. Using a case study of the Pendolino tilting train, we illustrate how significant discontinuities gave rise to the need for sense-making by the different project participants and stakeholders and how the various narratives expressed by different social groupings shaped the management and progress of the project. 

A range of theories (actor-network theory, multinodality, and sense making) are drawn together into a single model of project management processes in order to discuss project success and failure. It is argued that success and failure can be characterized in terms of a continuum between project convergence and divergence. The causes of divergence and convergence are discussed with reference to the above theories using four illustrative case studies.

Concerned with the management of complex long-term engineering projects, this important volume, of great interest to postgraduate students of business, technology management and engineering, reports on a set of rich, novel and unique findings concerning the conduct and management of three high profile and complex projects.

The major investments which constitute complex long-term projects represent an increasingly important source of economic activity, often with particularly significant consequences for economic growth and public policy. This informative volume expertly contributes to broader debates concerning new organizational forms, knowledge management and organizational learning and the management of innovation in project-based settings.

The digitalisation of public services involves not only the transformation of the relationship between public service providers and clients, but also the transformation of public administration work. While most studies of digitalisation of the public sector have focused on the practical outcomes for the quality of public services and the quality of public administration work, none have unpacked , or theorised, how these changes actually come about in practice. This paper fills this gap by drawing on a study of the in-house adaptation of a digital automation tool (an RPA) by a Swedish local authority. In the article, we pay attention to what we, inspired by Donna Haraway and Lucy Suchman, call ‘configuring work’, i.e. the weaving together of the affordances of the technology, materials, discourses, roles and power structures. The contribution of the paper is two-fold. First, the paper demonstrates empirically how the digitalisation of a public service took place through an emergent, relational process that involved both the social and the material. Second, by adopting the the idea of ‘configuring work’ and paying attention to the effects of this, we show that the digitalisation process was successively shaped by the particular vested interests, ethics, discourses and the algorithmic materialities that comprised it. This helps us discuss the reason for why, in extant literature, digitalisation threatens the professional autonomy of the public administrators as well as why it may reduce service quality. Finally, we suggest how some of these issues may be addressed in future research.

European countries are developing or implementing policies that promote or require the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and give BIM a central role in strategies for national sector-level transformation. It is necessary to understand BIM as a systemic innovation that is enacted and adopted by firms, projects and users but also by national actors. The Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) approach has shown how the evolution of innovations can be understood in terms of networks in which actors mobilise and combine technical and social resources in order to perform activities-the Actors-Activities-Resources (ARA) model. A comparative study of BIM adoption in France, Sweden and the UK was undertaken using data from independent country-specific research projects and a pooled desktop study. A grid was developed based on the ARA model that provided a framework to inform data collection and analysis salient for explaining the extent, processes and type of adoption of BIM in each country. Similarities between countries included: the importance of large and international firms in the innovation network; and project types (non-residential public buildings and either complex or repetitive building types). Differences were found in, for example, the activities and national institutions of architecture and the policy positions and mechanisms of government actors. The analysis highlights both the value and some limitations of a country-level focus and provides a basis for thoroughgoing network analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to theorize how different sociomaterial entanglements affect work practices. Based on a qualitative case study, we compare and contrast three empirical Factory-cases; the Non-digital-and-non-lean factory; the Somewhat-digital-and-lean factory; and the More-thoroughly-digital-factory. When comparing these three cases, we are able to show that the different sociomaterial entanglements enact different spheres of concern. The contribution of the paper lies in its’ unveiling of how the spheres of concern differ in terms of temporal orientation and localization, and depending on the entanglement of technologies and production management models. 

In the post-digital era we are currently experiencing, digital technologies are becoming so ubiquitous that we have begun to take them for granted in our lives—at home as well as at work. The argument of this chapter is that this technological transformation is, in fact, a social revolution, and that this urges us to re-think what we mean with ‘the social’. The chapter starts by teasing out what makes the current technological transformation a social revolution. Then we unpack what the contemporary technological development does to the social. In so doing, we outline two existential concerns: the separation of humans and machines, and the proliferation of relationships to many others. Because of these reconfigurations, we argue, sociality needs to be reconceptualized in a way that also should be considered by those interested in communication. We end the chapter by elaborating on this.

Three case studies of user/client-architect interaction, and their implications for an understanding of the design and innovation process in capital goods projects, are considered in this paper. The studies presented include a major 'City Challenge'-funded social housing development programme in the UK, a housing co-operative-driven workplace and housing scheme associated with the same programme and a new building for the business school of a major UK university. Reflecting upon existing literature on user-producer relationships, the paper draws two key conclusions from the case studies that add to this literature. The first points to the need to account for the broader strategic motivations of agents within projects. Two of the case studies describe how innovation driven by the architects involved exceeded the original requirements of the client, and in so doing reveal architects to be oriented toward non-project specific goals. The second conclusion focuses on the user/client and points to the importance of a strong and coherent 'customer vision' in 'enabling' the client to determine project outcomes more fully. Following from these conclusions, it is argued that an analysis of client/user-producer interactions needs to account more fully for the effects of longer-term strategic planning by agents.

Much has been written about the positive contribution made by the customer to innovation in bespoke and low-volume products like those of construction. Far less attention has been given to the potentially corrosive effects the client might have on innovation. Drawing on three construction case studies, this paper argues that strong client leadership may have negative consequences for innovation, including the suppression of innovation and an overly narrow focus on particular types of innovation. Given that innovation has a key role in the future competitiveness of any industry, it is argued that the role of the client in construction innovation requires more careful examination than it has thus far been afforded. © 2005 Taylor & Francis.

This article is a response to Lauri Koskela's recent piece in Construction Management and Economics (Why is management research irrelevant? 35(1-2): 4-23) which reflects on the relationship between academic research and management practice in business schools. In particular, Koskela asks why production management research and teaching has disappeared from the business school agenda and why management research has failed to produce a consistent body of knowledge that is of use to management practice. In this article, I try to provide some alternative perspectives on the present and past contexts of management theory and production research. I argue that production research, if not teaching, is alive and well and the site of theory generation, problem-focused research and innovation. I also question the veracity and wisdom of a creating body of knowledge in relation to management research and practice-even if it were possible, which I believe it is not. My assessment of the state of research in business schools, at least in the U.K. and the U.S. and notwithstanding a lack of consensus over how to approach management research, is that it is eclectic and vibrant and of much more use to practicing managers in that state.

The role of the imagined user in planning and design narratives is explored. It is argued that the imagined user is critical to the plausibility of design and planning narratives by bringing resonance and meaningfulness to them. As such, the imagined user is an important rhetorical tool. This article draws on the author's experience of the regeneration of Hulme, Manchester, in the United Kingdom, in the late 1990s and shows how tenants were constructed as imagined users by planners and designers in ways that made sense of, and supported, specific planning and design choices.

The paper considers the knowledge management problems facing clients who are procuring complex capital goods based on technologies unfamiliar to them. In the example presented, a sludge treatment centre procured by Northumbrian Water Ltd. (NWL), the task faced by the client was to manage knowledge in a context where the core technology being procured had resulted in a radical and partly unforeseen departure from previous operating experience. The case study shows that whereas generating knowledge for procurement and operations appears relatively unproblematic, adapting the organisation to the changes implied by the technology appears to be more difficult.

Studies of failure in complex technology systems point to the role of non-linear interactions, “emergence,” conflicting objectives, overly centralized management and “multi-nodality” in precipitating this failure. At the same time, studies of technology failure and safety in high-reliability organizations point to the benefits of what might be termed an “interventionist” approach to managing. Drawing on the insights of these studies, we explore three case studies of complex projects to show the importance of ongoing management “interventions” in preventing project failure. We conclude that “interventionism,” as a balance to overreliance on centralized project management systems, may be a fruitful approach to project management in the context of complex projects.

This paper articulates the role of the imagined user in the design choices of a higher education client with respect to a project to provide new workspaces for one of its divisions. The case study centres on the disagreements that occurred between different factions within the client organisation regarding the type of office space that was appropriate for its workforce. The paper examines the ways in which competing images of academic knowledge work and knowledge workers were conjured up in differently imagined users and deployed as persuasive user-stories in the design process. The analysis of the case uses the narratives of key project actors to identify the underlying discourses that were articulated to support particular imaginings of the user. The case shows how the successful deployment of discourses was tied up with the power wielded by particular actors at different times during the project. The paper suggests that the articulation of an imagined user implies that project actualities may be presumed as well as real and that discourse analysis provides a useful mechanism for understanding these imagined actualities.

This paper considers the implications of the growing trend for Engineer-To-Order (ETO) companies to engage in projects that involve not just the design and manufacture of capital plant and equipment, but also responsibility for downstream aspects of the project such as operations, maintenance and service delivery. These types of long-term, service-focused projects introduce an added dimension of complexity to the project that stems from a proliferation of stakeholders and multiple customers within the project. Drawing on three detailed case studies of projects with a long-term, service focus, this paper explores the problems facing ETO companies and their project managers in terms of identifying who the critical customer is at any particular stage of the project and highlights some implications for the management of the design and innovation process in such ETO projects.

The paper analyses the sources of meanings attached to consumption of the early automobile to inform analysis of the lockout of electric automobiles in the UK, mindful of related developments in France, and the USA. Data are gathered from archive sources, and include social and technical histories and popular newspapers and magazines from the period investigated (1885-1914). The paper asserts that the association of the early car with specific and particular cultural meanings, as defined by class and gender, led to it becoming an untenable choice for early consumers contributing to the 'lockout' of the electric car before it had a chance to establish itself as a viable socio-technical system. The conclusion highlights the limitations of an analytical focus privileging technical accounts of lockout and identifies the contribution of the concepts of symbolic consumption and signification.

Latour (1996) observes, drawing on Simian sociology, that the social, in its purest form, is a matter of engaging in face-to-face interaction. Rules, daily plans, relationships and social structures such as power, sexual relationships and alliances are established, interactively and collectively, and have to be constantly renewed through the ongoing work grooming, posturing and acting.

Our question is whether this pure simian interactionism can provide a useful basis for shedding light on the nature and use of project tools. From a simian interactionist perspective, project tools substitute for, and in theory improve, the effectiveness of face- to-to face interactions; they create a turbo-charged interactionism. For example, the mere act of committing to writing an agreed work schedule, extends the durability of the 'structuring effects' of that initial interaction. This is because the interaction can be re- invoked without actually needing to 'reproduce' the meeting itself. However, creating something like a contract to replace on-going interaction also carries dangers – unanticipated effects. A simian group, by being in more or less constant line-of-sight of one another, will have an opportunity to monitor the behaviour of others and so will have on-going opportunities to re-assess whether a present action is appropriate or not. Circumstances, other unanticipated interactions, can render a written agreement ridiculous to some of the signatories. In the case of the simians, the arrival of a predator in that part of the forest may trigger a re-think about being there. A sudden change in behaviour in one monkey will trigger that re-think - even if they have not actually seen the predator themselves. However, in the human world, changing economic circumstances (for example a shift in the cost of labour or the cost of a service) can see

1 Professor Chris Ivory, Acting Director of Institute of International Management Practice, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. chris.ivory@anglia.ac.uk

2 Associate Professor Anette Hallin, School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University, Västerås. anette.hallin@mdh.se

1

Abstract submitted to SCOS workshop, 11-14 July, Uppsala University, Sweden

some firms bankrupted while others make fortunes; as their fortunes are 'bound' to the original, now out-dated agreement. Simians would not allow such a state of affairs. In a sense they are more, not less, rational. From this perspective it is ironic that project management tools are generally framed as a form of über-rationalism (Hodgson & Cicmil, 2006).

Our paper will examine the effects of project tools by contrasting them against the less encumbered, and potentially more rational, world of simian ordering. To do so, we draw on Latour's ANT, Simian sociology and our own empirical research of a newly emerging project tool call Prindit. This is a tool which tries, at its root, to bring more line-of-sight between managers and the rest of the project. Prindit was developed with the aim of helping organizations to “move beyond traditional result-oriented measurements”3 by identifying and visualizing the status of the project on a weekly basis. It is a cloud-based B2B service developed by SICS; a Swedish research institute for applied information- and communication technology. Not only does the example of Prindit provide a nuanced understanding of tools in project management, highlighting the need, as with simian groups, for constant feedback; it also highlights how the social is constantly re- negotiated through, and mediated through, project tools.

Reference

Hodgson, D., & Cicmil, S. (Eds.). (2006). Making projects critical. New York: Palgrave. Latour, B. (1996). On Interobjectivity. Mind, Culture and Activity, 3(4), 228-245. 

The article considers knowledge management issues from the client's perspective. In the example presented, a sludge treatment centre procured by Northumbrian Water Ltd (NWL), the task faced by the client was to manage knowledge in a context where the core technology being procured was new and resulted in the need for new knowledge to be created and shared both pre- and post-delivery. In exploring these issues, the article reveals the problems of (and some solutions to) managing knowledge across the project life-cycle and between different groups, where the motivation for generating and sharing knowledge was not the same for all participants.

Two case studies of capital goods projects, both of which were faced with new forms of demand for their products, are reported in this paper. In both cases, the contracting organisations involved were adjusting to new customer requirements for the long-term provision of the services associated with the capital goods they normally produced, rather than for the capital goods themselves. While both contracting organisations recognised the need to re-focus their equipment design efforts, to reflect the need for long-term service reliability (both contracting organisations were tied to penalties associated with agreed service levels), they nevertheless responded differently to this challenge, and their differing responses reflected the differing natures of the extended networks which comprised both projects and the organisational architectures in which the projects were themselves embedded. The paper explores the differing opportunities and barriers to the management of design in complex projects presented by these two case studies. In so doing it points to the conclusion that successful design management in complex projects can depend upon the successful management of the (multiple) contexts in which design takes place.

This report begins with an analysis of the historical development of management education in Britain since 1945. This is for two reasons. Firstly, to provide a context for understanding conflicting themes in current debates about business schools. Secondly, it is to emphasise the different types of business schools and how they have evolved in the UK within very different education institutions. This report does not provide definitive answers to these questions. It does however, place the current challenges faced by business schools in context, offers guidance on the strategic options available, and discusses some of the practical implications of the different paths outlined.

UK business schools have grown rapidly over the last forty years. They account for a substantial proportion of students and overall income (especially from overseas), with one in seven undergraduates and one in five postgraduates studying business and management related subjects. Underlying this robust picture, where business schools are integral to their universities’ successes, some interesting issues arise about the future for business schools and particularly the leadership pipeline. This report focuses on business schools and how like other schools within universities face a challenging, complex and ambiguous future and there appears to be a limited pool of candidates applying to become deans.

The UK business schools are threatened by a potential shortage of faculty. Not only that but business schools face significant challenges within retention and development with data suggesting that there are worrying shortfalls in amounts of PhD students graduating and taking up faculty positions. The research reveals that a key part of devising a successful talent strategy is to understand the business school faculty shortage and the strategies for addressing it in the context of the different types of activity that business schools engage in.

Winner (1977, Autonomous Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 77), in defense of technology determinism, cautioned against 'throwing out the baby with the methodological bathwater'. His concern was that in so doing STS research would underplay, or be unable to account for, the effects that technology change does have on society. We similarly now find that powerful explanatory concepts like 'structural-discourse' have been largely expunged from the contemporary STS analytical lexicon; with consequences, we believe, for our ability as researchers to interpret and explain the rapid change we see in contemporary work places. In this paper we make the case for the continued use of a strong structural-discourse theory alongside other emergent forms of discourse. We show how workers, responding to conflicting and different types of discourse, produce varying hybrid responses-actions that react to and combine elements of emergent and structural discourses. Our work considers the implications of this finding for contemporary STS theory.

Drawing on contemporary and historical discourse around UK business schools and insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge, we argue that business schools should be understood and judged, not as they typically have been, as engines of knowledge production, but as engines of credibility production. Credibility, we argue, is central to the attractiveness of business schools to students and other key stakeholders and therefore credibility, and the mechanisms through which credibility are maintained, should be at the center of strategic thinking within business schools. We argue that over-reliance on funding from corporate sources can have profound consequences for the ability of schools to continue to produce credibility. This article focuses primarily on the experiences of business schools in the UK.

Using the relational ontologies and methods found in Latour’s sociology of translations (1992, 1993, 2007) and Leonardi’s approach to socio-material analysis (2017), we explore in this paper how, in practical terms, we can ‘follow’ digital technology actors and explore their effective entangling in the social. Using management visualization boards in a manufacturing setting as an example, we attempt to follow these technology actors as they enter into, and become part of, the relations and regulation of organizing. We build on the argument that the material visualization boards – whether digital or analogue - need to be understood and researched as actors and influencers within emergent socio-material relations. Our focus is upon the methodologies for such research.Our paper is not concerned with whether or not material objects play a critical role in relations between human actors, this is well established in numerous fields of research (see for instance Hugosson, Stevik, Söberg, & Tryggestad, 2019; Lindblad, 2019; Mol, 2002; Sergi, 2016). Our intention here is, rather, to provide a worked example of how detailed ethnographic work can approach researching the transformational role of digital information technologies, such as visualization boards, in organizing, and how to properly account in research for their effects on work and organizing. We propose that detailed longitudinal ethnography, detective work and even a little imagination, are key to this.In the paper, we do a selective review of Bruno Latour’s thinking around a ‘sociology of translation’ (1992, 1993, 2007)and an analysis of how this might be used to frame and conceptualize visualization boards as quasi-material objects in socio-material relations. We then draw on the socio-material work of Leonardi (2017), who proposes a three-step model forhow we as researchers iteratively can shift attention between the (real) material, the materiality, and affordances of the technologies, tools, and artefacts encountered.In order to provide robust suggestions for how we might approach researching management visualization boards in organizations in a structured and methodical way, we provide an illustrative example from our ethnographic study at an industrial manufacturing site, at which a global industrial company produces advanced, high-quality products. At the local site, which has been in the same location for over 100 years, some 200 blue collar and 50 white collar workers are employed. The manufacturing part of the plant is divided into seven separate manufacturing cells, each with its own team of shift workers and team managers. We have mainly observed the daily work in the manufacturing cells by shadowing operators and managers, taking detailed notes and collecting documents and photos. In addition, we have conducted around 20 interviews with managers, employees, and process development consultants. The study is still ongoing, and we have to date over a one-year period spent 150 hours at the site.

The role of perceptual frames and reframing in the context of the shifting demand for goods and services is explored. The case of Alstom Transport's building of the Pendolino tilting train for Virgin Trains' West Coast Mainline route is used as an example of how framing and reframing can be a key management tool in contexts where customers are driving new strategic directions in the delivery of goods and services. We see the successful management of transitional projects (projects which depart from existing knowledge and capabilities to deliver transformed goods and services) as dependent on the ability of project managers, and other key actors, to reshape and realign existing perceptual frames. The paper examines the difficulties of so doing. 

Background: Technological advancements have opened the path for many technology providers to easily develop and introduce eHealth tools to the public. The use of these tools is increasingly recognized as a critical quality driver in health care; however, choosing a quality tool from the myriad of tools available for a specific health need does not come without challenges. Objective: This review aimed to systematically investigate the literature to understand the different approaches and criteria used to assess the quality and impact of eHealth tools by considering sociotechnical factors (from technical, social, and organizational perspectives). Methods: A structured search was completed following the participants, intervention, comparators, and outcomes framework. We searched the PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest databases for studies published between January 2012 and January 2022 in English, which yielded 675 results, of which 40 (5.9%) studies met the inclusion criteria. The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines and the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions were followed to ensure a systematic process. Extracted data were analyzed using NVivo (QSR International), with a thematic analysis and narrative synthesis of emergent themes. Results: Similar measures from the different papers, frameworks, and initiatives were aggregated into 36 unique criteria grouped into 13 clusters. Using the sociotechnical approach, we classified the relevant criteria into technical, social, and organizational assessment criteria. Technical assessment criteria were grouped into 5 clusters: technical aspects, functionality, content, data management, and design. Social assessment criteria were grouped into 4 clusters: human centricity, health outcomes, visible popularity metrics, and social aspects. Organizational assessment criteria were grouped into 4 clusters: sustainability and scalability, health care organization, health care context, and developer. Conclusions: This review builds on the growing body of research that investigates the criteria used to assess the quality and impact of eHealth tools and highlights the complexity and challenges facing these initiatives. It demonstrates that there is no single framework that is used uniformly to assess the quality and impact of eHealth tools. It also highlights the need for a more comprehensive approach that balances the social, organizational, and technical assessment criteria in a way that reflects the complexity and interdependence of the health care ecosystem and is aligned with the factors affecting users’ adoption to ensure uptake and adherence in the long term.

BACKGROUND: Mobile health (mHealth) tools have shown promise in clinical photo and wound documentation for their potential to improve workflows, expand access to care, and improve the quality of patient care. However, some barriers to adoption persist. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand the social, organizational, and technical factors affecting clinicians' adoption of a clinical photo documentation mHealth app and its implications for clinical workflows and quality of care. METHODS: A qualitative case study of a clinical photo and wound documentation app called imitoCam was conducted. The data were collected through 20 in-depth interviews with mHealth providers, clinicians, and medical informatics experts from 8 clinics and hospitals in Switzerland and Germany. RESULTS: According to the study participants, the use of mHealth in clinical photo and wound documentation provides numerous benefits such as time-saving and efficacy, better patient safety and quality of care, enhanced data security and validation, and better accessibility. The clinical workflow may also improve when the app is a good fit, resulting in better collaboration and transparency, streamlined daily work, clinician empowerment, and improved quality of care. The findings included important factors that may contribute to or hinder adoption. Factors may be related to the material nature of the tool, such as the perceived usefulness, ease of use, interoperability, cost, or security of the app, or social aspects such as personal experience, attitudes, awareness, or culture. Organizational and policy barriers include the available clinical practice infrastructure, workload and resources, the complexity of decision making, training, and ambiguity or lack of regulations. User engagement in the development and implementation process is a vital contributor to the successful adoption of mHealth apps. CONCLUSIONS: The promising potential of mHealth in clinical photo and wound documentation is clear and may enhance clinical workflow and quality of care; however, the factors affecting adoption go beyond the technical features of the tool itself to embrace significant social and organizational elements. Technology providers, clinicians, and decision makers should work together to carefully address any barriers to improve adoption and harness the potential of these tools. 

Background: Despite the existence of adequate technological infrastructure and clearer policies, there are situations where users, mainly physicians, resist mobile health (mHealth) solutions. This is of particular concern, bearing in mind that several studies, both in developed and developing countries, showed that clinicians' adoption is the most influential factor in such solutions' success. Objective: The aim of this study was to focus on understanding clinicians' roles in the adoption of an oncology decision support app, the factors impacting this adoption, and its implications for organizational and social practices. Methods: A qualitative case study of a decision support app in oncology, called ONCOassist, was conducted. The data were collected through 17 in-depth interviews with clinicians and nurses in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Results: This case demonstrates the affordances and constraints of mHealth technology at the workplace, its implications for the organization of work, and clinicians' role in its constant development and adoption. The research findings confirmed that factors such as app operation and stability, ease of use, usefulness, cost, and portability play a major role in the adoption decision; however, other social factors such as endorsement, neutrality of the content, attitude toward technology, existing workload, and internal organizational politics are also reported as key determinants of clinicians' adoption. Interoperability and cultural views of mobile usage at work are the key workflow disadvantages, whereas higher efficiency and performance, sharpened practice, and location flexibility are the main workflow advantages. Conclusions: Several organizational implications emerged, suggesting the need for some actions such as fostering a work culture that embraces new technologies and the creation of new digital roles for clinicians both on the hospitals or clinics and on the development sides but also more collaboration between health care organizations and digital health providers to enable electronic medical record integration and solving of any interoperability issues. From a theoretical perspective, we also suggest the addition of a fourth step to Leonardi's methodological guidance that accounts for user engagement; embedding the users in the continuous design and development processes ensures the understanding of user-specific affordances that can then be made more obvious to other users and increase the potential of such tools to go beyond their technological features and have a higher impact on workflow and the organizing process.

Background: There is a growing body of evidence highlighting the potential of mobile health (mHealth) in reducing health care costs, enhancing access, and improving the quality of patient care. However, user acceptance and adoption are key prerequisites to harness this potential; hence, a deeper understanding of the factors impacting this adoption is crucial for its success. Objective: The aim of this review was to systematically explore relevant published literature to synthesize the current understanding of the factors impacting clinicians' adoption of mHealth tools, not only from a technological perspective but also from social and organizational perspectives. Methods: A structured search was carried out of MEDLINE, PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and the SAGE database for studies published between January 2008 and July 2018 in the English language, yielding 4993 results, of which 171 met the inclusion criteria. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis guidelines and the Cochrane handbook were followed to ensure a systematic process. Results: The technological factors impacting clinicians' adoption of mHealth tools were categorized into eight key themes: usefulness, ease of use, design, compatibility, technical issues, content, personalization, and convenience, which were in turn divided into 14 subthemes altogether. Social and organizational factors were much more prevalent and were categorized into eight key themes: workflow related, patient related, policy and regulations, culture or attitude or social influence, monetary factors, evidence base, awareness, and user engagement. These were divided into 41 subthemes, highlighting the importance of considering these factors when addressing potential barriers to mHealth adoption and how to overcome them. Conclusions: The study results can help inform mHealth providers and policymakers regarding the key factors impacting mHealth adoption, guiding them into making educated decisions to foster this adoption and harness the potential benefits.

Background: Although there is a push toward encouraging mobile health (mHealth) adoption to harness its potential, there are many challenges that sometimes go beyond the technology to involve other elements such as social, cultural, and organizational factors. Objective: This review aimed to explore which frameworks are used the most, to understand clinicians' adoption of mHealth as well as to identify potential shortcomings in these frameworks. Highlighting these gaps and the main factors that were not specifically covered in the most frequently used frameworks will assist future researchers to include all relevant key factors. Methods: This review was an in-depth subanalysis of a larger systematic review that included research papers published between 2008 and 2018 and focused on the social, organizational, and technical factors impacting clinicians' adoption of mHealth. The initial systematic review included 171 studies, of which 50 studies used a theoretical framework. These 50 studies are the subject of this qualitative review, reflecting further on the frameworks used and how these can help future researchers design studies that investigate the topic of mHealth adoption more robustly. Results: The most commonly used frameworks were different forms of extensions of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; 17/50, 34%), the diffusion of innovation theory (DOI; 8/50, 16%), and different forms of extensions of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (6/50, 12%). Some studies used a combination of the TAM and DOI frameworks (3/50, 6%), whereas others used the consolidated framework for implementation research (3/50, 6%) and sociotechnical systems (STS) theory (2/50, 4%). The factors cited by more than 20% of the studies were usefulness, output quality, ease of use, technical support, data privacy, self-efficacy, attitude, organizational inner setting, training, leadership engagement, workload, and workflow fit. Most factors could be linked to one framework or another, but there was no single framework that could adequately cover all relevant and specific factors without some expansion. Conclusions: Health care technologies are generally more complex than tools that address individual user needs as they usually support patients with comorbidities who are typically treated by multidisciplinary teams who might even work in different health care organizations. This special nature of how the health care sector operates and its highly regulated nature, the usual budget deficits, and the interdependence between health care organizations necessitate some crucial expansions to existing theoretical frameworks usually used when studying adoption. We propose a shift toward theoretical frameworks that take into account implementation challenges that factor in the complexity of the sociotechnical structure of health care organizations and the interplay between the technical, social, and organizational aspects. Our consolidated framework offers recommendations on which factors to include when investigating clinicians' adoption of mHealth, taking into account all three aspects.

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) tools have emerged as a promising health care technology that may contribute to cost savings, better access to care, and enhanced clinical outcomes; however, it is important to ensure their acceptance and adoption to harness this potential. Patient adoption has been recognized as a key challenge that requires further exploration. Objective: The aim of this review was to systematically investigate the literature to understand the factors affecting patients' adoption of mHealth tools by considering sociotechnical factors (from technical, social, and health perspectives). Methods: A structured search was completed following the participants, intervention, comparators, and outcomes framework. We searched the MEDLINE, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and SAGE databases for studies published between January 2011 and July 2021 in the English language, yielding 5873 results, of which 147 studies met the inclusion criteria. The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines and the Cochrane Handbook were followed to ensure a systematic process. Extracted data were analyzed using NVivo (QSR International), with thematic analysis and narrative synthesis of emergent themes. Results: The technical factors affecting patients' adoption of mHealth tools were categorized into six key themes, which in turn were divided into 20 subthemes: usefulness, ease of use, data-related, monetary factors, technical issues, and user experience. Health-related factors were categorized into six key themes: the disease or health condition, the care team's role, health consciousness and literacy, health behavior, relation to other therapies, integration into patient journey, and the patients' insurance status. Social and personal factors were divided into three key clusters: demographic factors, personal characteristics, and social and cultural aspects; these were divided into 19 subthemes, highlighting the importance of considering these factors when addressing potential barriers to mHealth adoption and how to overcome them. Conclusions: This review builds on the growing body of research that investigates patients' adoption of mHealth services and highlights the complexity of the factors affecting adoption, including personal, social, technical, organizational, and health care aspects. We recommend a more patient-centered approach by ensuring the tools' fit into the overall patient journey and treatment plan, emphasizing inclusive design, and warranting comprehensive patient education and support. Moreover, empowering and mobilizing clinicians and care teams, addressing ethical data management issues, and focusing on health care policies may facilitate adoption.

This paper explores the experiences of a detailed security check that the first author of this paper had do subject himself to in order to gain research access to a high-security facility where he is to perform an ethnographic study. In doing so, the paper accounts for a stressful experience, the intensities, i.e. the affective dimensions, of gaining research access. These are tied to wider discussions concerning the role of imagination -and how imagination exists in relation to a reseach group.

Theoretical and policy treatments of the processes and management of innovation in construction have neglected the complexity of the social practices in construction and the new conflicts between the parties that may arise from the introduction of organizational and technological change. Based on extensive interviews with contractors, consultants, suppliers and developers, this paper shows that new developments in project management and technologies have not eliminated the adversarial relations associated with the traditional contracting system but have created the potential for new conflicts in the construction sector that might affect innovation adversely. These problems may be further exacerbated by the impacts of these changes on skills and employment conditions in the construction industry. It is argued that these new conflicts suggest the need for research and policy initiatives to move beyond stylized generalizations of the industry.