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Expanding understanding of service exchange and value co-creation: a social construction approach
According to service-dominant logic (S-D logic), all providers are
service
providers, and service is the fundamental basis of exchange. Value is co-created with customers and assessed on the basis of value-in-context. However, the extensive literature on S-D logic could benefit from paying explicit attention to the fact that both service exchange and value co-creation are influenced by social forces. The aim of this study is to expand understanding of service exchange and value co-creation by complementing these central aspects of S-D logic with key concepts from social construction theories (social structures, social systems, roles, positions, interactions, and reproduction of social structures). The study develops and describes a new framework for understanding how the concepts of service exchange and value co-creation are affected by recognizing that they are embedded in social systems. The study contends that value should be understood as value-in-social-context and that value is a social construction. Value co-creation is shaped by social forces, is reproduced in social structures, and can be asymmetric for the actors involved. Service exchanges are dynamic, and actors learn and change their roles within dynamic service systems.
Journal Article
Methodology, Legend, and Rhetoric
Artificial intelligence (AI) is again attracting significant attention across all areas of social life. One important sphere of focus is education; many policy makers across the globe view lifelong learning as an essential means to prepare society for an “AI future” and look to AI as a way to “deliver” learning opportunities to meet these needs. AI is a complex social, cultural, and material artifact that is understood and constructed by different stakeholders in varied ways, and these differences have significant social and educational implications that need to be explored. Through analysis of thirty-four in-depth interviews with stakeholders from academia, commerce, and policy, alongside document analysis, we draw on the social construction of technology (SCOT) to illuminate the diverse understandings, perceptions of, and practices around AI. We find three different technological frames emerging from the three social groups and argue that commercial sector practices wield most power. We propose that greater awareness of the differing technical frames, more interactions among a wider set of relevant social groups, and a stronger focus on the kinds of educational outcomes society seeks are needed in order to design AI for learning in ways that facilitate a democratic education for all.
Journal Article
Of ‘Welfare Queens’ and ‘Poor Carinas’: Social Constructions, Deservingness Messaging and the Mental Health of Welfare Clients
Politicians engage in, and the media amplifies, social constructions of welfare recipients as undeserving. Such messaging seeks to influence mass public opinion, but what are the effects on the target population receiving welfare benefits? We test if deservingness messaging affects welfare recipients' mental health. To do so, we exploit a quasi-experiment entailing a dramatic shift in deservingness messaging after a welfare recipient in Denmark became the subject of a national debate, utilizing detailed administrative data on the ensuing consumption of antidepressants by other welfare recipients. We find evidence that welfare recipients experienced worse mental health outcomes after being exposed to deservingness messaging, reflected in a 1.2-percentage-point increase in the use of antidepressants in the weeks following the airing of a critical interview. Deservingness messaging particularly affected more vulnerable groups who had a history of mental health problems.
Journal Article
Data-driven smart sustainable urbanism: the intertwined societal factors underlying its materialization, success, expansion, and evolution
Visions of future advances in science and technology (S&T) inevitably bring with them wide-ranging common visions on how societies, and thus cities as social organizations, will evolve in the future and the immense opportunities this future will bring. This relates to the role of science-based technology in modern society. The focus here is on big data science and analytics and the underpinning technologies as an instance of S&T and its role in advancing sustainability in modern cities. This relates to what has been dubbed data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. However, there is a little understanding about how it has emerged and why it has become institutionalized and interwoven with politics and policy—urban dissemination. Therefore, this paper examines the intertwined societal factors underlying its materialization, success, expansion, and evolution, as well as critically discusses urban science and big data technology as social constructions in terms of their inherent flaws, limits, and biases. This paper argues that data-driven smart sustainable urbanism is shaped by socio-cultural and politico-institutional structures. And it will prevail for many years to come given the underlying transformational power of big data science and analytics, coupled with its legitimation capacity associated with the scientific discourse as the ultimate form of rational thought and the basis for legitimacy in knowledge-making and policy-making. This paper also argues that there is a need for re-casting urban science in ways that reconfigure the underlying epistemology to recognize the complex and dynamic nature of smart sustainable cities, as well as for re-casting them in ways that re-orientate in how they are conceived.
Journal Article
Controlling Internet Use: A Contemporary Way of Excluding People With Intellectual Disabilities? Mapping and Understanding Internet Use in Sweden From a Critical Perspective
The internet has become very central to today's society. The aim of this scoping review was to map internet use among people with an intellectual disability (ID) in Sweden, and to scrutinise the phenomenon from a critical perspective. The concepts of digital divide, digital inequality, social construction of intellectual disability, and power relations were applied to conceptualise the empirical material. The results showed that people with ID have limited access to the internet. A discrepancy in approaches towards internet use was identified. Generally, people with ID subscribe to a positive view of the internet. Among professionals a generally pessimistic view was instead identified. People with ID are described as a vulnerable and naive group, who presumably cannot protect themselves from the risks the internet entails. From a critical perspective, control of internet access could strengthen asymmetric power, and human rights of social participation are withheld from people with ID. Keywords: social construction of intellectual disability, internet use, digital divide, digital inequality, power relations
Journal Article
Replacing humans with machines: a historical look at technology politics in California agriculture
Media outlets, industry researchers, and policy-makers are today busily extolling new robotic advances that promise to transform agriculture, bringing us ever closer to self-farming farms. Yet such techno-optimist discourse ignores the cautionary lessons of past attempts to mechanize farms. Adapting the Social Construction of Technology framework, we trace the history of efforts to replace human labor with machine labor on fruit, nut, and vegetable farms in California between 1945 and 1980—a place and time during which a post-WWII culture of faith in the beneficence of technoscience applications to agriculture reached an apex. The degree to which and forms whereby mechanization gains momentum hinges on whether, how, and among whom a technological frame for mimicking human capabilities and supplanting workers coalesces. These frames, we find, vary considerably across crops, reflecting complex interactions of biology, farmer and farm worker behavior, industry supply chains, agricultural research and development, financial flows, and beliefs about labor, race, gender, and immigration. To tease out these complex dynamics, we draw directly from archival evidence to follow the development of cultivation and harvest machines through four cases spanning a spectrum of outcomes—tomatoes, nuts, peaches, and lettuce. In comparing across these cases, we find that although agricultural engineers, scientists, and their boosters framed mechanization as a triumphal narrative of progress in ‘human vs. nature’ conflicts, this techno-optimist rhetoric camouflaged deeper ‘human vs. human’ conflicts, particularly among agribusiness, farmers, and farm workers. We conclude with several insights that this historical study brings to the study of agricultural automation today.
Journal Article
Getting Ahead or Getting Along? The Two-Facet Conceptualization of Conscientiousness and Leadership Emergence
We propose a theoretical process model of the social construction of leadership that sheds light on the relationship between conscientiousness and leadership emergence. The socioanalytic theory of personality is invoked to hypothesize different mediational paths linking the two facets of conscientiousness, achievement striving and duty, with leadership emergence. We tested the theoretical model with data from 249 employees matched with data from 40 of their coworkers and 40 supervisors employed in a Fortune 500 organization. Results indicate that the relationship between achievement striving and leadership emergence is partially mediated by competitiveness, providing support for a getting-ahead path to leadership. In contrast, the relationship between duty and leadership emergence is, in part, carried forward by trust, helping role perceptions, and helping behavior, supporting a getting-along path to leadership. Consistent with the self versus other distinction theoretically posited with regard to the facets of conscientiousness, although helping behavior is a predictor of leadership emergence, achievement strivers help only when they perceive helping as being an in-role requirement, whereas dutiful individuals enlarge their helping role perceptions.
Journal Article
Institutional Entrepreneurship in a Contested Commons: Insights from Struggles Over the Oasis of Jemna in Tunisia
Recently, management literature has sought to examine the role of institutional entrepreneurs in the emergence of commons logic and in building consensus around its meaning. While the focus has been on new commons, not all are created ex nihilo. Some types of preexisting commons, known as contested commons, often pose challenges that result in disagreements and conflicts with respect to their ownership, use, and management. These commons are a ubiquitous yet understudied phenomenon. In this paper, we use the case of the Tunisian Oasis of Jemna, pictured against the historical backdrop of the Arab Spring, to look at the institutional struggles that involve institutional entrepreneurs and the opponents of a contested commons. We identify two main strategies used by institutional entrepreneurs to frame the commons as a superior alternative: idealizing the commons and coalescing the community to harness its potential. We also highlight the heretofore neglected role of opponents, who engage in demonizing the commons to restore the competing logics of state or market. Finally, we unravel some of the conditions that allow for a temporary settlement of the contest, leading to what we term de facto commons.
Journal Article
From the Big Five to the Big Four? Exploring extinction accounting for the rhinoceros
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore a possible framework for extinction accounting which builds on but also extends significantly the existing GRI guidelines relating to species identified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List as under threat of extinction.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses disclosures relating to rhinoceros conservation and protection produced by top South African-listed companies in order to assess the current state of \"extinction accounting\". Following this analysis, the authors explore and discuss a potential framework for extinction accounting which may be used by companies to demonstrate their accountability for species and disclose the ways in which they are working alone, and in partnerships, to prevent species extinction.FindingsCorporate disclosures relating to rhinoceros may be interpreted as emancipatory. The authors identify several disclosure themes dealing with rhinoceros in integrated and sustainability reports of large South African companies and on their websites. Contrary to initial expectations, there is evidence to suggest corporate awareness of the importance of addressing the risk of this species becoming extinct.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors have relied on public corporate disclosures and would like to extend the work further to include interview data for a further paper.Practical implicationsAn extinction accounting framework may be applied to corporate accounting and accountability for any species under threat of extinction. The framework may also be considered for use as a tool for institutional investors as well as NGO engagement and dialogue with stakeholder companies.Social implicationsThe rhinoceros has, from the analysis, significant cultural, heritage, eco-tourism and intrinsic value. Developing and implementing an emancipatory extinction accounting framework to prevent extinction will have a substantial social and environmental impact.Originality/valueThis is the first attempt to the knowledge to explore accounting for extinction and a possible extinction accounting framework. It is also the first attempt to investigate accounting and accountability for the rhinoceros.
Journal Article