In this article I generalize ecological theory by developing the notion of separate but linked ecologies. I characterize an ecology by its set of actors, its set of locations, and the relation it involves between these. I then develop two central concepts for the linkage of ecologies: hinges and avatars. The first are issues or strategies that ‘‘work’’ in both ecologies at once. The second are ...

This paper takes a look at the political issues involved in the implementation of health information system (HIS) in resource constrained countries. By doing a comparative case, we attempted to understand how two different implementation processes took shape in two countries – Tanzania and Vietnam using Actor network theory (ANT) as our analytica lens. The study suggests that by mobilizing an a...

The aim of this article is to develop the foundations of an actor-centred, processual approach to examining the influence of cross-border knowledge transfer and management learning on transnational institution building in post-socialist countries. We argue that there is a need for more research to understand how key social actors go about (re)structuring, (re)defining and sharing knowledge with...

Decision-making about innovative change in high-risk networks is exceptionally difficult because system failure may result in catastrophe. We adopt a historical method to compare the US and Soviet choices in their nuclear attack submarine programs between 1970 and 1996 and to surface their complex political, technological, and operational relations. One program achieved high reliability in the ...

Crowdsourcing platforms are commonly used for research in the humanities, social sciences and informatics, including the use of crowdworkers to annotate textual material or visuals. Utilizing two empirical studies, this article systematically assesses the potential of crowdcoding for less manifest contents of news texts, here focusing on political actor evaluations. Specifically, Study 1 compar...

VLNET is a shared virtual life network with virtual humans that provides a natural interface for collaborative working. Virtual actors play a key role in VLNET. Three kinds of virtual actors may coexist in a VLNET scene: participant, guided and autonomous actors. A participant actor is a virtual copy of the real user or participant; his movement is exactly the same as the real user. A guided ac...

In this paper we show how the dynamic behavior of human actors and their influence on land use change can be modeled to produce spatially explicit simulations of future land use. An actor-based dynamic systems approach is integrated with the existing APoLUS (Actor, Policy and Land Use Simulator) cellular automata land use model. Previous versions of APoLUS determined final total land use amount...

for the CFSP and ESDP in the early 21st century. Our three essays will help readers begin to sort it out. Richard Whitman (co-chair of the EUSA’s “EU as a Global Actor” interest section) offers a clear exposition of some of the nuts and bolts of CFSP change in the Lisbon Treaty. These were both the main CFSP-related elements of the Constitutional Treaty and, as he observes, are still likely to ...

On the basis of a longitudinal interpretive case study, this paper explores the dynamics in the implementation of an industry interorganizational information system (IOIS). The paper covers 11 years (1994–2005) of the implementation process. We use the lens of actor network theory (ANT) to analyze the process of emergence, development, and progressive stabilization of a socio-technical network,...

E-government is a promising technological innovation to improve government performance in developing countries. The potential benefits of e-government include less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and cost reduction. However, most egovernment projects failed because of its complexity and its inherent political process. Meanwhile as young fields e-governme...