Global e-businesses such as Google, Amazon and E-bay affect both users and society. How can society begin to understand this duality in the socio-technical affordances of e-business? This paper examines a digital art performance as an example of the tensions between capitalist businesses and the public commons. Using notions of transparency and knowledge as a form of Knowledge Management rooted...

The chapter describes an empirical study of a sociotechnical community—as an extended part of an institution—with the aim of revealing its changing processes. One hypothesis is that structures of socio-technical communities evolve from being less defined and informal to being more formal structures supported by evolving social control mechanisms, regulations and rules. The focus is the new emer...

In the case presented herein, two three-dimensional rendering software products coexist without competing, though they present similar characteristics and rely on competitive technological architectures. The market configuration for these two software products thus appears largely determined by socio-technical elements, not just the technical characteristics of the software architecture. The so...

This article explores the boundaries of socio-technical IT systems for knowledge development, using military environments in a case study approach. The need to examine the effects of socio-technical convergence of human systems and computer systems is emerging in many fields. The article examines both the risks and the potential in military critical-environments for early adoption of socio-tech...