Expectations are high for digital technologies to address sustainability related challenges. While research into such applications and the twin transformation is growing rapidly, insights in the actual daily practices of digital sustainability within organizations is lacking. This is problematic as the contributions of digital tools to sustainability goals gain shape in organizational practices. To bridge this gap, we develop a theoretical perspective on digital sustainability practices based on practice theory, with an emphasis on the concept of sociomateriality. We argue that connecting meanings related to sustainability with digital technologies is essential to establish beneficial practices. Next, we contend that the meaning of sustainability is contextspecific, which calls for a local meaning making process. Based on our theoretical exploration we develop an empirical research agenda.
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Een digitaal netwerk is van strategisch belang voor mens, organisatie en regio. Hoe kunnen we social media en andere vormen van digitale netwerken nu functioneel doordacht, efficiënt en effectief inzetten? Hebben we voldoende media wijsheid in pacht? Zijn we voldoende ‘digital media literate’? Aandacht voor en het ontwikkelen van digital media literacy wordt in het Horizon Report 2011 van EDUCAUSE “de belangrijkste kritieke uitdaging” voor de komende jaren genoemd. Het rapport spreekt van “een key skill voor elke discipline en professie“. Demografische ontwikkelingen als vergrijzing en ontgroening hebben gevolgen voor de arbeidsmarkt. De oplossing kan worden gezocht in employability van de beroepsbevolking: van baan- naar werkgarantie. Aangezien digital media literacy een key skill voor elke discipline en professie is en dat digitaal netwerken van strategisch belang is, is het bevorderen van digital media literacy een belangrijke randvoorwaarde voor het realiseren van employability. Deskundigheid moet door HR-diensten in kaart worden gebracht. HR-diensten kunnen met Strategisch HRM (SHRM) employability bevorderen. In het essay neem ik de lezer, met digital media literacy in zijn of haar koffertje, mee via de demografische problematiek in de regio (Limburg, Euregio) naar Zuyd (daar waar ik zelf werk).
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Technological developments go fast and are interrelated and multi-interpretable. As consumer needs change, the technological possibilities to meet those needs are constantly evolving and new technology providers introduce new disruptive business models. This makes it difficult to predict what the world of tomorrow will look like for an organization and that makes the risks for organizations substantial. In this context, it is difficult for organizations to determine what constitutes a good strategy to adopt digital developments. This paper describes a first step of a study with the objective to design a method for organizations to formulate a future-proof strategy in a rapidly changing, complex and ambiguous context. More specifically, this paper describes the results of a sequence of three focus groups that were held with a group of eight experts, with extensive experience as members of the decision making unit in organizations. The objectives of these sessions were to determine possible solutions for the outlined challenge in order to provide direction for continuation and scoping of the following research phases.
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This book is about you. Are you, as a customer, as an entrepreneur, as an individual, ready for the Internet and e-business? Do you see the possibilities and do you actually use these? Do you have an idea of where it will end? Did you ever list how the Internet changes your life as an entrepreneur? And, do you make the next move or do you let it all happen to you? About the fact that the Internet is much more than e-mail, shopping, chatting and searching. About how the Internet as a driver of e-business changes the set-up of your company or educational institution and maybe your very business in a very positive and still “e-secure” way: marketing & sales, operations, purchasing, recruitment & selection, e-HRM. We go through six related trends with you, without pretending to be complete.
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Websites placing cookies on your computer to track your browsing behavior. TikTok stores your personal data in China. Are you aware of what products, services, and organisations do with your personal data? It is often not obvious. Our digital lives are becoming more and more prominent. We are now meeting each other virtually for work and leisure, and are spotted and traced without our knowledge, both in physical places (public areas and streets) and in virtual spaces. Technology is developing rapidly and policy makers are not able to keep up, resulting in unknown threats for citizens in modern society. Moreover, technology can lead to inequality and exclusion, as demonstrated in the Dutch childcare benefits scandal. The aim of the Inholland Digital Rights Research Team, co-founded by Professors Wina Smeenk, Ander de Keijzer and Ben Wagner, is to focus their work on the social, economic, cultural, communication, design and technological elements that can lead to a digitally responsible society. This means that we want to be part of the debate and research on how technology in our digital age can contribute to the quality of peoples’ lives: how can people benefit from the digital society and how are they hindered, or even worse, excluded from partaking in our digital society. We do this in our research lines, as well as in the sustainable media lab courses and the data-driven minor.
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Parents who grew up without digital monitoring have a plethora of parental monitoring opportunities at their disposal. While they can engage in surveillance practices to safeguard their children, they also have to balance freedom against control. This research is based on in-depth interviews with eleven early adolescents and eleven parents to investigate everyday negotiations of parental monitoring. Parental monitoring is presented as a form of lateral surveillance because it entails parents engaging in surveillance practices to monitor their children. The results indicate that some parents are motivated to use digital monitoring tools to safeguard and guide their children, while others refrain from surveillance practices to prioritise freedom and trust. The most common forms of surveillance are location tracking and the monitoring of digital behaviour and screen time. Moreover, we provide unique insights into the use of student tracking systems as an impactful form of control. Early adolescents negotiate these parental monitoring practices, with responses ranging from acceptance to active forms of resistance. Some children also monitor their parents, showcasing a reciprocal form of lateral surveillance. In all families, monitoring practices are negotiated in open conversations that also foster digital resilience. This study shows that the concepts of parental monitoring and lateral surveillance fall short in grasping the reciprocal character of monitoring and the power dynamics in parent-child relations. We therefore propose that monitoring practices in families can best be understood as family surveillance, providing a novel concept to understand how surveillance is embedded in contemporary media practices among interconnected family members.
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Aim: There is often a gap between the ideal of involving older persons iteratively throughout the design process of digital technology, and actual practice. Until now, the lens of ageism has not been applied to address this gap. The goals of this study were: to voice the perspectives and experiences of older persons who participated in co-designing regarding the design process; their perceived role in co-designing and intergenerational interaction with the designers; and apparent manifestations of ageism that potentially influence the design of digital technology. Methods: Twenty-one older persons participated in three focus groups. Five themes were identified using thematic analysis which combined a critical ageism ‘lens’ deductive approach and an inductive approach. Results: Ageism was experienced by participants in their daily lives and interactions with the designers during the design process. Negative images of ageing were pointed out as a potential influencing factor on design decisions. Nevertheless, positive experiences of inclusive design pointed out the importance of “partnership” in the design process. Participants defined the “ultimate partnership” in co-designing as processes in which they were involved from the beginning, iteratively, in a participatory approach. Such processes were perceived as leading to successful design outcomes, which they would like to use, and reduced intergenerational tension. Conclusions: This study highlights the potential role of ageism as a detrimental factor in how digital technologies are designed. Viewing older persons as partners in co-designing and aspiring to more inclusive design processes may promote designing technologies that are needed, wanted and used.
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Can you remember the last time the ground gave way beneath you? When you thought the ground was stable, but for some reason it wasn’t? Perhaps you encountered a pothole on the streets of Amsterdam, or you were renovating your house and broke through the floor. Perhaps there was a molehill in a park or garden. You probably had to hold on to something to steady yourself. Perhaps you even slipped or fell. While I sincerely hope that nobody here was hurt in the process, I would like you to keep that feeling in your mind when reading what follows. It is the central theme of the words that will follow. The ground beneath our feet today is not as stable as the streets of Amsterdam, your park around the corner or even a poorly renovated upstairs bedroom. This is because whatever devices we use and whatever pathways we choose, we all live in hybrid physical and digital social spaces (Kitchin and Dodge 2011). Digital social spaces can be social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, but also chat apps like WhatsApp or Signal. Crucially, social spaces are increasingly hybrid, in which conversations take place across digital spaces (WhatsApp chat group) and physical spaces (meeting friends in a cafe) simultaneously. The ground beneath our feet is not made of concrete or stone or wood but of bits and bytes.
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Nowadays, digital tools for mathematics education are sophisticated and widely available. These tools offer important opportunities, but also come with constraints. Some tools are hard to tailor by teachers, educational designers and researchers; their functionality has to be taken for granted. Other tools offer many possible educational applications, which require didactical choices. In both cases, one may experience a tension between a teacher’s didactical goals and the tool’s affordances. From the perspective of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME), this challenge concerns both guided reinvention and didactical phenomenology. In this chapter, this dialectic relationship will be addressed through the description of two particular cases of using digital tools in Dutch mathematics education: the introduction of the graphing calculator (GC), and the evolution of the online Digital Mathematics Environment (DME). From these two case descriptions, my conclusion is that students need to develop new techniques for using digital tools; techniques that interact with conceptual understanding. For teachers, it is important to be able to tailor the digital tool to their didactical intentions. From the perspective of RME, I conclude that its match with using digital technology is not self-evident. Guided reinvention may be challenged by the rigid character of the tools, and the phenomena that form the point of departure of the learning of mathematics may change in a technology-rich classroom.
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