Gianluca Miscione

University College Dublin | UCD

The blockchain technology offers a novel mode of distributed authentication, which does not depend on a central authority. We consider this novelty against established governance modes. We illustrate our argument by paying special attention to blockchain-based authentication functions in the empirical domain of land registries across the world. Bas...

Recent revelations of intelligence surveillance are an unprecedented breakdown of contemporary communication functioning, therefore offer novel insights about how it has worked normally. The contrastive description of the Wikileaks and Snowden’s events show unexpected paths to address responsibility and enact performativity globally. In both cases,...

Since centuries, myth, progress, and technology have been interwoven in ways that explain the past and anticipate the future. The relevance of myths is not in being true or false, but in contributing to orienting social praxes, and thus in acting as a regulator of human behaviour in front of unknown consequences of today's decisions and actions. Th...

Full paper http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2624922

This paper contributes to the debate on technological innovation in the domain of emerging economies. Using the example of M-Pesa, the well-known m-banking application developed in Kenya, we argue that technological innovation in emerging markets should be seen as arising from an assemblage of actors in which context matters. We develop this argum...

Research on information and organization is used to highlight how organizations and their practices are digitalized. In this contribution, the opposite angle is taken: the focus is on how values and organizing practices originated on the internet avoid, encounter, and clash – not without controversies – with existing organizations. WikiLeaks and Sn...

In blockchain consortia, different companies band together to develop, govern, and operate a shared blockchain-based system. However, many blockchain-based systems are exposed to the risk of never going live without a proper understanding of the peculiar collaboration this technological architecture entails. To understand how blockchain consortia d...

It is generally assumed that organisational studies began as an academic discipline in the 1890s, when Frederick Winslow Taylor launched scientific management, while the scholars could also revoke even earlier writings of Max Weber. Since that time, many scholars have been studying formal organisations to the point where there was scarcely anything...

For years, there has been an emphasis on how to efficiently and effectively identify, evaluate, and implement innovative information systems in both design science research (DSR) and practice. Nonetheless, still today, these efforts continue to be hampered by the temporal gap between ideation and evaluation. Usually, innovative ideas are implemente...

The broad and continued success of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) has helped to spread its ideology to many other domains, including Open Government Data (OGD), which has recently gained prominence due to its potential for feeding algorithms. Despite the anti-market and anti-corporation values around free sharing, citizen participation...

We have been studying formal organizations for at least a century, if not longer, and there is not much that we do not know about them. A recent phenomenon-the digital transformation of contemporary organizations-has also attracted much attention, and great many studies were done, with interesting results. But digitalization opened also wide doors...

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been criticized from many angles (Liverman, 2018). Despite these criticisms, their capacity to focus minds and mobilize activities across the most diverse settings and groups is obvious. This relates closely to A.O. Hirschman’s concept of the ‘hiding hand’ (Hirschman, [1967]/2020): Interventions may be able...

In recent years, scholarly interest research on blockchain technology steadily increased. While the underlying technology matures, observed problems in the field show questions of governance to remain crucial, even though scarcely studied empirically. One approach of solving these problems can be seen in decentralized autonomous organizations, whic...

Cryptocurrencies are a hotly-debated topic because it is not clear why they should be valued as they are. Bitcoin, by far the most prominent cryptocurrency, currently trades around $9,500 USD. "Why is Bitcoin valuable?" is a question often heard, but seldom answered well. It is not the legal tender of any nation, nor does it represent anything of p...

Blockchain comes with the promise of being a disruptive technology with the potential for novel ways of interaction in a wide range of applications. Following broader application, scholarly interest in the technology is growing, though an extensive analysis of blockchain applications from a governance perspective is lacking to date. This research p...

This chapter steps back from specific empirical cases and discusses alternative theoretical lenses that can be used to study if and how blockchain-based registries in Africa will be affecting organizations and society. Those lenses are: Neoinstitutionalism, Structuration theory, and Actor-Network theory. Each of them is adopted to outline aspects o...

Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible applications. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian agenda rejecting organizations, its developments have illustrated...

The second-hand automotive market is one with the least trust from consumers. Customers on the second-hand car market suffer from such problems as the car being in worse condition than initially indicated, accident damage that is not disclosed, fraud, etc. Akerlof, described the market for used cars as an example of the problem of information asymm...

Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible applications. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian agenda rejecting organizations, its developments have illustrated...

Infrastructures are typically seen as boring and serious, and are routinely depicted using metaphors from transportation. We argue that the carnival is a fruitful metaphor for understanding emerging information infrastructures, as the information age is also the age of the carnival. We distinguish between the ubiquitous or distal carnival and its p...

Information technologies have been changing how things get organized for a while now. Free and open source software, peer-to-peer networks, cloud computing, just to name a few waves of digital innovation, are instances of a mode of organizing which has been: a) circumventing the structures and conventions of formal organizations, and b) changing an...

The global financial crisis and the contemporaneous emergence of the digital currency Bitcoin invite us to think about money and how it often functions almost imperceptibly in society. In this article, we show that Bitcoin is a ‘new object of concern’ that also compels us to reimagine ethnography in a digital age. We present a method, which we term...

Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible application, including – but not limited to – land and other registries, global trade systems. While it has been originally closely linked to...

The blockchain comes with the promise of being a disruptive technology with the potential for novel ways of interaction in a wide range of applications. Although scholarly interest in the technology is growing, a broad analysis of blockchain applications from a governance perspective lacks to date. This research pays special attention to the govern...

The automotive market is in the top three markets with the least trust from consumers. In particular, in the secondhand car market, consumers suffer from such problems as the car being in worse condition than initially indicated, accident damage that is not disclosed, fraud, etc. Akerlof, described the market for used cars as an example of the prob...

The blockchain technology challenges the view on established modes of governance by offering distributed authentication without the need for a central authority, which is well-exemplified by Bitcoin. While the governance of and through Bitcoin is well-accentuated in research, we spotlight impacts on governance which blockchain-based systems bring t...

All details can be found here: https://goo.gl/i5VQyx

The aim of this chapter is to present a methodological approach to map unequal quality-of-life and citizen’s self-perceived living conditions. The objective is to critically explore new approaches where the combination of multiple sources of information collected via mixed methods offers new insights at the same time as raises new challenges. This...

In this paper, we argue that Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies more generally, is an important and distinctive information infrastructure that warrants substantive study by organizational scholars. The Bitcoin system is briefly described and the particular methodological challenges involved in studying the phenomenon are also discussed. We assert that...

Traditionally, investigative journalists had a gatekeeping role between their confidential sources of information and the public sphere. Over the last two decades and with the arrival of new media, this role has been undergoing changes. Recent cases of whistleblowing, such as WikiLeaks and Snowden, illustrate how contemporary media allow individual...

IT multinational enterprises (MNEs) have garnered a significant amount of attention in relation to the growth of indigenous IT sectors . Compared to some sectors, the IT industry - which trades in immaterial goods - may be less dependent on spatial constraints since it does not rely on large scale labor force or massive movement of raw materials. T...

https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/news-events/smartcontracts-and-smartcities-displacing-power-through-authentication

Las monedas son intrínseca a los modos de la organización. De hecho, los mercados basados en transacciones monetarias, son una de las formas ideal-típicas de organización que Powell (1990) analiza junto con las jerarquías y redes. Como no todas las relaciones sociales están regulados por el dinero, la economía puede ser vista como el aglomerado de...

http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/research/fintech.html

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are now a widespread and important form of Information Technology (IT) use. In principle, Information Systems (IS) research is concerned with all forms of IT use. Yet despite this importance, GIS remains largely invisible in IS research. This paper illustrates this separation using bibliographic data drawn fro...

Postcodes are some of the best established pieces of national spatial data infrastructures. Originally they were designed to facilitate postal delivery, but through the decades more and more organizational functions have been integrating postcodes as unique spatial identifiers. State organizations may use postcodes to classify areas under their jur...

Traditionally, geospatial information systems (GIS) and information systems (IS) tend to refer to different academic disciplines: geography, geology, environmental sciences, food and agriculture the former; organization studies, business, accountancy and social sciences more generally the latter. Probably for historical reasons, the distance betwee...

Contrary to physical goods, information goods are 'non-rival', i.e. my use does not prevent yours. Current laws and technologies have not managed to constrain the near zero replication and distribution costs of digital data and their effects. In this way, digital networks seem to be a realm of plenitude, not subject to the laws of scarcity. In 2009...

Journalism has always developed in close interplay with the available communication technologies. In recent decades, it has been undergoing major transformations in relation to information infrastructures like the Web. Especially user-generated content, aka Web 2.0 and social media, has posed new challenges to journalism (Boczkowski 2005; Conboy, 2...

Traditionally, geospatial information systems (GIS) and information systems (IS) tend to refer to different academic disciplines: geography, geology, environmental sciences, food and agriculture the former; organization studies, business, accountancy and social sciences more generally the latter. Probably for historical reasons, the distance betwee...

Full text: http://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/handle/10197/5670/Unknown-Myth.pdf?sequence=1

The new era of Information and Communication Technologies ICT enables people to communicate and interact with each other in different manner, changing the way they conduct their lives. This change has significant implications on their physical travels. The relationship between ICTs and travel is complex and sometimes indirect. This paper aims to be...

Even though they tend to be studied by diverse disciplines, it is commonly accepted that writing technologies, organizational forms and public opinion have been interwoven since at least the invention and massive deployment of the printing press. Acknowledging both the centrality of communication in contemporary societies and the impossibility of i...

E-government initiatives tend to come charged with expectations of improving the performance of public administrations by reducing inequalities in public service provision. The studies presented here elaborate on implications and consequences of systems to handle citizen complaints and public feedback related to the services provided to and managed...

This study is based on an ethnographic study of a telemedicine system implemented in Northeastern Peru. This system connects a hospital in the Upper Amazon with health care facilities scattered throughout that area of the jungle. Patients' transport through the physical nodes of the public health care system relied on rivers and wooden boats, but v...

Contemporary world faces increasing complexity also because all societies are increasingly bound together by information infrastructures, so research on them gains explanatory power beyond infrastructures themselves. The problems addressed by this paper are, first the extension of the empirical boundaries beyond "the North", usually confining what...

Standardisation is one of tools of Electronic Government (EGov). It refers to the development where individuals and organizations develop and/or adhere to standard IT solutions and associated work processes. Studies on standardization in information technology (IT) emphasize either only the technical side of standard construction (the ‘what’ and ‘h...

The new era of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) enables people to communicate and interact with each other in new and different manners, changing the way they conduct their daily lives. This change inevitably has significant implications for physical travel in the age of electronic communication (e-communication). This paper aims to...

This chapter addresses the institutional dimension of scaling of information systems through the interplay of globally distributed software development with organizational processes. Through examining various phases of a long term project to implement information systems for the public health care sector in global South countries, I highlight chang...

This study is based on an ethnographic study of a telemedicine system implemented in Northeastern Peru. This system connects a hospital in the Upper Amazon with health care facilities scattered throughout that area of the jungle. Patients' transport through the physical nodes of the public health care system relied on rivers and wooden boats, but v...

This article addresses the institutional scaling of information systems through the interplay of globally distributed free and open source software development with organizational processes. Through examining various phases of a long term project to implement information systems for the public health care sector in resource-poor countries, we highl...

Several innovative ‘participatory sensing’ initiatives are under way in East Africa. They can be seen as local manifestations of the global notion of Digital Earth. The initiatives aim to amplify the voice of ordinary citizens, improve citizens' capacity to directly influence public service delivery and hold local government accountable. The popula...

Constructivism in geo-information science has emphasized what happens to geo-information technologies (geoIT) after the design stage, when systems and applications are used in real life. Current constructivist views, however, have focused less on other aspects such as software development practices. This paper adopts a similar constructivist episte...