Enriching Socio-Technical Sustainability Intelligence through Sharing Autonomy

Richard Heininger (), Thomas Ernst Jost and Christian Stary
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Richard Heininger: Institute of Business Informatics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria
Thomas Ernst Jost: Institute of Business Informatics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria
Christian Stary: Institute of Business Informatics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-22

Abstract: We suggest to extend scientific research on sustainability beyond its focus on interactions between natural and social systems to socio-technical systems and the ways in which those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability. In increasingly digitalized settings, socio-technical sustainability intelligence becomes critical for human-centered development of societies worldwide, including the achievement of future organizational success. Human-centered enablers, such as self-awareness, global perspective, and societal consciousness, lay foundation for reflective socio-technical practice in highly dynamic ecosystems that are increasingly backed by Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Socio-technical practice requires frameworks and architectures that support active stakeholder engagement throughout design and engineering. In this contribution, we propose sharing autonomy as inherent feature of sustainable socio-technical system development and operation. We introduce an architecture and mechanism for building and handling autonomy as part of socio-technical sustainability intelligence. We exemplify both with a system-relevant logistics use case to illustrate the enrichment of CPS-based socio-technical environments through active stakeholder participation.

Keywords: shared autonomy; cyber-physical systems; CPS; subject-oriented business process management; S-BPM; socio-technical systems; socio-technical systems design; Internet of Things; IoT; autonomic computing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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