The civil society organizations (CSOs) in Bangladesh that came into the limelight for their activities during the COVID-19 pandemic are relatively new. Their formation, platform building, support expansion, fundraising, and coordination took place within the virtual network. Moreover, this new generation of civil society is engaged in digital advocacy. Under these new circumstances, it has become important to undergo a systematic study on this new generation of CSOs. The present article has conducted a content analysis of the websites (105) and Facebook pages (20) of sampled CSOs that have registered with the NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh from 2011 to 2021. Their digital activities have been analyzed under four broad headings, namely, information and transparency, participation, networking, and mobilization. It has been found that although a few CSOs have come into the limelight for their digital performance, 81% of the CSOs are not using any official website. CSOs that are active on digital platforms are mostly concerned with providing information about themselves rather than engaging in online advocacy or mobilization. Among the different types of CSOs, youth groups have been found to be the most active users of Facebook, whereas service-providing NGOs and environmental CSOs have been observed to be disinterested in utilizing the digital facilities. Though digital culture has already taken root in the socio-political and economic life of Bangladesh, the CSOs seem to be in a transitional phase of digitalization, and their efforts to advocate for and deliver services through the digital space are at an initial stage.

Despite the rapid development of the digital economy, its impact on corporate environmental responsibility remains unclear. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we suggest that city digitalization enhances regulatory and social stakeholder governance and, in turn, facilitates local firms’ corporate environmental investment (CEI). Utilizing data from 2,358 Chinese listed firms operating in environmentally sensitive industries from 2014 through 2019, our findings indicate that city digitalization positively affects CEI. Moreover, such positive impact is more pronounced in regions where environmental regulatory or social salience is high, and for firms with high levels of state share or top management team ownership. Our study sheds light on the governance function of digital development and provides valuable insights into how city digitalization helps address environmental challenges in emerging markets.

In this Article, I delve into a development I call the emergence of new humans in European technology regulation and ethical discourses. This means that instead of natural persons, bureaucrats or civil servants, “humans” are assigned legal assignments and power. Humans are required to be in the loop, on the loop, or in command. This is reflected in legal requirements such as “human intervention,” “human oversight,” or “human judgment.” In the Article, I aim to make two contributions. First, I show and problematize the emergence of “new humans” as a corollary of digital technologies. I argue that this “human” is a conceptual transplant from the discourses of technology and its incorporation into law is uneasy. Second, I suggest that the emergence of “new humans” and the following reimagining of legal professionals give rise to a novel framing: Adopting a wide conception of legal technology. Through this conception, we could dismantle the human/machine distinction in public administration and approach all—digital tools and humans and human legal labor, even mindsets—as legal technologies. I argue that this would add value by making visible the naïve human exceptionalism embedded in our legal thinking and would question its sustainability.

The twin digital and green transition constitutes a major societal challenge in the upcoming decades. To remain competitive, governments need to invest in both transformations. However, budgetary limits constitute trade-offs in addressing both simultaneously. At the same time, both transformations have far-reaching consequences for labor markets. Yet, we know very little about citizens’ preferences for relative public spending on both transitions and their determinants. Here, we examine the role of subjective labor market risk resulting from these transitions in shaping relative spending preferences. We argue that individuals might prefer to spend less on the societal transformation they perceive as a job threat (single-pressuredness), while cross-pressuredness by both transitions leads to an equal split. Drawing on novel comparative survey data from six countries, we find that individuals prefer to divert investment from the transition they perceive as a threat to their jobs, while cross-pressuredness moves people slightly towards equal investment.

Discussing recent literature on online financial practices, this article argues that ‘finance becoming tech’ assumes the form of particular financial situations in the everyday, to be understood in terms of Erving Goffman’s concept of interaction order. While the interactionist strand in the social study of finance foregrounds the role of techno-social situations in the constitution of finance, this article suggests applying Goffman’s notion of the ‘interaction order’ to that debate and demonstrates the latter’s capability to reconstruct the techno-social mechanisms through which finance emerges in the everyday. Unlike the notion of ‘situation’, that of ‘interaction order’ addresses the constitution of situational boundaries through interactional procedures as they refer only partially and selectively to circumstances of their social contexts. Against this background, online financial practices are analytically contoured as techno-social situations that enable the emergence of finance as a matter of the everyday. It is argued that the enabling condition for this commingling of everyday and financial processes is a specific delimitation of the digital-financial interaction order from parts of its political economic context – in particular, the uncertainty that structurally characterizes the financial economy.

This study examines the influence of digitalization on the ecological transformation of manufacturing companies, employing a comprehensive dataset of A-share listed companies in China from 2011 to 2022. The research develops extensive indicators for green transformation and uses fixed-effects regression models to assess the effects of digitalization. The results indicate that digitalization substantially facilitates green transformation through four pathways: internally, grounded in socio-technical systems theory, by enhancing green cognitive capability and green innovation capability; externally, grounded in stakeholder theory, by increasing investor attention and media attention. Furthermore, the research reveals variability in the impacts of digitalization contingent upon company ownership, pollutant severity, and technological characteristics, offering refined insights into various industrial contexts. This research enhances the literature by correcting deficiencies in previous studies that primarily concentrate on green innovation, thereby providing a more comprehensive view of the interplay between digital transformation and sustainable development. The results offer practical ideas for policymakers and businesses to synchronize digital strategy with environmental activities, expediting the shift toward a low-carbon, sustainable manufacturing sector.

Ample survey research and content analysis has established that NGO internet presence is qualitatively weak and characterized by the dominance of asymmetrical communication. We argue that the emergent communicative and social paradigm of on-line interaction forms what could be defined as a wicked problem. NGOs, seen as a ‘sender’ of information, may well face a crisis of accountability determined by the very nature of the media; whereas the NGOs’ ‘information receivers’ often are deprived of the very possibility of stakeholder relatedness. In the internet-based/on-screen ‘universe’, information and electronic flow are assumed to be continual, which supersedes the entity logic crucial to NGO accountability and legitimacy. In designing their social media presence, NGOs may, therefore, face an impossible challenge.

Informed by Stéphane Vial’s analysis of the nature of on-line interactive media, we evaluate these conundrums. Then, inspired by Lucas Introna and Fernando Ilharco, we question the dialogic potential to ‘screen-being’. While the shift from an ‘actor-centric’ to ‘flow-oriented’ paradigm of ‘screen-being’ is inherent to digital communication, it destabilizes the entity-grounded accountability of NGO legitimacy. Hence, we end with explicating the risks to dialogic relatedness of ‘sceen being’ for NGOs. By so doing, we challenge the oft vocalized perspective that NGOs ‘just’ have to increase their digital communications in order to improve their relations with various stakeholders.

Personal money management is an important part of a self-determined life. When assistance needs increase, many care recipients require help with bills, purchases, paperwork or budget planning. Third-party money management (TPMM) is thus a prevalent care-giving task in long-term care (LTC), essential to care recipients’ wellbeing and financial security. However, research on this phenomenon is scarce, scattered over time and research locations, and lacks consistent terminology. This article sheds light on the under-explored topic of TPMM for care-dependent people. It explores the scope and characteristics of TPMM, develops dimensions to characterize practices and mechanisms of TPMM and identifies aspects of good TPMM practice to balance personal autonomy and support by care-giving. In this scoping review (PRISMA-ScR), we analysed 35 scientific and non-scientific publications, retrieved from multiple databases and via citation searching. We found reports on various TPMM practices ranging from occasional help to official substitute decision-making. To grasp the complexity of support arrangements, we synthesized four dimensions, by which TPMM practices can be characterized: (1) degree of formalization, (2) degree of collaboration, (3) type of care provision and (4) degree of digitalization. We furthermore identified six aspects constituting good practices of TPMM, from collaborative decision-making to adequate fintech design. Future key research areas include the collection of comprehensive data on money management assistance needs and related care tasks, an exploration of TPMM issues in formal care settings, the role and responsibility of financial institutions, (digital) solutions to support TPMM, and detailed insights into the support needs of informal (financial) care-givers.

This article examines the implications of adopting a socio-technical perspective on the design and implementation of GovTech solutions. To observe the phenomenon, it adopts a case study approach focusing on the WiseTown solution and its City Digital Twin (CDT), developed by the Italian company TeamDev. The article investigates how integrating social factors, such as urban governance, with technical elements, like data analysis and modeling, can enhance the conceptualization, design, and implementation of user-centric, data-driven digital solutions as part of a broader digital transformation strategy. The article explores an Italian best practice that is developing four dimensions of the GovTech socio-technical framework: Governance Structures, Institutional Arrangements, User and Context Understanding, and Technological Development. It critically examines and discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with the adoption of CDTs and their impact on public policy implementation. The analysis is centered on two main aspects that emerged from the case study: data integration and sharing within CDTs, and the social implications associated with data usage for decision-making. Ultimately, the article explores the role of stakeholder collaboration (public-private partnerships) and the creation of innovation ecosystems—GovTech ecosystem in this specific case—to inform and steer policymaking through and beyond the adoption of CDTs.

Digital Tools are reshaping how Engineering Design data and information are produced, processed, used, reused, shared, and stored. The Digital Thread prioritizes the flow of design data and information, promoting effective collaboration and process efficiency. While literature showcases the immense application and capability of taking a Digital Thread approach to Product Design, best practices, key features, and benefits of successful implementations remain scarce. Reviewing and understanding successful implementations can assist researchers and practitioners in making informed decisions to effectively implement Digital Threads in their product design processes. This article addresses this gap by reporting a post hoc review of a collaborative Research & Development project that developed and implemented a Digital Thread approach to the design of hydrogen composite pressure vessels. A thematic analysis of the project’s reports and interviews with members of the project team was performed to identify the key features that expedite and improve the design process through an effective Digital Thread implementation. The post hoc review offers valuable insights – in the form of six feature benefits, four potential implementation challenges, three possible extensions, and four best practice recommendations – for companies looking to adopt and implement a Digital Thread approach to their design process.

The European Union (EU) has embraced the “twin transition” – the simultaneous pursuit of digitalisation and ecological transformation – as a cornerstone of its industrial policy. EU lawmakers argue that digital technologies can advance environmental protection by enhancing environmental monitoring, optimising resource use, and enabling data-driven sustainability efforts. However, this vision tends to overlook the environmental costs of digitalisation, including rising energy and water consumption, intensive resource extraction, and the proliferation of electronic waste. This article critically examines whether EU law is adequately equipped to support a twin transition, drawing on a black-letter analysis of EU legal provisions, as well as insights from science and technology studies and critical environmental law. It posits that, while environmental law plays a significant role in the datafication of the environment and the digitalisation of society, it falls short in regulating digital technology and data in ways that advance sustainability. For the twin transition to evolve beyond a political slogan and deliver real ecological benefits, substantial legal reforms would be required. The regulation of digital technology would have to move beyond corporate self-regulation and disclosure-based models of environmental governance. Data governance should be reoriented to emphasise freedom of access and a more deliberatively restrained approach to data generation.

This paper develops a theoretical framework to examine the technology adoption decisions of insurers and their impact on market share, considering heterogeneous customers and two representative insurers. Intuitively, when technology accessibility is observable, an insurer’s access to a new technology increases its market share, no matter whether it adopts the technology or not. However, when technology accessibility is unobservable, the insurer’s access to the new technology has additional side effects on its market share. First, the insurer may apply the available technology even if it increases costs and premiums, thereby decreasing market share. Second, the unobservable technology accessibility leads customers to expect that all insurers might have access to the new technology and underestimate the premium of those without access. This also decreases the market share of an insurer with access to the new technology. Our findings help explain the unclear relationship between technology adoption and the market share of insurance companies in practice.