Posture-related problems, such as back pain, are an increasing global burden. They are deeply intertwined with how humans sit. While the information systems (IS) literature has been relatively silent on this matter, emerging literature in related disciplines has begun to attend to this problem by developing various artefacts. However, researchers have oftentimes done so by basing their artefacts on engineering rationales and attending only limitedly to the interactions between artefacts and humans. These interactions are crucial because data on posture is best collected by placing sensors on humans’ backs. This calls for considering and evaluating how bodies move in relation to sensors, the emotive reactions of humans to sensors and how humans make sense of recommendations emanating from underlying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. We uncover what these considerations of human-centredness mean for designing smart service systems for posture management and suggest that a core consideration relates to trading-off possibilities of smart technologies and necessities emerging from practices. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on designing smart service systems and responds to calls for more IS research dealing with the prevention of chronic health conditions.

Digital technology enables the transformation of work and workplaces. Previous digital workplace transformation (DWT) literature has shown how organisations add new digital technologies to create new workplace routines. However, such an emphasis on addition may hinder scholarship from recognising that some established workplace technologies and routines must disappear for new ones to emerge. Adopting the concept of deinstitutionalisation, we examine the rationale for and the process of how an organisation abandons workplace routines that conflict with its intended DWT. Referring to this as subtraction logic, we advance two contributions. First, we conceptualise how deinstitutionalisation of established workplace routines and technologies unfolds in DWT by outlining a process model that synthesises addition and subtraction. Second, we highlight the underlying rationales for DWT. With these insights, we shift the gaze from the dominant addition logic, which advocates for appropriating new digital technologies, to the equally important value of subtraction, i.e., removing existing workplace technologies (or inscribed institutional rules) to abandon workplace routines that conflict with the intended DWT. Hence, our study highlights the oft-ignored subtraction logic in DWT.

Business process management (BPM) research emphasises three important logics – modelling (process), infrastructural alignment (infrastructure) and procedural actor (agency) logics. These logics capture the dominant ways of thinking in BPM, reflected in its assumptions, practices and values. While the three logics have proven useful in prior contexts, we argue that the applicability of these underlying assumptions in theorising BPM needs to be re-examined in the context of digital transformation. Based on an ethnographic study of BPM in a company undergoing digital transformation, we uncover tensions related to applying these prior logics that point to the need to update the underlying assumptions. Consequently, we propose new logics that we conceptualise as light touch processes (process), infrastructural flexibility (infrastructure) and mindful actors (agency). Our observations contribute to a rethinking of the dominant BPM logics by unpacking their dynamics in the context of digital transformation. Our study further highlight salient differences between digital transformation and IT-enabled organisational transformation contexts. We conclude by proposing new managerial approaches for BPM in digital transformation contexts.