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A group of prominent researchers recently introduced Computational Social Science (CSS) in a Nature article, highlighting its potential with a call for more institutional support. The companion composed by prevalent researchers sees no scientific limitations in CSS. However, this paper argues that despite CSS's popularity, it harbors scientific, methodological and philosophical shortcomings leading to a form of academic authoritarianism, highly consequential for Higher Education. It evaluates critically its impact on Management Science, Public Policy, and Social Development. While CSS appears promising, its current trajectory fails to deliver substantial innovation and leadership, misleading both leaders and policymakers. The paper advocates for alternative approaches within CSS, more useful for Higher Education and societal advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the significant role that standardisation plays in the regulation and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) within the European Union (EU). As AI technologies rapidly advance, they bring about important societal implications involving privacy, fairness, transparency and other relevant ethical considerations. As a result, legislators and policymakers around the world are joined by a common drive to provide legislative solutions and regulatory frameworks that guarantee that the ongoing integration of AI systems into society is consistent with fundamental rights and democratic values. This paper critically examines the EU Regulation on AI (AI Act), which delegates the definition of essential requirements for high-risks AI systems to harmonised standards, underlying the significance of standardisation in ensuring technical feasibility and compliance with EU laws and values. At the forefront of this discussion there is the increasing influence of AI-related standardisation across social, economic, and geopolitical domains, with a particular focus on the crucial role played by Standard Developing Organisations (SDOs) in the regulatory and governance processes. This paper contributes to the legal scholarship by critically analysing the regulatory approach chosen for the EU’s AI Act, contesting the adequacy of the New Legislative Framework (NLF) for AI governance, and arguing that the reliance on harmonised standards risks undermining democratic accountability and fails to sufficiently safeguard fundamental rights without a more inclusive and transparent standard-setting process. The article focuses on the exclusion of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) from the European Commissions standardisation request in support of the AI Act, and asseses its potential impact on EU law-making and regulatory consistency. Ultimately, the analysis aims to contribute to the understanding of standardisation dynamics, offering insights into its profound implications for AI governance and the broader digital sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary intends to provide a scholarly reaction on the two papers in this Special Issue, that discuss the emerging European legislation in the field of technology standards. The contribution of Marta Cantero Gamito addresses the (draft) Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), whereas the contribution of Irene Kamara covers the (draft) Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Both pieces of legislation use the ‘New Approach’ regulatory technique, whereby the European Commission requests three European standards bodies to develop technical standards in support of its policies in the fields of AI and cyber resilience respectively. Drawing on the findings of these contributions, this paper starts from the premise that through its recent policy initiatives, the European Commission attempts to gain regulatory authority in the technological domains by tightening its regulatory muscle around ETSI. In doing so, the Commission invokes its concerns about ETSI’s legitimacy and procedural safeguards. Yet, as this commentary concludes, such practices are potentially detrimental to the EU’s role as a global technology actor but also to the legitimacy of European standardization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of standards to complement legislation is a prevalent regulatory technique in the EU, including in the telecommunications, information technology and broadcasting sectors, where the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) plays a key role. In light of the recent reform of ETSI’s governance model in terms of its inclusiveness, this paper examines the role of societal stakeholders in ETSI’s standard-setting process through the lens of throughput legitimacy. In particular, by relying on desk research and semi-structured interviews conducted in 2020 and 2023, we analyse specific membership and voting rules of ETSI in order to discuss in detail the possibilities of effective participation for the so-called ‘Annex III organisations’. The paper shows that ‘Annex III organisations' have had limited participative possibilities in ETSI’s standard-setting process, entailing both institutional throughput and constructive throughput legitimacy issues. Although not fully, the recent reform of ETSI’s decision-making appears to tackle them to a certain extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings forth an empirical study of organizational resilience strategies in standard setting. The selection of ETSI (The European Telecommunications Standards Institute) as a case study for this purpose was motivated by ETSI's legal status as an ESO (European Standardization Organization), global impact, and the history of external criticism directed at the organization. Based on theoretical considerations and author's previous empirical research, it was expected that the organizational resilience strategies used by ETSI differ with regards to two dimensions: anticipation of the disturbance (proactive and reactive strategies); and the locus of the strategic effort (internal or external to the organization). A combination of deductive and inductive content analysis was applied to 12 semi-structured interviews with individuals who participate in standard setting activities within ETSI. The conducted analysis confirmed the expected 2 × 2 type of taxonomy determined by anticipation and locus of strategic effort. The identified 29 categories were thus categorized into four clusters of resilience strategies: proactive external (5), proactive internal (9), reactive external (5) and reactive internal (10) strategies. The discussion reflects on the historical organizational challenges, the resilience strategies reported in response to them, and how they might have contributed to continued thriving of ETSI despite organizational challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of the euro has greatly increased the amount of inbound tourists. The paper employs a multiperiod difference-in-differences (DID) model aimed at investigating the impact of the introduction of the euro on inbound tourism in 19 member states of the European Monetary Union (EMU) during 2002–2018. The results show that the euro has a significantly positive impact on international tourist arrivals and international tourism receipts in euro area countries. Moreover, there are also quantile differences in this effect. With increasing quantile levels, the quantile regression coefficients of the euro on international tourist arrivals are increasing, and the quantile regression coefficients of the euro on international tourism receipts are decreasing. Furthermore, the impact of the euro on international arrivals and international tourism receipts has been on the rise as the increase in the number of years of Eurozone accession, but the rate of growth is slowing, and the impact of the euro on inbound tourism has fluctuated with the European debt crisis. These results highlight that although the euro has a positive and significant effect on both international tourist arrivals and international tourism receipts, they are found to have different patterns and trends through the decomposition of quantile regression and segmented regression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cybersecurity resilience as a concept and EU policy approach encompasses, in broad terms, the preparedness of organisations against and the ability to recover from cyber-attacks. Policy and law makers in the European Union have started endorsing strategies moving both towards reactive measures mitigating the consequences of cybersecurity incidents and proactive measures geared towards prevention. Recently, a political agreement was reached on a new horizontal Regulation addressing cyber resilience of products with digital elements. An essential aspect of the Cyber Resilience Act is technical standardisation to support its goals. How appropriate is however the European Standardisation system for such a role in EU cybersecurity law? The paper argues that for European standards to be conceptualised as a building block of cyber resilience in the European Union, their development process must be inclusive and open, and a prerequisite for that is that the ESOs jointly work towards the common goal of developing and adopting European standards in support of the EU cyber resilience policy and law. This collaborative approach is mandated both by the nature of cyber resilience and cybersecurity as regulated fields, but also the changing nature of standardisation aspiring to contribute to areas pertaining to societal interests and fundamental rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological development is a key factor for shaping social life, transforming the ways in which societies organize their production, mobility and communication processes. Since the beginning of industrialization, the pace of the transformations brought about by technological change has increased dramatically, and has further accelerated since the advent of the new digital technologies. These development processes has also impacts in terms of social, economic and environmental costs, a fact that has been addressed in the past few decades by various social movements as well as theoreticians, becoming a key issue in political and social discussion agendas. In this paper, we outline a historical perspective of these changes and their effects, from pre-industrial, industrial, post-Fordism and network societies, and we focus on the mobilizing potential of technological change. We analyze the role that technological interfaces play today in social transformation, as well as the implications for our present day that our interactions become increasingly intermediated by digital technologies. Finally, we discuss digital technologies and their impacts on social inequity. We argue that a public and democratic agenda comprising both development and technological issues should be put in place for guaranteeing social development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the moderating effects of public deliberation on policy support determinants: self-interests, symbolic attitudes and sociotropic perceptions. It explores how individual attitudes and policy preferences evolve during deliberation, focusing on Gyeonggi Province’s basic income policy held in 2020 in South Korea. The paper reveals that while public deliberation, through information and group discussions, reduces the influence of material self-interests on policy preferences, it has a relatively limited effect on symbolic attitudes and sociotropic perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For assessing the overall impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is crucial to continuously monitor large corporations. This paper delves into the examination of 42 corporations that rank among the world's largest investors in R&D, accounting for over one-third of AI patents globally. The focus is on their post-patenting performance, specifically in terms of employment changes, and comparing it with the outcomes of 42 similar companies operating in the same sectors. The latter also recorded substantial levels of R&D expenditures but were not significantly involved in AI patenting. The key findings reveal that, in the medium – and high-tech manufacturing sectors, companies with the highest proportions of AI patents incurred in employment reductions. Conversely, IT services companies experienced substantial employment growth. Along with tentative explanations of these findings, advantages, limitations, and possible developments of this type of analysis are illustrated in the concluding section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides insights on the transformation process in education triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and suggests a new theoretical concept of shock innovation. Based on interviews with school administrators and teachers (N = 15), we conceptualized the transition to distance learning as an innovation, and compared its characteristics with the typical spread of innovations. We use Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory to construct a three-tiered model that describes the universal spread of innovations in education. The analysis suggests that the transition to emergency remote teaching is not a ‘diffusion spread’ but a ‘shock spread’ as: (1) awareness was synchronized with implementation, removing the persuasion and decision steps; (2) the boundaries between ‘innovators’ and ‘laggards’ were erased; (3) schools made the transition on an equal basis with other industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej formulated the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP). "Sufficiency" means balancing reasonable moderation in production against the need for protection from sudden internal and external shocks. SEP follows the middle path as a guiding principle for all classes of society and government. Knowledge, thoughtfulness, prudence, and ethical integrity are essential to achieve the middle path. This paper explores the use of SEP as a method of social innovation for enhancing delivery of public services and for localizing the process of sustainable development. Such innovative use of SEP is illustrated by three exploratory case studies of local administrative organisations (LAOs) in Thailand. All three LAOs' case studies have mayors with significant entrepreneurial talent useful in teaching entrepreneurial action to their residents, their staff, and other local leaders. Together, these cases show the potential of SEP as a method of bottom up social action and sustainable development. A brief discussion of the wider need for and use of innovation, including social innovations, and underpinning entrepreneurship, is included prior to the Thai case studies. There is also a short section examining similar types of activities to those observed in the cases in the European context by way of comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to analyse organisations in the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE), working in the field of energy provision, and their contribution to the so-called energy transition from the perspective of social innovation. By showing the practical application of the concept of social innovation and its convergence and synergies with the SSE, we review the extent to which Basque Renewable Energy SSE alternatives are experiences that incorporate socially innovative elements. In addition, we study three cases through these approaches in order to observe the real and potential benefits that experiences based on social innovation can bring to energy transition. The main contribution of our research is to analyse the means by which certain initiatives are implemented through projects framed using the most prominent theoretical models focused on energy transition, social innovation and a social and solidarity-based economy, all aimed at achieving a low-carbon society.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food systems affect and are affected by the interrelated crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion and health, amongst others. Transforming to sustainable approaches is vital, yet entangled with uncertainties, complexity and a great value diversion with stakeholders. Deliberative processes such as citizen assemblies offer a valuable contribution to such a transformation, since the crises and their responses affect everyday life, and therefore inviting individual and collective action. Still, who is included and whose knowledge counts affects outcomes. Theoretically anchored in concepts of environmental justice, our study analyses three nation-wide citizens’ assemblies on climate change and food systems from Western Europe. It assesses (a) how citizens’ assemblies can incorporate a broad set of viewpoints and design more substantive political answers to current crises, and (b) whether citizens’ assemblies include environmental justice aspects to facilitate social change. The paper argues that systematic and methodologically reflected inclusion of various positionalities can inspire decision-making processes in that they incorporate procedural, recognition, and distributional justice to address problems of climate change or modern food systems. It concludes with offering further approaches to include more than scientific knowledge in deliberative processes for a just transformation towards sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]