Conference Agenda

The escalating prevalence of Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) across diverse geographical landscapes underscores their indispensable role in our socio-technical and economic foundations. Increasingly, teams in strategic engineering projects are GVTs and must exhibit coordination and tradeoffs as transdisciplinary engineering (TE) partners. Extensive research has scrutinized the intricate challenges faced by virtual engineering teams. Researchers characterize these challenges as distance factors (geographical, temporal, and perceived), shedding light on associated hurdles concerning motivation, awareness, and the nuanced establishment of trust. Effective decision-making within teams relies on a foundation of trust. Within this context, trust is defined as the perception that team members will act benevolently, prioritizing collective interests over self-interest. Previous studies have demonstrated the pivotal influence of trust on team performance, particularly in sustaining collaborations. The challenge intensifies during the initial stages of projects within GVTs, where face-to-face social exchanges—historically relied upon for trust-building—are difficult or unattainable. Decades of research have yielded qualitative measurement techniques and supportive methodologies, with recent emphasis on computer-mediated communications encompassing face-to-face visuals, audio, and text messages. However, these techniques are commonly evaluated qualitatively at the conclusion of experiments, leaving a gap in understanding and measuring the dynamic nature of trust in global virtual teams. This research proposes an approach by prototyping measurements for real-time assessment of the trust phenomenon in GVTs. By outlining the subsequent steps for integrating these methods, the work aspires to contribute to the advancement of GVT research, offering practical insights to fortify trust in virtual teams and enhance collaborative efficacy in the digital era.

Given their obvious need, why is it so hard for new pro-poor, engineering-based inclusive innovation (EII) to become more mainstream? Can new trajectories emerge that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable? Those interested in these questions have studied the role of science and engineering in development but have been brought up short by a range of constraints. These include the poverty of those who might benefit most but also institutional barriers to the inclusion of some actors with knowledge and experience of scaling innovations towards the mainstream. This paper presents new theories and a set of case studies of attempts to scale and mainstream innovations. We have gathered data from and analysed scaling up case studies from different sectors and geographies, including the UK, China, India, Bangladesh, Uganda. The paper advocates for the advantages of evolutionary approaches to development engineering that take account of institutional variety over static, neo-classical and one-size-fits-all approaches. We show that one size fits all does not apply to scaling up for engineering-based inclusive innovations. We illustrate that engineering innovations that have not been replicated on a large scale have not necessarily failed. We conclude by arguing that it is possible to go beyond market failure approaches towards a more agile framework for the delivery of innovations and suggest that our results resonate with broader changes in the greening of the global economy.

The need for human-centric perspectives on smart automation are increasing as new technological advancements and global societal changes continuously re-shapes the manufacturing industry. Meeting this need is challenging and cannot be accomplished by one sole field of research expertise and requiers university-industry collaboration. The research presented combines expertise from different disciplines, i.e., industrial engineering, automation and control, business administration, management, informatics, and work-integrated learning. The research group has extensive experience of such collaborations and is presently applying previous research and experiences in studies of human-centric smart automation striving to build unique research. Transdisciplinary research offers many opportunities; however, challenges include, combining methodologies, communication jargon, mutual respect for different disciplines and designing joint research studies. The research presented addresses such challenges by taking a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach bringing forth the human-centric perspective when advancing smart robotic automation. The aim is to exemplify and illustrate how to design transdisciplinary research in collaboration with industry for knowledge exchange and co-creation of new knowledge. The collaborative design emphasises the value of a transdisciplinary approach in university-industry collaboration when studying, understanding, and evolving the human-centric perspective of technological advancement in the manufacturing industry. Findings contribute design for synergizing technology development and manufacturing management to reach human-centric smart automation. The implication of the research relates to broader societal issues aligned with Industry 5.0, placing humans at the centre when introducing novel production processes and new technologies.

This paper explores specifically designed workshops, referred to as Knowledge Sharing Sessions (sessions), emphasizing their transdisciplinary nature. These sessions serve as convergence points for academia and industry to collaborate and integrate knowledge, addressing complex concepts such as boundary crossing and boundary objects. The sessions comprised two types: six theory-driven sessions led by researchers, discussing theoretical concepts related to boundary crossing and boundary objects, and four practice-driven sessions led by practitioners, focusing on the means and objects employed by their respective companies to cross boundaries between disciplines in product realisation. These sessions involved three researchers and practitioners from five large and medium-sized manufacturing companies in the Swedish industry. The sessions were perceived as crucial for increasing knowledge among researchers and practitioners regarding boundaries between disciplines in product realisation and understanding the contextual nature of boundary objects. During the sessions, practitioners found themselves challenged by researchers to grasp and reflect upon complex concepts, while researchers faced the task of operationalizing intricate concepts like boundary objects, making them accessible and understandable for practitioners. Expanding such insights can empower practitioners to strategically design objects that effectively serve as boundary objects, thus facilitating the crossing of boundaries between disciplines. Based on the experiences gained from these sessions, the design appears relevant to strengthen transdisciplinary engineering efforts.