Why does Automation Adoption in Organizations Remain a Fallacy?: Scrutinizing Practitioners' Imaginaries in an International Airport

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges: Despite the longstanding interest in automation among organizations, its implementation and integration into daily operations often face significant challenges. These issues are particularly pronounced in standardized environments like airports, which are considered well-suited for automation. At Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, automation projects have encountered delays and difficulties in achieving integration, highlighting that automation is still not fully prepared to be seamlessly incorporated into operational workflows.
• Significance: Automation holds potential for improving efficiency, reducing human errors, and addressing labor shortages, yet advancing automation processes remains a socio-technical challenge. Considering the efficiency of organizational operations and long-term sustainability goals, failing to address these issues may hinder the adoption of automation technologies.
• Research Motivation and Related Work: While previous studies have focused on the perspectives of developers or workers regarding automation, the views of practitioners responsible for the actual implementation of automation technologies have not been adequately explored in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This study aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Solution

• Proposed Approach or Solution: The authors examine practitioners' understanding and design pathways for automation through the lens of social imaginaries. Using qualitative analysis, they conducted semi-structured interviews with practitioners to uncover organizational complexities and dynamics in the adoption of automation.
• Innovations:
  • Investigating automation from the perspective of practitioners rather than focusing directly on developers or end-users.
  • Employing socio-technical theoretical frameworks, such as the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), to explore how automation is imagined and developed within organizations, thereby uncovering internal power dynamics and organizational forces.
• Implementation Steps and Techniques: Data collection was based on five key automation projects at Schiphol (e.g., automated lawn mowers, passenger boarding bridges, baggage handling systems). Sixteen practitioners involved in these projects were interviewed. Grounded Theory methodology was used for interview and data analysis, generating coded themes related to the social imaginaries and challenges of automation.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:
  • Captured practitioners' collective understanding of automation, including their attitudes toward technological capabilities, their visions of future human roles, and their expectations for integrating automation into the airport ecosystem.
  • Identified key barriers to automation adoption, such as organizational culture's conservatism toward technological change, conflicts among numerous stakeholders, and the complexity of the airport environment coupled with strict regulatory requirements that limit testing and implementation.
• Comparative Advantages Over Existing Solutions:
  • Greater focus on practitioners' collective imaginaries and their influence on automation design pathways, rather than solely emphasizing the technology itself.
  • Highlighted the necessity of shared ownership of automation projects and early stakeholder involvement to address implementation barriers.
• Experimental and Evaluation Results:
  • Participants exhibited strong optimism about technology's problem-solving potential but also expressed concerns about its adaptability to the complex airport environment.
  • The study revealed frequent occurrences of "external solution adaptation failures" when project development lacked an understanding of the airport's unique environment.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Limitations: The study focused on a single airport, so the findings may not be fully generalizable to other organizations or environments. The examples included only practitioners' perspectives, lacking in-depth exploration of ordinary workers and other key roles.
  • Future Directions: Replicating this approach in different types of organizations to identify generalizable conclusions; providing more detailed definitions of human roles in automation; exploring pathways to foster multi-stakeholder collaboration to achieve shared ownership and democratized design of automation solutions.

Through this study, the authors provide concrete insights into the responsible design of organizational automation and propose improved frameworks and recommendations that may facilitate closer integration between technology and organizational practices.