Dissertation Proposal Defense: Chang Liu
Chang Liu will defend his dissertation proposal, "In Transition: Informatization and Manufacturing Industries in the Transforming Chinese Economy." Liu's committee includes Associate Professor Jerome McDonough (chair); Professor Les Gasser; Professor Michael Twidale; and Yu Hong, One-Hundred Talents Program Young Professor in the College of Media and International Culture, Zheijiang University.
Abstract: Informatization plays a key role in the transforming Chinese economy, in which the Chinese state attempts to let the growth in ICT use drive the modernization of the country's industries and provide sustainable areas of reinvestment. Given this context, this research explores the relationships between informatization and small and medium-sized manufacturing operations in China as well as the role that the informatization of manufacturing industries plays in the Chinese economic transformation. Viewing the informatization in this context as a sociotechnical transition, this study employs Multi-Level Perspective (Geels, 2002, 2011, 2012; Geels et al. 2016) as its primary theoretical framework to examine the multi-dimensionality of the phenomenon and the structural changes that are situated by the large landscape and enacted through the struggles between emerging niche developments and the existing regimes. In particular, this research aims to study critically the development and potentially extensive and profound ramifications of informatization beyond the existing literature's primary focus on the immediate ICT sector. This will be done with a close examination and careful interpretation of the political, economic, and other societal situations, related policies, pre-existing social relations, experiences and perspectives of various people relevant to the ICT use in manufacturing operations, including those that tend to be marginalized and overlooked. This research will contribute to our more comprehensive understanding of Chinese informatization and hopefully serve as a baseline study on which various future studies can build.
A copy of the proposal is available at the front desk of the School.