{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/117651"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/117651","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Sociotechnical matching: Furniture manufacturers at the peripheries of Chinese economic reform","abstract":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2024-12-01","abstract_html":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2024-12-01","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Liu, Chang"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Informatics","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Sanfilippo, Madelyn R","Chan, Anita S","Twidale, Michael","Hong, Yu"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-12","date_published":"2022-12","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:56Z","subjects":["Informatization","Matching","Sociotechnical","Ethnography","China","Supply Chains","Manufacturing"],"languages":["en","eng"],"rights":["© 2022 Chang Liu"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117651","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Sanfilippo, Madelyn R","Chan, Anita S","Twidale, Michael","Hong, Yu"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Liu, Chang"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2022-12","2022-11-21"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text","Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Informatics"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Informatization","Matching","Sociotechnical","Ethnography","China","Supply Chains","Manufacturing"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en","eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["© 2022 Chang Liu"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117651"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2024-12-01","The student, Chang Liu, accepted the attached license on 2022-11-16 at 14:50.","The student, Chang Liu, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-11-16 at 20:58.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-11-21 at 09:29.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #18590 on 2023-04-12 at 08:11:06","Informatization is often said to transform economies and industries, but what does the claimed transformation really look like? What is the character of experience? What works and what fails? Who benefits and who bears costs? This dissertation explores these questions based on a year-long ethnography of furniture manufacturers in a Chinese peri-urban town under the current information and communication technology (ICT)-driven economic reform. My analysis highlights how the technological imagination’s ignorance of social and material complexities is often intensifying, rather than mitigating, the challenges facing the local economy, businesses, and workers. I discuss 1) how e-commerce platforms’ scale-oriented technocratic approach to matchmaking transfers the risks and burdens of rapid expansion to participating manufacturers, 2) how the economic reform introduces rules - with decoupling and exception in practice- to allow leading companies to exploit on-demand labor of smaller manufacturers and externalize less profitable work, and 3) how the accounts of ICT-enabled management make assumptions about manufacturing work and workers to which the reality of smaller manufacturers is little similar, obscuring the roles smaller manufacturers play in enabling the local industry. Based on this research, I also develop the concept of “matching” as a useful lens to examine the gaps between frictionless technological imaginations and the messy reality and better understand the externalities and social consequences of technological systems in various forms. With this dissertation, I aim to present a reconstructed account of the technology-driven economic development with a focus on marginalized experiences and overlooked processes and contribute to the broader debates about the social implications of informatization and the interaction between ICTs and different communities."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Sociotechnical matching: Furniture manufacturers at the peripheries of Chinese economic reform"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Sanfilippo, Madelyn R","Chan, Anita S","Twidale, Michael","Hong, Yu"],"dc:creator":["Liu, Chang"],"dc:date":["2022-12","2022-11-21"],"dc:description":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2024-12-01","The student, Chang Liu, accepted the attached license on 2022-11-16 at 14:50.","The student, Chang Liu, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-11-16 at 20:58.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-11-21 at 09:29.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #18590 on 2023-04-12 at 08:11:06","Informatization is often said to transform economies and industries, but what does the claimed transformation really look like? What is the character of experience? What works and what fails? Who benefits and who bears costs? This dissertation explores these questions based on a year-long ethnography of furniture manufacturers in a Chinese peri-urban town under the current information and communication technology (ICT)-driven economic reform. My analysis highlights how the technological imagination’s ignorance of social and material complexities is often intensifying, rather than mitigating, the challenges facing the local economy, businesses, and workers. I discuss 1) how e-commerce platforms’ scale-oriented technocratic approach to matchmaking transfers the risks and burdens of rapid expansion to participating manufacturers, 2) how the economic reform introduces rules - with decoupling and exception in practice- to allow leading companies to exploit on-demand labor of smaller manufacturers and externalize less profitable work, and 3) how the accounts of ICT-enabled management make assumptions about manufacturing work and workers to which the reality of smaller manufacturers is little similar, obscuring the roles smaller manufacturers play in enabling the local industry. Based on this research, I also develop the concept of “matching” as a useful lens to examine the gaps between frictionless technological imaginations and the messy reality and better understand the externalities and social consequences of technological systems in various forms. With this dissertation, I aim to present a reconstructed account of the technology-driven economic development with a focus on marginalized experiences and overlooked processes and contribute to the broader debates about the social implications of informatization and the interaction between ICTs and different communities."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117651"],"dc:language":["en","eng"],"dc:rights":["© 2022 Chang Liu"],"dc:subject":["Informatization","Matching","Sociotechnical","Ethnography","China","Supply Chains","Manufacturing"],"dc:title":["Sociotechnical matching: Furniture manufacturers at the peripheries of Chinese economic reform"],"dc:type":["text","Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Informatics"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:56Z"}