The construction and infrastructure sector is undergoing significant transformation driven by evolving workforce expectations, increasing regulatory scrutiny, and the growing need for ethical and responsible organisational practices. Despite advances in technology and project management, persistent challenges remain in relation to workforce development, competence management, working conditions, and governance mechanisms. These challenges are further compounded by complex project structures, multi-tier subcontracting arrangements, and the dynamic nature of construction work environments, which collectively influence workforce outcomes and organisational performance.

Traditionally, research in construction has examined workforce development, wellbeing, and governance as largely separate domains. However, there is increasing recognition that these dimensions are deeply interconnected and must be understood within a broader, system-level perspective.
This Special Issue aims to advance understanding of human-centric construction systems by examining ethical governance, workforce development, and wellbeing as interconnected   and strategic elements of contemporary construction practice. The aims will be met by publishing high-quality empirical, review and case-based studies that investigate organisational, project, and governance mechanisms influencing workforce outcomes, supported by rigorous methodologies, and practice-oriented insights relevant to industry and policy

This Special Issue will make a distinctive contribution by positioning workforce development, wellbeing, and ethical governance as core, interdependent and strategic components of construction systems, rather than treating them as peripheral or isolated concerns. By integrating systematic review articles with in-depth case-based and empirical studies, the Special Issue will consolidate fragmented knowledge, surface underexplored ethical and governance challenges, and provide contextualised insights into real-world construction practices. Collectively, the contributions will advance theory, inform policy and organisational decision-making, and offer evidence-based guidance for developing safer, fairer, and more human-centric construction systems.
Existing literature consistently highlights persistent challenges in construction related to ethical governance, workforce development, competence management, and wellbeing ( Karakhan et al., 2023; Lukhele, Botha and Mbanga, 2023; Hasan, Mishra and Kamardeen, 2024), yet these issues are often examined in isolation. Research documents ongoing skills shortages (Maqbool et al., 2023), fragmented training and competence assessment, and high workforce turnover, alongside the sector’s continued exposure to high accident rates and increasing psychosocial risks such as stress, fatigue, and burnout (Howe et al., 2024; Zong et al., 2024).

At the same time, complex project structures, multi-tier subcontracting, and the growing use of digital monitoring technologies have intensified ethical and governance concerns, including accountability gaps, labour exploitation, data privacy, and uneven enforcement of standards (Halder and Batra, 2024; Oladinrin, Aghimien and Goodhew, 2025). Although organisational culture, leadership, and project management practices are widely recognised as critical enablers of workforce outcomes (Rehan, Thorpe and Heravi, 2024; Zada et al., 2024), evidence remains dispersed, limiting integrated understanding and practical application. Recent industry events on worker wellbeing such as Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) report on mental health in the built environment (Barnett, 2025) underscore the need for a focused, system-level scholarly response. This Special Issue addresses these gaps by consolidating review, empirical, and case-based research to advance integrated, human-centric perspectives on construction systems with clear implications for practice, policy, and education.

List of Topic Areas

​​​1. Project and organisational management practices enabling human-centric construction systems: This theme will address issues such as integration of human-centric principles into project management, organisational alignment with workforce wellbeing, coordination across project structures, decision-making affecting workforce performance, and effectiveness of risk management, communication, and reporting systems in supporting ethical and productive construction environments.

2. Organisational culture, ethical leadership, and responsible construction practices: Issues to be addressed under this theme include the role of organisational culture in shaping ethical behaviour, leadership approaches influencing workforce wellbeing, promotion of responsible practices, alignment of values and conduct, and mechanisms for fostering accountability, trust, and integrity within construction organisations.

3. Strategic and ethical stakeholder engagement in construction projects: Issues to be addressed under this theme include distinguishing features of strategic and ethical engagement, organisational mechanisms for implementation, reconciling strategic and ethical approaches through theoretical and empirical insights, managing power asymmetries and transparency, and assessing long-term implications for stakeholders and project outcomes.

4.  Human-centric construction systems and their role in advancing social sustainability: Issues include conceptualising and operationalising social sustainability within human-centric construction systems, identifying key success factors, embedding relevant theoretical perspectives, examining leadership for socially sustainable practices, and evaluating impacts on workforce inclusivity, working conditions, and long-term project outcomes.

5. Ethical challenges in workforce management, labour practices, and employment relations: This theme will focus on issues such as fairness in employment practices, labour conditions and worker dignity, ethical implications of subcontracting arrangements, managing power asymmetries, and addressing challenges related to equity, transparency, and responsible workforce management in construction projects.

6. Workforce development, competence management, and skills formation in construction systems: Issues include approaches to workforce planning, skill development, upskilling and reskilling, competence assessment, alignment of training with industry needs, and the role of organisations in building and sustaining workforce capabilities in evolving construction environments.

7. Education, training practices, and the impact of digital technologies on workforce capabilities: Issues include innovation in construction education and training, integration of digital tools and platforms, effectiveness of technology-enabled learning, alignment with industry skill requirements, and the role of digitalisation in enhancing workforce adaptability and competence development.

8. Governance and organisational mechanisms for workforce wellbeing and psychosocial risk management in construction systems: Issues include governance frameworks for workforce wellbeing, regulation and accountability mechanisms, management of psychosocial risks such as stress, fatigue, and burnout, organisational policies and practices supporting mental health, and evaluation of interventions to improve workforce wellbeing in construction environments.

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jedt

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: Emerald Publishing Author Guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ‘Please select the issue you are submitting to.’

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/07/2026 
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 11/11/2026 

Generative artificial intelligence has rapidly become embedded in digital information ecosystems, including search engines, social media platforms, online learning systems, business intelligence tools, public service platforms, and professional knowledge work. While these technologies create new opportunities for automated content generation, personalized services, and data-driven decision-making, they also introduce significant challenges related to the reliability and credibility of AI-generated information. One of the most pressing challenges is AI hallucination, where generative AI systems produce outputs that appear fluent, authoritative, and contextually plausible but are factually incorrect, unsupported, misleading, or fabricated.

AI hallucinations are often discussed as technical problems associated with model architecture, training data, or prompt design. However, their implications extend far beyond technical performance. In digital information environments, hallucinated outputs may circulate across platforms, influence user interpretation, shape trust in AI-generated content, and affect decision-making in education, healthcare information, business, public communication, scientific knowledge, and everyday digital interactions. As users increasingly rely on AI-generated responses, recommendations, summaries, and explanations, the boundary between trustworthy information and fabricated content becomes more difficult to identify.

Research trends also reflect the growing scholarly momentum surrounding this issue. A Google search using the terms “artificial intelligence hallucinations” OR “AI hallucinations” identifies approximately 6,510 related academic papers, indicating increasing attention to hallucination-related challenges in AI research. In addition, issues related to generative AI, trustworthy AI, AI-generated information, and human-AI interaction have gained growing prominence in leading information systems conferences, such as ICIS, AMCIS, ECIS, and PACIS, in recent years. These developments suggest that AI hallucinations are no longer only a technical concern, but also an important information systems issue involving digital information credibility, user interpretation, platform accountability, and data-driven governance.

This special issue therefore positions AI hallucinations as a critical digital information management and governance challenge. It seeks to bring together interdisciplinary research that examines how hallucinations are detected, measured, interpreted, diffused, corrected, and governed in data-intensive digital environments. We welcome studies that investigate AI hallucinations from technical, behavioral, organizational, platform, and socio-technical perspectives. Relevant approaches may include natural language processing, machine learning, generative AI evaluation, platform analytics, user experiments, survey research, qualitative studies, learning analytics, human-computer interaction, and design science research.

The special issue aims to advance theoretical, methodological, and practical understanding of trustworthy AI-generated information. It encourages research that examines not only how hallucinations can be reduced or detected, but also how users perceive them, how platforms and organizations should respond to them, and how data-driven governance mechanisms can support transparency, accountability, and responsible AI use. By integrating information credibility, user trust, platform responsibility, and governance perspectives, this special issue seeks to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how digital information ecosystems can manage the risks and societal consequences of AI hallucinations

List of Topic Areas

• AI hallucination detection, measurement, classification, and evaluation in digital information environments
• AI-generated misinformation, fabricated content, and digital information credibility
• User trust, reliance, verification behavior, and resistance toward AI-generated information
• Human-AI interaction and user interpretation of hallucinated AI outputs
• Platform transparency, source attribution, content labeling, explainability, and correction mechanisms
• Data-driven governance, auditability, accountability, and responsible AI management
• Organizational strategies for monitoring and mitigating hallucination risks
• AI hallucinations in online learning, education, and knowledge work
• AI hallucinations in healthcare information, public services, and business decision-making
• Social, ethical, and societal implications of AI hallucinations in digital ecosystems
• Computational, behavioral, experimental, qualitative, and design-oriented approaches to trustworthy generative AI

Submission Information

Submissions of full manuscripts are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:

Submit via ScholarOne

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see:

Author guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Dates

Opening date for manuscript submissions: 1 August 2026

Closing date for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027

Meaning (Sinn) occupies a central position in Niklas Luhmann’s systems-theoretical programme. Coded as the continuous distinction between actual and potential, meaning operates as the shared medium for both psychic and social systems. It enables observation, selection, and the perpetual opening of horizons of possibility. As a medium without an outside, meaning entails inherent blind spots and paradoxes for any meaning-processing observer. To handle with this inescapable paradox of observation, meaning must be structured and processed across objects, time, and social relations.

In his foundational works, Luhmann distinguished three canonical dimensions of meaning: the factual (this/that), the temporal (before/after), and the social (ego/alter). Each dimension relates to a distinct sub-theory of his broader programme—social differentiation, social evolution, and communication, respectively. Furthermore, each dimension corresponds to a dedicated strategy for deparadoxifying the paradox of observation. However, despite the triad’s canonical status in systems theory, Luhmann never adequately addressed the underlying logic of its architecture. Why should meaning be structured into precisely three dimensions rather than more—or fewer? This explicitly unresolved logic invites a critical re-examination of the medium itself.

Recent theoretical contributions have returned to this problem by reconstructing meaning dimensions in relation to the basic questions of observation. By mapping the classic triad to questions of what (factual), when (temporal), and who (social), scholars have begun exploring systematically expandable dimensions. Additional questions—such as where (spatial), how (modal), and why (motivational)—suggest that Luhmann’s triad is not a closed architecture, but rather a reduced form of a broader, potentially open framework. This expanded perspective recasts meaning not as a static, settled concept, but as a highly dynamic medium of observation that allows for alternative distinctions to be drawn and contingency to be processed.

Against this theoretical backdrop, this Special Issue of Kybernetes seeks to revisit and extend the concept of meaning under contemporary conditions of growing societal complexity. As meaning-processing systems confront unprecedented challenges—from the artificial and technological mediation of meaning via AI and algorithmic decision premises, to profound societal polarisation and pathologies of meaninglessness—there is a pressing need for renewed engagement with the medium. We explore how meaning is observed, transformed, stabilised, and contested when interacting with different media, and inter-systemic relations.

This collection aims to create a shared interdisciplinary space for observing how meaning is currently being observed, and for experimenting with alternative ways of doing so. By foregrounding reflexivity, second-order observation, and the continuous processing of contingency, the Special Issue seeks to stimulate theoretical innovation, empirical exploration, and productive friction. Ultimately, it marks a step toward reflecting on the future directions of systems-theoretical scholarship in an era profoundly shaped by technological co-evolution and expanding architectures of meaning.

List of Topic Areas

1. Theoretical work revisiting, or extending established three-dimensional models of meaning (factual, temporal, social). This includes the introduction of novel distinctions (e.g., spatial, modal, motivational), new foundational questions, and expanded sub-programmes within systems theory.
2. Studies focusing on second-order observation, reflexivity, and the inherent paradoxes of observation within social and psychic systems.
3. Analyses of how artificial intelligence, artificial communication, and algorithmic decision premises impact meaning-processing systems, technological co-evolution, and structures of expectation.
4. Explorations of forms of meaning that resist operational closure, reduction, or authoritarian simplification, including the role of imagination, counterfactuals, and non-necessary social orders.
5. Systems-theoretical approaches to current societal challenges, encompassing values, political polarisation, populism, inter-systemic relations, strategies for complexity reduction, and pathologies of meaninglessness.
6. Renewed theoretical and empirical engagement with sense-making, consciousness, psychology, and psychotherapy, with a focus on identity formation and the structural coupling between psychic and social systems.

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/kyb

Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 21/09/2026

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 13/12/2026

Teacher educators have long grappled with the perceived divide between what is taught in teacher preparation programmes and the realities candidates encounter in schools and classrooms. Frequently characterised as the “theory-practice divide”, this tension remains a persistent challenge across teacher education.

This special issue seeks to reframe this challenge by exploring what we term the paradox of the teacher preparation-practice divide. Teacher preparation-most notably its field and clinical experiences- can be disconnected from the seeming priorities of today’s schools and school districts, it simultaneously remains deeply significant in shaping the aspirations, values and professional identities of future educators. What may appear irrelevant in one context may, paradoxically, be highly relevant in supporting teachers’ commitments to equity, civic engagement, critical thinking and meaningful learning for young adolescents.

The special issue will provide a platform for teacher educators to critically examine, illuminate and interrogate this paradox. Through diverse perspectives and methodologies, contributors are invited to consider how teacher preparation can both diverge from and respond to the realities of schools while continuing to serve the needs of teacher candidates, students and communities.

List of Topic Areas

We welcome submissions that explore, challenge or extend understandings of the preparation-practice divide, including but not limited to:

• The paradox of teacher education relevance and irrelevance
• Theory-practice tensions in educator preparation
• Personal narratives of teacher education
• Self-studies and autoethnographic accounts
• Clinical practice and field experiences
• Partnerships between universities and schools
• Curriculum and content area preparation
• Teacher candidate identity formation
• Equity, inclusion and social justice in teacher preparation
• Aspirational versus enacted teaching practices
• Preparing teachers for diverse and complex educational contexts
• Pedagogical innovations that bridge preparation and practice
• Middle level teacher education and adolescent learning
• The role of educator beliefs, values and professional commitments in teacher preparation

Types of Contributions Encouraged

To capture the richness and diversity of this topic, we particularly encourage submissions adopting approaches such as:

• Self-study research
• Autoethnography
• Narrative inquiry
• Reflective practitioner accounts
• Qualitative and mixed-methods research
• Conceptual and theoretical papers
• Programme and partnership case studies

Submissions should contribute new insights into how teacher educators understand, navigate and potentially leverage the paradoxical relationship between preparation and practice.

Submissions Information

All manuscripts must be submitted through the journal’s ScholarOne Manuscripts system: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mgrj

Submissions should follow the journal’s author guidelines, available on the journal website: https://www.emerald.com/mgrj

All papers will be subject to the journal’s usual double-anonymised peer review process.

Key Deadlines

Submission Deadline – 1 November 2026

Final Acceptance Date – 1 March 2027 

Questions

For questions regarding the special issue, please contact:

Professor Christina M. Tschida

Appalachian State University

Email: tschidacm@appstate.edu

or

Dr Brian Sevier

California State University Channel Islands

Email: brian.sevier@csuci.edu

This special issue aims to gather cutting edge research in information science from the Asia Pacific region and beyond, with a particular focus on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the information ecosystem, breaking down disciplinary boundaries, and driving sustainable development. Building on the strong papers presented at AP-iConference 2026, this issue will extend theoretical and applied contributions.

This issue distinguishes itself by: (1) highlighting regional perspectives and case studies from the
AsiaPacific, (2) integrating AI with libraries, archives, cultural heritage, and (3) emphasising
actionable research with societal impact, linking to the UN SDGs.

List of Topic Areas

• AI and Data Science in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Preservation
• Human Information Interaction and AI Enhanced User Experience
• Knowledge Discovery and Organization
• Data & Information Policy, Ethics, and Governance
• Scholarly Communication, Bibliometrics, and Research Evaluation
• AI Applications in Education, Healthcare, Cultural Heritage, etc.
• Information Behavior and Social Informatics
• Interdisciplinary and Emerging Topics in Information Science

Submission Information

Submissions of full manuscripts are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:

Submit via ScholarOne

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see:

Author guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Guest Editors

• Jie Ma m-1j-1@163.com Jilin University, China
• Lihong Zhou L.zhou@whu.edu.cn Wuhan University, China
• Naya Sucha-xaya naya.s@chula.ac.th Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Key Dates

Opening date for manuscript submissions: 1 March 2027

Closing date for manuscript submissions: 1 June 2027

For more details refer here

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