Smart City Research as an Interdisciplinary

Crossroads: A Challenge for Management

and Organization Studies

Francesca Ricciardi and Stefano Za

Abstract This paper seeks to define the boundaries of Smart City research and to
draw a map of the interdisciplinary community focusing on this emerging issue. To
do so, we analysed the texts included in the websites of two major international
Conferences on Smart Cities, and we used the Social Network Analysis (SNA)
approach to examine a representative sample of 114 publications on Smart Cities.
We found that Smart City research was hosted in Architecture and Social Sciences
journals in the first place, but since 2007–2008 the interest in this issue boomed
among Engineering and Computer Science scholars. Whilst there is a growing
number of publications describing many ICT-enabled solutions for enhancing the
competitiveness, sustainability and livability of cities, only few studies have
addressed the organizational issues implied in such innovations so far. On the
other side, our graph describing the interdisciplinary links within the 118 analysed
publications shows that management studies occupy a strategic position within the
interdisciplinary network of Smart City research. Then, Management and Informa-
tion Systems scholars are given the opportunity to fill an important gap in an
emerging stream of studies.

1 Introduction

In his seminal The City in History (first edition 1961, [1]), Lewis Mumford argued
that if we examine the Fertile Crescent region as it was 7,000 years ago, we realize
that it was not the size of the built-up area that distinguished the first proper cities
from the many large Neolithic villages around them: it was their innovation
capabilities, forwardness, competitive dynamism, which contrasted with the risk
aversion, patience and repetitiveness of rural life.

F. Ricciardi
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
e-mail: francesca.ricciardi@unicatt.it
S. Za (*)
Università LUISS Guido Carli, Rome, Italy
e-mail: sza@luiss.it

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 163

L. Mola et al. (eds.), From Information to Smart Society, Lecture Notes
in Information Systems and Organisation 5, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-09450-2_14
164 F. Ricciardi and S. Za

On the other side, the more a city becomes large and complex, the more it needs
to develop further creative problem-solving capabilities, because it becomes more
and more dependent on the successful networking of a wider area [2]. In other
words, cities tend to be exposed to growing and unprecedented challenges of
competitiveness and sustainability throughout time; and these challenges can be
failed, with even fatal consequences, unless successful innovations are timely
developed at different, interconnected levels.
Many scholars, in effect, highlight that the competition between territories
occurs also at the level of the cities and surrounding regions [3]: different cities
can prosper or fail within the same nation, depending on the extent to which each
city is capable to innovate and evolve, as the astonishing case of the Detroit
bankruptcy has recently demonstrated.
In the emerging world, indeed, cities are subject to world-wide competitive
pressure to attract talents, investments and resources [4, 5]; they must struggle for
their economic and ecological sustainability [6]; and their success depends on the
satisfaction of innumerable stakeholders, with many different needs, such as
bureaucratic efficiency, public space safety, affordable housing, landscape beauty,
smooth mobility, etc. [7]. As a consequence, the cities that succeed in creating the
conditions for “smart” innovation and adaptation flourish, whilst the others sooner
or later decline.
This scenario is more and more influenced by ICT. In fact, the Internet is
dramatically boosting many capabilities that correspond to the very raison d’être
of cities: connection, sharing, confrontation, sense-and-respond, speed and
cooperation.
Thus, each city poses big challenges to the people and organizations that directly
or indirectly govern, plan, modify and manage it [8]; but, in order to successfully
tackle such challenges, the solutions and theories developed by the traditional
Management, Organization and Information Systems studies are not sufficient,
since they tend to disregard the importance of the built environment for the people,
institutions, organizations and networks rooted in it. Moreover, these disciplines
have developed theories and tools for analysing single organizations or relatively
small inter-organizational networks. Thus, if Management, Organization and Infor-
mation Systems scholars choose the city as the level of analysis, they soon find that
the complexity of the entailed phenomena is so high, that novel, strongly inter-
disciplinary theoretical tools and design capabilities are needed [9].
That is exactly what the emerging studies on Smart Cities are interested in. In
these researches, scholars seek to investigate (and/or to enhance) the cities’ capa-
bilities to develop intelligent, i.e. forward-looking, innovations, taking into account
the novel possibilities offered by ICT.
As our analysis will confirm below, this issue is strongly interdisciplinary, since
it may involve economic studies (e.g. urban and regional economics), engineering
studies (e.g. sanitation systems, energy management, building automation), archi-
tecture and city planning studies (e.g. mobility, sustainable buildings, housing
solutions for the elderly and the disabled), sociological studies (e.g. social inclu-
sion, knowledge communities, citizen empowerment), ICT and computer science
Smart City Research as an Interdisciplinary Crossroads: A Challenge for. . . 165

studies (e.g. cloud computing, embedded systems), and management and organi-
zation studies (e.g. e-government, health care systems, network cooperation
studies).
The purpose of this paper is to describe the heterogeneous and interdisciplinary
community of scholars committed to this wide issue.
More specifically, our Research Questions are the following:
1. What are the main journals that publish Smart City studies, and what disciplinary
areas do these journals belong to? Is it possible to identify any emerging trends?
2. To what extent are the single publications on Smart Cities interdisciplinary? Is it
possible to identify any emerging opportunities for Management/Organization
Studies/Information Systems scholars?

2 Research Method

In order to answer our Research Questions, we decided to utilize the Social

Network Analysis (SNA) to draw representative maps of the scholarly publications
on Smart Cities. The first step was the identification of a representative sample of
publications.
In order to minimize the exclusion of the most important and relevant writings
from our sample, we chose to select the publications on the basis of a complete
array of focused keywords. To do so, we decided to analyse the array of words used
by the scholars involved in two main international Conferences on Smart Cities,
identified through the Internet in June, 2013. The Conference “Smart Cities and
Communities” (eu-smartcities.eu) was the first one retrieved by Google for the
keywords “smart cities conference”. The Conference “Smart Cities for Sustainable
Growth” (smartcities2012.org) was the only one included in the paragraph Projects,
Conferences and Research within the Wikipedia page “Smart Cities”.
Both the Google engine and the Wikipedia contents are likely to mirror with
sufficient accuracy the opinions of the users’ community, so we felt authorized to
consider the web sites of these two Conferences as representative of the language
and concepts used by the international community of people focused on Smart City
research.
We then utilized these two web sites to collect texts, including all the calls for
papers, presentations, publications and keynote speeches available within the
Conference sites in June, 2013. We analysed these texts through coding [10], and
we found that they were quite consistent in identifying the following expressions as
quasi-synonyms of “smart city”: (1) “intelligent city”, and (2) “smart community”.
Moreover, we found that “smart city” is sometimes spelled “smartcity”.
Instead, we found that the expressions “digital city” or “e-city” are described in
the analysed texts as related to a different concept, i.e. the presence of advanced
computing and broadband communication infrastructures connecting government
bodies, citizens and businesses of a city. This differs from the Smart City discourse,
which although based on ICT-enabled solutions, usually shows a performance-
166 F. Ricciardi and S. Za

oriented approach, in terms of at least one of the following concepts: environmental

sustainability, economic sustainability, competitiveness, and livability (livability is
associated to a wide range of performance indicators, such as security, social
inclusion, high-quality sanitation services, etc.). In other words, according to our
text analysis, “digital city” and “e-city” could not be considered as quasi-synonyms
of “smart city”, but rather as a sort of precursor or forerunner concept.
On the other hand, we found that the expression “smart citizenship”, although
not really a quasi-synonym of smart city, could usefully be taken into consideration,
since it implied the active role of citizens in the ICT-enabled innovation of politics,
government and Public Administration.
We then utilized the quasi-synonyms we had selected, as topic in the query
performed on ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) Web of Science (ISI-WoS)
[11]. We conducted the searches and retrieved publication data taking into account
the main three citation databases: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sci-
ences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. They fully cover over
12,000 journals, over 150,000 conference proceedings, and over 275,000 books and
book chapters, adding up to over 40 million searchable records. In addition, ISI
Web of Science search seems to merge duplicate results when searching from
multiple indexes, so there was no great fear of redundant data in the search results.
Using “topic” as search field, the procedure searches the submitted words for each
publication in title, abstract and keywords. On the basis of the selected quasi-
synonyms, we execute on August 2nd, 2013 the following query:

Topic¼("smart communit*" OR smartcit* OR "smart cit*" OR "intelligent

cit*")

Timespan¼All years. Databases¼SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI.

As result we retrieved 118 writings, published between 1987 and the first months
of 2013. Afterwards we performed an abstract analysis and we removed four
writings from this list since they proved completely irrelevant to our research. At
the end our set is composed by: 96 journal articles (included eight book reviews and
14 editorials), seven conference proceedings, and 11 others (categorized as
“reviews” or “News Item” by ISI, but they are always journal papers). We adopted
this set of publications as a representative sample of high-quality scientific publi-
cations on smart cities and we used it to analyse the evolution of this scholarly
community.
Smart City Research as an Interdisciplinary Crossroads: A Challenge for. . . 167

3 Main Journals Publishing Smart City Studies: Emerging

Trends

To answer the first Research Question, we analysed the journals and book series in
which the writings we selected had been published. The list included 89 journals
and book series; only 13 out of them (12 journals and a book series) had published
more than one of the 114 selected writings, and only six journals had published
more than two of the 114 selected writings. In other words, whilst a good number of
journals include at least one paper on some Smart City topic, only few journals
seem strongly dedicated to this issue. On the other hand, this situation may change
soon, since the longitudinal analysis of the publication data reveals a dramatic
increase since 2009 (see Fig. 1). Moreover also in 2013 the number of publications
seems to follow the same trend, taking into account that not all the papers already
published were present on the database when the search was done (due to technical
update), and the year is not still ended. Finally, as the number of citations per year
increases after 2009, also the impact of the set of selected publications seems to be
relevant after that year.
We then utilized the UCSD Map of Science [12] to analyze the disciplinary areas
of our panel of journals. We found that the stream of studies on Smart Cities is very
dynamic from an interdisciplinary point of view. In fact, the first studies on Smart
Cities (1987–1995) showed up in few journals focused on Architecture, Urban and
Environmental Studies (classified within Earth Sciences by the UCSD Map) and
Social Sciences. In the following years, the first Economics and Management
journals appeared (classified within Social Sciences by the UCSD Map); but also
some Engineering and Computer Science journals started publishing studies on
Smart Cities. After 2004, the contributions in Engineering and Computer Science

Fig. 1 Number of publications and citations per year. Data on year 2013 are partial
168 F. Ricciardi and S. Za

Fig. 2 Disciplinary distribution of the journals that published on Smart Cities

journals boomed. Meanwhile, between 2005 and 2007, three of the four most cited
papers on Smart Cities were published [13–15], and immediately after, also the
interest of Social Sciences journals in this issue increased further. Moreover, a
number of journals focused on Health Care started publishing contributions on
Smart Cities.
The disciplinary distribution of the journals that have been publishing on Smart
Cities since 1987 is drawn in Fig. 2. It is based on the UCSD Map of Science, which
depicts a network of 554 subdiscipline nodes that are aggregated to 13 main
disciplines of science (e.g. Earth Sciences, Chemistry, etc.). The circles represent
the records per unique subdiscipline. Each circle area is proportional to the number
of fractionally assigned records. The map is drawn on a sphere, then the discipline
on the right (Social Sciences) should be understood as linked to the discipline on the
left (Computer Science).
In addition to the UCSD Map of Science, we also used the disciplinary catego-
ries of ISI-WoS to quantitatively compare the disciplinary areas involved in Smart
City research. Each journal is associated with one or more disciplinary category
within ISI WoS, then the sum of the percentages for a set of publications usually
exceeds 100 %. We aggregated the ISI-WoS categories to create six wider catego-
ries, corresponding to the six disciplinary areas identified in the Introduction. We
found that the journals that have published Smart City research so far are allocated
in the following disciplinary areas:
1. Engineering, Physics, Chemistry: 62.3 %
2. Computer Science, Telecommunications: 35.1 %
3. Social and Political Studies: 33.3 %
4. Architecture, City Planning: 13.2 %
5. Management and Organization Studies: 12.3 %
6. Economic Studies: 8.8 %
7. Other: 7.0 %
Smart City Research as an Interdisciplinary Crossroads: A Challenge for. . . 169

4 Interdisciplinarity of Smart City Studies: Emerging

Opportunities

The ISI WoS database classifies each publication also on the basis of the publica-
tion’s own disciplinary area(s), independently from the disciplinary area of the
journal. Many writings are classified as belonging to more than one disciplinary
area; we used these data to identify the interdisciplinary links in our set of writings
and to answer our second Research Question. For this aim, on the basis of the
research areas assigned to each publication, we have designed the co-occurrence
network in which:
• The node represents a research area and its size shows how many writings
belong to that area (one at least);
• The edge between two nodes (research areas) exists if there is at least one paper
associated to both of them (co-occurrence). The thickness of the edge is propor-
tional to the number of the associations (number of papers that belong at least to
both research areas).
In the figure it is easy to identify five main research areas (the biggest nodes):
Engineering, Computer science, Telecommunications, Urban studies, and Business
economics.
We found that there are areas with few, if any, interdisciplinary connection
(including, for example, Physics, Chemistry or Geriatrics), whilst the network
shows a sort of core where the disciplines are more densely linked.
If we look at the graph in Fig. 3 as if it was a geographical map, we can see that in
the “south-western” part there is the Engineering area, including also Energy,
Thermodynamics and Transportation. The Engineering area is strongly linked to
the Telecommunications and Computer Science area, which in turn is the bridge
between the Engineering area and the Social Sciences area, located more “north-
west” in the graph. In the “north-eastern” part of the map, there is the area related to
Public Administration, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, Urban Studies, and
Geography. The central part of the network is filled by the disciplines of the
business studies area, (called by ISI-WoS as Business & Economics and Operations
Research & Management Science), and they represent a sort of bridge between the
western part (Engineering area Social science area) and eastern part. Finally, a
relevant triad (a triple of nodes with their ties) is present in the south-eastern part,
related to Chemistry and Electrochemistry, but it is totally disconnected from the
rest.
170 F. Ricciardi and S. Za

Fig. 3 Co-occurrence network based on research areas

5 Conclusions

On the basis of what arisen from our literature analysis, Smart City research is a
vigorously emerging stream of studies. In order to better understand the boundaries
of Smart City research and its interdisciplinary nature, we conducted text analyses
on the contents of the web sites of two major international Conferences on Smart
Cities, and we analysed a representative sample of 114 publications through SNA.
Consistently with our findings, we propose a two-fold definition of Smart City
research, which consists in: (1) the study of ICT-enabled solutions aimed to
enhance the city’s competitiveness, sustainability and/or livability; and/or (2) the
study of cities and surrounding regions as generators and/or implementers of
ICT-enabled innovation, for improved competitiveness, sustainability and/or
livability.
Our Social Network Analysis revealed that Management, Organization and
Information Systems studies can play a pivotal role in Smart City research, since
they fill the structural hole between the disciplines that have been the first to address
the issue of city performances, such as Urban Studies or Public Administration, and
the emerging technological side of Smart City research, involving Engineering and
Computer Science on the one side, and Health Care studies, on the other side. Our
research path will include, among other steps: (1) the enrichment of the dataset
refining the keywords used in the query and considering also other databases
(e.g. Scopus); (2) the investigation on the relationships among the publications
present in dataset and their theoretical background always by using social network
analysis tools [16].
Smart City Research as an Interdisciplinary Crossroads: A Challenge for. . . 171

Oddly enough, on the basis of our results only a minority of writings has
addressed Smart Cities as a management issue so far: we propose that scholars
take on this stimulating challenge.

References

1. Munford, L.: The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, New York (1961)
2. Tranos, E., Gertner, D.: Smart networked cities? Innov. Eur. J. Soc. Sci. 25, 175–190 (2012)
3. Kennedy, C.: The Evolution of Great World Cities: Urban Wealth and Economic Growth.
University of Toronto Press, Toronto (2011)
4. Florida, R.: The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent.
HarperCollins, New York (2010)
5. Casalino, N., Buonocore, F., Rossignoli, C., Ricciardi, F.: Transparency, openness and knowl-
edge sharing for rebuilding and strengthening government institutions. In: Proceedings of the
IASTED International Conference on Web-Based Education, pp. 866–871 (2013)
6. Shen, L.-Y., Jorge Ochoa, J., Shah, M.N., Zhang, X.: The application of urban sustainability
indicators – a comparison between various practices. Habitat Int. 35, 17–29 (2011)
7. Balsas, C.J.L.: Measuring the livability of an urban centre: an exploratory study of key
performance indicators. Plan. Pract. Res. 19, 101–110 (2004)
8. Mola, L., Carugati, A.: Escaping localisms in IT sourcing: tracing changes in institutional
logics in an Italian firm. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 21, 388–403 (2012)
9. Nam, T., Pardo, T.A.: Smart city as urban innovation: focusing on management, policy, and
context. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of
Electronic Governance, pp. 185–194 (2011)
10. Corbin, J., Strauss, A.: Grounded theory research: procedures, canons, and evaluative criteria.
Qual. Sociol. 13, 3–21 (1990)
11. ISI: ISI Web of Knowledge [v.5.11]: Web of Science Home, http://apps.webofknowledge.com
12. Börner, K., Klavans, R., Patek, M., Zoss, A.M., Biberstine, J.R., Light, R.P., Larivière, V.,
Boyack, K.W.: Design and update of a classification system: the UCSD map of science. PLoS
One 7, e39464 (2012)
13. Shapiro, J.M.: Smart cities: quality of life, productivity, and the growth effects of human
capital. Rev. Econ. Stat. 88, 324–335 (2006)
14. Bekkers, V., Homburg, V.: The myths of e-government: looking beyond the assumptions of a
new and better government. Inf. Soc. 23, 373–382 (2007)
15. Bunnell, T., Coe, N.M.: Re-fragmenting the “political”: globalization, governmentality and
Malaysia’s multimedia super corridor. Polit. Geogr. 24, 831–849 (2005)
16. Za, S., Spagnoletti, P.: Knowledge creation processes in Information Systems and Manage-
ment: lessons from simulation studies. In: Spagnoletti, P. (ed.) Organization Change and
Information Systems. LNISO, vol. 2, pp. 191–204. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)