Reflective journal My account of the SDF work, written in February 2026 about events in 2025.

Technical materials The code, processing logic and diagrams of what I built, showing how it worked.

Dated messages Messages from the time, used only to confirm dates and the order of events.

Participant account What an interviewee described. Not observed or checked independently.

Interpretation dashed outline Conclusions drawn from the evidence.

Stage of use Whether a change was in use, being tested, explored or proposed. These labels describe a stage, not whether the change succeeded.

About

About this site

This research examines how generative AI fits into university work, how people respond when tools and tasks do not fit, and what preparation, checking and explanation remain around the outputs. It draws on my Staff Development Fund reporting workflow and interviews with eleven university staff.

This website presents the research through diagrams, examples and findings. Thesis section references point to the fuller discussion.

The thesis

TitleEnterprise Generative AI Workability within a University: Sociotechnical Friction, Workaround Formation and Less Visible Work
AuthorShane Lee
Degree programmeMaster of Science (Research) in Computing Sciences
FacultyFaculty of Engineering and Information Technology
UniversityUniversity of Technology Sydney
Principal supervisorBaki Kocaballi
Co-supervisorsBhuva Narayan and Simon Buckingham Shum
Ethics approvalUTS Human Research Ethics Committee, ETH25-10884
ScholarshipAustralian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship (doi.org/10.82133/C42F-K220)
SoftwareLee, S. C. (2026). Staff Development Fund (SDF) processor (Version 1.0.0) [Computer software]. GitHub

Scheduled thesis defence

Date4 November 2026
Panel chairNico Pietroni
Expert panel membersDilek Cetindamar Kozanoglu and Gnana Bharathy

Publication arising from this thesis

Lee, S. C., Narayan, B., Buckingham Shum, S., Ng, S., & Kocaballi, A. B. (2025). Making AI functional with workarounds: An insider’s account of invisible labour in organisational politics [Research-in-progress paper]. Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2025 Proceedings (Paper 73). AIS Electronic Library. https://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2025/73

References

References from the thesis.

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