Vigilance tasks are known to be stressful and highly practical tasks present in many workplace environments. Research has examined ways to alleviate this stress but has often failed to include ...individual difference characteristics that might increase stress. The current research examined potential gender differences in stress after completing a vigilance task. Participants completed a questionnaire pre- and post-task measuring worry, engagement, and distress (Matthews et al., 1999) for a vigilance task. Results showed that women reported more distress after the vigilance task when reminded of a negative stereotype about their gender. Results are discussed in terms of practical implications for research examining distress during vigilance tasks, as well as considerations for future research.
Despite a large and growing literature on workplace discrimination, there has been a myopic focus on the direct relationships between discrimination and a common set of outcomes. The aim of this ...meta‐analytic review was both to challenge and advance current understanding of workplace discrimination and its associations with outcomes by identifying the pathways through which discrimination affects outcomes, examining boundary conditions to explain when discrimination is most harmful for employees, and exploring a potential third variable explanation for discrimination–outcome relationships. Mediation tests indicated that workplace discrimination is associated with employee outcomes through both job stress and justice. Moderator analyses showed that discrimination appears to be most detrimental when it is observed rather than personally experienced, interpersonal rather than formal, and measured broadly rather than specifically. We also found that discrimination–outcome relationships differ across work and nonwork contexts and as a function of the social identity targeted by discrimination. Discrimination generally explained meaningful incremental variance in outcomes after controlling for the effects of negative affectivity, but the relationships between discrimination and health were substantially decreased. We conclude by offering a constructive critique of the empirical discrimination literature and by detailing an agenda for future research.
Evaluation of Trunk-Supporting Exoskeleton Kazerooni, H.; Tung, Wayne; Pillai, Minerva
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting,
11/2019, Volume:
63, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Trunk Supporting Exoskeletons are increasingly being evaluated in workplaces as viable ergonomic interventions for reducing the risk of back injuries. A series of trunk-supporting exoskeletons have ...been designed and built at the University of California at Berkeley and suitX. These exoskeletons decrease the forces on the wearer’s back at L5/S1 location. This article describes one of these exoskeletons, referred to as backX, and its evaluation method. backX is designed not only to reduce the forces and torques on the wearer’s back at L5/S1 location, but also to allow the wearer to perform all kinds of maneuvers such as walking, squatting, ascending and descending stairs, slopes and ladders, riding bicycles and driving trucks. This study finds that average muscle activities of the thoracic and lumbar erector spinae muscles among equal populations of male and female subjects, wearing backX while maintaining forward bending postures, are reduced by 75% and 56% respectively. The results of this study and extended field evaluations indicate that wearing backX minimizes the risk of back injuries among workers who repeatedly go through stooping, squatting, and bending postures for various tasks, such as lifting objects.
This article reports meta‐analyses intended to clarify and enhance our understanding of voice and its promotive and prohibitive forms. We find that undifferentiated constructive voice is associated ...with a wide range of antecedents that fit in Morrison's (2014) five categories: (a) dispositions, (b) job and organizational attitudes and perceptions, (c) emotions, beliefs, and schemas, (d) supervisor and leader behavior, and (e) contextual factors. However, relative weight analyses reveal a highly dominant variable within each category (personal initiative, felt responsibility, engagement, leader–member exchange, and positive workplace climate). We also find that undifferentiated constructive voice has a moderate zero‐order association with job performance that is nonsignificant when task performance and organizational citizenship behavior are also considered. Finally, we explore how associations vary as a function of whether voice is promotive or prohibitive. First, there are significant differences in associations with over a third of the antecedents (core self‐evaluations, felt responsibility, organizational commitment, detachment, psychological safety, ethical leadership, and leader openness). Second, although promotive voice has a positive association with job performance, the opposite is true for prohibitive voice. We conclude with suggestions to enhance our understanding of voice, especially with respect to efforts needed to clarify and distinguish promotive and prohibitive voice.
In this paper we examine established practice regarding the reporting, justification and number of interview participants chosen within organization and workplace studies. For such qualitative ...research there is a paucity of discussion across the social sciences, the topic receiving far less attention than its centrality warrants. We analysed 798 articles published in 2003 and 2013 in ten top and second tier academic journals, identifying 248 studies using at least one type of qualitative interview. Participant numbers were contingent on characteristics of the population from which they were chosen and approach to analysis, but not the journal, its tier, editorial base or publication year, the interview type or its duration. Despite lack of transparency in reporting (23.4% of studies did not state participant numbers) we reveal a median of 32.5 participants, numbers ranging from one to 330, and no justification for participant numbers in over half of studies. We discuss implications and, recognizing that different philosophical commitments are likely to imply differing norms, offer recommendations regarding reporting, justification and number of participants. Acknowledging exceptions, dependent upon study purpose and data saliency, these include an organization and workplace research norm of 15−60 participants, alongside credible numbers for planning interview research.
•The extended theory of planned behavior model has been used in this study.•The extended TPB model has better explanatory power than the original TPB model.•Subjective norm doesn’t have any ...significant effect on energy saving intention.•Descriptive norm is the most powerful predictor of energy saving intention.•This study enriches research on individual’s energy saving behavior in workplaces.
Individual’s energy saving behavior in workplaces is crucial to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. The main idea of this research is to explore the determinants of individual’s energy saving behavior in workplaces. An extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) has been used as the theoretical research framework. The extension was implemented by adding two new variables: descriptive norm and personal moral norm. Data were collected using questionnaire survey method and analyzed with the help of structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicate that individual’s attitude towards energy saving, perceived behavior control, descriptive norm and personal moral norm positively affect individual’s energy saving intention in workplaces, while the effect of subjective norm is insignificant. Descriptive norm is the most powerful variable to predict individual’s energy saving intention. Moreover, the results also verify the usefulness of the extended TPB model, as it has increased the explanatory power of the original TPB model (from 22.6% to 34.9%). Based on the results, implications for improving individual’s energy saving intention in workplaces and suggestions for further research are discussed.
As a pervasive workplace phenomenon in service organizations, knowledge hiding can cause serious economic losses to companies. This study seeks to identify a new interpersonal antecedent of knowledge ...hiding, specifically workplace ostracism. We further focus on the moderating roles of negative reciprocity beliefs and moral disengagement in the relationship between workplace ostracism and knowledge hiding in service organizations. Using a time-lagged research design, we collected data from 253 samples in 17 Chinese hotels. As predicted, we found that workplace ostracism was positively related to hospitality employees’ evasive hiding and playing dumb, but not related to rationalized hiding. In addition, we supported a hypothesized three-way interaction involving workplace ostracism, negative reciprocity beliefs, and moral disengagement on evasive hiding and playing dumb, but not on rationalized hiding. In particular, workplace ostracism was most positively related to evasive hiding and playing dumb when both negative reciprocity beliefs and moral disengagement were high. However, workplace ostracism was not related to evasive hiding and playing dumb when service workers have low levels in either or both.
We describe a belt-mountable prototype instrument containing a gas chromatographic microsystem (μGC) and demonstrate its capability for near-real-time recognition and quantification of volatile ...organic compounds (VOCs) in moderately complex mixtures at concentrations encountered in industrial workplace environments. The μGC comprises three discrete, Si/Pyrex microfabricated chips: a dual-adsorbent micropreconcentrator–focuser for VOC capture and injection; a wall-coated microcolumn with thin-metal heaters and temperature sensors for temperature-programmed separations; and an array of four microchemiresistors with thiolate-monolayer-protected-Au-nanoparticle interface films for detection and recognition–discrimination. The battery-powered μGC prototype (20 × 15 × 9 cm, ∼2.1 kg sans battery) has on-board microcontrollers and can autonomously analyze the components of a given VOC mixture several times per hour. Calibration curves bracketing the Threshold Limit Value (TLV) of each VOC yielded detection limits of 16–600 parts-per-billion for air samples of 5–10 mL, well below respective TLVs. A 2:1 injection split improved the resolution of early eluting compounds by up to 63%. Responses and response patterns were stable for 5 days. Use of retention-time windows facilitated the chemometric recognition and discrimination of the components of a 21-VOC mixture sampled and analyzed in 3.5 min. Results from a “mock” field test, in which personal exposures to time-varying concentrations of a mixture of five VOCs were measured autonomously, agreed closely with those from a reference GC. Thus, reliable, near-real-time determinations of worker exposures to multiple VOCs with this wearable μGC prototype appear feasible.
The mutual gains model suggests that HRM should benefit both individuals and organisations. However, the dominant models within HRM theory and research continue to focus largely on ways to improve ...performance, with employee concerns very much a secondary consideration. Furthermore, pressures at work and in society more widely are creating an increasing threat to employee well‐being. If employee concerns and the threats to well‐being are to be taken seriously, a different analytic framework for HRM is required. The article sets out an alternative approach to HRM that gives priority to practices designed to enhance well‐being and a positive employment relationship, proposing that both elements are essential. Evidence is presented to support the choice of practices and to argue that these also hold the potential to improve both individual and organisational performance. It therefore offers a different path to mutual gains. The research and policy implications of this approach are discussed.
Abstract
Most countries have implemented restrictions on mobility to prevent the spread of Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19), entailing considerable societal costs but, at least initially, based on ...limited evidence of effectiveness. We asked whether mobility restrictions were associated with changes in the occurrence of COVID-19 in 34 OECD countries plus Singapore and Taiwan. Our data sources were the
Google Global Mobility Data Source,
which reports different types of mobility, and COVID-19 cases retrieved from the dataset curated by
Our World in Data.
Beginning at each country’s 100th case, and incorporating a 14-day lag to account for the delay between exposure and illness, we examined the association between changes in mobility (with January 3 to February 6, 2020 as baseline) and the ratio of the number of newly confirmed cases on a given day to the total number of cases over the past 14 days from the index day (the potentially infective ‘pool’ in that population), per million population, using LOESS regression and logit regression. In two-thirds of examined countries, reductions of up to 40% in commuting mobility (to workplaces, transit stations, retailers, and recreation) were associated with decreased cases, especially early in the pandemic. Once both mobility and incidence had been brought down, further restrictions provided little additional benefit. These findings point to the importance of acting early and decisively in a pandemic.
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