1,720,963 research outputs found

    ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT AND MULTITASKING BEHAVIORS: A MIXED-METHOD STUDY

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    This paper investigates how individual perceptions and attitudes about an organization influence multitasking behaviors in the workplace. While we know that individuals’ behaviors are influenced by the characteristics of their organizations (e.g., ICTs, physical layout), we still do not know much about how the way individuals interpret their organization influences their multitasking behaviors. We first hypothesize that individual perceptions of organizational preferences for multitasking (i.e. organizational polychronicity) have impacts on actually enacted multitasking behaviors. We also hypothesize that the attachment to the organization (i.e. organizational identification) moderates the above relationship. We conducted a mixed method study in two knowledge intensive organizations and collected data through a survey, diaries, and semi-structured interviews. Our findings support the first hypothesis but not the moderating role of organizational identification. However, this latter seems to be directly related on how much a person is willing to work on different activities, but not on how much she interrupts others or accepts being interrupted. Further, our study suggests that not only the organizational context should be investigated in the study of multitasking behaviors, but also the larger work context, including the individuals’ professional communities

    The interplay between organizational polychronicity, multitasking behaviors and organizational identification: A mixed-methods study in knowledge intensive organizations

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    This paper investigates how individual perceptions and attitudes about an organization influence multitasking behaviors in the workplace. While we know that individuals are significantly influenced in their behaviors by the characteristics of their organizations (e.g. ICTs, organizational structure, physical layout), we still do not know much about how the way individuals interpret their organization influences their multitasking behaviors. Thus, we specifically hypothesize that the individual perception of the organizational preferences for multitasking (i.e. organizational polychronicity) engenders the actual multitasking behaviors that an individual enacts in the workplace. We also hypothesize that the attachment to the organization (i.e. organizational identification) moderates the above relationship. We conducted a mixed method study in two knowledge intensive organizations (an R&D unit and a university department) and collected data through a survey, diaries, and semi-structured interviews. Our findings support the first hypothesis but not the moderating role of organizational identification. However, this latter is directly related to how much a person is willing to work on multiple activities on a single day. Further, our study suggests that not only the organizational context should be investigated in the study of multitasking behaviors, but also the larger work context, including the individuals’ professional communities. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications as well as methodological reflections on mixing methods in the study of multitasking in organizations

    Minimizing CO2 emissions in a practical daily carpooling problem

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    Governments, as well as companies and individuals, are increasingly aware of the damages to the environment caused by human activities. In this sense, the reduction of CO2 emissions is an important topic that is pursued through a range of practices. A relevant example is carpooling, which is defined as the act of individuals sharing a single car. In this paper we approach a practical case found in an Italian service company. Our objective is to develop an integrated web application to be used by the employees of this company to organize carpooling crews on a daily basis, so as to reach a common destination. We look for possible crews by the use of mathematical formulations and heuristic algorithms. The heuristic algorithms are then embedded into the web application to provide users with carpooling solutions. Experimental results attest for a great potential in CO2 savings by the use of carpooling in the real-world scenario as well as in newly generated instances

    How Many Teams should we Manage at Once? The Effect of Multiple Team Membership, Collaborative Technologies, and Polychronicity on Team Performance

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    This study explores the relationship between multiple team membership or ‘multi-teaming’ (the extent to which team members are simultaneously engaged in several teams in a given period of time and switch between different teams in a single work day), the performance of single teams, the intensity of use and perceptions of usefulness of collaborative technologies, and team members individual preferences for managing multiple tasks simultaneously (individual polychronicity). Drawing on theoretical work on multiple team membership (MTM) and theories of attention and knowledge acquisition, we argue that the number of MTMs has an inverted U-shaped relationship with team performance while the team average daily MTM is negatively related to the focal team performance. We also propose that the intensity of use of collaborative technologies will moderate the above relationships so that at low levels of MTM it will help teams to attain higher performance while at high levels of MTM it will reduce teams performance. Conversely, variance in collaborative technologies’ perceptions of uselfulness will moderate negatively the above relationships. Finally, we expect teams whose members are more polychronic to attain better performance in a multi-teaming context. We are exploring these issues through a field study based on quantitative and qualitative data collected in an Italian consulting firm that operates in the field of Business Intelligence Systems

    Geographic Configuration Fluidity in Virtual Teams: Consequences for Individuals and Teams

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    As communications technologies become increasingly stable and secure, distributed virtual work is fast becoming a central component of how global organizations function (Caya, Mortensen & Pissoneault, 2013; Gibson, Huang, Kirkman & Shapiro, 2014). With U.S. virtual worker growth of over 100% in the past decade (Global Workplace Analytics, 2014) and an estimated 1.3 billion virtual workers worldwide (International Data Corporation, 2011), it is increasingly important for organizations and employees to effectively navigate this transformed work environment. Although work is becoming more and more virtual, our collective understanding of the effects of this change is still in its infancy. In a variety of articles across a range of domains, Organizational Behavior scholars have lamented the lack of clarity on whether existing, highly cited management theories wholly apply to virtual contexts (Bolino, Long & Turnley, 2015; Feldman & Ng, 2007; Grandey, 2015). Theories relating to interpersonal interactions, which often rely on synchronous communication, in person cues, and shared understandings, may operate differently in settings where individuals are separated by space, time, and technology. The goal of this symposium is to advance research on virtual work by illuminating new findings and theoretical developments within this emerging work context. The presentations in this symposium cross domains and methodologies to help build an understanding of how virtual work impacts employee status, voice, transactive memory, team creativity, and communication. Together, these presentations propose theories and offer practical implications that will advance our understanding of this increasingly popular business context

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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