Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Remote Work: Examining Current Trends And Organizational Practices, Bradford Bell

Bradford S Bell

[Excerpt] Although remote work offers a number of potential benefits, it is not without risks and challenges. Companies can find it difficult to build a culture that is accepting and supportive of remote work. It can also be difficult to track exactly who is working remotely, particularly when remote work is adopted more informally, and to measure the business impact of these initiatives. Remote workers can face a number of personal and professional challenges. For instance, they may struggle for exposure and access to professional opportunities and there is the risk that those working outside the office can become socially …

Situation Awareness And Maritime Traffic: Having Awareness Or Being In Control?, Fulko Van Westrenen, Gesa Praetorius

Gesa Praetorius

Situation awareness (SA) is generally seen as a mental representation of the system state, an objective measure of the ‘situation out there’. In this article, the authors make an argument that SA can only have a meaning in relation to the task of the user and characteristics of the system. This will be argued with the help of a specific environment: vessel traffic monitoring. The long-time constants and the complex constraints imposed on the ship require that the operator monitoring the traffic has a good SA: the operator must make long-term predictions about possible traffic developments. For this, being in …

The Effects Of A Computer Malfunction On Subsequent Task Performance, Nicole Zimmerman, Everett Sambrook, Jonathan Gore

Jonathan Gore

Although previous research has examined the effects of computer malfunctions on employee frustration, to our knowledge no research has explored computer malfunction's effect on subsequent task performance. It was hypothesised that participants who experience a malfunction would perform worse on a subsequent task than those who experience no malfunction. Participants (n = 204) were randomly assigned to experience either a computer malfunction or not during the first task. Participants then completed a subsequent task. The results confirmed that the Malfunction group performed worse than the Control group on both tasks. Implications for workplace performance are discussed.

DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2012.733412

Slippage In The System: The Effects Of Errors In Transactive Memory Behavior On Team Performance, Matthew Pearsall, Aleksander Ellis, Bradford Bell

Bradford S Bell

[Excerpt] Although researchers have consistently shown that the implicit coordination provided by transactive memory positively affects team performance, the benefits of transactive memory systems depend heavily on team members’ ability to accurately identify the expertise of their teammates and communicate expertise-specific information with one another. This introduces the opportunity for errors to enter the system, as the expertise of individual team members may be misunderstood or misrepresented, leading to the reliance on information from the wrong source or the loss of information through incorrect assignment. As Hollingshead notes, “information may be transferred or explicitly delegated to the ‘wrong’ individual in …

Work Groups And Teams In Organizations, Steve Kozlowski, Bradford Bell

Bradford S Bell

[Excerpt] Our objective in this chapter is to provide an integrative perspective on work groups and teams in organizations, one that addresses primary foci of theory and research, highlights applied implications, and identifies key issues in need of research attention and resolution. Given the volume of existing reviews, our review is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, it uses representative work to characterize key topics, and focuses on recent work that breaks new ground to help move theory and research forward. Although our approach risks trading breadth for depth, we believe that there is much value in taking a more …