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1 – 10 of over 1000This study aims to propose a novel concept of choreography as a way of understanding co-creation of value and thus develops the spatial analytical dimensions of co-creation…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to propose a novel concept of choreography as a way of understanding co-creation of value and thus develops the spatial analytical dimensions of co-creation theorising.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper contemplates the meanings and possibilities of leveraging the theoretical underpinnings of value co-creation, from the viewpoint of value-in-experience.
Findings
The concept of choreography opens up a way to read knowledge as movement. It enables a way to elaborate on both the phenomenological and non-representational aspects of co-creation processes. Conceptualising co-creation through such a lens, where knowing is seen as an on-going, spatio-temporal and affective process formed in movement, posits opportunities to further understand the value co-creation practices of experiences. Choreography gives access to the kinaesthetic and affective nature of knowing gained in and through different spatio-temporal contexts and can, in turn, be mobilised in others.
Originality/value
Only a few studies have conceptualised co-creation in relation to a spatio-temporal phenomenon. Notably, this study connects co-creation with mobilities and thus constructs a novel view of knowledge and value creation.
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Kanokwan Srisupornkornkool, Kanphajee Sornkaew, Kittithat Chatkanjanakool, Chayanit Ampairattana, Pariyanoot Pongtasom, Sompiya Somthavil, Onuma Boonyarom, Kornanong Yuenyongchaiwat and Khajonsak Pongpanit
To compare the electromyography (EMG) features during physical and imagined standing up in healthy young adults.
Abstract
Purpose
To compare the electromyography (EMG) features during physical and imagined standing up in healthy young adults.
Design/methodology/approach
Twenty-two participants (ages ranged from 20–29 years old) were recruited to participate in this study. Electrodes were attached to the rectus femoris, biceps femoris, tibialis anterior and the medial gastrocnemius muscles of both sides to monitor the EMG features during physical and imagined standing up. The %maximal voluntary contraction (%MVC), onset and duration were calculated.
Findings
The onset and duration of each muscle of both sides had no statistically significant differences between physical and imagined standing up (p > 0.05). The %MVC of all four muscles during physical standing up was statistically significantly higher than during imagined standing up (p < 0.05) on both sides. Moreover, the tibialis anterior muscle of both sides showed a statistically significant contraction before the other muscles (p < 0.05) during physical and imagined standing up.
Originality/value
Muscles can be activated during imagined movement, and the patterns of muscle activity during physical and imagined standing up were similar. Imagined movement may be used in rehabilitation as an alternative or additional technique combined with other techniques to enhance the STS skill.
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Enrico Attila Bruni, Filippo Andrei and Lia Tirabeni
The purpose of this contribution is twofold: at the empirical level, it is shown how in the relationship that subjects are encouraged to construct with their bodies major…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this contribution is twofold: at the empirical level, it is shown how in the relationship that subjects are encouraged to construct with their bodies major implications for workers' well-being can be found; at a theoretical level, attention is drawn to the importance of framing the different practices workers may display towards digital wellness programmes not just in terms of acceptance or resistance, but also in terms of appropriation.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirically, this study concentrates on the pilot study conducted by a large manufacturing firm that decided to implement a digitally assisted corporate wellness programme. The experimentation involves a sample of the company's workers. The 24 participants were interviewed at the beginning, during the programme and at its end, for a total of 69 interviews. Interviews were transcribed and analysed through a template analysis.
Findings
This research emphasizes how workers' well-being manifests in the relationship subjects are fostered to construct with their body and, in parallel, how workers may play an active and unpredictable role in corporate wellness programmes.
Originality/value
Differently from the current literature that frames workers' reactions towards digital corporate well-being initiatives in mainly polarized ways, this contribution leads to a less dichotomic and more nuanced interpretation of the “impacts” wellness programmes may have, showing how workers may display practices not just of acceptance or resistance, but also of appropriation.
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Michelle M.E. Van Pinxteren, Mark Pluymaekers and Jos G.A.M. Lemmink
Conversational agents (chatbots, avatars and robots) are increasingly substituting human employees in service encounters. Their presence offers many potential benefits, but…
Abstract
Purpose
Conversational agents (chatbots, avatars and robots) are increasingly substituting human employees in service encounters. Their presence offers many potential benefits, but customers are reluctant to engage with them. A possible explanation is that conversational agents do not make optimal use of communicative behaviors that enhance relational outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to identify which human-like communicative behaviors used by conversational agents have positive effects on relational outcomes and which additional behaviors could be investigated in future research.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a systematic review of 61 articles that investigated the effects of communicative behaviors used by conversational agents on relational outcomes. A taxonomy is created of all behaviors investigated in these studies, and a research agenda is constructed on the basis of an analysis of their effects and a comparison with the literature on human-to-human service encounters.
Findings
The communicative behaviors can be classified along two dimensions: modality (verbal, nonverbal, appearance) and footing (similarity, responsiveness). Regarding the research agenda, it is noteworthy that some categories of behaviors show mixed results and some behaviors that are effective in human-to-human interactions have not yet been investigated in conversational agents.
Practical implications
By identifying potentially effective communicative behaviors in conversational agents, this study assists managers in optimizing encounters between conversational agents and customers.
Originality/value
This is the first study that develops a taxonomy of communicative behaviors in conversational agents and uses it to identify avenues for future research.
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Alessandro Stefanini, Davide Aloini and Peter Gloor
This study investigates the relationships between team dynamics and performance in healthcare operations. Specifically, it explores, through wearable sensors, how team…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the relationships between team dynamics and performance in healthcare operations. Specifically, it explores, through wearable sensors, how team coordination mechanisms can influence the likelihood of surgical glitches during routine surgery.
Design/methodology/approach
Breast surgeries of a large Italian university hospital were monitored using Sociometric Badges – wearable sensors developed at MIT Media Lab – for collecting objective and systematic measures of individual and group behaviors in real time. Data retrieved were used to analyze team coordination mechanisms, as it evolved in the real settings, and finally to test the research hypotheses.
Findings
Findings highlight that a relevant portion of glitches in routine surgery is caused by improper team coordination practices. In particular, results show that the likelihood of glitches decreases when practitioners adopt implicit coordination mechanisms rather than explicit ones. In addition, team cohesion appears to be positively related with the surgical performance.
Originality/value
For the first time, direct, objective and real time measurements of team behaviors have enabled an in-depth evaluation of the team coordination mechanisms in surgery and the impact on surgical glitches. From a methodological perspective, this research also represents an early attempt to investigate coordination behaviors in dynamic and complex operating environments using wearable sensor tools.
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Mary Margaret Fonow, Judith A. Cook, Richard S. Goldsand and Jane K. Burke-Miller
We explored the potential of the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education as a tool for enhancing mindfulness, body awareness, and perceptions of transformational leadership…
Abstract
We explored the potential of the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education as a tool for enhancing mindfulness, body awareness, and perceptions of transformational leadership capacities among college students. The intervention consisted of thirty-two, 1.25-hour long group sessions taught by a certified Feldenkrais instructor twice weekly to 21 undergraduates in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre of a southwestern state university. Students also were required to keep a journal in which they reflected on how they felt prior to and after each class, and then recorded three additional entries during the week with observations about their experiences with thinking, sensing, feeling, and moving. Repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to assess changes in levels of mindfulness, body awareness, and perceived leadership capacities using standardized scales administered at study baseline, midterm, and end of term. Over the semester, students evidenced significantly greater mindfulness, body awareness, and a domain of transformational leadership measuring empathy, controlling for their level of stress at the time of final exams. To meet the needs of today’s college students, our results suggest that the Feldenkrais Method shows promise as an intervention to promote mindfulness, body awareness, and empathic leadership.
This study determines which aspects of the intended object of learning (planned by teachers during the first phase of a learning study) is made discernible from a learners'…
Abstract
Purpose
This study determines which aspects of the intended object of learning (planned by teachers during the first phase of a learning study) is made discernible from a learners' perspective. In a learning study, the intended, enacted, and lived object of learning are considered. This study focuses on the learning material used by teachers while designing a lesson.
Design/methodology/approach
In many learning studies, variation theory is used to design lessons, which predicts difficulties in and possibilities for student learning. The data consisted of a lesson part – instruction through a video-recorded dance choreography – employed to enhance primary school (in a Swedish context, grade 4) students' dancing skills in the subject of Physical Education and Health. The choreography comprised five different sequences, where a variation occurred when the subsequent (new) sequence was applied to the previous movement pattern. The sequences acted as building blocks, where the students' transitions from one movement pattern to another were logical and distinguishable.
Findings
The results of this study show in what way an analysis of learning material, based on variation theory, can help teachers take into account the level of complexity of the object of learning. The results also identify which parts of a lesson design can be predicted to present a higher degree of challenge and by that more difficult to grasp, especially for students with different educational needs.
Originality/value
Lessons may be designed based on theoretical assumptions to ensure effective classroom learning and provide guidance to teachers based on student needs.
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Wenbin Xu, Xudong Li, Liang Gong, Yixiang Huang, Zeyuan Zheng, Zelin Zhao, Lujie Zhao, Binhao Chen, Haozhe Yang, Li Cao and Chengliang Liu
This paper aims to present a human-in-the-loop natural teaching paradigm based on scene-motion cross-modal perception, which facilitates the manipulation intelligence and robot…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a human-in-the-loop natural teaching paradigm based on scene-motion cross-modal perception, which facilitates the manipulation intelligence and robot teleoperation.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed natural teaching paradigm is used to telemanipulate a life-size humanoid robot in response to a complicated working scenario. First, a vision sensor is used to project mission scenes onto virtual reality glasses for human-in-the-loop reactions. Second, motion capture system is established to retarget eye-body synergic movements to a skeletal model. Third, real-time data transfer is realized through publish-subscribe messaging mechanism in robot operating system. Next, joint angles are computed through a fast mapping algorithm and sent to a slave controller through a serial port. Finally, visualization terminals render it convenient to make comparisons between two motion systems.
Findings
Experimentation in various industrial mission scenes, such as approaching flanges, shows the numerous advantages brought by natural teaching, including being real-time, high accuracy, repeatability and dexterity.
Originality/value
The proposed paradigm realizes the natural cross-modal combination of perception information and enhances the working capacity and flexibility of industrial robots, paving a new way for effective robot teaching and autonomous learning.
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The purpose of this study is to examine the role of videoconferencing technologies for mediating and transforming emotional experiences in virtual context.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the role of videoconferencing technologies for mediating and transforming emotional experiences in virtual context.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on empirical data of video conferencing experiences, this study identifies different constitutive relations with technology through which actors cope with actual or potential anxieties in virtual meetings. It draws on the phenomenological-existential tradition (Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) and on an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to conceptualize and illustrate the role of affective affordances in virtual settings.
Findings
The study identifies four different body–technology–other relations that provide different action possibilities, both disclosing and concealing, for navigating emotional experiences in virtual encounters of mutual gazing. These findings offer insights into the anatomy of virtual emotions and provide explanations on the nature of Zoom fatigue (interactive exhaustion) and heightened feelings of self-consciousness resulting from video conferencing interactions.
Originality/value
This paper builds on and extends current scholarship on technological affordances, as well as emotions, to suggest that technologies also afford different tactics for navigating emotional experiences. Thus, this paper proposes the notion of affective affordance that can expand current information system (IS) and organization studies (OS) scholarship in important ways. The focus is on videoconference technologies and meetings that have received little research attention and even less so from a perspective on emotions. Importantly, the paper offers nuanced insights that can advance current research discourse on the relationships between technology, human body and emotions.
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Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a two-degrees-of-freedom wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism based on spring, in order to improve the robot’s athletic ability, load capacity and rigidity, and to ensure the coordination of multi-modal motion.
Design/methodology/approach
First, based on the rotation transformation matrix and closed-loop constraint equation of the parallel trunk joint mechanism, the mathematical model of its inverse position solution is constructed. Then, the Jacobian matrix of velocity and acceleration is derived by time derivative method. On this basis, the stiffness matrix of the parallel trunk joint mechanism is derived on the basis of the principle of virtual work and combined with the deformation effect of the rope driving pair and the spring elastic restraint pair. Then, the eigenvalue distribution of the stiffness matrix and the global stiffness performance index are used as the stiffness evaluation index of the mechanism. In addition, the performance index of athletic dexterity is analyzed. Finally, the distribution map of kinematic dexterity and stiffness is drawn in the workspace by numerical simulation, and the influence of the introduced spring on the stiffness distribution of the parallel trunk joint mechanism is compared and analyzed. It is concluded that the stiffness in the specific direction of the parallel trunk joint mechanism can be improved, and the stiffness distribution can be improved by adjusting the spring elastic structure parameters of the rope-driven branch chain.
Findings
Studies have shown that the wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism based on spring has a great kinematic dexterity, load-carrying capacity and stiffness performance.
Research limitations/implications
The soft-mixed structure is not mature, and there are few new materials for the soft-mixed mixture; the rope and the rigid structure are driven together with a large amount of friction and hindrance factors, etc.
Practical implications
It ensures that the multi-motion mode hexapod mobile robot can meet the requirement of sufficient different stiffness for different motion postures through the parallel trunk joint mechanism, and it ensures that the multi-motion mode hexapod mobile robot in multi-motion mode can meet the performance requirement of global stiffness change at different pose points of different motion postures through the parallel trunk joint mechanism.
Social implications
The trunk structure is a very critical mechanism for animals. Animals in the movement to achieve smooth climbing, overturning and other different postures, such as centipede, starfish, giant salamander and other multi-legged animals, not only rely on the unique leg mechanism, but also must have a unique trunk joint mechanism. Based on the cooperation of these two mechanisms, the animal can achieve a stable, flexible and flexible variety of motion characteristics. Therefore, the trunk joint mechanism has an important significance for the coordinated movement of the whole body of the multi-sport mode mobile robot (Huang Hu-lin, 2016).
Originality/value
In this paper, based on the idea of combining rigid parallel mechanism with wire-driven mechanism, a trunk mechanism is designed, which is composed of four spring-based wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism in series. Its spring-based wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism can make the multi-motion mode mobile robot have better load capacity, mobility and stiffness performance (Qi-zhi et al., 2018; Cong-hao et al., 2018), thus improving the environmental adaptability and reliability of the multi-motion mode mobile robot.
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