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1 – 10 of over 1000Steven H. Appelbaum, Adam Marchionni and Arturo Fernandez
The purpose of this article is to describe multi‐tasking behaviour in the workplace; to link its cause to the increasing prevalence of low‐cost information and communications…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to describe multi‐tasking behaviour in the workplace; to link its cause to the increasing prevalence of low‐cost information and communications technologies and to the changing organizational structures that have evolved to meet the demands and opportunities of these technologies.
Design/methodology/approach
This article is a presentation of the current literature on multi‐tasking behaviour among knowledge workers with a selective bibliography addressing empirical research into the behavioural, managerial and technological aspects of this phenomenon. It then expands to comprehensive coverage of the literature on past and current thinking about task structuring, strategies for coping in a multi‐tasking environment and the changing nature of work and organizations, which fuels the need to multi‐task in response to these changes.
Findings
Among knowledge workers, multi‐tasking behaviour appears to be an inevitable consequence of the presence of increasingly easy access to information. Despite the detrimental effect that multi‐tasking has on specific task completion, the paradox is that this does not seem to have an effect on overall organizational productivity. For the USA at least, an average 4 per cent growth rate over the past several years of the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries shows that productivity has increased in tandem with an increase in multi‐tasking behaviour and information technologies.
Practical implications
Multi‐tasking behaviour needs to be understood in the context of its manifestation as a variable that is at least partially dependent on the existence of relatively “cheap” information. In essence, in an information economy, task completion by knowledge workers to a set deadline may be counterproductive to the interests of the organization as a whole. This article describes certain strategies that can be used to minimize the harmful aspects of continuous task switching and to maximize the returns to experience that multi‐tasking can bring to an organization.
Originality/value
Multi‐tasking behaviour and its link to complexity theory may lead to a new understanding of organizations as highly fluid and variable entities that are impossible to design or maintain centrally and yet whose goals lead to the moment by moment creation of micro‐organizational structures that accomplish tasks in a manner that engages the full resources of knowledge workers.
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Kohei Arai, Hirotsugu Kitada and Keisuke Oura
This study aims to investigate the relative weight of financial and non-financial performance measures used to evaluate production managers (such as shop floor managers or…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the relative weight of financial and non-financial performance measures used to evaluate production managers (such as shop floor managers or foremen) in a modern manufacturing setting.
Design/methodology/approach
Using survey data from Japanese factories, the paper examines the association between the choice of profit, cost, and non-financial performance measures with two characteristics of manufacturing systems: interdependence and multi-tasking.
Findings
The results indicate that interdependence has a significant and positive association with the importance of profit information, while multi-tasking is associated negatively with the importance of profit information, and positively with non-financial information for performance evaluation.
Originality/value
In recent years, a significant shift has been observed in Japanese production management with many companies now focusing on profit information instead of cost information. For example, the past studies show that large Japanese manufacturing companies are now using micro-profit centres and include profit information when evaluating factories. However, little empirical evidence is available on performance measurement at the shop floor foreman level, and even less is known about the importance of profit information in the evaluation of these lower level managers.
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Jun Wu, Shaowei Fan, Minghe Jin, Kui Sun, Cheng Zhou and Hong Liu
– The purpose of this paper is to present the design and experiment of a universal space-saving end-effector for multi-task operations.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the design and experiment of a universal space-saving end-effector for multi-task operations.
Design/methodology/approach
The universal end-effector is equipped with capture and actuation transmission capabilities with two corresponding subsystems, which are highly integrated systems of mechanics, electronics and sensors. A trefoil-shaped capture system is developed for closed envelop. The worm gear pair is adopted for self-locking and space-saving, and it is used in a unique manner for three grapple chains’ synchronous motion. The combination of optimal straight path linkage and pantograph mechanism is proposed in the transmission system. The electrical structure and the multi-sensory system provide the foundation for control strategy.
Findings
Simulations and experiments demonstrated characteristics of the universal end-effector. The compliance of the manipulator guaranteed the achievement of “soft capture” by the end-effector. Due to the self-locking property, the end-effector and the grapple interface could keep rigid connection when powered off.
Practical implications
The design process takes practical requirements into consideration. Through experiments, it is proved that the proposed end-effector can be used for the multi-task operations with corresponding tools.
Originality/value
Among end-effectors with operation function, the misalignment tolerance (MT) is originally regarded as a key factor. The adoptions of the worm gear pair and the linkage make it space-saving compared to conventional designs.
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Yao Chen, Ruijun Liang, Wenfeng Ran and Weifang Chen
In gearbox fault diagnosis, identifying the fault type and severity simultaneously, as well as the compound fault containing multiple faults, is necessary.
Abstract
Purpose
In gearbox fault diagnosis, identifying the fault type and severity simultaneously, as well as the compound fault containing multiple faults, is necessary.
Design/methodology/approach
To diagnose multiple faults simultaneously, this paper proposes a multichannel and multi-task convolutional neural network (MCMT-CNN) model.
Findings
Experiments were conducted on a bearing dataset containing different fault types and severities and a gearbox compound fault dataset. The experimental results show that MCMT-CNN can effectively extract features of different tasks from vibration signals, with a diagnosis accuracy of more than 97%.
Originality/value
Vibration signals at different positions and in different directions are taken as the MC inputs to ensure the integrity of the fault features. Fault labels are established to retain and distinguish the unique features of different tasks. In MCMT-CNN, multiple task branches can connect and share all neurons in the hidden layer, thus enabling multiple tasks to share information.
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David Nicholas, Ian Rowlands, David Clark and Peter Williams
The purpose of this paper is to report on continuing research undertaken on the way the Google Generation behave on the internet and to compare this with an earlier highly…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on continuing research undertaken on the way the Google Generation behave on the internet and to compare this with an earlier highly publicised study by the paper's authors.
Design/methodology/approach
This research use a televised practical experiment and a remote web global test incorporating search, working memory and multi‐tasking experiments.
Findings
The Google Generation appears to behave very differently from older generations. By their own admission they are less confident about their searching prowess and this is also demonstrated by the fact that they viewed fewer pages, visited fewer domains and undertook fewer searches. Also, tellingly, their search statements were much more the product of cut and paste. The Google Generation also have poorer working memories and are less competent at multi‐tasking, both of which may have implications for researching in an online environment.
Originality/value
The paper introduces of multi‐tasking and cognitive measurement in evaluating and describing information‐seeking behaviour; comparing the web behaviour of young and old; the first time this has been shown on public television.
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Patricia Crifo‐Tillet and Marie‐Claire Villeval
In relation to the analysis of inequality and skill‐bias innovation, this article develops a theoretical model for determining the influence of work organisation on incentives and…
Abstract
In relation to the analysis of inequality and skill‐bias innovation, this article develops a theoretical model for determining the influence of work organisation on incentives and earnings. In a linear agency model, which explains innovative work organisation practices from an incentive perspective, we show that the static impact of organisational forms on expected earnings can be decomposed into two effects (a risk premium effect and a task complementarity effect originated in learning and information diffusion). Such effects drive productivity and expected pay‐offs upward, as observed in many recent empirical studies. Thus, the development of new work practices based on a greater degree of delegation contributes to the increase of earnings inequality. In a dynamic perspective, the model shows that knowledge dissemination will in general sustain the same trend. However, when initial efforts and productivity are relatively high, output and pay‐offs will decline during the transition to the steady‐state. The overall impact of organisational forms on earnings and inequality may therefore be ambiguous, depending on the importance of learning.
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A new manufacturing plant has been installed in Solihull, UK, to manufacture the new Range Rover sports utility vehicle. An important aspect of the £80 million investment at the…
Abstract
A new manufacturing plant has been installed in Solihull, UK, to manufacture the new Range Rover sports utility vehicle. An important aspect of the £80 million investment at the site is a body‐in‐white assembly shop containing 123 robots, many of which are employed in multi‐tasking roles.
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The design and development of a computer‐based information system requires an understanding of the operating system of the computer. This knowledge helps in efficient file design…
Abstract
The design and development of a computer‐based information system requires an understanding of the operating system of the computer. This knowledge helps in efficient file design for optimal utilisation of disk space which results in increased system efficiency. This paper describes an Indian multi‐tasking/multi‐programming operating system called WDOS, especially its data‐structure and how an online, multi‐user bibliographic information storage and retrieval system has been developed under it utilising the knowledge of its operating system. A set of functional specifications drawn in consultation with users has guided the system development work. The system has been validated and successfully implemented. It has been found to be efficient in terms of response time and this may be attributed to its file design.
Image classification is becoming a supporting technology in several image-processing tasks. Due to rich semantic information contained in the images, it is very popular for an…
Abstract
Purpose
Image classification is becoming a supporting technology in several image-processing tasks. Due to rich semantic information contained in the images, it is very popular for an image to have several labels or tags. This paper aims to develop a novel multi-label classification approach with superior performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Many multi-label classification problems share two main characteristics: label correlations and label imbalance. However, most of current methods are devoted to either model label relationship or to only deal with unbalanced problem with traditional single-label methods. In this paper, multi-label classification problem is regarded as an unbalanced multi-task learning problem. Multi-task least-squares support vector machine (MTLS-SVM) is generalized for this problem, renamed as multi-label LS-SVM (ML2S-SVM).
Findings
Experimental results on the emotions, scene, yeast and bibtex data sets indicate that the ML2S-SVM is competitive with respect to the state-of-the-art methods in terms of Hamming loss and instance-based F1 score. The values of resulting parameters largely influence the performance of ML2S-SVM, so it is necessary for users to identify proper parameters in advance.
Originality/value
On the basis of MTLS-SVM, a novel multi-label classification approach, ML2S-SVM, is put forward. This method can overcome the unbalanced problem but also explicitly models arbitrary order correlations among labels by allowing multiple labels to share a subspace. In addition, the multi-label classification approach has a wider range of applications. That is to say, it is not limited to the field of image classification.
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Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose
Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings
The old joke about men not being able to multi‐task has become particularly tired and over‐worked of late. Coincidentally, during the last few years the need for workforces to be multi‐skilled has become far more widely discussed and mulled over. Multi‐tasking and being multi‐skilled are related but not quite the same thing, which if there's any truth in the joke, is just as well for men.
Practical implications
Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.
Social implications
Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that can have a broader social impact.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.
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