Search results

This paper aims to take a new look at how scenarios are produced and used. It does so from a perspective that is unusual in the field: network pragmatism.

This paper takes a conceptual approach.

A network pragmatist account allows scenarios to play an important role in actions designed to secure specific futures for organisations. It, thus, endows them with micro-political force. Any scenario that fails to exert this force will wither and, ultimately, die, but it can be resuscitated. With its demise in the networked world, a scenario can assume a more partial and private existence, shaping the affections, loyalties and actions of notable individuals.

This approach generates novel propositions that question the adequacy of currently dominant cognitive theories. However, it has yet to be tested empirically.

Pragmatist reading of scenarios that is proposed is not only distinct but also only ever partial. This work emphasises that a holistic account of scenario lives needs multiple theoretical perspectives.

Despite inauspicious circumstances, the European Commission embarked on an ambitious programme of management reform in 2000, and in 2003 the reform Progress Review claimed that it had been implemented. There is now a substantial body of literature examining the theory and practice of public management reform under different conditions. Using these models and an implementation matrix differentiating between types of reform action, this article analyses these claims. The findings suggest a considerable gap exists between reform rhetoric and the reality of its application.

Boredom is believed to be the common cause of workers' absenteeism, accidents, job dissatisfaction, and performance variations in manufacturing environments with repetitive jobs. Effectively measuring and possibly predicting job boredom is the key to the design and implementation of appropriate strategies to deal with such undesirable emotional state. The purpose of this paper is to present new methodologies to measure and predict human boredom at work.

Two series of mathematical formulations, linear and nonlinear, to describe the variation of human boredom at work are first presented. Given the complexity of human emotions, the authors also present a probabilistic framework based on state‐of‐the‐art Bayesian networks to model employees' boredom at work.

The proposed methods centre on the prediction and measurement of human boredom at work. They enable managers to take proactive actions to deal with human boredom at work. Examples of such actions are task rotation and job redesign.

The proposed methods are verified using a number of cases describing a set of phenomena that may occur in the real world. However, further research is required to demonstrate the validity of the models using real world data.

According to accessible literature, human boredom is being measured by self reporting scales thus far. This study describes and demonstrates analytical approaches to model human boredom at work.