Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic and systematic understanding of a fundamental issue within open plan office designs: the sustainability of two extremely contrasting requirements, concentration and collaboration, in the same workspace and work environment at a given time. A literature review is presented, along with initial suggestions for potential improvements in knowledge work organizations.

A thorough range of fields, including those outside the built environment, are investigated for their contribution to findings on distractions, especially auditory distractions and their impacts.

This research underpins the need for cost analysis of the impact that distractions have on knowledge workers. Provisions for appropriate and adaptable workspaces are needed to meet the dual needs of collaboration and concentration on complex tasks in order to maximize worker contribution and value.

Additional field research on improved workspace is needed to confirm the hypothesis of savings from reduced or adaptation from auditory distractions.

As knowledge work grows, the evaluation of workplace architecture and design must include analysis of the needs of knowledge workers. The sole consideration of cost savings in real estate and facilities ignores the tremendous cost of human capital. This reduces overall value and profitability of the organizations choosing to ignore the workspace needs of their workers.

The paper provides a new and original review of multi‐disciplinary research on the impact of distractions, especially auditory distractions, providing the groundwork for analysis of total costs of auditory distractions in the workplace.

Auditory and visual distractions originating in the workspace have been shown to negatively impact the performance of knowledge workers on complex tasks. The paper aims to theorize that an adaptable workspace (AW) can mitigate the negative impacts on performance.

A conceptual multi‐attribute utility model is presented to facilitate decision‐maker's choice between a static and an adaptable workspace. A mathematical model is presented to evaluate the net present value (NPV) of deploying AW in a knowledge organization. The significance of valuation model is an integration of costs of distractions into the NPV calculations. Negative impacts of distractions are modeled as performance costs. The model also captures the costs of deploying AW so that a comparative benefit of adopting AW over a static workspace is recognized.

The significant positive results for NPV justifies investments in AW over a standard open workspace with the exception for distraction‐free work environments. These calculations can be performed to compare a number of alternatives so that an informed decision is made for the type of a workspace to be designed.

Auditory and visual distractions originating from workspace surroundings are only part of the complete list of distractions in a workplace, but are considered for this model because these are cited as significant problems in knowledge organizations. The model variables are identified based on the existing literature; further development is proposed for future research.

Research to quantify the value of elimination of distractions can have practical and valuable applications for facility decision makers, architects, engineers, and knowledge organizations.

The aim of the paper is to shed light on the use of chitosans and chitooligosaccharides as biopreservatives in various foods animal. Foods of animal and aquatic origin (milk, meat, fish, eggs, sea foods, etc) become contaminated with a wide range of microorganisms (bacteria, molds and yeasts) during harvesting, transporting, processing, handling and storage operations. Due to the perishable nature of these foods, their preservation is of utmost importance. Though many synthetic chemicals are available, yet their use is quite restricted due to their hazardous effects on human health.

Within the domain of food industry, traditionally chitosan is used for biopreservation of foods, which is well known for its nutritional and medicinal properties in human nutrition. However, chitooligosaccharides also possess a number of nutraceutical and health promoting properties in addition to their preservative effect and shelf-life extension of foods. In this study, the comparative effects of both chitosan and chitooligosaccharides on preservation of foods of animal and aquatic origin have been summarized.

Though chitosan has been extensively studied in various foods, yet the use of chitooligosaccharides has been relatively less explored. Chitooligosaccharides are bioactive molecules generated from chitosan and have several advantages over the traditional use of chitosan both in food products and on human health. But unfortunately, little or no literature is available on the use of chitooligosaccharides for preservation of some of the foods of animal origin. Notable examples in this category include cheese, beef, pork, chicken, fish, sea foods, etc.

This paper focuses on the effects of chitosans and chitooligosaccharides on the processing and storage quality of foods of animal and aquatic origin, which offers a promising future for the development of functional foods.