Search results

To provide a conceptual framework for understanding the role of organizational control in the context of remote work arrangements.

The framework has been developed drawing on two distinct research streams. Existing frameworks on remote work arrangements enabled to identify relevant dimensions to include in our framework, namely drivers of adoption and outcomes of implementation. They also evidenced the importance of opening up the remote work implementation process addressing crucial management issues, notably organizational control. On the basis of extant organizational research we deconstructed the complexity of organizational control in its constituent elements and identified mechanisms of control enactment over time.

The framework links the dynamics of change in organizational control initiated by the adoption of remote work arrangements with its antecedents (drivers of adoption and characteristics of the remote work model) and implementation outcomes at individual, group and organizational level. It opens the implementation stage focusing on the dynamics of organizational control and clarifies its role when the organization decides to adopt remote working.

The framework assumes that organizational control is not a static entity but a process of mutual constitution between structures of controls and actions enacted over time by both managers and employees (remote workers and on-site colleagues). It shows the value of a process perspective that emphasizes time mechanisms underlying changes in organizational control of remote work. Moreover, it constitutes a valuable reference guide to interpret in an integrated way existing research on the issue and identify inconsistencies in empirical findings, relevant gaps and opportunities for future research.

This study's purpose is to explore the difference in employee voice behavior along with its modalities and employee perceived control in a remote vs an in-office work situation.

Employees who worked remotely and in-person at a local municipal government in the Great Lakes Region of the United States were surveyed.

Findings suggest voice behavior and perceived control are stable attitudes and not impacted by a move from in-person to remote work. Participants indicated both Zoom staff meetings and Zoom one-to-one meetings with their supervisor were important; however, only Zoom one-to-one meetings with the supervisor were indicated to be satisfactory.

This study suggests that organizations considering moving some of their operations to a fully remote work situation would not experience differences in employee voice or perceived control. Implications related to utilizing specific communication modalities are also discussed.

This is the only study that focuses on differences in employee voice, its modalities and perceived control comparing in-person vs remote work.

This paper aims to present a novel modular design framework for the haptic teleoperation of single-master/multiple-slave (SM/MS) systems with cooperating manipulators.

The user commands the remote-leader robot and the slave remote robot follows the leader in a leader–follower formation. The remote-slave is purely force-controlled. A virtual model of the remote environment is introduced between the local and remote environments through simulation software. Locally generated motion inputs are transmitted to the remote environment through the virtual model. A haptic coupling is designed in the virtual environment and the haptic feedback is transmitted to the user along with the forces measured in the remote environment. The controllers proposed in this work are experimentally evaluated with experienced and inexperienced users.

The proposed haptic interaction model contributes to the total force feedback and smoothens the high-frequency signals occurring at the physical interaction in the remote environment. Experimental results show that the implemented controllers including the proposed haptic interaction improve the teleoperation performances in terms of trajectory tracking. Furthermore, pure force control of the remote-slave is shown to enhance the robustness of the teleoperation against external disturbances. Satisfactory teleoperation performances are observed with both experienced and inexperienced users.

The proposed SM/MS teleoperation system involves a multi-purpose virtual simulator and a purely force-controlled remote-slave manipulator in a modular cooperative configuration. The uniquely defined structure of the proposed haptic coupling is used in modeling the interaction between the local and remote manipulators on the one hand, and between cooperating remote manipulators on the other.

Despite the increasing popularity and interest in remote pointing devices such as Wii remote controllers, there have been few studies that find and evaluate the users' psychological aspects of technology acceptance. This study uses the technology acceptance model (TAM) framework with the two external variables of perceived mobility and control.

The authors conducted an experiment with 409 participants to test the research model and employed structural equation modelling as the analysis method.

The results show that perceived mobility and control were significant determinants of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Moreover, perceived usefulness is significantly influenced by perceived ease of use and, further, perceived usefulness and ease of use played a significant role in affecting the attitude towards the technology. Finally, the results also reveal that attitude and perceived usefulness positively influence the intention to use the remote pointing device.

This paper is of value to researchers, engineers and designers designing and developing remote pointing technologies and their devices for use in our society.

The purpose of this paper is to develop user friendly software with the minimum error and maximum performance in a form of remote sensing satellites evaluation software for estimation of weights and ranks of the remote sensing satellite plans, to decrease risk of management decisions.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) as a comprehensive framework for strategic decision making is used to arrive at the weights of criteria and sub‐criteria of remote sensing satellites. The Ms‐Access software is written to compute the ranks of the remote sensing satellite plans based on the relative weights of inputs and then, the outputs from AHP are shown as a numerical graph and generates the Ms‐Access database.

One of the main objectives of this paper is an attempt to access this skill that compare several remote sensing satellite plans on quantity and quality point of view by several effective criteria such as mass, power consumption and cost of satellites, in addition to the remote sensing subsystem, communication subsystem, telemetry, tracking and control subsystem, attitude determination control subsystem and their own sub‐criteria.

It is hard in just one paper, to gather lots of information about remote sensing satellite systems, use a new methodology that is unknown for aerospace engineering, and talk about an innovative software.

This paper provides helpful evaluating software which has a data bank that it is very useful and impartial advice for space strategy's managing organization to compare several plans.

This study provides low cost, time‐saving, and high‐performance remote sensing satellite evaluation software and gives valuable information and guidelines which help management decisions of aerospace organization.

The study aims to investigate the effects of a remote energy management service to the energy consumption of retail buildings. The study focuses on analysing the changes in energy consumption after the implementation of a facility service concept where building processes are optimized with a remote energy management system. The paper seeks to demonstrate that remotely operated building management practices, which allow high competence service for all facilities, have a positive impact, beyond traditional facility services, on energy and environmental performance of buildings.

The research analyses the metered energy consumption of two retail building portfolios comprising altogether 44 properties. Additionally, secondary data are collected from archive reviews, observation and interviews.

The research shows that remote energy management service reduced the total energy consumption during the two-year service period by 12 and 6 per cent depending on the portfolio. Electricity consumption was found to decrease by 7 per cent and heating energy by 26 per cent on the average in the first portfolio, and 7 and 4 per cent in the second one, respectively.

Variation between buildings was found to be relatively high as the individual characteristics and history of the different buildings inevitably affect the achieved results.

The study indicates that remote energy management offers an effective means to reduce the energy consumption and costs, and ultimately climate impacts derived from buildings.

The study adds to the knowledge of facilities management in context to energy management and environmental performance of buildings.

The authors examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working, triggered by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, on management control (MC) practices in professional service firms (PSFs). In addition, employee responses to these changes are explored.

The authors carried out a field study of MC changes in PSFs in Italy, the first country in Europe that was severely impacted by COVID-19. Interviews with PSF employees form the primary data source. Pattern matching was used to identify similarities and differences and investigate how employees respond to the MC changes.

As a response to the shift to remote working, managers at PSFs made various MC-related changes. For instance, they increased the number of online meetings and made use of technologies to monitor employees from a distance. Employees reacted to this by engaging in “voluntary visibilizing practices”, i.e. by trying to make sure they got noted by their superiors, for instance by doing overtime. In addition, collected evidence suggests increased stress levels among employees, changes to employee autonomy, changed perceptions of hierarchies and a weakened sense of relatedness with others in the organization.

This is one of the first studies to examine the impact of the sudden shift to remote working on MC. In addition, this paper contributes by exploring employee responses to the MC-related changes. The findings add to the growing literature on MC and motivation, and the notion of voluntary visibilizing practices is mobilized to warn against over-commitment and self-exploitation.

Internet‐based robotic systems have received much attention in recent years. A number of design issues are essential for designing this new type of robotic systems. This paper addresses the Internet time delay, the user interface design and concurrent user access for an Internet‐enabled arm robot. The implementation and application of the Internet‐enabled arm robot in an open control laboratory has been illustrated as a case study.

The major objectives of this study are the engineering development and the structural analysis with finite element method (FEM) of a refrigerated container having a passive equipment and a remote control system to carry both fresh (+4°C÷±1°C) and frozen (−18°C÷−20°C) goods. The purpose of this paper is to offer some solutions to the many disadvantages of using phase change material (PCM) to refrigerate the insulated container for transporting both fresh and frozen goods.

In order to transport both fresh products (+4°C÷±1°C) and frozen products (−18°C÷−20°C), the PCM elements are filled with one eutectic liquid only, so as to avoid problems related to filling and emptying the eutectic plates, and to plate corrosion. Moreover, specially shaped air ducts and a cool flow control system are designed to maintain a uniform circulation of cool air and constant humidity values. All the structures of the container are correctly designed by means of FEM calculations to assure that all the structural, safety standards parameters are satisfied.

An innovative refrigerated container with PCM and a remote control system used to transport both fresh (+4°C÷±1°C) and frozen (−18°C÷−20°C) products, in which it is possible to maintain the temperature values for almost seven days, has been considered here. Many disadvantages due to the use of PCM have been eliminated. It is possible to maintain a uniform circulation cool air and humidity values within the design parameters by means of fans; moreover, this container is light and environmentally friendly. All structures of the container are designed using FEM.

This paper presents a refrigerated container with passive equipment and a remote control system to carry both fresh (+4°C÷±1°C) and frozen (−18°C÷−20°C) goods in which it is possible to maintain the temperature values necessary for almost seven days. The container is equipped with a remote control system powered by photovoltaic panels which works in real time, is capable of giving information about the environmental parameters set in it and monitors the state of products by means of a network of sensors. Furthermore, the remote control system can send information about the position of the container to a remote control centre. The relevant structural conditions are numerically (FEM) evaluated and reported.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organisations to transform face-to-face teams into virtual ones through the adoption of remote working modes. This event has represented the starting point of a process that is changing how management control (MC) systems are designed and implemented to guide employees towards organisational objectives. The previous literature on virtual teams (VTs) has devoted scant attention to MC issues. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how MC – and particularly cultural control – has changed to cope with the shift from face-to-face to VTs and by analysing the interrelationship between the different control mechanisms and the resulting tensions.

The research adopts the methodological framework based on abduction to provide a theoretical explanation and conceptualisation of MC in virtual settings. To tackle the research objective, this work undertakes a cross-sectional field study based on semi-structured interviews with managers of different service companies.

The results of the research highlight the key challenges that managers are called to deal with to design and change MC systems when implementing remote working. In particular, managers must cope with the reduced possibility to leverage cultural controls. To do this, this study’s analysis found that managers act by introducing and/or removing formal and informal controls and by orchestrating the interplays and tensions between these mechanisms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, to date limited attention has been paid to MC in VTs. Moreover, few researchers have investigated the process of MC change from face-to-face to VTs. This work aims to contribute to this nascent stream of literature by providing interesting implications for both research and practice.