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Knowledge workers live and work in a technology-enabled, push-notification world full of interruptions that create information overload, often requiring these workers to utilize task switching as a mechanism to meet multiple competing tasks' demands. Previous research has examined both the positive and, more often, negative effects from interruptions and task switching on knowledge workers' performance. However, this paper aims to examine knowledge workers' agentic approach to managing interruption signals and consequent task switching to remain dedicated to the task at hand.

Using an inductive grounded theory approach, we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews with knowledge workers regarding their experiences with task management strategies in interruption-heavy environments.

The results indicate the emergence of a new construct that we define as “task adherence.” We identified behavioral and technological mechanisms that knowledge workers employ to adhere to tasks, and we also categorized a host of environmental, personal and task-related factors that influence a knowledge worker's task adherence level.

This study offers a novel conceptualization of key determinants of knowledge workers' task management. Through insights into how knowledge workers purposefully prepare for and address potential interruption signals, as well as manage task switching from subsequent interruptions, managers may be able to design new work processes to improve task performance.

In a world of interruptions, task adherence adds to and clarifies a missing element in the time and task management dilemma that can enhance future efforts in designing strategies that enable knowledge workers to be more productive.

This paper aims to investigate how graduates’ perceptions of self-service technology and perceived job performance can be used to assess university service quality. Also, this study examines the mediating role of perceived job performance on the effect of university service quality on graduates’ satisfaction and loyalty.

A quantitative methodology was adopted where university graduates’ perceptions of self-service technology and job performance were used to assess the level of the university’s service quality. Through a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 280 university graduates employed in Chinhoyi town, Zimbabwe, during the period between August and December 2021.

This study’s findings indicate that self-service technology influences university service quality which in turn impacts on graduates’ perceived job performance, satisfaction and loyalty. Graduates' perceived job performance was also found to partially mediate the effect of university service quality on satisfaction and loyalty among graduates.

This study’s results are instrumental to enable university’s management in developing economies to adopt and improve self-service technologies as this enhances university service quality and graduates’ perceived job performance, satisfaction and loyalty.

This paper provides new insights, that is, the incorporation of graduates’ perceptions of self-service technology and job performance in assessing the university’s service quality. This research further clarifies the function of graduates’ perceived job performance in mediating the effect of university service quality on graduate satisfaction and loyalty. This study further adds to our understanding of tools, criteria and methods for assuring university service quality.

To identify competencies connecting personality, organizational orientations and self‐reported learning outcomes (as measured by concise Likert‐type scales), for individuals who are learning for their organizations.

Five concise factor scales were constructed to represent aspects of personality. Three further concise factor scales were constructed to represent orientation towards managers' roles and behaviour, orientation towards employees' roles and behaviours and self‐reported learning outcomes. The eight‐factor sub‐scales were combined in a 47‐item Likert‐type instrument. A total of 170 individuals, in ten separate groups, provided factor scores that were analysed using principal components analysis.

Analysis revealed four competencies related to the eight factor scales in the mindset of individuals. They are: aptness, art, adherence, and adventure.

The study was conducted mainly with university respondents from the UK only, which may limit its usefulness elsewhere. Future research is proposed to confirm or refute the existence and validity of the four competencies.

The four competencies explain the relation between personality, organizational orientations and self‐reported learning outcomes and hence can be used to improve learning for the work organization.

This study has provided a further insight and explanation of some dispositional and situational factors connected with workplace learning. The 4A model of workplace learning is introduced.

Frontline workers (FLWs) constitute a critical part of the implementation cadre within public policies, serving a significant role in the last-mile delivery of public goods and services. FLWs under public programs in low and middle-income countries like India are offered different compensation structures that range from full-time salaries, piece rate honorariums, contractual engagements, to no remuneration. Whilst the rationale for offering different compensations vary, are certain structures more successful in encouraging FLWs to perform a prosocial task? Further, can certain structures encourage FLWs to perform beyond the incentivized policy mandate?

Investigating workers' prosocial effort within policy implementation, the authors conducted a randomized lab-in-the-field inquiry with 344 Anganwadi-based workers (workers under the nutrition policy) in western India. These FLWs were engaged to perform a novel real-effort task that was tied to different incentive structures and their performance was adjudged based on measurable quantity, effort and quality parameters.

Results demonstrate that uncompensated workers invest the greatest amount of effort whilst compromising on task quality, and vice-versa for subjects receiving pay-for-performance compensation. Programs must account for policy focus when offering compensations: volunteer engagement may be counterproductive for quality focus and to the adherence to ancillary task mandates like nature/quality of beneficiary interaction. On the other hand, the distribution of products (like health goods) can rely on volunteer effort.

The study brings together various compensation schemes operating at the field level, under one study using an LFE methodology within the context of policy implementation in India.

This study uses ethnographic data from two diabetes clinics to examine how some organizational features of medical settings are connected to the daily cognitive and interactional work of medical providers – specifically, the process of assessing patient adherence and using such assessments to make treatment decisions. I address continuity of care, scheduling and time constraints, team management, provider interaction, and medical recordkeeping as organizational-level issues that impact individual-level providers’ work. More than a top-down model of how “macro” influences “micro,” this study highlights how organizational influences are accounted for in terms of variation in patients’ behavior.

There is a paucity of research into high-performing virtual teams. This study aims to design and test a model of virtual team performance and to produce a profile of high-performing teams.

The main constructs found to have influenced virtual team performance in business were trustworthiness, commitment, communication characteristics, cross-cultural communication style and structure effects. New or revised scales to measure these and a new performance measure, based on five performance criteria, were developed. A research model was designed and tested, and a profile of high-performance teams produced. The sample from a global telecoms company comprised 108 global virtual teams. Two senior managers rated performance independently.

Hierarchical regression results explained 75.7 per cent of the variance of performance. Analysis of variance revealed that model fit was highly statistically significant. Trustworthiness was identified as the predominant factor, explaining a majority of the dependent variable’s variance, while interpersonal communication, commitment and cross-cultural communication style were also identified as important. The 52 items differentiating high- and low-performing teams are reported and discussed.

The research model makes a contribution to team performance theory and understanding, especially the relative importance of constructs for explaining performance. The profile of high-performing teams adds greatly to our knowledge and provides valuable guidance for team management, selection and development.

Sociological research on work and job authority, while most often highlighting the material implications of workplace status, has largely overlooked the implications of experiential aspects of work for broader orientations toward the social world including, most poignantly, stratification beliefs. Building on classic and contemporary statements regarding the centrality of workplace experiences, and utilizing data from the 2012 General Social Survey, we analyze job authority specifically and its consequences for general beliefs surrounding inequality. Results, which account for a variety of other status attributes and material benefits of employment, demonstrate how authority tasks, especially in concert with authority tenure, shape traditionally conservative ideological stances, specifically: (1) restrictive support for socioeconomic redistributive policy, and; (2) perceptions of the functional necessity of socioeconomic inequality. These patterns are robust in the face of controls, though tend to be stronger among Whites and private sector workers compared to African American and public sector workers. Our findings inform inequality scholarship by highlighting the significance of workplace experiences for stratification worldviews and arguably support for redistributive policy. They also extend the sociology of work literature by relating how workplace experiences are carried into the broader social world.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a typology of customer value cocreation activities and explore the psychological drivers and quality of life outcomes of such activities in a complex health care service setting.

Focus groups with people with Type 2 diabetes and in-depth interviews with diabetes educators were conducted.

Four types of customer value cocreation activities were found (mandatory (customer), mandatory (customer or organization), voluntary in-role and voluntary extra-role activities). In addition, health locus of control, self-efficacy, optimism, regulatory focus and expected benefits are identified as key psychological factors underlying the customers’ motivation to be active resource integrators and resulting in physical, psychological, existential and social well-being.

The study highlights the various types of customer value cocreation activities and how these affect the various quality of life dimensions.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.