Exploring Churn and Alignment between Retention and Occupational Culture as Perceived by Professional Truck Drivers

Despite advances in logistics software and increased driver pay, the trucking industry continues a historic wave of human capital risks in the form of driver turnover and driver shortages. Previous efforts to understand the phenomenon of driver turnover rely heavily on supply chain, transportation, and logistics based disciplines. The current study provides a human capital ontology towards understanding professional truck driver perceptions. Within the interpretive framework of pragmatism, the study applied a simultaneous ethnographic and phenomenological research design to explore the phenomenon of churn and professional truck driver perceptions of environmental alignment between trucking industry retention strategies and the occupational needs and culture of professional truck drivers. Perceived environmental alignment reduces barriers with external social and cultural institutions while facilitating improved organizational performance and individual performance and behavior. The study provides a network model of the occupational culture of professional truck drivers. The study found the occupational culture, cognitive and normative dimensions form the occupational needs of professional truck drivers. The study further found environmental alignment and environmental misalignment exists between trucking industry retention strategies and the occupational needs and culture of professional truck drivers. The study concluded that although the phenomenon of churn exists, the phenomenon is not an attribute of nor promulgated by the occupational culture of professional truck drivers. The study’s findings of strategies environmentally aligned with occupational needs and culture of professional truck drivers, could serve as the foundation for improving industry and individual driver performance beyond retention. The study’s conceptualization of the trucking industry as a population ecology and professional truck drivers as a culture sharing group, advances research of human capital risks at a collective or industry level. Finally, alignment between human capital strategies and occupational cultures has the potential to improve performance across industries and occupations beyond the trucking industry

User expectations of partial driving automation capabilities and their effect on information design preferences in the vehicle

Partially automated vehicles present interface design challenges in ensuring the driver remains alert should the vehicle need to hand back control at short notice, but without exposing the driver to cognitive overload. To date, little is known about driver expectations of partial driving automation and whether this affects the information they require inside the vehicle. Twenty-five participants were presented with five partially automated driving events in a driving simulator. After each event, a semi-structured interview was conducted. The interview data was coded and analysed using grounded theory. From the results, two groupings of driver expectations were identified: High Information Preference (HIP) and Low Information Preference (LIP) drivers; between these two groups the information preferences differed. LIP drivers did not want detailed information about the vehicle presented to them, but the definition of partial automation means that this kind of information is required for safe use. Hence, the results suggest careful thought as to how information is presented to them is required in order for LIP drivers to safely using partial driving automation. Conversely, HIP drivers wanted detailed information about the system's status and driving and were found to be more willing to work with the partial automation and its current limitations. It was evident that the drivers' expectations of the partial automation capability differed, and this affected their information preferences. Hence this study suggests that HMI designers must account for these differing expectations and preferences to create a safe, usable system that works for everyone. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Pair programming and the re-appropriation of individual tools for collaborative software development

Although pair programming is becoming more prevalent in software development, and a number of reports have been written about it [10] [13], few have addressed the manner in which pairing actually takes place [12]. Even fewer consider the methods used to manage issues such as role change or the communication of complex issues. This paper highlights the way resources designed for individuals are re-appropriated and augmented by pair programmers to facilitate collaboration. It also illustrates that pair verbalisations can augment the benefits of the collocated team, providing examples from ethnographic studies of pair programmers 'in the wild'

The Usefulness of a Simulated Environment in Ethnographic Research for Gaming and HCI

Ethnography is now a widely used research method in information systems and gaming. It is one of the most in-depth research methods that can capture people’s feelings, behavior and opinions by the researcher getting immersed in the study. The main aspect of the research method is gathering the data by being in the ‘field’, gaining a deep insight by participating and observing the culture being studied. The authors have replaced the ‘field’ with simulated environments, and although this would tend to infer a less rich or truthful ethnographic study (from a purist’s perspective), they reflect on the usefulness in the context of two ongoing research studies. A Simulated Gaming Environment is proving to offer a suitably ‘real’ experience for the first author’s research, and a driving simulator is the only option for the second

The Influence of Public Policy Interventions on Millennial Distracted Driving Behavior

Despite recent public policy initiatives limiting or banning forms of distracted driving resultant from cellular phone use, crashes remain on the rise. Individuals from the millennial generation, ages 16 to 35, appear to be most susceptible to distracted driving. Understanding the behaviors, attitudes, and habits of millennials is critical to developing effective policy for behavior change. A dual task ethnographic study framed by Skinner\u27s theory of behavior modification and Maslow\u27s hierarchy of needs motivational model, was used to investigate to what extent millennials feel public policy has influenced their driving, and if additional policy initiatives are required to deter distracted driving behavior. Two phases of inquiry, first, naturalistic observation, and then focus group were conducted at a commuter university. Distracted driving behaviors including hand held cellular phone use, eating, drinking, and passenger interaction of 100 drivers entering or exiting campus were observed, tracked, and analyzed using a researcher-developed tracking form. Eighty-four percent exhibited at least one distracted driving behavior. After which, 12 enrolled and licensed students, aged 18-35, were recruited via social media for two focus group discussions. Focus group data were inductively coded and analyzed using semantical attribution analysis. The students revealed that millennial drivers felt distracted driving policy did not address behaviors they see as worthy of intervention, they did not perceive that cellular phone use while driving posed a significant threat, and they felt current law was difficult to enforce with penalties they regarded as non-prohibitive. Social change implications include improved distracted driving public policy, which may result in driving behavior changes and a potential reduction of death, injury, and property loss

Challenges in Developing Applications for Aging Populations

Elderly individuals can greatly benefit from the use of computer applications, which can assist in monitoring health conditions, staying in contact with friends and family, and even learning new things. However, developing accessible applications for an elderly user can be a daunting task for developers. Since the advent of the personal computer, the benefits and challenges of developing applications for older adults have been a hot topic of discussion. In this chapter, the authors discuss the various challenges developers who wish to create applications for the elderly computer user face, including age-related impairments, generational differences in computer use, and the hardware constraints mobile devices pose for application developers. Although these challenges are concerning, each can be overcome after being properly identified

Affordances, constraints and information flows as ‘leverage points’ in design for sustainable behaviour

Copyright @ 2012 Social Science Electronic PublishingTwo of Donella Meadows' 'leverage points' for intervening in systems (1999) seem particularly pertinent to design for sustainable behaviour, in the sense that designers may have the scope to implement them in (re-)designing everyday products and services. The 'rules of the system' -- interpreted here to refer to affordances and constraints -- and the structure of information flows both offer a range of opportunities for design interventions to in fluence behaviour change, and in this paper, some of the implications and possibilities are discussed with reference to parallel concepts from within design, HCI and relevant areas of psychology

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE ELECTRIC CAR CHARGING ‘SMART’?

In this paper, we argue that the electrification of cars is not simply a move from fossil fuel to electric energy. It also integrates the car into the household energy system in ways that challenge assumptions that car charging is made ‘smart’ primarily through AI-powered app-based digital services that help the user to make energy-, and cost-efficient decisions in terms of when to charge the car. As we will demonstrate in this paper, our design ethnographic study of how nine households learn to charge their cars according to their family routines and values shows how smart charging is not merely due to specific technological features. Instead, charging habits evolve through anticipatory experiences of what smart technologies come to mean to family members through their use. Based on our research, we recommend a smart charging service design that affords multi-operation ability, co-learning ability and social accessibility

Conflict in Organizations

{Excerpt} Michael Cohen, James March, and Johan Olsen9 have developed an influential, agent-based representation of organizational decision-making processes. They submit that organizations are—at least in part and part of the time—distinguished by three general properties: (i) problematic preferences, (ii) unclear technology, and (iii) fluid participation. Citing, “Although organizations can often be viewed conveniently as vehicles for solving well-defined problems or structures within which conflict is resolved through bargaining, they also provide sets of procedures through which participants arrive at an interpretation of what they are doing and what they have done while in the process of doing it. From this point of view, an organization is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work.” Decision opportunities characterized by problematic preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation, viz., ambiguous stimuli, generate three possible outcomes, each driven by the energy it requires within the confines of organizational structure. These outcomes, whose meaning changes over time, are resolution, oversight, and flight. Significantly, resolution of problems as a style for making decisions is not the most common; in its place, decision making by flight or oversight is the feature. Is it any wonder then that the relatively complicated intermeshing of elements does not enable organizations to resolve problems as often as their mandates demand