Caring or not caring for coworkers? An empirical exploration of the dilemma of care allocation in the workplace

Organization and management researchers praise the value of care in the workplace. However, they overlook the conflict between caring for work and for coworkers, which resonates with the dilemma of care allocation highlighted by ethicists of care. Through an in-depth qualitative study of two organizations, we examine how this dilemma is confronted in everyday organizational life. We draw on the concept of boundary work to explain how employees negotiate the boundary of their caring responsibilities in ways that grants or denies care to coworkers. We argue that the possibility of an ethics of care for coworkers requires boundary work that suspends the separation of personal and professional selves and constitutes the worker as a whole person. We contribute to research on care in organizations by showing how care for coworkers may be enabled or undermined by maintaining or suppressing the care allocation dilemma

How to Construct an Ideal Collaboration Tool for Coworking Spaces: An SP-CBC Application

Coworking spaces both require and foster communication and collaboration among members and providers’ staff as well as between members and providers. A variety of tools, denominated Workstream Collaboration software, seeks to fulfill this purpose. We show how a single-product choicebased conjoint (SP-CBC) approach can be used to develop an ideal Workstream Collaboration tool. 300 coworking spaces in Germany were used for data collection. The application shows the viability of the proposed approach and highlights the importance of an applications’ dissemination, modern security standards, and a plurality of collaborative instruments. We find network effects to be a tool’s critical feature. Communication functionality, surprisingly, seems to play only a subordinate role

Designing to Support Workspace Awareness in Remote Collaboration using 2D Interactive Surfaces

Increasing distributions of the global workforce are leading to collaborative workamong remote coworkers. The emergence of such remote collaborations is essentiallysupported by technology advancements of screen-based devices ranging from tabletor laptop to large displays. However, these devices, especially personal and mobilecomputers, still suffer from certain limitations caused by their form factors, that hinder supporting workspace awareness through non-verbal communication suchas bodily gestures or gaze. This thesis thus aims to design novel interfaces andinteraction techniques to improve remote coworkers’ workspace awareness throughsuch non-verbal cues using 2D interactive surfaces.The thesis starts off by exploring how visual cues support workspace awareness infacilitated brainstorming of hybrid teams of co-located and remote coworkers. Basedon insights from this exploration, the thesis introduces three interfaces for mobiledevices that help users maintain and convey their workspace awareness with their coworkers. The first interface is a virtual environment that allows a remote person to effectively maintain his/her awareness of his/her co-located collaborators’ activities while interacting with the shared workspace. To help a person better express his/her hand gestures in remote collaboration using a mobile device, the second interfacepresents a lightweight add-on for capturing hand images on and above the device’sscreen; and overlaying them on collaborators’ device to improve their workspace awareness. The third interface strategically leverages the entire screen space of aconventional laptop to better convey a remote person’s gaze to his/her co-locatedcollaborators. Building on the top of these three interfaces, the thesis envisions an interface that supports a person using a mobile device to effectively collaborate with remote coworkers working with a large display.Together, these interfaces demonstrate the possibilities to innovate on commodity devices to offer richer non-verbal communication and better support workspace awareness in remote collaboration

Developing communication tools for resource management in western Alaska: an evaluation of the Western Alaska Landscape Conservation Cooperative coastal projects database

Master's Project (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Science communication is an essential component in decision-making for resource management in Alaska. This field aids in bridging knowledge gaps between scientists and diverse stakeholders. In 2014, the Western Alaska LCC developed a database cataloging the current coastal change projects in order to facilitate collaboration amongst researchers, managers, and the surrounding communities. In order to better inform similar outreach projects in other LCC regions, this MNRM project entailed an evaluation of this database between April and September 2016 and comprised a ten-question phone interview with the database participants and other involved personnel. Results from this evaluation can help refine the database to better suit its users' needs in the future, and it can also inform the creation of similar tools in other LCC regions. This project evaluated the use and usability of the Western Alaska LCC Coastal Change Database. First, I review coastal change and its impacts on Western Alaska. Next, I explore how institutions can respond to these changes and what resources they can use, including decision-support tools. I then provide examples of different decision-support tools (both in academic literature and in Alaskan projects) and discuss methodologies for evaluating their use. Interview results are then reported. The evaluation of the WALCC Coastal Change Database indicated that the tool was mostly used to enhance general understanding of the research occurring in the region. Respondents were less likely to use it for time-intensive tasks such as collaboration. Respondents also indicated that a place exists for tools like this database to flourish, but they need 1) persistent outreach, 2) a dynamic design, and 3) immediate benefits for users' time. In the future, regular updates and frequent outreach could improve the database's usability and help maintain its credibility

Leaders who care: Exploring empathy as an essential trait in 21st century corporate leadership

In a field dominated by eclectic leadership styles, leaders have the capacity to influence worker experiences and organizational outcomes. This study examines particular leadership traits that may influence the overall organizational environment. Specifically, the study proposes that empathy is significant for effective leadership. Eighteen leaders in various industries participated in semi-structured interviews regarding their practices and perspectives. The results delineate a compilation of emergent themes as well as data findings regarding specific areas of inquiry. Five major categories were found regarding empathy as an aspect of 21st century leadership: industry-based perspectives, generational demographics, technology, employees as people first and workers second, and the link between empathy and productivity. Additionally, four major categories were found in regards to how empathy is established in organizational culture: training programs/workshops, organizational success measures, daily communication habits/interaction, and work activities/traditions. The results indicate that empathy is an essential trait for 21st century leadership and beyond

Driving the Use of Enterprise Social Media at Work: A Framework for Employees’ Adoption

More and more organizations are using enterprise social media (ESM) to improve the efficiency of communication and collaboration. Although many studies have tried to investigate employees’ adoption of this technology, most only provide limited insights and fail to capture the differences between ESM and other information systems used in organizations. In this article, we introduce a framework for enterprise social media adoption at the individual level. Our framework is based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and enterprise social media affordances. It is necessary to divide employees’ usage behavior into three types: not use, contribute, and lurk. We propose that the affordances initiate new types of factors that drive the three types of employees’ usage behavior differently

Managers\u27 Resistance to Supervising Teleworking Employees

Telework allows employees to perform work tasks in any location using information communication technology. Though organizations and employees can benefit from teleworking arrangements in many ways, most managers implemented teleworking relatively slowly prior to the COVID-19 quarantine. Research suggests managers avoided supervising remotely based on a lack of trust for remote employee productivity, a lack of technology self-efficacy, and their perceptions of organizational support and politics. Pandemic COVID-19 quarantine conditions in March 2020 required most organizations to mandate teleworking for all employees whose work could be performed remotely and simultaneously mandated teleworking supervision for managers. This narrative inquiry aimed to explore managers’ experiences with mandated teleworking supervision and contribute to a deeper understanding of effective teleworking supervision practices. The conceptual framework for the study included the job demandsresources and conservation of resources theories. Three midlevel managers (between 5- and 12- years managerial experience managing at least three employees simultaneously and no remote supervisory experience before the COVID-19 related mandate) shared their experiences during three loosely structured interviews with each participant. Transcripts of the interviews formed the foundation for the collaborative creation of field texts with the researcher. Combined with the field texts, reflexive journaling was utilized to identify and explore possible threads influential to remote supervision, forming the discussion of findings and recommendations. Identified themes included the need for quantifiable performance expectations and indicators when supervising remotely working employees, managers’ technology self-efficacy and confidence, and consistent organizational remote working policies. Suggestions for future research to enhance the supports organizations provide for effective remotely working employees included exploration of gender- v based self-efficacy/self-confidence influences and successful experiences of additional hierarchical levels of management (executive or front-line supervisors)

Smart Vehicle Proxemics: A Conceptual Framework Operationalizing Proxemics in the Context of Outside-the-Vehicle Interactions

We introduce smart vehicle proxemics, a conceptual framework for interactive vehicular applications that operationalizes proxemics to outside-the-vehicle interactions. We identify four zones around the vehicle affording different kinds of interactions and discuss the corresponding conceptual space along three dimensions (physical distance, interaction paradigm, and goal). We study the dimensions of this framework and synthesize our findings regarding drivers’ preferences for (i) information to obtain from their vehicles at a distance, (ii) system functions of their vehicles to control remotely, and (iii) devices (e.g., smartphones, smartglasses, smart key fobs) for interactions outside the vehicle. We discuss the positioning of smart vehicle proxemics in the context of proxemic interactions more generally, and expand on the dichotomy and complementarity of outside-the-vehicle and inside-the-vehicle interactions for new applications enabled by smart vehicle proxemics