What Does Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Chester I. Barnard Have to Do With Quiet Quitting?

Media sources have blended aspects of social loafing with aspects of the free rider problem which they now call “quiet quitting.” Social loafing is decades old theory from the social psychology literature, used to explain why individuals work less hard in groups. The free rider problem is a theory, mainly from economics, that explains the insatiable desire of people who do not contribute to the cost of production for goods and services which they consume. Employees’ perceptions of a firm’s social contract inform their understanding of psychological contracts, and inevitably their interpretation of fairness in job descriptions. Managers who understand Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Social Contract” and Chester I. Barnard’s “Theory of Authority” will be better able to anticipate and mitigate against the collective will of employees. In this article, we present three recommendations that, if implemented correctly, will help managers resolve problems leading to quiet quitting

CommuniSense: Crowdsourcing Road Hazards in Nairobi

Nairobi is one of the fastest growing metropolitan cities and a major business and technology powerhouse in Africa. However, Nairobi currently lacks monitoring technologies to obtain reliable data on traffic and road infrastructure conditions. In this paper, we investigate the use of mobile crowdsourcing as means to gather and document Nairobi's road quality information. We first present the key findings of a city-wide road quality survey about the perception of existing road quality conditions in Nairobi. Based on the survey's findings, we then developed a mobile crowdsourcing application, called CommuniSense, to collect road quality data. The application serves as a tool for users to locate, describe, and photograph road hazards. We tested our application through a two-week field study amongst 30 participants to document various forms of road hazards from different areas in Nairobi. To verify the authenticity of user-contributed reports from our field study, we proposed to use online crowdsourcing using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to verify whether submitted reports indeed depict road hazards. We found 92% of user-submitted reports to match the MTurkers judgements. While our prototype was designed and tested on a specific city, our methodology is applicable to other developing cities.Comment: In Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2015

Piecing Together Performance: Collaborative, Participatory Research-Through-Design for Better Diversity in Games

Digital games are a multi-billion-dollar industry whose production and consumption extend globally. Representation in games is an increasingly important topic. As those who create and consume the medium grow ever more diverse, it is essential that player or user-experience research, usability, and any consideration of how people interface with their technology is exercised through inclusive and intersectional lenses. Previous research has identified how character configuration interfaces preface white-male defaults [39, 40, 67]. This study relies on 1-on-1 play-interviews where diverse participants attempt to create “themselves” in a series of games and on group design activities to explore how participants may envision more inclusive character configuration interface design. Our interview findings describe specific points of tension in the process of creating characters in existing interfaces and the sketches participant-collaborators produced challenge the homogeneity of current interface designs. This project amplifies the perspective of diverse participant-collaborators to provide constructive implications and a series of principles for designing more inclusive character configuration interfaces, which support more diverse stories and gameworlds by reconfiguring the constraints that shape those stories and gameworlds

Piecing together performance: collaborative, participatory research-through-design for better diversity in games.

Digital games are a multi-billion-dollar industry whose production and consumption extend globally. Representation in games is an increasingly important topic. As those who create and consume the medium grow ever more diverse, it is essential that player or user-experience research, usability, and any consideration of how people interface with their technology is exercised through inclusive and intersectional lenses. Previous research has identified how character configuration interfaces preface white-male defaults. This study relies on 1-on-1 play-interviews where diverse participants attempt to create "themselves" in a series of games and on group design activities to explore how participants may envision more inclusive character configuration interface design. Our interview findings describe specific points of tension in the process of creating characters in existing interfaces and the sketches participant-collaborators produced challenge the homogeneity of current interface designs. This project amplifies the perspective of diverse participant-collaborators to provide constructive implications and a series of principles for designing more inclusive character configuration interfaces, which support more diverse stories and gameworlds by reconfiguring the constraints that shape those stories and gameworlds

Reactor development and process optimisation for the bioremediation of phenolic wastewaters by trametes species

In many service industries, the source of a company’s value has shifted from capital to knowledge and ideas, the quality of which is dependent on its employees (Wooldridge, 2006). In fact, human resources can be considered part of factor conditions which can positively impact on a firm’s competitive context. This impact can ultimately translate into improved financial results (Porter and Kramer, 2002). There is therefore a growing interest in ways to attract and retain talent. According to the managers of many big companies, well communicated corporate responsibility practices can improve staff attraction as well as retention rates by improving morale (CSRwire, 2002). To explore this, a small, creative company in Johannesburg which engages in charity work was selected as a case study, with the goal being to understand whether their culture of good deeds has a positive impact on staff wellbeing. While the owner of the company actively attempts to make the company an enjoyable place to work at, he appears to have initiated the philanthropic activities in a true spirit of giving, rather than with the motive of engaging staff in order to make more money. Nevertheless, the researcher’s investigative stance is that of an enlightened egoist, and the study focuses on the business case of giving being beneficial to the giver (ultimately the company) in the long term, as well as to the recipient. While the danger of suggesting that philanthropy could be instrumentalised is acknowledged (Morton, 2004), the investigation explores the possibility because such evidence could persuade other companies to become more socially concerned. Through a qualitative approach involving interviews, observation and analysis of video footage, it becomes apparent that there is clearly value for the staff in the charity work they do. Unfortunately the multiple initiatives undertaken to keep staff morale high at the company make it impossible to establish a clear link between the philanthropy and overall wellbeing, but as the study was conducted in the phenomenological paradigm the main concern was with understanding the experience of participants. However, an unexpected finding was that the employees derive great satisfaction from using their professional skills for charity work rather than just donating money to the charity. They feel that their skills uniquely position them to make significant changes to the lives of others, which gives them a sense of pride and achievement that they don’t necessarily experience in their ordinary activities at work. On the basis of this, it is recommended that companies look to involve staff with projects that require their specific expertise when evaluating philanthropic initiatives.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Science, Biochemistry, Microbiology and Biotechnology, 200

The Career Benefit of Having a “Good” Name

The impact of a person’s given name on their life and career success is often questioned. There is limited evidence linking names to long-term economic well-being, such as salaries. To address this gap, this study examined a salary dataset for Missouri State employees, investigating whether the origin of a given name influenced salaries. The study also explored how the interaction between name origins and gender affected salaries. The findings supported the association between names, particularly their origins, and an individual’s economic well-being. Additionally, the study revealed that name origins interacted with gender to impact inequity

Lessons Learned from the Canadian Cattle Industry: National Animal Identification and The Mad Cow

Canada implemented a national cattle identification system, led and developed by the industry. Initially a voluntary program beginning in July 2001, it became mandatory in July 2002 and achieved 92-95 percent compliance by that fall. The costs to develop and initiate the system were low; animals are tagged before leaving the farm of origin and the tags are read when the animal dies or is exported. The national identification system did not protect Canadian cattle from a sole case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or Mad Cow Disease, found in the spring of 2003, but it did help speed and lend confidence to the investigation. While the identification system was the objective of the study, the team also reports on how markets and an industry behave in a crisis

Belfast Without Sight: Exploring Geographies of Blindness

In this paper (he transformed spaces of visually impaired and blind people is explored through a detailed analysis of interview transcripts with twenty seven visually impaired people living in or around Belfast. Data were collected using a structured open-ended interview and were analysed within NUD-IST, a qualitative data analysis package. Analysis revealed that visually impaired people become spatially confused (e.g. lost or disorientated) for two primary reasons. "Self-produced" confusion is spatial confusion caused by the misperception/miscognition of a route (e.g. miscounting intersections). "Situational" confusion is spatial confusion caused by a permanent or temporary localised occurrences such as road works, vehicles parked on pavements, and street furniture. Both types of spatial confusion were found to induce feelings of fear and anxiety, leading to a loss of selfconfidence, embarrassment and frustration, which in turn led to less independent travel and exploration, and constrained patterns of spatial behaviour. Respondents detailed a number of strategies for coping with spatial confusion. In addition, they assessed methods to make Belfast more navigable including environmental modifications and orientation and mobility aid

Belfast Without Sight: Exploring Geographies of Blindness

In this paper (he transformed spaces of visually impaired and blind people is explored through a detailed analysis of interview transcripts with twenty seven visually impaired people living in or around Belfast. Data were collected using a structured open-ended interview and were analysed within NUD-IST, a qualitative data analysis package. Analysis revealed that visually impaired people become spatially confused (e.g. lost or disorientated) for two primary reasons. "Self-produced" confusion is spatial confusion caused by the misperception/miscognition of a route (e.g. miscounting intersections). "Situational" confusion is spatial confusion caused by a permanent or temporary localised occurrences such as road works, vehicles parked on pavements, and street furniture. Both types of spatial confusion were found to induce feelings of fear and anxiety, leading to a loss of selfconfidence, embarrassment and frustration, which in turn led to less independent travel and exploration, and constrained patterns of spatial behaviour. Respondents detailed a number of strategies for coping with spatial confusion. In addition, they assessed methods to make Belfast more navigable including environmental modifications and orientation and mobility aid