Private ICT-Activities and Emotions at Work – A Swedish Diary Study

The boundaries between the work and non-work spheres have been challenged through the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT). Individuals may easily engage in non-work (family and private) matters at work and during working hours. Prior research on emotions at work tends to understand all emotions at work as work related. By studying non-work matters managed through ICT in a diary study, we suggest that emotions at work are triggered both by work and non-work matters. Our research shows that these emotions can be both positive and negative and may come from actual engagement in private matters, or as a response to a need or a demand to address a private matter. Since emotions affect work performance, for example, we suggest that HR and managers take the causes of workplace emotions into consideration when addressing issues related to emotions at work

Inledning till temanummer om Covid-19s effekter på arbetslivet

Sammantagningsvis tar det här temanumret upp viktiga aspekter rörande coronapandemins effekter på arbetslivet. Utifrån artiklarna vill vi särskilt lyfta följande fyra punkter som angelägna för framtiden:- facket och skyddsombuden i Sverige spelar viktiga roller för bedömning avarbetsmiljörisker vid kriser, såsom coronapandemin.- goda arbetsvillkor i vardagen är avgörande för vård- och omsorgssektorns förmåga att möta kommande kriser.- arbetsmiljöansvaret vid distansarbete behöver utredas och möjligen kompletteras med nya föreskrifter från arbetsmiljöverket.- vid fortsatt distansarbete behöver arbetsgivare finna strategier för hur godaoch utvecklande sociala relationer kan skapas och upprätthållas när arbete skerpå distans

Influencing project work: exploring the potentials of participatory research

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to address the concept of participatory research (PR) in terms of its values and challenges in project work. Design/methodology/approach - A participative research approach was used in which researchers worked collaboratively with key stakeholders involved in the development of a digital network model for expert diagnostics. The approach involved research and data gathering in six work packages: first, participation at workshops, including the presentation of a preliminary research agenda; second, presentation of a revised research agenda; third, interviews with project managers and steering committee members; fourth, feedback sessions; fifth, participation at a project conference, including additional feedback sessions; and sixth, concluding interviews with project managers. Findings - The findings suggest that PR might strengthen project work through challenging interview questions and clear feedback. PR might empower the project manager by illuminating challenges and possibilities in the project process. Practical implications - Project managers may use PR as one strategy to empower project work. Originality/value - Despite the vast research on projects and project management, researchers and practitioners are still looking for ways to advance project work. This paper contributes with knowledge on how PR may advance project work

Producing Feedstock for Biofuels: Land-Use and Local Environmental Impacts

This report covers Chalmers responsibilities for subtask 1.3 - land-use patterns as well as parts of subtask 3.4 – data for other environmental impacts, in the EU Biofuel Baseline projec

Psychobiological evaluation of day clinic treatment for people living with dementia : feasibility and pilot analyses

Background: Hospitalization is often stressful and burdensome for people living with dementia (PwD) and their informal caregivers (ICs). Day clinic treatment may provide a suitable alternative, but is often precluded by a diagnosis of dementia. Furthermore, it is often caregiver-based ratings that measure treatment success as the validity of self-reports in PwD is critically discussed. We therefore set out to examine the feasibility of psychobiological stress measures in PwD and ICs and to evaluate treatment trajectories considering both the day clinic context and the daily life of the dyads. Method: A total of 40 dyads of PwD (mean age: 78.15 ± 6.80) and their ICs (mean age: 63.85 ± 13.09) completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires (covering stress, depressive symptoms, and caregiver burden among others) in addition to the measurement of hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) at admission, discharge, and follow-up 6 months after day clinic treatment. As part of an ambulatory assessment, for 2 days at the beginning and 2 days at the end of the day clinic treatment, PwD and ICs collected six saliva samples per day for the analysis of salivary cortisol (sCort) and alpha-amylase (sAA). Results: Paper-and-pencil questionnaires and HCC assessments were more feasible than the ambulatory assessment. We found discrepancies between subjective and physiological markers of stress in PwD. Whereas HCC decreased over time, self-reported stress increased. Child–parent dyads reported decreases in neuropsychiatric symptoms, associated burden, and self-reported stress from admission to follow-up. In daily life, both PwD and ICs showed characteristic diurnal profiles of sAA and sCort, however, we found no differences in summary indicators of salivary stress markers over time. Discussion: The psychobiological evaluation was feasible and added informative value, underlining the potential of physiological stress markers to complement self-reports on stress in PwD and to objectively evaluate treatment trajectories. In this sample, HCC was more feasible and acceptable as biological marker of stress compared to saliva samples. Concerning treatment trajectories, differential effects on the dyads were found, with child–parent dyads benefiting more from day clinic treatment compared to spousal dyads

Characterizing Swedish school algebra – initial findings from analyses of steering documents, textbooks and teachers’ discourses

The paper reports the first results of an ongoing research project aiming at characterizing Swedish school algebra (grades 1-9). Both diachronic and synchronic studies are conducted to identify the specific teaching tradition developed in Sweden and different theoretical approaches are applied in the overall project in order to obtain a rich picture of the Swedish case. The results reported here are based on the analyses of mathematics curriculum, textbooks and focus group interviews with teachers in seven schools. The initial results indicate that, since 1980s, algebra is vaguely addressed in the steering documents and the progression of algebraic thinking is elusive in teachers\u27 discourses. Moreover, certain important ideas, such as generalized arithmetic, are largely missing in the curriculum and mathematics textbooks for grades 1-6. We discuss the implications of the initial findings for our project

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Towards More Proactive Sustainable Human Resource Management Practices? A Study on Stress Due to the ICT-Mediated Integration of Work and Private Life

This article discusses sustainability in Human Resource Management (HRM) in the blurred digital working life, focusing on the emotion of stress. Its empirical basis is an activity and emotion diary study conducted with 26 employees of three industrial companies in Sweden. Our results show that work and private life are integrated by digital activities and also by emotions. Due to the extensive use of digital devices, stress in the working sphere is not only connected with work, and stress in the private sphere is not only connected with private life. The study also shows that stress is often episodic and can end due to activities connected with both the trigger and non-trigger spheres. From a social sustainability perspective, this study suggests that HRM should gently extend employee consideration beyond the traditional temporal and spatial boundaries of work, i.e., also including private life when understanding work in the digital age

Revolutionen som kom av sig

This thesis is based on a case study of an organizationalchange-project within Civil Engine at Volvo Aero Corporation.The changeproject was aimed to create an organization built oncollaboration, which differs radically from traditionalindustrial work. Existing boundaries between the blue- andwhite-collar workers were meant to be erased and work would beperformed and decisions thereby be taken by that or thosepersons who are most appropriate. The co-workers demand on workshould be satisfied as well as the enterprises demand onefficiency and longterm competitiveness. The projects goalswere not fulfilled, but it could have been a first step towardsa radical transformation of how work can be organized. As theproject did not come out as expected effects of a verticalintegrated organization cannot be concluded. The discussion istherefore mainly about possibilities and obstacles in work ofradical changes. The main topic is to analyse what a vertical integratedorganization can be and what meaning it has for the employeesand the enterprise. This thesis contributes to a tentativemodel with four types of difficulties, to be noticed toincrease the possibilities for successful radical changes: \u95obstacles of first order\u95obstacles of second order\u95resistances of first order\u95resistances of second order Further on this thesis contributes to define a supposedorganization built on collaboration according to Volvo AeroCorporation and to relate it to the conceptions onpost-bureaucratic and post-Tayloristic organizations.NR 20140805</p