Investigating the nature and importance of social conversations at work

This research addresses social conversations at work. Most modern workplaces have opportunities and demands for social conversations with colleagues (Tönsing & Alant, 2004). For over two decades there have been calls for further research into social conversations at work (Kirmeyer, 1988), yet no clear understanding of the antecedents and outcomes has been established. This systematic literature review undertaken for this doctorate is the first in the field; it provides a valuable synthesis of the evidence base. From an initial 13,083 titles, the review identified 12 papers that met the inclusion criteria. There was considerable variation in study design and definition of social conversations at work across the studies, and while they give some insights into their nature, there is little evidence to inform our understanding of what predicts them, their benefits, or barriers. To address some of the methodological limitations of the studies identified in the systematic literature review, a field intervention study was undertaken in which 76 participants in the Intervention Group were directed to increase their number of social conversations at work. An active Control Group (n = 70) undertook a social network mapping task, but were not directed to converse with colleagues. Further, the study expanded the focus of previous research to address a broader range of organisational outcomes and understand the nature of social conversations at work. The relationship between social conversations at work and loneliness, high-quality working relationships, team performance, and acceptance of social conversations at work was explored. The intervention successfully increased participants’ participation in social conversations at work. However, this increase was observed for both the Intervention Group and Control Group. Similarly, improvements in the outcome variables (but not loneliness at work) were observed for both groups. This study advances the research by investigating key organisational outcomes with a novel field intervention methodology. Further, it shows that social conversations can be practiced and are therefore responsive to training intervention. The implications of this work on research and practice are discussed

Careless whisper: Political elite discourses activate national identities for far-right voting preferences

While exclusionary national identities are widespread among Europeans, relatively few people vote for the far right in most countries. Thus, an exclusionary identity in many cases does not lead to voting for the most nativist types of parties. We explain this empirical puzzle by showing that these identities need to be activated to become behaviourally relevant. To this end, we analyse longitudinal comparative data of over 135,000 individuals across more than 26 years and 26 countries combining different survey programmes and manifesto data. We use latent class analysis to show that over half of respondents hold exclusionary conceptions of nationhood. Moreover, this type of national identity predicts voting far right. Using multi-level modelling and within-country estimators, we further demonstrate that this relationship is significantly stronger when a country's political elites across all parties become more exclusionary. Taking the activation hypothesis to the test in a European context, we conclude that the effect of national identity is conditional on its prior activation.Obwohl ausgrenzende nationale Identitäten in Europa weit verbreitet sind, wählen in den meisten Ländern relativ wenige Menschen die extreme Rechte. Daher führt eine ausgrenzende Identität in vielen Fällen nicht dazu, dass solche Parteien gewählt werden. Die Autor*innen zeigen, dass diese nationalen Identitäten aktiviert werden müssen, um verhaltensrelevant zu werden

ONBound-Harmonization User Guide (Stata/SPSS), Version 1.1

This document provides information on how to work with the data of the 'ONBound - Old and New Boundaries: National Identities and Religion' project. It outlines the project's starting point, the data harmonization procedures, the harmonization repository, the ONBound Harmonization Wizard, and most importantly, guides through the steps and procedures needed to compile a customized ONBound dataset. Chapter One of this user guide informs about citations for ONBound data and metadata. Chapter Two gives an overview of the available variables and the original datasets that were included. It also introduces our harmonization strategies. Chapter Three introduces the ONBound Harmonization Wizard. Finally, chapter four provides a step-by-step guide for the application of the ONBound harmonization routines

Art as parodic practice

Perhaps because of the pervasive sampling, remixing, rehashing and promiscuous citational blending in postmodernity, where quote marks dissolve, parody has come to be seen as a somewhat archaic concept, pertaining to cultures more stably codified and hierarchically ordered, rather than subject to the fluctuations of global markets and phantasmagoric projections affecting the flow of investment moneys. Given the anxiogenic nature of postmodernity under its various guises, willed as hypermodernityand metamodernity or supermodernity, the ideologeme ‘parody’ might be seen as nostalgic symptom in the wake of the ‘grand narratives’ (Lyotard 1984 [1979]) – a rehearsed post-apocalyptic nostalgia for a world of neo-feudalism and fiefdoms, where the seasonal lifting of prohibition for carnival brought on the ‘allowed fool’ (Shakespeare 2006) for parody’s brief upending of the hierarchical order, when high became low, mouth met anus, and wise became mad, even within the Pater Noster of the Holy Mass. (Bakhtin 1980: 78). How the revisitation of parody might illuminate contemporary cultural politics is a driving question behind this collection, a questionmade more urgent by recent global developments of terror

Automated Derivation of Optimal Production Sequences from Product Data

Customer specific, individual products nowadays lead to larger product variance and shorter time to market. This requires efficient production system planning. In addition, due to a larger system complexity, each iteration of the planning process itself gets soaringly complex. Time constraints and complexity, therefore, emphasize the necessity of supporting humans in planning modern production systems. Especially the determination of the production sequence holds immense potential and tends to get even more complex within specific production technologies. Exemplarily, this article focuses on welding sequences. Here, domain knowledge from product development and production planning needs to be holistically integrated. Furthermore, implicit, historic knowledge needs to be formalized and used in today’s planning tasks. This article introduces a methodical approach and a corresponding toolchain to derive optimal production sequences from customer product data which is validated using welding processes. For this, firstly, a reference system is build up consisting of historic product data (e.g. part list, CAD data) and corresponding production system characteristics (e.g. number and specifications of machines). The main aspect is to use similarities between the new product variant and assemblies from the reference system, to determine implications of product specifications on the process sequence. Overall, such restrictions can be displayed using Model-Based Systems Engineering. Relevant information (e.g. weld seam lengths) can be used to compute the optimal weld seam order regarding minimal cycle times, for example. This requires a parametric encoding of product and production system. In a nutshell, this approach covers the automated derivation of an optimal production sequence for new product variants, based on system information and product similarities, to tackle time constraints and complexity by suggesting initial planning drafts

HaSpaD - Data Manual (September 2021)

Extensive harmonization of survey and especially biographical data has not been common in the social sciences. HaSpaD provides a tool for harmonizing and accumulating, and thus comprehensively analyzing, survey-based longitudinal data sets on partnership biographies. The following studies were harmonized and merged for a joint analysis for the third-party funded project "Harmonizing and synthesizing partnership histories from different research data infrastructures" (HaSpaD): the panel studies pairfam, SOEP and SHARE; the cross-section studies General German Social Survey, Mannheim Divorce Study and the Fertility and Family Survey; as well as the cross-section studies combined with partially repeated surveys Family Surveys, German Life History Studies and the Generations and Gender Surveys. The project provides syntax-based harmonization processes available through the HaSpaD Harmonization Wizard. The HaSpaD Harmonization Wizard enables a customized selection of survey programs and variables. After downloading the source data sets from their repositories, the HaSpaD syntax package enables to generate an individually customized and harmonized data set of the source datasets. In addition to biographical data on partnerships, the HaSpaD target dataset may include other variables such as age, gender, citizenship, and education level. If all surveys are selected, the target data set will contain approximately 182,000 partnership biographies

HaSpaD - Datenhandbuch (September 2021)

Die Harmonisierung von Umfrageprogrammen, und insbesondere von Biographiedaten, ist in diesem Umfang in den Sozialwissenschaften bisher wenig verbreitet. Durch die Harmonisierung und Kumulation umfragebasierter Längsschnittdatensätze bietet das HaSpaD-Projekt die Möglichkeit zur umfassenden Analyse von Partnerschaftsbiografien. Folgende Studien wurden im Drittmittelprojekt „Harmonisierung und Synthese von paarbiografischen Daten“ (HaSpaD) harmonisiert und für eine gemeinsame Analyse verknüpft: die Panelstudien pairfam, SOEP und SHARE; die Querschnittsstudien ALLBUS, Mannheimer Scheidungsstudie, Fertility and Family Survey; die Querschnittsstudien mit teilweiser Wiederholungsbefragung der Familiensurveys, der Lebensverlaufsstudien und des Generations and Gender Surveys. Das Projekt stellt seinen Aufbereitungs-Code zur Nachnutzung zur Verfügung. Über den HaSpaD - Harmonization Wizard können Umfrageprogramme und zusätzliche Variablen für einen individualisierten Datensatz ausgewählt werden. Nach Download der Urprungsdatenquellen aus den jeweiligen Forschungsdatenrepositorien kann mit Hilfe des HaSpaD-Codes ein gemeinsamer Datensatz erstellt werden. Variablen dieses Zieldatensatzes sind neben Biografiedaten der Partnerschaften auch Zusatzvariablen wie Alter, Geschlecht, Staatsbürgerschaft und Bildungsstand. Bei Auswahl aller Umfrageprogramme enthält der Zieldatensatz ungefähr 182.000 Partnerschaftsbiographien

How to Lose Some Weight - A Practical Template Syndrome Decoding Attack

We study the hardness of the Syndrome Decoding problem, the base of most code-based cryptographic schemes, such as Classic McEliece, in the presence of side-channel information. We use ChipWhisperer equipment to perform a template attack on Classic McEliece running on an ARM Cortex-M4, and accurately classify the Hamming weights of consecutive 32-bit blocks of the secret error vector. With these weights at hand, we optimize Information Set Decoding algorithms. Technically, we show how to speed up information set decoding via a dimension reduction, additional parity-check equations, and an improved information set search, all derived from the Hamming weight information. Consequently, using our template attack, we can practically recover an error vector in dimension n=2197 in a matter of seconds. Without side-channel information, such an instance has a complexity of around 88 bit. We also estimate how our template attack affects the security of the proposed McEliece parameter sets. Roughly speaking, even an error-prone leak of our Hamming weight information leads for n=3488 to a security drop of 89 bits

Risk factors, prevalence, and co-Morbidities of Hypertension in adult villagers in Kampung Tajau Laut, Kudat, Sabah, Malaysia

Introduction: Hypertension is a condition where there is persistently raised pressure in the blood vessels. In Malay-sia, higher prevalence of hypertension could be explained by lifestyle factors such as higher rates of obesity, excess dietary intake of sodium and fat and lack of physical activity. The main objective of this study was to determine the prevalence, risk factors and co-morbidities of hypertension in villagers aged 18 years and above in Kampung Tajau Laut, Kudat, Sabah. Methods: Non-probability convenience sampling method was used to select a total of 210 villagers for interview, anthropometric examinations and blood pressure measurements. House to house and face to face interview by trained year four medical students done using a pretested validated questionnaire. The ques-tionnaire contained data on socioeconomic status, tobacco use, physical activity, diet, extra-salt use, family history of hypertension, co-morbidity, anthropometric measurements and blood pressure. Results: Respondents noted to be hypertensive were 67.6%, and out of this, 61.3% were undiagnosed. There was a significant association between hypertension and family history (Chi-squared test=38.280, p=0.000), hypertension and smoking status (Chi-squared test=7.673, p= 0.006), hypertension and obesity (Chi-squared test= 8.731, p=0.003), hypertension and gender (Chi-squared test=5.126, p=0.024), hypertension and age (Chi-squared test=26.110, p=0.000) of respondents. There was no significant association between hypertension with vegetable intake, fruit intake, physical activity, marital status, ethnicity, economic status, level of education, and occupational status of respondents. Half of the known hyperten-sive respondents have comorbidities with most commonly being dyslipidaemia and diabetes mellitus. Conclusion: Hypertension was found to have a significant association with family history, smoking status, obesity, age and gender among the studied population