Monitoring of Electronic Communications: Justice, Connectedness, and Social Exchange Influences on Employee Job Attitudes

The proliferation and changing nature of electronic communications (e.g., email, texting, instant messaging, Skype, etc.) as a necessary resource for knowledge requires continuing research in order to understand how these technologies affect relationships among managers and their employees. I seek to measure the extent to which employees’ perceived email content monitoring (PECM), defined as the extent to which employees believe that their emails are being read regardless of whether that is done within the organization, affects their behavior and job attitudes. Further, employees’ supervisors can monitor how and when employees utilize electronic communications as a means of evaluating job performance. Employees’ perceived email activity monitoring (PEAM), defined as the extent to which employees perceive that their usage of email is being monitored by their supervisors, can have negative attitudinal effects. Job attitudes can be especially impacted where the monitoring of the actual content of emails and/or email usage behaviors is considered to be inappropriate, overly intrusive, or beyond the scope of traditional managerial monitoring practices. In order to help understand the implications of electronic communication monitoring in the workplace, I investigate how theoretical social exchange mechanisms of leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived organizational support (POS) influence employee attitudinal outcomes including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, stress, and work/life conflict. I also develop a concept of “monitoring justice” that can be employed by managers to defer the potential for negative implications of monitoring. Further, I explore how the level of importance that individuals place on being connected to their organization via electronic communication technology can exacerbate the social exchange relationships and resulting job attitudinal outcomes. The findings of this study suggest that formal monitoring of email content reduces levels of social exchange and results in negative employee attitudes regarding their work environment. However, where employees determine that there is a sufficient level of monitoring justice, these negative responses to monitoring were not found to be significant. Further, I found that high levels of monitoring of electronic communication usage behavior significantly decreased social exchange levels and negatively impacted attitudinal outcomes. This negative result was increased where employees attributed high levels of importance to remaining connected to their organization. This dissertation suggests that organizational leadership take the perceptions of their employees and overall effects on job attitudes into account when engaging in electronic communication monitoring practices

Organic cation transporter 3 contributes to norepinephrine uptake into perivascular adipose tissue

Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) reduces vasoconstriction to norepinephrine (NE). A mechanism by which PVAT could function to reduce vascular contraction is by decreasing the amount of NE to which the vessel is exposed. PVATs from male Sprague-Dawley rats were used to test the hypothesis that PVAT has a NE uptake mechanism. NE was detected by HPLC in mesenteric PVAT and isolated adipocytes. Uptake of NE (10 μM) in mesenteric PVAT was reduced by the NE transporter (NET) inhibitor nisoxetine (1 μM, 73.68 ± 7.62%, all values reported as percentages of vehicle), the 5-hydroxytryptamine transporter (SERT) inhibitor citalopram (100 nM) with the organic cation transporter 3 (OCT3) inhibitor corticosterone (100 μM, 56.18 ± 5.21%), and the NET inhibitor desipramine (10 μM) with corticosterone (100 μM, 61.18 ± 6.82%). Aortic PVAT NE uptake was reduced by corticosterone (100 μM, 53.01 ± 10.96%). Confocal imaging of mesenteric PVAT stained with 4-[4-(dimethylamino)-styrl]-N-methylpyridinium iodide (ASP(+)), a fluorescent substrate of cationic transporters, detected ASP(+) uptake into adipocytes. ASP(+) (2 μM) uptake was reduced by citalopram (100 nM, 66.68 ± 6.43%), corticosterone (100 μM, 43.49 ± 10.17%), nisoxetine (100 nM, 84.12 ± 4.24%), citalopram with corticosterone (100 nM and 100 μM, respectively, 35.75 ± 4.21%), and desipramine with corticosterone (10 and 100 μM, respectively, 50.47 ± 5.78%). NET protein was not detected in mesenteric PVAT adipocytes. Expression of Slc22a3 (OCT3 gene) mRNA and protein in PVAT adipocytes was detected by RT-PCR and immunocytochemistry, respectively. These end points support the presence of a transporter-mediated NE uptake system within PVAT with a potential mediator being OCT3

Temperature stability in the sub-milliHertz band with LISA Pathfinder

LISA Pathfinder (LPF) was a technology pioneering mission designed to test key technologies required for gravitational wave detection in space. In the low frequency regime (milliHertz and below), where space-based gravitational wave observatories will operate, temperature fluctuations play a crucial role since they can couple into the interferometric measurement and the test masses’ free-fall accuracy in many ways. A dedicated temperature measurement subsystem, with noise levels in 10 μKHz⁻¹/² down to 1 mHz was part of the diagnostics unit onboard LPF. In this paper we report on the temperature measurements throughout mission operations, characterize the thermal environment, estimate transfer functions between different locations, and report temperature stability (and its time evolution) at frequencies as low as 10 μHz, where typically values around 1 K Hz⁻¹/² were measured.ISSN:0035-8711ISSN:1365-296