Amount Of Workload Research Articles

The effects of age and gender upon the perceptions of accounting professionals concerning their job satisfaction and work‐related attributes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of age and gender upon the level of job satisfaction of accounting professionals as well as examine if gender and age lead to differences in their perceptions of work‐related attributes such as advancement opportunities and relations with supervisors.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaires were mailed to 1,000 accounting professionals and 245 useable questionnaires were received (193 were returned due to incorrect address) resulting in a 30 percent response rate. The questionnaire was designed with a six‐point Likert scale to measure the respondent perceptions concerning 78 factors that may influence their level of job satisfaction. Factor analysis with a varimax rotation reduced the 78 factors down to nine factor groups. These factors or work‐related attributes became the nine independent variables for six regression models. The sample was subdivided based by age and gender differently for each of the six regression models. The dependent variable represented the level of job satisfaction perceived by the accounting professionals surveyed.FindingsAs a result of the six regression models, the six following factors or work‐related attributes are significant to age and/or gender: job fulfillment, treatment by peers and supervisors, promotion and advancement opportunities, supervisors, gender discrimination and employee relations with coworkers. The remaining three factors or work‐related attributes are not significant with age and/or gender: amount of compensation, fringe benefits provided and amount of workload required.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample includes alumni from a private university located in a large metropolitan area on the east coast of the USA, the results are not representative of all accounting professionals. Thus, our findings cannot be generalized to the larger population of American accounting professionals.Practical implicationsEmployers can incorporate the findings of this study in their organizations to assist in improving the overall level of job satisfaction of their accounting professional employees, especially involving gender or age issues.Originality/valueThis study shows boards of directors and executive managers which specific work‐related attributes to improve for the purpose of increasing the retention rate and decreasing turnover rate of their accounting professionals in critical positions within those organizations.

Effects of Cogintive Functioning on Strategic System Engineering

Mental workload is an important construct in psychology. Using various methods, researchers have investigated ways to reduce the amount of workload imposed on system operators. Reducing workload through system design might be facilitated by identifying required cognitive resources and designing the system so that tasking does not impose resource conflict which may cause a decrement in performance. Wickens' multipleresource theory has expanded on the three stages of processing (encoding, centralprocessing, and responding) to include cognitive resources, such as visual/spatial encoding, spatial/abstract processing, and manual discrete and non-discrete responding resources which are identified in this model. This study represents a first step towards building a research paradigm in which the amount of resource conflict (resulting in performance decrements) is estimated by taxing multiple resources simultaneously.

Investigating Display Integration in Candidate Synthetic Vision System Displays

Displays augmented with Synthetic Vision System (SVS) technologies are being examined as a means to reduce the potential for low visibility aviation incidents and accidents. A study was conducted at NASA Langley Research Center to examine how display integration in candidate SVS display layouts affect flight performance and subjective mental workload. Display layout (integrated/ less integrated), display view (SVS/ Traditional), and workload (high/low) were manipulated in a within subjects design resulting in eight possible display configurations. Sixteen commercial pilots flew multiple approaches under simulated IMC conditions in a fixed-base flight simulator. As expected, the more integrated display layout facilitated superior performance on an integrated flight task. Displays augmented with SVS technology produced better flight performance independent of the amount of workload imposed on the pilot. Subjective workload was also affected by display integration such that less workload was reported for the more integrated display. Implications for this research are addressed and future avenues for research along this line are suggested.

An efficient partitioning algorithm for distributed virtual environment systems

Distributed virtual environment (DVE) systems model and simulate the activities of thousands of entities interacting in a virtual world over a wide area network. Possible applications for DVE systems are multiplayer video games, military and industrial trainings, and collaborative engineering. In general, a DVE system is composed of many servers and each server is responsible to manage multiple clients who want to participate in the virtual world. Each server receives updates from different clients (such as the current position and orientation of each client) and then delivers this information to other clients in the virtual world. The server also needs to perform other tasks, such as object collision detection and synchronization control. A large scale DVE system needs to support many clients and this imposes a heavy requirement on networking resources and computational resources. Therefore, how to meet the growing requirement of bandwidth and computational resources is one of the major challenges in designing a scalable and cost-effective DVE system. In this paper, we propose an efficient partitioning algorithm that addresses the scalability issue of designing a large scale DVE system. The main idea is to dynamically divide the virtual world into different partitions and then efficiently assign these partitions to different servers. This way, each server will process approximately the same amount of workload. Another objective of the partitioning algorithm is to reduce the server-to-server communication overhead. The theoretical foundation of our dynamic partitioning algorithm is based on the linear optimization principle. We also illustrate how one can parallelize the proposed partitioning algorithm so that it can efficiently partition a very large scale DVE system. Lastly, experiments are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed partitioning algorithm under various settings of the virtual world.

A Discretionary Work Scheme May Induce a Change in the Association of Working Hours and Vacations with Health Problems in Middle‐Aged Male White‐Collar Workers

A Discretionary Work Scheme May Induce a Change in the Association of Working Hours and Vacations with Health Problems in Middle‐Aged Male White‐Collar Workers: Kimio Tarumi, et al. Occupational Health Training Center, University of Occupational and Environmental Health—White‐collar workers who worked at an office where a discretionary work scheme had been introduced for those in managerial positions were surveyed in August 1999 in a prospective framework in order to explore the effects of a discretionary work scheme on the association of working hours and vacations with workers' health. Two hundred and eight eligible male workers aged 35 to 60 were examined, and the following were major findings: Whether workers were engaged in discretionary work or not was directly related to neither working hours and vacation measures nor workers' health. When workers were divided into two groups, those engaged in discretionary work (n=147, mean age: 46.1 ± 5.9) and those who were not (n=61, mean age: 45.4 + 7.2), the percentages of those with health problems significantly decreased only for the latter along with an increase in paid holidays and chances of successive days of vacation during the past year (P<0.01 and P<0.05, respectively). And for those engaged in non‐discretionary work, the percentages of workers judged to be distressed significantly decreased with increasing chances of successive days of vacation (P<0.01). That is, a discretionary work scheme did not have any unfavorable effect on working hours, vacations or the health of the subjective workers, and it only modified the association of vacations with workers' health in the direction in which that association was weakened. On the other hand, working hours showed no association with workers' health, irrespective of the work scheme. Although a discretionary work scheme included occupational positions, the practical difference could result in that of the range or level of discretion in performing work and workers' awareness of working hours. For those engaged in discretionary work, the amount of workload seemed to be hardly proportionate to the number of hours worked, and that could explain the obscure associations between working hours, vacations and health. The findings obtained here have to be explored through further studies in other workplaces.

Combination of calcium channel blockers and β‐adrenoceptor blockers for patients with exercise‐induced angina pectoris: a double‐blind parallel‐group comparison of different classes of calcium channel blockers

The combination of calcium channel blockers and beta-adrenoceptor blockers is more effective for the treatment of exercise-induced angina pectoris than beta-adrenoceptor blocker monotherapy. As ischaemia in exercise-induced angina is preceded by increase in heart rate, calcium channel blockers with negative chronotropic properties may perform better for this purpose than nonchronotropic compounds. A 335 patient double-blind parallel-group study comparing 14 day treatment with amlodipine 5 and 10 mg, with diltiazem 200 and 300 mg, and mibefradil 50 and 100 mg added to baseline beta-adrenoceptor blocker treatment was performed. Exercise testing (ETT) was performed by bicycle ergometry. Although none of the calcium channel blockers improved duration of exercise or amount of workload, all significantly delayed onset of 1 mm ST-segment depression on ETT (P<0.001 for any treatment vs baseline). In addition, mibefradil, both low and high dose treatment, produced the longest delays (low dose: different from diltiazem and amlodipine by 24.1 and 29.8 s, respectively, P<0. 003 and <0.001; high dose: different from diltiazem and amlodipine by 33.7 and 37.0 s, respectively, P<0.001 and <0.001). These effects were linearly correlated with the reduction in rate pressure product (RPP). Serious symptoms of dizziness occurred significantly more frequently on mibefradil (P<0.05), and 19 patients on mibefradil withdrew from trial. Calcium channel blockers with negative chronotropic properties provide greater delay of ischaemia in patients with exercise-induced angina, but the concomitant risk of intolerable dizziness attenuates this benefit.

Estimating capacity loadings from workcenter arrival and departure events

Abstract Manufacturing firms rely on automatic data collection systems to replace labor-intensive data collection methods. Most systems concentrate on locating and counting parts without regard to transaction times; however, by capturing and processing event times, additional system characteristics can be inferred. Using product arrival and departure event transactions based on bar code technology, this research develops a methodology for estimating the amount of workload in a workcenter with a parallel server structure commonly found in practice. This paper presents an evaluation of the accuracy and precision of the resulting workload estimators under conditions of varying product mix. It was found that the relative proportion of products in the production mix can have a significant effect on estimator performance. For production mixes that change infrequently, the estimator was within 5% of the true workcenter load in 98% of the experiments. The estimator is simple and can be continually updated as new data are collected. This research illustrates the value-added benefits to be gained in utilizing bar code timing information for developing estimates of workcenter load especially within computer-automated shop floor control systems.

The effects of personality on supervisory control tasks

Personality is a collection of holistic human traits: character, perception of the world, covert and overt behaviors, uniqueness in functioning and coping within cultural setting, and response to different environmental stimuli. While many studies have focused on perception and cognitive aspects of supervisory control (SC), not much consideration is given to the effect of personality on supervisory control performance. In this paper, results showing the effects of Type A and Type B personality types on SC and workload perception are discussed. One major finding of the study shows that Type A individuals respond better than Type B to monitoring single tasks for automation failure, and they also experience the least amount of workload in both single and multiple SC tasks. However, Type A individuals made significantly more errors, than Type B individuals, during system monitoring and resource management tasks.

Selective Visual Attention during Multiple-Process Control

During multiple-task control, eye movements are central for the performance of aimed actions and the development of working strategies. In order to investigate visual and informational workload the behavioural pattern has been analysed. Information presented on a screen has to be visually analysed in order for a decision to be reached on the action to be performed. Normally peripheral vision and the knowledge of the displayed optical structure are used to select the next position of fixation. The resulting scan path is determined by the context and the dynamics of the processes to be controlled. Therefore, the question arises to what extent characteristics of the eye movements are affected by the amount of workload. In order to test this an experimental setup was designed which makes it possible to record eye and head movements simultaneously. From these data the gaze position on the screen could be computed. During the experimental sessions trained subjects were asked to control a complex process simulation by means of cursor movements. This simulation displayed on a high-resolution colour screen consisted of four process units similar to Crossman's water bath paradigm. Temperature and flow rate represent the control variables for each process unit and have to be adjusted to and kept within a certain tolerance range. The visual scan path and all actions on the graphic tablet were recorded continuously during the experimental sessions. An attempt is made here to describe the allocation of attention during multiple-task performance. The results provide evidence that the contextual structure of the task determines the uptake of specific visual information. The amount of visual workload affecting the subject during the control of all four simulated processes is determined by two independent variables: the flow rate (kinetics) and the number of activated processes. On the one hand fixation duration is affected by the kinetics and on the other hand the stability of the activated processes is very sensitive to both independent variables. These effects are due to the limited capacity of the subject to deal with more than one process state within a certain time interval. He or she is forced to divide his or her attention between different processes. There seems to exist only a poor mental representation of the dynamics of several processes running in parallel.

Age and the Measurement of Workload by a Secondary Task

The purpose of this study was to investigate age differences in the amount of workload imposed by a tracking task. Twelve subjects between the ages of 18 and 22, and 12 subjects between the ages of 48 and 67 performed a serial, choice-reaction-time task alone and concurrently with a pursuit rotor tracking task. Workload, as defined by Ogden et al. (1979) and Michon (1966) was evaluated as a function of age and tracking complexity. Significant tracking complexity and age main effects were revealed for the workload measure in choice reaction time. This suggests that the complexity of the tracking task affected the amount of workload, and that the tracking task imposed a greater workload on the older subjects. The implications of age difference in the amount of workload imposed on the subjects were discussed.

Appearance of adenosine triphosphate in the perfusate from working frog heart.

Frog hearts (Rana pipiens) were perfused in situ with Ringer's solution and the perfusate tested on firefly extract for the presence of ATP. At a normal perfusion pressure of 8 cm. H2O the rate of release of ATP into the perfusate was 8.8 (+/- S.E.1.7) pmoles.min-1. When the workload was increased by raising the perfusion pressure to 12 cm. H2O the rate of release increased to 28.3 (+/- S.E.4.8) pmoles.min-1. The rate of release was found to be proportional to the amount of workload imposed upon the heart. It is postulated that the trigger for release is hypoxia and that the release of ATP from the cardiac cell will augment contractility of the myocardium through its action upon adjacent cells via the P2 purinergic receptor. cells via the P2 purinergic receptor.