Large Utility Company Research Articles

Self-directed learning readiness and performance in the workplace

Deep and rapid changes in a “high-tech” society exceed the ability of formal educational systems to respond to new learning needs. Therefore, the future of post secondary education will increasingly include emphases on self-directed learning skills and activities. Despite recognition of such a trend, knowledge of self-directed learning and self-directed learners is in its infancy. This study of self-directed learning and performance was designed to determine the relationship of self-directed learning readiness and performance in an occupational setting. Business, government and industry are expected to depend heavily upon self-directed learning in the future. Because of the increasingly close relationship between education and these sectors of the economy, educators should have a keen interest in this kind of research. The sample included 753 individuals selected from the population of a large American utility company: 421 were managers and 318 were non-managers; 14 subjects did not define their occupational status. Subjects provided information on their management level, sex, age, education, race, job performance rating, creativity required on their jobs, problem-solving ability needed in their jobs and degree of change in their work. Nine hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance. Selected conclusions are as follows: (a) outstanding performers in jobs requiring a very high level of creativity had significantly higher SDLRS scores than others; (b) outstanding performers in jobs requiring a very high degree of problem-solving skill had significantly higher SDLRS scores than others; and (c) individuals who have completed higher levels of education tend to have higher SDLRS scores.

Requirements and Performance Data of Control Center EMS Configurations

The evaluation and selection process of different EMS configurations proposed by EMS suppliers to meet specs issued by utility companies is approached in terms of requirements, configuration features and characteristics and processor load of two actual cases, both related to large brazilian electric power utility companies. The first case refers to an utility operating in a regional level, which generates and transmits energy to four other utilities operating at state level, and the data are related to solutions proposed by three different EMS suppliers. The solutions are compared in terms of meeting the requirements, and performance. The performance data was estimated through simulation. The second case presented is related to an utility operating at a state level generating, transmitting and distributing energy. For this system, four alternate configurations have been considered, with performance data estimated through simulation, as in the first case. Although real performance data is verified only at system field acceptance test time, data estimated through simulation is of utmost importance for EMS evaluation and selection.

Family versus friends: Their relative importance as referent others to an aged population

There is much social gerontological research suggesting that the aged in our society constitute a minority group or separate stratum. This separateness, in combination with a lack of a clear conception of the elderly role, has led to a preponderance of stereotyped images of the elderly. A mailed questionnaire was returned by 224 retirees of a large utility company in the Southwest and provided a data base to test a conceptual model of the dynamics of the process of acceptance or denial of age‐appropriate behavioral expectations. The model, grounded in the reference group theoretical approach, was concerned expressly with the operationalization of factors thought to influence whether the elderly accept age‐appropriate behavioral expectations as pertinent to their life situation. Whether the people in this particular population accept others' expectations for their behavior was found to be affected by their perception of the expectations of family members and friends and whether the respondents characterize...

Middle Life Crisis and Industrial Workers

Psychiatric consultation with a large utility company has uncovered a unique manifestation of the middle life syndrome. Employees with 20 or more years of service, referred to our psychiatric group, have in common such issues as "institutional transference," unfulfilled employee vocational dreams and fantasies, with concurrent inability to adjust to technological, geographical and personnel changes. The author suggests personnel programs and policies which might help to deal preventively with these problems before employees reach middle life. Methods are suggested in which corporation changes might be more sensitively instituted to meet the psychological needs of employees.

An on-line customer information system at a gas-utility company

Since about 1970, there has been a significant trend among large organizations in moving from a manual system or semiautomatic system that first prepares source data and then processes it in a batch environment to an online automatic system that receives and processes data entered directly at the office. This paper describes the course of events during the development of such an on-line system that processes customer orders at a large gas utility company. One significant outcome of the conversion from the previous manual system to the on-line system was a large reduction in the work force required for processing customer order; this resulted in great savings in labor and material costs.

Bond Quality Rating Changes for Electric Utilities: A Multivariate Analysis

Most bond issues of large utility companies are rated for quality by at least two of the three rating agencies. Bond investors individuals and institutions are concerned not only with original ratings of an issue but also with future ones. Since a rating change will affect prices of the outstanding bonds as well as interest rates and marketability of new issues, it may be a cause of portfolio readjustment for investors as well as a reason for the utility to reconsider its capital budgeting policies. Each rating agency maintains that models based on financial statements or data bases cannot replicate its ratings [4, 7]. Nevertheless, studies have explained bond quality ratings by using financial statement data [9, 19, 21, 25] and related bond quality ratings to systematic risk [15], prices [10], bond yield [26], and market-determined risk measures [22]. Several scholars have examined the impact of rating changes on borrowing cost [11] and on price adjustments [8, 12, 20]. No work has been uncovered, though, that centers upon forecasting rating changes by the various rating agencies. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to investigate whether or not a multivariate discriminant model that incorporates the recent levels, past trends, and instability of financial ratios can explain and predict the quality rating changes of electric utility bonds. We used 1971 as a starting point because bond rating changes were rare before then. In 1971, there were no quality rating changes announced by Moody's for industrial or utility bonds graded B or above. With rising interest rates and the environmental problems

Organizational Change Through Feedback and Research (OD) Efforts

Action research was undertaken by a large midwestern utility company. Although 3,000 individuals were in the affected areas, particular atten tion was paid to 300 engineers and technicians. The study was undertaken to learn what would happen to an organization that was undergoing severe reorganizational stresses while attempting to use organization development techniques to reduce those stresses. The OD work included inside and outside consultation with the top executive, team-building activities, attitude surveys and survey feedback, and vertical communi cations meetings. The dependent variables of organizational per formance and process improved during the ten-month test period. The research identified structural changes that may have had some effects, but these could not be isolated because of the multidimensionality of the situation. Additional research is needed to determine what impact the different OD interventions actually have on an organization and to de termine the half-life of those interventions.

Power, pollution, and the imperiled environment II. East, Midwest, and West Coast: pollution-control plans of some major utilities; role of government in environmental matters; other proposed systems for reducing stack emissions

A number of the largest utility companies are embarking upon large-scale nuclear generating plant construction programs that may phase out up to 50 percent of their fossil-fuel stations by the end of the present decade. This move is being encouraged by the electrical suppliers, who, with the utilities and the AEC, are striving to convince a skeptical public that nuclear stations are completely safe and provide the best means for air-pollution abatement. Nevertheless, many fossil-fuel plants are still being planned and built, and more efficient methods of reducing stack gas emissions will have to be incorporated at these facilities if a general reduction in air-pollution levels is to be achieved while simultaneously meeting the accelerating demand for more electric energy. Government, too, has a role to play and a responsibility to fulfill in the public interest by enacting fair and practicable pollution-control legislation, and ensuring the enforcement of such statutes.

Some Recent Studies in Social Acquiescence

Since publication of the Social Acquiescence scale accompanied by preliminary evaluations (Bzss, 1956), a number of studies have been completed including several unpublished analyses of interest. The test of 56 proverbs, to be accepted as true or rejected by examinees, was administered by Robert Bond to 20 male senior Chemical or Electrical Engineering majors at LSU and 16 upperclassmen majoring in Psychology. The Psychology majors earned a mean of 19.4 in social acquiescence while engineers earned a significantly different mean of 33.8 resembling closely the mean of 32.6 obtained for 1491 LSU freshmen in general. There was hardly any overlap berween the number of proverbs accepted by psychology students and the number accepted by engineering seniors. Another extremely low-scoring group was uncovered by Dr. Edgar Schein who gave the scale to 50 first year graduate students in management at MIT. Their median score was only 18. This value contrasted significantly with a mean of 26.9 for a group of 45 LSU seniors and graduate students from a course in Industrial Psychology at LSU reported earlier (Bass, 1956). Gaier and Bass (1959) found means of 28.7 and 29.9 for Kansas and Maryland freshmen while Hoffman (1960) reported a mean of 24.0 for Washington State scudents. One guesses that an interesting map could be drawn of the United Sra~es showing systematic fluctuations from acquiescence areas of the Deep South to low acquiescense areas in New England and the West Coasr with intermediate values occurring in the Border States. Further, the performance of LSU Psychology seniors points to the possible sensitivity of the Social Acquiescence scale to a specific educational effect of increasing skepticism, assuming that this performance was not due to selection factors alone. Social acquiescence seems to be working as a negative predictor of supervisory success according to some unpublished work with sales supervision by the author and the uses to which the scale is being put by a large utility company. The high degree of selection and the outstanding training at MIT in contrast to what is possible at an average state university with unselected students may be reflected in the performance of MIT in contrast to almost comparable LSU scudents. This, in turn, fits with the falling trend in social acquiescence associated with increasing education from high school to graduate school reporred earlier (Bass, 1956). Consistent with these results also is

Suggested Grid in the United States

CONFERENCES have recently been taking place in Washington with the officials of some fifty large public utility companies operating in the eastern part of the United States to explore the possibilities of constructing a series of high-voltage lines interconnecting the larger generating plants and power-consuming centres in this area, including both private and public developments. According to the Electrical Reviewof February 9, although up to the present no definite plan has actually been made public, the proposals include connecting links that would make it possible to interchange power whenever necessary between such major load centres as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and possibly Birmingham. Connexions would be made with all major generating stations, both steam and hydro-electric, without regard to whether they are controlled by private capital, municipalities, or the Federal Government.