Non-routine Tasks Research Articles

Trading away what kind of jobs? Globalization, trade and tasks in the US economy.

Economists and other social scientists are calling for a reassessment of the impact of international trade on labor markets in developed and developing countries. Classical models of globalization and trade, based upon the international exchange of finished goods, fail to capture the fragmentation of much commodity production and the geographical separation of individual production tasks. This fragmentation, captured in the growing volume of intra-industry trade, prompts investigation of the effects of trade within, rather than between, sectors of the economy. In this paper we examine the relationship between international trade and the task structure of US employment. We link disaggregate US trade data from 1972 to 2006, the NBER manufacturing database, the Decennial Census, and occupational and task data from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Within-industry shifts in task characteristics are linked to import competition and technological change. Our results suggest that trade has played a major role in the growth in relative demand for nonroutine tasks, particularly those requiring high levels of interpersonal interaction.

Routine and feelings of safety, confidence, and well-being

An examination of the influence of routine behaviour on people's feelings of safety, confidence, and well-being shows, as hypothesized, that these positive emotions increase with routine behaviour. Five studies were conducted on flights, in different neighbourhoods of the city, in the laboratory performing a routine or a non-routine task, and in seating behaviour in university classrooms. In all studies, participants reported more feelings of safety, confidence, and well-being in routine situations. Thus, routine enhances feelings of safety, confidence, and well-being in many aspects of everyday life.

Computer use and wage returns

The effect of computer use on individual workers is relatively underresearched in the IS literature. Prior studies on computer use usually treat technologies as a “black box” and rarely look into how computers are used in workplaces and why IT-related skills are important there. In this study, we use the data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the data on job requirements for over 12,000 occupations from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), to examine the complementary roles of skill sets and nonroutine tasks in providing computer-use wage returns for individual workers. We find that computer use is associated with increased levels of interactive and numerical skills required for the general workforce. In addition, workers who use computers at work and possess higher levels of interactive skills receive higher wages. We also find that computer use complements performing nonroutine tasks, particularly nonroutine abstract tasks in contributing to the wage premium. As the tasks become increasingly routine, the impact of computer use on wage returns diminishes.

Exploring Nonroutine Functions Algebraically and Graphically

Nonroutine function tasks are more challenging than most typical high school mathematics tasks. In our classes of precalculus students and preservice mathematics teachers, we have found that nonroutine tasks encourage our students to expand their thinking about functions and their approaches to problem solving. As a result, they gain greater appreciation for the power of multiple representations and a richer understanding of functions.

Task and Relationship Conflict at Work

The distinction between task and relationship conflict is well established. Based on Jehn’s (1995) intragroup conflict scale, we developed an economic six-item questionnaire for assessing relationship and task conflict in work groups. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on data from a convenience sample (N = 247), and confirmed the original two-factor solution. The stability of the obtained two-factor solution was supported by confirmatory factor analysis in a longitudinal design with a second sample (N = 431) from the industrial sector. In line with previous research, the two types of conflict were intercorrelated. Moreover, the two subscales showed differential longitudinal effects on team outcomes. Task conflict was beneficial for performance in nonroutine tasks (but not in routine tasks). Relationship conflict had a negative impact on team viability and coworker trust.

ICT Skills and Employment Opportunities

This study examines the role of Information Technology (IT) skills in employment opportunities for workers. We leverage household IT use data from an emerging economy (Turkey) from 2007-2012 that include detailed information on IT skills, IT access, and IT use at the individual worker level. We integrate these survey data with household labor force data on workers’ occupations, industries, and job search methods. Our results show that, on average, IT skills are associated with a higher probability of employment for workers, and this relationship varies by occupation types and demographics. We show evidence that IT skills complement occupations that require non-routine tasks that cannot be executed by pre-determined rules more than occupations that are characterized by routine tasks. We also find a significantly stronger relationship between IT skills and the employment probability for women and older workers, two socioeconomic groups that traditionally suffer from high unemployment rates. The results are robust to alternative specifications and multiple robustness checks. By investigating the relationship between IT skills and employment for workers across various occupations and socio-economic groups, we provide public policy implications for designing societal IT policies to stimulate employment, particularly for occupations that require non-routine tasks and for traditionally disadvantaged socio-economic groups, such as women and older workers.

Multinational Firms and Job Tasks

We analyze the impact of multinational and foreign ownership on the demand for job tasks and educational skills. By using Swedish matched employer-employee data, we find that both foreign and domestic multinational firms have high shares of non-routine tasks and tasks requiring personal interaction. Moreover, acquisitions of local firms by multinationals increase the relative demand for non-routine and interactive job tasks in the targeted firms. The differences in the demand for job tasks are only partly explained by firm characteristics. Dividing employees by education instead of job tasks does not result in the same effects on relative labor demand, which shows that task measures do indeed capture a new labor market aspect.

Deux définitions de la collégialité et leur articulation: le cas d’un diocèse catholique

Against the background of the conflict observed between managers and professionals, two definitions of collegiality are identified: on the one hand, as a specific organizational form (bottom up) and, on the other, as a procedure of bureaucratic management (top down). A study of networks of priests in a catholic diocese in France is used to explore how these two definitions are related. Questions are raised about the effects of a too narrow organizational rationalization that uses collegiality only as a top down, bureaucratic managerial procedure. This always entails the risk of making the work done by experts sterile because it overlooks the first type of collegiality, which is based on the nature of the nonroutine tasks that members perform jointly thanks to an endogenous organizational structure of a bottom up type.

Hierarchical Structure and Search in Complex Organizations

Organizations engage in search whenever they perform nonroutine tasks, such as the definition and validation of a new strategy, the acquisition of new capabilities, or new product development. Previous work on search and organizational hierarchy has discovered that a hierarchy with a central decision maker at the top can speed up problem solving, but possibly at the cost of solution quality compared with results of a decentralized search. Our study uses a formal model and simulations to explore the effect of an organizational hierarchy on solution stability, solution quality, and search speed. Three insights arise on how a hierarchy can improve organizational search: (1) assigning a lead function that “anchors” a solution speeds up problem solving; (2) local solution choice should be delegated to the lowest level; and (3) structure matters little at the middle management level, but it matters at the front line; front-line groups should be kept small. These results highlight the importance for every organization of adapting its hierarchical structure to its search requirements.

Benefits and costs of adaptive user interfaces

The paper examines the positive and the possible adverse effects of adaptive user interfaces (AUIs) in the context of an in-vehicle telematic system as a function of four factors: (1) four different levels of adaptivity (ranging from manual to fully adaptive with intermediate levels); (2) different tasks; (3) routine (familiar) and non-routine (unfamiliar) situations; and (4) different user age groups. Both experiments included three sessions during which participants drove a simple driving simulator and performed tasks with the telematic system at one of the adaptivity levels. We measured task performance times and lane position variance. Adaptivity was not always equally beneficial, and its benefits depended on a number of factors, including the frequency in which the tasks were performed, the user’s age, the difficulty of the task and the user's involvement in the task. In familiar, routine situations, a fully adaptive system was beneficial for all participants, particularly older ones. In unfamiliar situations, to which the AUI was not adjusted, cognitive workload increased substantially, adversely affecting performance. Intermediate levels of adaptivity keep users involved in the task and help them become more proficient when performing both routine and non-routine tasks. However, intermediate levels of adaptivity should also be implemented with care, because they may also have adverse effects when users encounter non-routine situations.

Using Transaction Cost Economics to explain outsourcing of accounting

This study explores whether SMEs involved in the outsourcing of accounting tasks differ, in terms of transactional and personal (CEO) characteristics, from others that perform the same tasks within the company. We rely on the transaction cost economics (TCE) model, while controlling for age, educational background, and trust of the SME executive in the external accountant. A survey was developed to investigate the outsourcing by Belgian SMEs both of routine (entry of invoices, interim reporting) and non-routine (period-end accounting, preparation of financial statements) accounting tasks. For the routine accounting tasks, frequency was significantly associated with outsourcing. Meanwhile, for non-routine accounting tasks, asset specificity and frequency were significantly associated. High-frequency tasks were associated with lower levels of outsourcing. Similarly, higher asset specificity was associated with lower levels of outsourcing. Furthermore, the educational background of the CEO, as well as the CEO's level of trust in the external accountant, was significantly associated with outsourcing, confirming the upper echelon theory. Having a more educated CEO was associated with lower levels of outsourcing, both for routine and non-routine accounting tasks.

Building middle school students' understanding of proportional reasoning through mathematical investigation

This article describes and shares an innovative pedagogical practice that holds promise in contributing to the teaching and learning of proportions in middle school. The teaching and learning of mathematics with understanding framework was used as a vehicle to help 21 seventh grade students reason proportionally. The findings of this unit suggest that the classroom culture, which encouraged the students to make connections between their existing and new ideas and reflecting and communicating their thinking, contributed to their emerging understanding of proportions. The use of an authentic and non-routine task involving liquid measurements also heightened their interest, curiosity and enthusiasm, thereby contributing to their excitement about the mathematics they were learning.

Explaining Women's Success: Technological Change and the Skill Content of Women's Work

The closing of the gender wage gap is an ongoing phenomenon in industrialized countries. However, research has been limited in its ability to understand the causes of these changes, due in part to an inability to directly compare the work of women to that of men. In this study, we use a new approach for analyzing changes in the gender pay gap that uses direct measures of job tasks and gives a comprehensive characterization of how work for men and women has changed in recent decades. Using data from West Germany, we find that women have witnessed relative increases in non-routine analytic tasks and non-routine interactive tasks, which are associated with higher skill levels. The most notable difference between the genders is, however, the pronounced relative decline in routine task inputs among women with little change for men. These relative task changes explain a substantial fraction of the closing of the gender wage gap. Our evidence suggests that these task changes are driven, at least in part, by technological change. We also show that these task changes are related to the recent polarization of employment between low and high skilled occupations that we observed in the 1990s.

Learning from wrong and creative algorithm design

We all are aware of the relevance of examining a task from diverse angles. We also are aware of the potential relevance of learning from one's mistakes. Yet computer science (CS) textbooks and teaching materials fall short in embedding these two notions. In this paper, we present an approach of elaborating divergent thinking in algorithm design, while capitalizing on erroneous solutions. Using a collected set of non-routine algorithmic tasks, we developed and applied a scheme of class activities, in which initial faulty solutions (due to novice tendencies) are carefully examined, and their falsifying inputs and characteristics are used for creative reasoning that yields fruitful outcomes. We present and illustrate our activities, refer to their cognitive aspects, and describe our experience with applying them in (an Introduction-to-Algorithms) class.

サービスサイエンスに関する研究：〜ビジネスにおける行動観察技術の活用

Original methodology of service science, that combines three methods (obtaining service data using ergonomics methods, analyzing service data using statistical methods, improving service using information technology) was constructed. Service science approach was implemented for interactions with customers such as daily life observation, shopping behavior observation, and talk analysis, and for employee's nonroutine tasks, such as gas pipe construction work observation. The service science methodology improves customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction by improving productivity and safety of the work.

Rapid cerebral hemodynamic modulation during mental planning and movement execution: Evidence of time-locked relationship with complex behavior

Objective Although there is evidence of specific associations between neuronal activity and early cerebral blood flow (CBF), little is known on a logical furtherance of this linkage, namely the association between early measures of cerebral hemodynamics and complex behavior. The present study examined the linkage between hemodynamic modulation in basal cerebral arteries and performance in a non-routine planning task by means of functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD). Methods The Stockings of Cambridge (SOC) was employed as planning paradigm. The middle and anterior cerebral arteries (MCA/ACA) were bilaterally insonated. Statistical methods comprised uni- and multivariate analyses of variance and multiple linear regression analyses. Results Taking advantage of the excellent temporal resolution of fTCD, early cerebral hemodynamic modulation of the left MCA markedly predicted task accuracy. Pronounced early blood flow increase during planning and early decrease during movement execution were associated with better performance. No such blood flow modulations were observed in worse performers. Conclusions Early cerebral hemodynamic modulation in the left MCA proved to be a valuable neurophysiological marker that showed a great overlap with task accuracy during non-routine planning. Significance These results support the notion that a high temporal resolution in functional monitoring is a favorable strategy to disentangle relevant neurophysiological correlates of higher cognitive functioning.

The effect of promoting heuristic literacy on the mathematical aptitude of middle-school students

Heuristic literacy – an individual's capacity to use heuristic vocabulary in discourse and to apply the selected heuristics to solution of routine and non-routine mathematical tasks – was indirectly promoted in a controlled five-month classroom experiment with Israeli 8th grade students (N = 92). The experiment achieved a moderate mean effect size, which is in line with some previous research on heuristics. The novel result of the study is that those students of the experimental group who were below sample average at the beginning of the experiment benefited from the heuristically-oriented intervention significantly more than the rest of the students. It is argued here that this is, in part, due to communicational aspects of the intervention.

The Polarization of the U.S. Labor Market

This paper analyzes a marked change in the evolution of the U.S. wage structure over the past fifteen years: divergent trends in upper-tail (90/50) and lower-tail (50/10) wage inequality. We document that wage inequality in the top half of distribution has displayed an unchecked and rather smooth secular rise for the last 25 years (since 1980). Wage inequality in the bottom half of the distribution also grew rapidly from 1979 to 1987, but it has ceased growing (and for some measures actually narrowed) since the late 1980s. Furthermore we find that occupational employment growth shifted from monotonically increasing in wages (education) in the 1980s to a pattern of more rapid growth in jobs at the top and bottom relative to the middles of the wage (education) distribution in the 1990s. We characterize these patterns as the %u201Cpolarization%u201D of the U.S. labor market, with employment polarizing into high-wage and low-wage jobs at the expense of middle-wage work. We show how a model of computerization in which computers most strongly complement the non-routine (abstract) cognitive tasks of high-wage jobs, directly substitute for the routine tasks found in many traditional middle-wage jobs, and may have little direct impact on non-routine manual tasks in relatively low-wage jobs can help explain the observed polarization of the U.S. labor market.

Non-Routine Tasks, Restructuring of Firms, and Wage Inequality Within and Between Skill-Groups

This paper argues that endogenous restructuring processes within firms towards analytical and interactive non-routine tasks (like problem-solving and organizational activities, respectively), triggered by advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and rising supply of educated workers, are associated with an increase of wage inequality within education groups. We show that this may be accompanied by a decline or stagnation of between-group wage dispersion. The mechanisms proposed in this research are not only consistent with the evolution of the distribution of wages in advanced countries, but also with the evolution of task composition in firms and a frequently confirmed complementarity between skill-upgrading, new technologies and knowledge-based work organization.

Better without (lateral) frontal cortex? Insight problems solved by frontal patients

A recently proposed theory on frontal lobe functions claims that the prefrontal cortex, particularly its dorso-lateral aspect, is crucial in defining a set of responses suitable for a particular task, and biasing these for selection. This activity is carried out for virtually any kind of non-routine tasks, without distinction of content. The aim of this study is to test the prediction of Frith's 'sculpting the response space' hypothesis by means of an 'insight' problem-solving task, namely the matchstick arithmetic task. Starting from Knoblich et al.'s interpretation for the failure of healthy controls to solve the matchstick problem, and Frith's theory on the role of dorsolateral frontal cortex, we derived the counterintuitive prediction that patients with focal damage to the lateral frontal cortex should perform better than a group of healthy participants on this rather difficult task. We administered the matchstick task to 35 patients (aged 26-65 years) with a single focal brain lesion as determined by a CT or an MRI scan, and to 23 healthy participants (aged 34-62 years). The findings seemed in line with theoretical predictions. While only 43% of healthy participants could solve the most difficult matchstick problems ('type C'), 82% of lateral frontal patients did so (Fisher's exact test, P < 0.05). In conclusion, the combination of Frith's and Knoblich et al.'s theories was corroborated.