Squeaky Wheel Research Articles

Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China

We conducted a nationwide field experiment in China to evaluate the direct and indirect impacts of assigning firms to public or private citizen appeals when they violate pollution standards. There are three main findings. First, public appeals to the regulator through social media substantially reduce violations and pollution emissions, while private appeals cause more modest environmental improvements. Second, public appeals appear to tilt regulators’ focus away from facilitating economic growth and toward avoiding pollution-induced public unrest. Third, pollution reductions by treated firms are not offset by control firms, based on randomly varying the proportion of treated firms at the prefecture level. (JEL D22, L82, P28, P31, Q52, Q53, Q58)

"I don't want to be the squeaky wheel": Addressing bias as a leader in emergency medicine.

Implicit bias poses a barrier to inclusivity in the health care workforce and is detrimental to patient care. While previous studies have investigated knowledge and training gaps related to implicit bias, emergency medicine (EM) leaders' self-awareness and perspectives on bias have not been studied. Using art to prompt reflections on implicit bias, this qualitative study explores (1) the attitudes of leaders in EM toward implicit bias and (2) individual or structural barriers to navigating and addressing bias in the workplace. Investigators facilitated an hour-long workshop in May 2022 for those with leadership positions in the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM), a leading national EM organization, including 62 attending physicians, eight residents/fellows, and four medical students. The workshop utilized arts-based methods to generate a psychologically supportive space to lead conversations around implicit bias in EM. The session included time for individual reflection, where participants used an electronic platform to respond anonymously to questions regarding susceptibility, fears, barriers, and experiences surrounding bias. Two independent coders compiled, coded, and reviewed the responses using an exploratory constructivist approach. A total of 125 responses were analyzed. Four major themes emerged: (1) acceptance that bias exists; (2) individual barriers, including fear of negative reactions, often due to power dynamics between respondents and other members of the ED; (3) institutional barriers, such as insufficient funding and unprotected time committed to addressing bias; and (4) ambiguity about defining and prioritizing bias. This qualitative analysis of reflections from an arts-based workshop highlights perceived fears and barriers that may impact EM physicians' motivation and comfort in addressing bias. These results may help guide interventions to address individual and structural barriers to mitigating bias in the workplace.

A Proactive-Reactive-Based Approach for Continuous Berth Allocation and Quay Crane Assignment Problems with Hybrid Uncertainty

Port operations have been suffering from hybrid uncertainty, leading to various disruptions in efficiency and tenacity. However, these essential uncertain factors are often considered separately in literature during berth and quay crane assignments, leading to defective, even infeasible schedules. This paper addressed the integrated berth allocation and quay crane assignment problem (BACAP) with stochastic vessel delays under different conditions. A novel approach that combines both proactive and reactive strategies is proposed. First, a mixed-integer programming model is formulated for BACAP with quay crane maintenance activities under the ideal state of no delay. Then, for minor delays, buffer time is added to absorb the uncertainty of the arrival time of vessels. Thus, a robust optimization model for minimizing the total service time of vessels and maximizing the buffer time is developed. Considering that the schedule is infeasible when a vessel is seriously delayed, a reactive model is built to minimize adjustment costs. According to the characteristics of the problem, this article combined local search with the genetic algorithm and proposed an improved genetic algorithm (IGA). Numerical experiments validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm with CPLEX and Squeaky Wheel Optimization (SWO) in different delay conditions and problem scales. An in-depth analysis presents some management insights on the coefficient setting, uncertainty, and buffer time.

"Be the Squeaky Wheel" - a Call to Action to Create Change in Ergonomics; The Role of OSHA and Reporting

"Be the Squeaky Wheel" - a Call to Action to Create Change in Ergonomics; The Role of OSHA and Reporting

Does the squeaky wheel get the complaint? Linking bus performance, sociodemographic characteristics, and customer comments

Public transit agencies rely on service operations performance measures to guide service improvement efforts. They also collect customer feedback on performance to measure levels of satisfaction among users. Connecting these two performance measures can help public transport agencies increase ridership satisfaction and loyalty. In this study, we link service performance measures obtained from automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) with customer complaints. This is done while controlling for the amount of ridership to understand if routes with worse service performance, as identified by operations measures, also have more service complaints. We also investigated if an area’s level of affluence affects the number of service complaints per rider that the route receives while controlling for route service performance and ridership. The AVL/APC and customer-feedback data were provided by Portland, Oregon’s TriMet transport agency for the period between August 2018 and January 2019. Descriptive statistics at the route level and a series of mixed-effect multilevel logistic regression models were used to quantify the relationship between route service performance, service complaints, and a service-area vulnerability index, at the route-day level. The likelihood of receiving a service complaint for a route in a day was found to increase based on service performance and the vulnerability of the neighborhood being served by that route, all else held equal. Findings from this research unmask the relationship between service complaints, bus operations and socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood a route is serving, offering insights to transport planners and researchers in the psychology behind bus performance complaints.

Virtually present others and their influence on complainants’ follow-ups and firm response

PurposeThe purpose of this empirical research is to investigate the influence of interactive virtually present others (VPOs) on a firm response and customers’ reiterated complaints (follow-ups) during service failures. This research follows up on previous experimental studies that suggest VPOs affect the focal customers’ complaint intention.Design/methodology/approachMore than 16,000 posts (of complaints and complainants’ follow-ups) on 13 airline Facebook pages were analyzed using partial least squares.FindingsThis empirical study found that customers’ complaints are attended to the extent the complaints are followed up with more comments as supported by VPOs suggesting a contagion effect. Besides, it appears, the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease. The interactive virtual presence of others does not have an effect on a firm response toward them, despite their support to complainants and calling the airline to act.Originality/valueTo date, previous experimental studies have only featured a single VPO in potential complainants’ responses; however, in this empirical study the authors take into consideration the interaction of several VPOs in the service failure. Also, the focus is on the influence of VPOs on customers' complaints rather than the other way around.

(1037) What to Do with a Squeaky Wheel? Ventricular Assist Device Use in Children with Mechanical Valves in the Action Database

(1037) What to Do with a Squeaky Wheel? Ventricular Assist Device Use in Children with Mechanical Valves in the Action Database

Onboarding, Orientation, and Mentoring as Culture-Crafting Processes: A Rac(e)y Autoethnography of Resistance in Higher Education Administration

This essay uses autobiographical detail as theorizing through experiences and observations of culture-building in organizational structures that work through the tensiveness of maintaining cultural systems even while engaging commitments to DEI-A. The essay is written through the perspective of a Black queer/quare scholar/administrator in shifting cultural and institutional contexts. The essay engages autoethnography as a culture-centered methodology, and culture-crafting through three critical autobiographical entries: “This Is How We Do It (Here): The Tensions of Onboarding and Orientation,” “Mentoring for Consistency and Compliance (or for Possibility and Potentiality)?” and “ The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Oil: A Conflicted Leadership Strategy.” All examples are variations of actual experiences by the author between multiple academic institutions without the specificity of naming names or exact locations.

Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China

Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China

The squeaky wheel gets the grease: Violent civil unrest and global social assistance provision.

What are the contemporary determinates of social assistance provision? What is the role of contentious politics? Social assistance literature is dominated by economic and demographic accounts, which under-examine the possibility that governments extend social assistance to contain social unrest. We test factors associated with these “structuralist” and “political” theories on a new panel dataset which includes 54 OECD and emerging market countries between 2002 and 2015. The results indicate social assistance coverage has a significant positive relationship with riots. We explain this outcome as policymakers expanding social assistance as a means of containing violent civil unrest. This effect is more significant in emerging markets, suggesting that the domination of structural explanations is a result of sample bias toward the OECD. Finally, we find that governments consider World Bank social policy recommendations only insofar as there is violent unrest.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease: Recipients’ responses influence children’s costly third-party punishment of unfairness

Third-party punishment promotes cooperation by deterring opportunistic behaviors. Even children are willing to pay a cost to implement third-party punishment of unfair behavior. Whether in judicial practice or in daily third-party punishment, people take recipients’ feelings into account out of restorative motives. Restorative motives pay attention to both the offenders and the victims and are committed to best repairing harm. This work examined whether children adopt restorative motives by considering recipients’ responses when punishing unfair dividers. Participants (N = 128) were 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old Chinese children. Children were shown allocations proposed among a divider and a recipient with response (positive vs. negative) or without response and were asked to accept or pay a cost to reject the allocation. Two experiments indicated that costly third-party punishment increased with age. Furthermore, children took recipients’ responses into consideration, with negative responses prompting children to punish more. These findings show that children adopted a restorative view when implementing costly third-party punishment.

Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China

Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China

A Collaborative Berth Planning Approach for Disruption Recovery

Traditionally, terminal operators create an initial berthing plan before the arrival of incoming vessels. This plan involves decisions on when and where to load or discharge containers for the calling vessels. However, disruptive unforeseen events (i.e., arrival delays, equipment breakdowns, tides, or extreme weather) interfere with the implementation of this initial plan. For terminals, berths and quay cranes are both crucial resources, and their capacity limits the efficiency of port operations. Thus, one way to minimize the adverse effects caused by disruption is to ally different terminals to share berthing resources. In some challenging situations, terminal operators also need to consider the extensive transshipment connections between feeder and mother vessels. Therefore, in this work, we investigate a collaborative variant of the berth allocation recovery problem which focuses on the collaboration among terminals and transshipment connections between vessels. We propose a mixed-integer programming model to (re)-optimize the initial berth and quay crane allocation plan and develop a Squeaky Wheel Optimization metaheuristic to find near-optimal solutions for large-scale instances. The results from the performed computational experiments, considering multiple scenarios with disruptive events, show consistent improvements of up to 40% for the suggested collaborative strategy (in terms of costs for the terminal operators).

"The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease": Rental Assistance Applicants' Quests for a Rationed and Scarce Resource.

In 2016, only one in five eligible U.S. households received rental assistance and waiting lists averaged two years nationally. The gap between available rental assistance and need requires systems to allocate this scarce resource. The way potential rental assistance recipients experience and navigate these systems is likely to shape who ultimately receives assistance. We draw on repeated qualitative interviews (N=238) with low-income New Haven residents (N=54) to examine how participants understand and navigate rental assistance applications and waiting lists. Participants encountered multiple challenges in their search for rental assistance. They described an opaque and complex application and waiting process requiring significant knowledge to navigate. They also described considerable labor associated with monitoring waiting lists, a challenge made more difficult for some by their lack of a stable address. Additionally, participants described significant labor and knowledge required to strategically navigate prioritization systems that often required them to advocate for their deservingness of scarce housing resources. Our findings suggest that the allocation of rental assistance through complex processes that depend on applicant knowledge, labor, and advocacy may create barriers to housing, particularly for more vulnerable and marginalized housing seekers.

Engagement and Activities in Long-Term Care: Tapping Into “I Would Love to Do That!”

Engagement and Activities in Long-Term Care: Tapping Into “I Would Love to Do That!”

Berth allocation recovery for container transshipment terminals

ABSTRACT In container terminals, operators normally form an initial plan for berth allocation before the arrival of incoming vessels. However, during the real operations, unforeseen incidents (e.g. delays, equipment breakdowns) happen frequently, which hinder the implementation of initial plans. In response to disruptions, terminal operators usually employ an experience-based strategy for berth allocation recovery. However, this practice may not work well in challenging situations, especially when extensive transshipment operations need to be conducted, and the berthing for mother and feeder vessels should be coordinated. This paper studies the disruption recovery problem for berth allocation in transshipment terminals, and develops decision support tools for terminal operators. A mixed integer linear programming model is established to adjust original berthing plan with the objective of minimizing recovery cost caused by deviations from the original plan. Quay crane assignment decision is also taken into account during disruption recovery. Transshipment connections between correlated feeder and mother vessels are also considered specifically in order to reduce the missing of transshipment connection opportunities. Squeaky Wheel Optimization heuristic is devised to find near-optimal solutions under large problem scales. Extensive computational experiments validate the effectiveness and the efficiency of designed method, and the results show practical benefit from incorporating transshipment consideration when rescheduling berth allocation.

Cyclic di-GMP in Streptomycetes: A New Conformation, New Binding Mode, New Receptor, and a New Mechanism to Control Cell Development.

A recent paper by Gallagher etal. (2020) demonstrates that c-di-GMP controls spore formation in Streptomyces venezuelae through sequestering the sporulation sigma factor σWhiG and presents the crystal structure of a ternary complex between c-di-GMP, σWhiG, and its anti-sigma factor, RsiG.

The weakness of the strong: Examining the squeaky-wheel effect of hospital violence in China

Hospital violence has become a worldwide issue that disturbs health care systems. China is in a particular dilemma between meeting the healthcare demand of 1.39 billion residents and ensuring the safety of 12.3 million health professionals. Drawing on data from an administrative survey, we presented the types and distribution of disruptive behaviors, as well as the summary statistics of 225 medical disputes that took place from 2012 to 2013 in Z city. Logit and OLS regression analyses show that disruptive behaviors, characterized by the number of protest participants and the length of protest, can significantly predict whether the claimant receives compensation and the amount of compensation. All else equal, a one-person increase in the number of participants is associated with 3.94% higher odds of getting compensated, whereas a one-day increase in the length of protest is associated with a 1.03% increase in the odds of receiving compensation. Further analyses show that the link between disruptive behaviors and compensation outcomes is due to the involvement of the state, which tends to press hospitals to pay when substantial violence is present. Chinese government's overwhelming emphasis on social stability gives protestors leverage against hospitals, which can be summarized as “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Ironically, the sensitivity of Chinese government towards social stability becomes a weakness of its own. Government's active intervention to reach a peace-oriented goal will incentivize patients to resort to violence in pursuit of compensation. This study has implications for understanding the Chinese government's logic of addressing social problems that range from hospital violence, labor disputes, land disputes to demolition compensation and civil petitions.

Ant-Based Automated Mission Planning for Data Relay Space Missions

The Earth observation (EO) market is rapidly growing due to technology miniaturization, cheaper launch opportunities, and a wider spectrum of EO applications. Along with an exponential growth of the ground-based users that can access low-Earth-orbit (LEO) spacecraft data, this growing community represents an important demand for data relay missions. LEO spacecraft have short visibility windows to the ground stations (GSs), which limits their throughput. Data relay missions comprise spacecraft at higher-altitude orbits (geostationary orbits) acting as relays of data among LEO spacecraft and GSs. Those missions are then able to offer more frequent data downlink opportunities to the LEO spacecraft, thus increasing the volume of the data reaching the ground and improving the responsiveness between users’ requests and downlink operations. Ground-based mission planning systems (MPSs) are commonly managing such complex missions, representing a large operational cost. In this paper, the application of a swarm intelligence algorithm to the design of an automated MPS for data relay missions is proposed. Automated MPSs have the potential to save operational costs while leaving the high-level decisions to human operators. This paper represents the first time that an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is applied to this type of scheduling problem. This family of algorithms is generally found to offer a good level of efficiency and scalability. In this work, an ACO approach is compared against an algorithm that is popular in the literature, called Squeaky Wheel Optimization, outperforming it.

When and Why a Squeakier Wheel Gets More Grease: The Influence of Cultural Values and Anger Intensity on Customer Compensation

When customers express anger, do they gain greater returns, as suggested by the proverb “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”? If so, does the intensity of the squeak matter? In four studies, we explore employee compensation responses to customers who express relatively high- versus low-intensity anger in service-failure settings. The studies demonstrate that the cultural value of power distance (PD) moderates the relationship between emotional intensity and customer compensation: High-PD service employees offer less compensation to customers expressing higher intensity anger, and low-PD service employees offer more to customers expressing higher intensity anger. For high-PD service employees, this relationship between emotional intensity and compensation is mediated by the perceived appropriateness of the anger expression; for low-PD employees, it is mediated by perceived threat. However, when perceptions of threat are mitigated, low-PD service employees offer higher compensation to lower intensity anger, and this effect is mediated by perceptions of appropriateness. This research is the first to examine the effect of anger intensity in service-failure settings. For managers, the findings illuminate the importance of adopting a cultural lens when designing emotion management training programs and when setting practices for compensating angry customers.