Work Literature Research Articles

Exploring the potential of AI to increase productivity in small marketing teams

Marketing scientists as well as practitioners believe that artificial intelligence (AI) holds the promise of productivity gains for organizations. However, there has been little scientific research into these theories. This study investigates the role of AI in enhancing marketing productivity, deriving insights from a case study conducted with the marketing team of an industrial software start-up. Drawing upon Case Study Analysis by Yin (2018) and Participatory Action Research by Kemmis and McTaggart (2007), the study employs a combination of survey interviews, AI tool research and AI tool testings. Key findings indicate that productivity gains are more likely than productivity impairments with the use of marketing AI tools. This effect is even stronger when knowledge workers possess high levels of AI skills and utilize AI tools with suitable capabilities. Having closely analyzed six marketing disciplines, particularly SEO / content and design demonstrated significant productivity gains including generative AI (GAI) tools the team already subscribed to like ChatGPT 4 and Canva, but also new AI solutions. While an AI tool’s level of integration only showed a weak positive productivity impact, future studies are suggested to further investigate this variable by comparing the effects of less advanced but more accessible tools like generative AI versus highly advanced, but less accessible business AI. Having navigated the vast and dynamic landscape of AI tools, insights further emphasize the importance of AI experience sharing and informed decision-making, implying knowledge of own user rights and always staying updated on AI advancements. Zooming out from process level, the work's literature review further highlights the role of environmental and organizational AI enablers, like budget allocation, fostering AI trust and mindset, but also implementing AI routines and responsibilities. Overall, this research underscores the imperative for companies, especially startups and SMEs, to explore AI technology as a means to enhance productivity and gain a competitive edge.

On 1-Absorbing Fuzzy Ideals of Commutative Semirings

In this study, the algebraic structure of 1-absorbing ideals is first examined and applied to fuzzy sets, along with an investigation into the relationships and algebraic properties between them. The contribution to this work's literature involves examining 1-absorbing fuzzy primary ideals. Features of 1-absorbing fuzzy primary ideals are explored, and it is demonstrated, for instance, that I is deemed a 1-absorbing fuzzy primary ideal of P if I is a fuzzy primary ideal of P. Additionally, I is considered a 2-absorbing fuzzy primary ideal of P if I is a 1-absorbing fuzzy primary ideal of P. Furthermore, these theorems are elucidated through specific examples.

Literature as Medium: The Development and Cultural Space of New Worker Literature

Abstract Over the past few years, China's cultural landscape has seen the emergence of several authors from among its migrant laborers, or “new workers.” Fan Yusu and Xu Lizhi are the most representative. Their literary production, which draws on their personal experiences and tells their workplace stories, is an artistic configuration entirely different from both mass culture and high literature. This article analyzes the significance of this new worker literature from three perspectives. First, since the 1990s, new workers have been using the traditional medium of literature to speak with their own voices, which is particularly remarkable in the age of the internet. Second, workers’ culture spaces like the Picun Literature Group, from which Fan Yusu emerged, not only support ordinary laborers’ active interest in writing but also represent a specific cultural practice that has come into being in the post-Mao era. Third, the fact that a large number of new worker writers are “borrowing” from the language and style of 1980s literature generates a productive relation between the critical spirit of that literature and the alienating conditions under which the new workers labor. Although seen as marginal by many, new worker literature is of great cultural value for contemporary China.

Alienation and Hopes in Indonesian Migrant Worker Literature Work

Abstract: Female Indonesian migrant domestic workers (DMWs) often get a negative predicate both in Indonesia and in destination countries. For example, DMWs in Singapore are treated unequally by Singaporean society, in Indonesia, as well, their work is seen as a lowly job. They can be categorized as a marginal group. Marginals are marginalized people whose rights are ruled out by people that have power. Hence, they find it difficult to adapt to their environment and they are always suppressed. The circumstances lead to the feeling of alienation for DMWs. The alienation they have experienced is often ignored as a reality of the life of migrant workers. This study takes the object of poetry by Female Indonesian DMWs in Singapore. It explores how marginalization and alienation are expressed in literary work by female domestic migrant workers. This study, also analyzes how the expression of literary work can be functioned as a medium to voice alienation and to overcome its problem. This research used textual analysis, including the application of semiotics and narratology to see the marginalization and alienation faced by the migrant workers which are represented through a literary work. As complementary data, virtual interviews with the author of poetry was conducted.

Laughing in the Face of Adversity: Comedy and Tragedy as Affective Strategies in the Works of Mely Kiyak

German guest worker literature has responded to the traumatic and the tragic elements of postmigrant life with the comical and the absurd since the 1980s. This essay examines tragi-comic literary strategies in the writings of Mely Kiyak and other first and second-generation German-Turkish authors, which challenge homogenous narratives of nationhood and offer coping mechanisms for the pervasive presence of xenophobia. In these texts, affects (anger, fear, grief, but also affection) surface not as private emotions, but as socially organized catalysts for literary intervention, and as markers of kinship or exclusion. The dialogical nature of comedy (anticipating and relying on the reaction of the readership) promotes demarginalization and affective identification while mitigating tragic affect. This is true for Kiyak’s novel, Herr Kiyak dachte, jetzt fängt der schöne Teil des Lebens an (2013), as well as the transcultural performance project Hate Poetry (2012–18), in which Mely Kiyak and other German Turks read anti-migrant letters to the editor in the style of a poetry slam. Situated between the tension of an assumed German ‘Aufnahmekultur’ (‘receiving culture’) and an expanded sense of German ‘Nationalkultur’ which includes what Homi Bhabha has termed ‘minoritarian subjects’, these expressions of migrant experience interweave the affective charge of comedy and tragedy as socially uplifting and yet subversive modes of dissent.

Debts: Coming to Terms with Migrant Worker Poetry

This essay offers some impressions of a grassroots literature group and the multifaceted nongovernmental organization of which it is a part: the Migrant Workers Home based in Picun, in the suburbs of Beijing. In migrant worker literature the subaltern definitely speaks—and this is also true for the museum of migrant worker culture that is part of the Migrant Workers Home. After comparing this museum with government-run migrant worker museums in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, the essay returns to the Picun literature group and highlights the question of translatability in foreign scholarship’s engagement with China’s migrant worker poetry.

Tekstowa wielojęzyczność w niemieckojęzycznych utworach pisarzy polskiego pochodzenia (Artur Becker, Dariusz Muszer, Matthias Nawrat)

Tematem artykułu jest fenomen tzw. literatury migracyjnej w Niemczech rozumianej jako konstrukt, którego zasadność już od wielu lat jest przedmiotem krytyki. „Migracyjność” tekstów literackich nie jest tu uważana za ich integralną cechę, ale za kategorię dyskursywną odnoszącą się przede wszystkim do ich recepcji. Jedną z cech charakteryzujących tzw. literaturę migracyjną jest językowa hybrydyczność – przedstawiona na przykładzie wybranych powieści Dariusza Muszera, Artura Beckera i Matthiasa Nawrata. Według autorki skala użycia hybrydyczności językowej zmienia się w zależności od pokolenia migracji: intensywniej korzystają z tekstowej wielojęzyczności Muszer i Becker, którzy wyemigrowali do Niemiec już jako dorośli (tu język jest jednym z bohaterów powieści – „wirtuozeria języka”), rzadziej sięga po nią Nawrat, który, wyjeżdżając z Polski, był dzieckiem (na plan pierwszy wysuwa się „wirtuozerię narracji”). Analiza poprzedzona jest przeglądem stanu badań literaturoznawczych dotyczących tzw. literatury migracyjnej w Niemczech, polskiej literatury migracyjnej w Niemczech oraz hybrydyczności językowej (wielojęzyczności tekstowej) w literaturze inter- i transkulturowej.

Representing Dagongmei (Female Migrant Workers) in Contemporary China

Neither comrades nor yet full-fledged consumers, Chinese dagongmei (female migrant workers) and their experience(s) are an essential part of the story of China’s globalizing economy. The growing body of scholarly literature on internal migrant workers exposes a chilling underside to China’s passionate embrace of market-oriented reform—which certainly should give pause to those otherwise inclined to hail the rise of global capitalism as a glorious shift toward democracy and greater personal freedom. My particular interest in the subject lies in the intersection of the rural-to-urban labor migration phenomenon, gender, and the realm of contemporary cultural expression. This article examines the diverse array of literary and visual representations of dagongmei , a site of distinctly post-Mao ideological contestation. It begins with a discussion of dagongmei within popular and mainstream media. It then turns to the broad historical and cultural contexts that have spurred the grassroots emergence of worker literature in recent decades in southern China. The article concludes with an analysis of work by two women writers―poet Zheng Xiaoqiong and novelist Wang Lili―that offers highly gendered accounts of the contemporary migrant labor experience.

Innovation in the Knowledge Age: implications for collaborative science

Current trends validate the notion that multifaceted, multimodal interdisciplinary collaborations lead to increased research productivity in publications and citations, compared to those achieved by individual researchers. Moreover, it may be that scientific breakthroughs are increasingly achieved by interdisciplinary research teams. Nonetheless, despite the perceived importance of collaboration and its bibliometric benefits, today’s scientists are still trained to be autonomous, work individually, and encourage their graduate students to do the same—perpetuating values which impede the creation of collaborative space between disciplines. As a consequence, scientists working in teams typically report serious obstacles to collaboration. This paper builds off of recent recommendations from a 2015 National Academies report on the state of team science which emphasizes greater definition of roles, responsibility, accountability, goals, and milestones. However, these recommendations do not address the subjective, relational components of collaboration which can drive innovation and creativity. The relational side of collaboration is key to understanding the capacity and capabilities of the knowledge workers, such as scientists and engineers, who comprise interdisciplinary research teams. The authors’ recommendations, grounded in organizational communication and knowledge worker literature, include a renewed focus on the process of organizing through communication rather than focusing on organization as an outcome or consequence of teamwork, leading and cultivating team members rather than managing them, and the need to address self-driven, rather than external, motivations to engage in knowledge work.

Recessions, expectations, and labor supply dynamics

We examine how expectations on macroeconomic evolutions affect as many as twelve different labor market status transitions in bad economic times. Such a refined analysis of job search frequencies highlights intriguing findings. In bad economic times, e.g. to make up for the loss in family income, not-working agents would like to work. On the other hand, individuals are somewhat discouraged by the deteriorated expectations and they exert only a limited search effort. This latter turns out to be insufficient to find work in poor labor markets. All in all, the evidence pins down the widespread presence of “timid” responses, depicting a hybrid picture that hardly can be related to one single theoretical approach. Specifically, our findings suggest refining the standard dichotomic setting behind the discouraged worker and added worker literature. Results are based on a battery of multinomial logit models and controlled for several individual-level and aggregate variables.

Small Business and Computers: Adoption and Performance

Until recently, little evidence suggested that the computer revolution of recent decades has had much impact on aggregate economic growth. Analysis at the worker level has found evidence that use of computers is associated with higher wages. Although some research questions whether this finding is solely due to unobserved heterogeneity in worker quality, others point to such results as evidence that the wage premia for skilled workers have increased over time. Adoption of new technologies is associated with higher productivity and higher productivity growth. As in the worker literature, firms adopting computers may simply be more productive firms. Using new data from the 1998 Survey of Small Business Finances, I examine the determinants of computer adoption by small, privately-held firms and analyze whether computer use affects profits, sales, labor productivity, or other measures of firm success. I am able to control for many firm characteristics not available in other data sets. I find that computer adoption is more likely by larger firms, by younger firms, by firms whose markets are national or international, and by limited liability firms. Adoption is also more likely by firms founded or inherited by a current owner and by firms whose primary owners are more educated. Firms with more than 50% of their ownership shares held by African Americans or Asians, and, in some specifications, firms with more than 50% of their shares held by Hispanics are less likely to have adopted computers, echoing results for households in the literature. Evidence concerning the link between computer use and firm performance is mixed. Current performance as measured by profits or sales is not associated with current computer use in the full sample. In some specifications, use of computers for specific tasks is associated with higher costs. Estimates of the effects of computer use on costs are larger (in absolute value) when the sample is restricted to manufacturing or wholesale trade firms or to larger small businesses. Estimates using the more parsimonious set of control variables widely available in other firm level data show large and positive effects of computer use on firm costs, sales, and profits, suggesting that controlling for managerial, firm, and owner characteristics is important.

Bronchoalveolar lavage and its role in diagnosing cobalt lung disease

The bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) of two groups of hard metal workers (11 subjects) were examined and compared with BALs of 14 unexposed individuals as controls. The first group of workers included five asymptomatic subjects (2 females and 3 males) with normal lung function tests and chest X-rays. All the workers had been exposed daily to hard metal dust for 5 years before fiberoptic bronchoscopy. The second group of workers included six individuals (1 female and 5 males) with cobalt lung disease at biopsy. The BAL's cytology at the deep lung level is in agreement with a possible immunologic pathogenesis of the lung disease, similar to hypersensitivity pneumonitis (lymphocytosis with helper-suppressor ratio reduction). In order to identify diagnostic key-parameters, the data presented here are compared with data reported in literature for workers with a history of hard metal or cobalt (alone) exposure. Although the BAL can be useful, for a better definition of the reaction at the deep lung level, it seems insufficient per se for the diagnosis of hard metal lung disease.

German Worker's Literature: A Classroom Approach

In 1960 Walter Jens lamented the status of the worker's world in contemporary German literature: Die Arbeitswelt scheint noch nicht einmal in den Blick geruckt zu sein. Wo ist das Portrat eines Arbeiters, wo die Zeichnung eines Maurers, wo agieren die Madchen in der Fabrik... ? Ist unser tagliches Tun so ganz ohne Belang?' Although applicable to the situation in the FRG at that time, Jens's observation is not universally applicable to German literary history in its entirety. In fact, the literature of the German working class has enjoyed a long, rich history, commencing in the early nineteenth century with the emergence of the German proletariat as a distinct social class and the subsequent organization of the German worker's movement. Since the early 1800's and continuing into the present time, German worker's literature has been a recurring, integral feature in the broader context of German culture and continues to demonstrate its importance, centrality, and vitality. The potential of this body of literature to satisfy two important objectives should not be overlooked: 1) to enable students to appreciate the problems and possibilities of literature to explore the political, social, and economic nature of man; and 2) to provide students an opportunity to explore more fully the role of work and worker in society, given the role of work to be one of the most decisive social determinants in a person's life. The recent availability of inexpensive, yet high quality editions of worker's literature, coupled with an ever-expanding body of scholarship on the subject, now make it possible and worthwhile for German students to explore in depth this heretofore neglected aspect of German culture. The following outline organizes the study of worker's literature into three periods: 1) The Early 1800's-1912; 2) 1912-the Mid-1940's; and 3) The Mid-1940's-the Present Time. Following a historical overview for the course, a suggested syllabus, an instructional rationale, instructional strategies, and a brief bibliography are presented. Since there are few materials available in English for teaching German worker's literature, the following 15-week course is designed as a seminar for the upper-level German student whose language skills enable analysis and discussion of primary German documents.