Team control mode,workers' creativity,and new product innovativeness

Scholars of creativity and innovation argue that successful innovations originate from the creative ideas of workers. However, few studies have empirically examined how management mechanisms, such as the control mode adopted by the new product development team, may work together with workers' creativity to deliver a successful new product. Drawing on the theory of opposing action strategies of team innovation, we propose that different team control modes may work together with team members' creativity to jointly influence the innovativeness of teamwork outcomes. With survey data collected from different sources in new product development teams, we find that restrictive control can effectively help teams composed of very creative members to successfully develop innovative new products. Conversely, promotive control can effectively help teams composed of less creative members to deliver innovative new products.     

Self-managing selling teams and team performance: The complementary roles of empowerment and control

This work is the first to examine systematically the influence of empowerment and control on the degree to which selling teams engage in desired self-managing behaviors. Further, this work is the first to propose the construct of desired self-managing behaviors in a selling team context, and empirically examine its influence on selling team performance. Our investigation indicates that control of team self-management provides a complementary positive influence to that of empowerment on the degree to which selling teams exhibit desired self-managing behaviors. In addition, we find a positive relationship between the degree to which teams exhibit desired self-managing behaviors and selling team performance; moreover, this relationship explains, to a large degree, selling team performance. These findings are consistent with our thesis that control of teamwork facilitates performance on the selling team level, just as control of selling skills facilitates performance on the individual sales rep level.     

Collaboration,Co‐operation or Collusion? Contrasting Employee Responses to Managerial Control in Three Call Centres

This article draws on ethnographic studies of three call centres in a single, medium‐sized insurance company to explore how employees responded differently to similar techniques of managerial control. Considering recent discussions of compromise in the workplace, we identify a response to control that sits between implacable resistance and supine acquiescence. We style this collusion and distinguish it from other states of compromise, such as collaboration and co‐operation. Drawing on the work of Edwards et al., we argue that a dynamic and politically sophisticated collusive compromise can exist between parties whose control and developmental concerns are in conflict. From this position, we extend existing theories of compromise: (a) to accommodate different permutations of control and developmental concerns; and (b) to predict when collaboration, co‐operation and collusion are likely to occur under ostensibly similar conditions of managerial control.     

Neo‐bureaucratic organisational forms,technology, control and contingent work: the case of UK TV

A feature in contemporary labour markets has been the growth of non‐standard work. This has to be set within a context of evolving new organisational forms and the ways that large organisations control these forms. Based on a qualitative study of freelance work in television, we have witnessed considerable vertical‐disintegration of the industry and a substantial growth of freelance working. Control over the network is maintained by employing former large broadcaster staff, and in turn their own preferred freelancers. This has significant implications for the nature of freelance work. While work is characterised as more insecure, generally the degree varies. This is based, in part, on occupation but also on access to social capital. Freelancers also reported a positive attitude to work, but more negative findings on working hours, work intensification and on related benefits.     

Human Resources Practices as Predictors of Work-Family Outcomes and Employee Turnover

Drawing on a nonrandom sample of 557 dual-earner white-collar employees, this article explores the relationship between human resources practices and three outcomes of interest to firms and employees: work-family conflict, employees' control over managing work and family demands, and employees' turnover intentions. We analyze three types of human resources practices: work-family policies, human resources incentives designed to induce attachment to the firm, and the design of work. In a series of hierarchical regression equations, we find that work design characteristics explain the most variance in employees' control over managing work and family demands, whereas human resources incentives explain the most variance in work-family conflict and turnover intentions. We also find significant gender differences in each of the three models. Our results suggest that the most effective organizational responses to work-family conflict and to turnover are those that combine work-family policies with other human resources practices, including work redesign and commitment-enhancing incentives.     

协同工作(CSCW)中的访问控制模型

计算机支持的协同工作(CSCW)就是地域分散的一个群体借助计算机及其网络技术,共同协调与协作来完成一项任务。传统的访问控制不能很好地适用于CSCW系统,笔者对传统模型进行改进,提出了一个基于任务与角色的访问控制模型,并用实例对该模型进行了验证。     

'You don't know what you've got till it's gone': re-contextualising the origins, development and impact of the call centre

This paper locates the emergence of call centres within the broader political economy. We demonstrate how British Gas responded to privatisation, restrictive regulation and the need to deliver shareholder value by radically changing work organisation. Using documentary evidence and oral testimonies, we show how the call centre was pivotal to tightening control over the labour process, to intensifying work and transforming the experience of work.     

What Do Unions Do to Work Design? Computer Use,Union Presence,and Tayloristic Jobs in Britain

The task framework has focused on employee survey data to analyze how computer use changes the content of jobs. In this article, we add another factor of work design, namely trade union presence. Using data from the UK Skills and Employment Surveys for the period 1997–2012, we find that union presence is associated with more Tayloristic jobs involving less autonomy, lower relevance of problem solving, and more control. In line with theory, the union effect moves in the opposite direction to the effect of computer use. The article has two important general implications. First, the Tayloristic/holistic distinction is an instructive dichotomy to evaluate changes in work design. Second, the presence of unions may induce managers to design jobs in Tayloristic ways in order to curb union bargaining power.     

Organizational control as antidote to politics in the pursuit of strategic initiatives

In contrast to the contingency approach advanced by most prior work, we suggest a complementary perspective on organizational control and its relationship with performance. We argue that the simultaneous use of behavior and outcome control capitalizes on their respective advantages, and is therefore more effective than a sole reliance on either control type. Moreover, with organizational control seeking alignment between individual and organizational goals, the benefits of such a complementary approach may be more pronounced in a context characterized by high levels of organizational politics, or the pursuit of individual at the expense of organizational goals. Our analysis of strategic initiatives pursued by 184 European corporations provides support for both a complementary approach to organizational control and a contingency effect of organizational politics. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information technology change,work complexity and service jobs: a contingent perspective

We examine the contingent impact of implementing an enterprise‐wide information technology system (Enterprise Resource Planning) on perceptions of work complexity in clerical, technical and managerial service sector jobs. Using matched and control samples of employee survey data, we compare pre‐ and post‐intervention perceptions of work complexity and importance of analytical skills across three hierarchical job levels: clerical, technical and managerial. We find that employees in clerical jobs, at the lowest level in the hierarchy, experience a significant increase in work complexity and need for analytical skills, whereas those in technical and managerial service jobs do not. Implications for theory, management of technology and employment policy are discussed.     

Urgency at work: Trains,time and technology

In contemporary workplaces, urgency is symbolic of workers' experience of time as accelerated, and often associated with use of digital technologies. Yet we know little about how urgency is constructed at work, including the agentic roles of technology and other materialities. Based on interviews with railway workers, we extend Rosa's conceptualisation of temporal junctures to explain how urgency as a temporal framing is sociomaterially constituted, sustained and challenged across and between workers and their managers, particularly through smartphone-use. Our analysis extends existing thinking on temporality at work by demonstrating how urgency narratives at sociomaterially complex configurations of temporal junctures shield workers, managers and the organisation against the temporal fragility of the rail infrastructure, such that each narration of urgency carries forward an illusion of temporal control.     

Mapping themes in the study of new work practices

Both shaping and shaped by technological, economic and social facets, the world of work has witnessed a wide array of changes. This review article sets out to provide a synthesis of some of the main directions and insights of existing research connected to the new world of work. In particular, we approached the topic of new work practices through four key dimensions: (1) Conceptual and methodological dimensions in the study of new work practices; (2) Spatial and temporal manifestations of new work practices in the collaborative economy; (3) Individuals, organizations and new work configurations; (4) Power and control. The review article critically discusses the future of work and argues that the ‘new’ world of work simply repeats asymmetrical power relations and inequalities that characterise work activities, with the potential of exacerbating even further disparities, inequalities and precarity.     

Restructuring Managerial Labour in the USA,the UK and Japan: Challenging the Salience of ‘Varieties of Capitalism’

This article provides a cross‐national, qualitative investigation into the experiences of middle managers in large organizations in the USA, the UK and Japan, following organizational restructuring. Despite well‐documented national differences in administrative heritage, institutional regimes or ‘varieties of capitalism’, our data point towards considerable similitude across the three countries in terms of a general expression of the need for change, and the concrete impacts of organizational reforms on managerial work. Specifically we analyse the changing nature of work roles, career paths, working hours and spans of control of mid‐level managers in five large firms in each of the three countries. The data demonstrate that middle managers in all three countries face fundamental changes to key areas of their work experience. In Japan, although changes do not amount to a genuine shift towards ‘Anglo‐Saxon’ institutions or business practices, the robust use of organizational reforms with very similar aims and underpinning assumptions to those used in the USA and the UK entails similar impacts in terms of work processes of middle managers across the three nations. This shared experience involved the augmentation of middle management skill levels, responsibilities and span of control, but alongside the downgrading of career expectations, and increased workload and work intensity. We argue that these changes are in keeping with some, but not all, of the features explained and predicted in Bravermanian labour process theory.     

Capability management control and salesperson turnover: A double-edged sword in a product complexity scenario

Drawing on the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) theory, the present study investigates the underlying mechanisms through which capability control, a type of behavior-based control, influences salesperson turnover. Using a sample of 145 industrial salesperson–supervisor dyads from different industries, this study's findings reveal that capability control contributes to decreasing salesperson turnover intentions, both directly and indirectly. Specifically, management capability control reduces work overload and increases work meaning, thus lowering salesperson turnover intention. The findings also confirm that these effects are contingent on the complexity of a product. When product complexity is low, capability control increases work overload and decreases work meaning, which has a positive effect on salesperson turnover intention. This study discusses these findings' theoretical and managerial implications.     

Opportunities to reconsider decision making processes due to Auto-ID

This work aims at studying new opportunities held by Auto-ID technologies in the operation and logistic management. On the one hand, these new information technologies will speed up information flows, and on the other hand, doing the shop floor and the product flow more visible will allow reconsidering centralised decision making processes. In this paper, a quick presentation of the RFID technology is done, after what drawbacks of classical centralised control systems are pointed out. Then, we address a way to improve a classic kanban control system, by using kanban cards as an informational/decisional entity in order to enrich shop-floor information/decision.     

高参与工作系统中的社会关系网络及其变革障碍

实证研究表明，高参与工作系统对企业绩效具有积极的影响。但是高参与工作系统对企业绩效的作用机制如何．这一问题并没有得到回答。基于社会资本理论，本论文提出了一个高参与工作系统、社会关系网络和企业绩效的作用机制模式。在此基础上，论文提出从高控制型向参与型工作系统的变革不仅仅简单是人力资源政策的调整，更是员工与员工之间社会关系网络的彻底变革。正因为社会关系网络的变革成本巨大，才导致大部分企业从高控制型向高参与型工作系统变革的失败。     

中国钢铁工业景气指数的开发与应用研究

钢铁工业作为基础原材料工业其发展态势将直接影响国民经济的运行，因此，对钢铁工业的监测预测具有十分重要的现实意义。国际上已利用了钢铁工业指数对钢铁工业进行有效的监测预测，而我国对钢铁工业的监测预测工作刚刚起步。我们通过多方面收集与钢铁工业有关的月度经济指标，利用时差相关分析等方法从中筛选出钢铁工业的先行、一致和滞后指标，并利用国际上先进的合成指数(Composite Index，CI)方法构建了我国钢铁工业的景气指数，以期为政府、钢铁企业及相关部门准确判断钢铁工业发展形势，有效预测钢铁工业的未来发展动向，正确制定相关的宏观经济调控方向、力度及经营方针提供一定的依据。     

建设社会主义新农村应大力开展农村信息化建设

农村信息化建设是当前的一项重点工作,有着广阔的市场空间。我们必须抓住历史机遇,迎接农业信息新技术的挑战,深入研究农业信息化的发展规律,掌握农业信息化建设的主动权,加快社会主义新农村建设的进程。     

Automatic production control applying control theory

A new dynamic production model for the planning level will be presented in this paper. The model is based on methods of control theory, which provide a large variety of appropriate tools for analysing and controlling dynamic systems. With the help of the funnel model and the theory of the logistic operating curve, a continuous flow model of a single work centre has been designed. For the control task a backlog controller and a WIP controller have been developed. The controllers interact to adjust the capacity and the input rate of the work centre so as to eliminate the backlog as soon as possible and to set the WIP to a defined level. By means of envelope curves of capacity flexibility, which are easily applicable to industry, the individual range of capacity adjustments at a single work centre can be modelled. Simulation experiments confirm that this concept ensures the synchronisation of capacity and work. The objective is to develop a closed-loop control for PPC with defined control and reference variables based on the logistical objectives.     

轴向磁悬浮轴承控制系统的可靠性研究

研究了轴向磁悬浮轴承系统的控制问题。基于控制可靠和低成本的考虑,系统采用了差动式电容传感器检测轴位移,用基于脉宽调制的PID控制策略控制磁力线圈的工作。实验表明,该控制系统能实现快速、准确、稳定及可靠控制,保证轴向磁悬浮轴承的正常工作。