Service Completion Estimates for Cross‐trained Workforce Schedules under Uncertain Attendance and Demand

Although cross‐trained workers offer numerous operational advantages for extended‐hour service businesses, they must first be scheduled for duty. The outcome from those decisions, usually made a week or more in advance, varies with realized service demand, worker attendance, and the way available cross‐trained workers are deployed once the demands for service are known. By ignoring the joint variability of attendance and demand, we show that existing workforce scheduling models tend to overstate expected schedule performance and systematically undervalue the benefits of cross‐training. We propose a two‐stage stochastic program for profit‐oriented cross‐trained workforce scheduling and allocation decisions that is driven by service completion estimates obtained from the convolution of the employee attendance and service demand distributions. Those estimates, reflecting optimal worker allocation decisions over all plausible realizations of attendance and demand, provide the gradient information used to guide workforce scheduling decisions. Comparing the performance of workforce scheduling decisions for hundreds of different hypothetical service environments, we find that solutions based on convolution estimates are more profitable, favor proportionately more cross‐trained workers and fewer specialists, and tend to recommend significantly larger (smaller) staffing levels for services under high (low) contribution margins than workforce schedules developed with independent expectations of attendance and demand.     

Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects

Families, primarily female‐headed minority households with children, living in high‐poverty public housing projects in five U.S. cities were offered housing vouchers by lottery in the Moving to Opportunity program. Four to seven years after random assignment, families offered vouchers lived in safer neighborhoods that had lower poverty rates than those of the control group not offered vouchers. We find no significant overall effects of this intervention on adult economic self‐sufficiency or physical health. Mental health benefits of the voucher offers for adults and for female youth were substantial. Beneficial effects for female youth on education, risky behavior, and physical health were offset by adverse effects for male youth. For outcomes that exhibit significant treatment effects, we find, using variation in treatment intensity across voucher types and cities, that the relationship between neighborhood poverty rate and outcomes is approximately linear.     

CEO health

Using comprehensive data on 28 cohorts in Sweden, we analyze CEO health and its determinants and outcomes. We find CEOs are in much better health than the population and on par with other high-skill professionals. These results apply in particular to mental health and to CEOs of larger companies. We explore three mechanisms that can account for CEOs’ robust health. First, we find health predicts appointment to a CEO position. Second, the CEO position has no discernible impact on the health of its holder. Third, poor health is associated with greater CEO turnover. Here, both contemporaneous health and health at the time of appointment matter. Poor CEO health also predicts poor firm outcomes. We find a statistically significant association between mental health and corporate performance for smaller-firm CEOs, for whom a one standard deviation deterioration in mental health translates into a performance reduction of 6% relative to the mean.     

基于中国上市公司的政府干预、金融市场化与法人股价值研究

以上市公司2000～2004年法人股协议转让的经验数据为样本,实证分析了政府干预和金融市场化程度对法人股价值的影响.研究发现,政府干预会降低法人股协议转让价格,但这种影响主要体现在国有企业上,对民营企业的影响并不显著.这为政府掠夺之手的理论提供了新的证据,同时也能更深入地了解政府干预对不同所有制企业的影响.此外,还发现发达的外部金融市场可以提高法人股转让价格,这表明金融中介体系作为产权保护的替代机制,能够通过约束经理人行为以及提高企业效率为企业带来治理溢价.     

The many (distinctive) faces of leadership: Inferring leadership domain from facial appearance

Previous research has shown that people form impressions of potential leaders from their faces and that certain facial features predict success in reaching prestigious leadership positions. However, much less is known about the accuracy or meta-accuracy of face-based leadership inferences. Here we examine a simple, but important, question: Can leadership domain be inferred from faces? We find that human judges can identify business, military, and sports leaders (but not political leaders) from their faces with above-chance accuracy. However, people are surprisingly bad at evaluating their own performance on this judgment task: We find no relationship between how well judges think they performed and their actual accuracy levels. In a follow-up study, we identify several basic dimensions of evaluation that correlate with face-based judgments of leadership domain, as well as those that predict actual leadership domain. We discuss the implications of our results for leadership perception and selection.     

The Impact of Income and Employment Status on Leaving Home: Evidence from the Italian ECHP Sample

In this paper we investigate the role economic resources play in the decision of young Italian adults to leave the parental home. This is of particular interest given that, in Italy, young people leave home considerably later than in other European countries. We use the first two waves of the Italian sample of the European Community Household Panel. We use a Heckman selection‐type probit procedure to account for left censoring and unobserved heterogeneity. We find that economic circumstances are important. In particular, we find personal income resources, as well as parental income levels, to be crucial in leaving home. Our results suggest that stable employment is an important prerequisite for men to start their own household. For women, on the other hand, finding a partner seems to the most important factor in becoming independent of their parents.     

Signs of struggle (SOS): The development and validation of a behavioural mental health checklist for the workplace

ABSTRACT

For managers to successfully support employee access to mental health resources, they must first be able to recognise if and when an employee may need help. To manage employees effectively, managers must be able to recognise changes in employees’ work behaviour that may indicate when an employee is struggling at work. In study 1, we develop and establish the structure of the 20-item Signs of Struggle (SOS) checklist as comprising five factors that describe the warning signs of health impairment at work (i.e. distress, withdrawal, reduced attendance, degradations in performance, extreme behaviours). In study 2, we show that manager-rated signs of struggle correlated substantially (r?=?.72) with participant-reported strain. The SOS tool provides managers a way to recognise when employees may be struggling and could benefit from workplace resources. We recommend that for maximal benefit, managers also receive training on how to use the SOS, and also on how to approach and assist employees who are displaying warning signs.     

CRITICAL PERIODS DURING CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

We identify the ages that constitute sensitive (or critical) periods in children's development towards their adult health status, skills, and human capital. For this, we use data on families migrating into Sweden from countries that are poorer, with less healthy conditions. Late‐life health is proxied by adult height and other adult outcomes. The relation between siblings’ ages at migration and their adult outcomes allows us to estimate the causal effect of conditions at specific childhood ages. We effectively exploit that, for siblings, the migration occurs simultaneously in calendar time but at different developmental stages (ages). We find evidence that the period just before the puberty growth spurt constitutes a critical period for adult height and we find related critical periods for adult cognition, mental health, and education.     

DOES THE BETTER‐THAN‐AVERAGE EFFECT SHOW THAT PEOPLE ARE OVERCONFIDENT?: TWO EXPERIMENTS

We conduct two experimental tests of the claim that people are overconfident, using new tests of overplacement that are based on a formal Bayesian model. Our two experiments, on easy quizzes, find that people overplace themselves. More precisely, we find apparently overconfident data that cannot be accounted for by a rational population of expected utility maximizers who care only about money. The finding represents new evidence of overconfidence that is robust to the Bayesian critique offered by Benoît and Dubra (Jean‐Pierre Benoît and Juan Dubra (2011). “Apparent Overconfidence.” Econometrica, 79, 1591–1625). We discuss possible limitations of our results.     

MORTALITY,HEALTH STATUS,AND WEALTH

In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/1989 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes. We find that, even after conditioning on the initial health status, wealth rankings are important determinants of mortality and the evolution of the health indicator in the survey. For men aged 65 moving from the 40th percentile to the 60th percentile in the wealth distribution increases the probability of survival by between 1.0 and 1.9 percentage points depending on the measure of wealth used. A similar effect is found for women of between 1.1 and 1.3 percentage points. In the process of estimating these effects we control for nonrandom attrition from our sample. (JEL: I2, J19)     

Leading for change: line managers’ influence on the outcomes of an occupational health intervention

Line managers may play a central role in the success of occupational health interventions. However, few studies have focussed on the relationship between line managers’ behaviours and the outcomes of occupational health interventions. We examined the influence of both line managers’ attitudes and actions towards an intervention as well as their transformational leadership on the expected outcomes of the intervention (i.e. employee self-rated health and work ability). The intervention consisted of the implementation and use of a web-based system for occupational health management. A sample of 180 employees provided data for the analysis. Self-rated health and work ability were measured at the baseline (Time 1) and follow-up (Time 3), while employee ratings of line managers’ attitudes and actions, and transformational leadership were measured during the intervention process (Time 2). The results revealed that line managers’ attitudes and actions positively predicted changes in both self-rated health and work ability. The influence of transformational leadership was indirect and mediated through line managers’ attitudes and actions towards the intervention. Based on the results, we suggest using process measures that include aspects of both line managers’ attitudes and actions as well as their transformational leadership in future process evaluation.     

Schedule Recovery: Unplanned Absences in Service Operations*

The U.S. service sector loses 2.3% of all scheduled labor hours to unplanned absences, but in some industries, the total cost of unplanned absences approaches 20% of payroll expense. The principal reasons for unscheduled absences (personal illness and family issues) are unlikely to abate anytime soon. Despite this, most labor scheduling systems continue to assume perfect attendance. This oversight masks an important but rarely addressed issue in services management: how to recover from short‐notice, short‐term reductions in planned capacity. In this article, we model optimal responses to unplanned employee absences in multi‐server queueing systems that provide discrete, pay‐per‐use services for impatient customers. Our goal is to assess the performance of alternate absence recovery strategies under various staffing and scheduling regimes. We accomplish this by first developing optimal labor schedules for hypothetical service environments with unreliable workers. We then simulate unplanned employee absences, apply an absence recovery model, and compute system profits. Our absence recovery model utilizes recovery strategies such as holdover overtime, call‐ins, and temporary workers. We find that holdover overtime is an effective absence recovery strategy provided sufficient reserve capacity (maximum allowable work hours minus scheduled hours) exists. Otherwise, less precise and more costly absence recovery methods such as call‐ins and temporary help service workers may be needed. We also find that choices for initial staffing and scheduling policies, such as planned overtime and absence anticipation, significantly influence the likelihood of successful absence recovery. To predict the effectiveness of absence recovery policies under alternate staffing/scheduling strategies and operating environments, we propose an index based on initial capacity reserves.     

关键基础设施及其安全管理

关键基础设施(CI)系统是复杂的、高度相互依存的、网络化的社会-技术系统,一旦系统被中断或者被破坏,将会对国民健康、国土安全、经济稳定以及政府的正常运转等产生重大的影响.主要研究关键基础设施及其安全管理过程中的若干问题,对CI的特点进行了分析和总结,建立了网络化CI系统的体系结构,并利用视图模型来描述系统,同时还给出了灾难处理的一般过程.最后,进一步探讨了如何使用系统工程的方法来分析和模拟网络化CI系统的运行方式、潜在的薄弱环节以及改进这些薄弱环节的实施方法.     

The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries

School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence that winning a lottery provides any systematic benefit across a wide variety of traditional academic measures. Lottery winners do, however, experience improvements on a subset of nontraditional outcome measures, such as self‐reported disciplinary incidents and arrest rates.     

Religious beliefs along the suicidal path in northern Taiwan

This study aimed to understand the current inclinations toward depression and compulsion for members of four different religious groups, and to predict religious beliefs along the suicide path through analyzing the lifetime prevalence of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts for members of these religious groups. Participants in this cross-sectional study, which adopted purposive sampling, were members of Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Taoism in northern Taiwan. In the case of suicide experiences, suicides among people one knows, and tendency toward compulsion and depression, there are statistical differences between the four religions. According to the results, some people with suicidal tendency will attend religious activities; therefore, we predict that religious beliefs play an important role in suicide prevention.     

A Case Study Investigating the Effects of a Low-Cost Intervention to Reduce Three Attendance Behavior Problems in a Clerical Training Program

ABSTRACT

Operant learning principles were employed to design an intervention aimed at reducing the frequency of dysfunctional attendance behaviors among a group (N = 13) of low socioeconomic females completing a clerical/office simulation training program. The Federally funded simulation provided a setting in which subjects learned the rudimentary skills required for employment. A low cost coupon incentive system served as the independent variable which effectively reinforced proper attendance behaviors. Effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated using a multiple-baseline design. Results were practically significant reductions in dysfunctional behavior rates which generalized to actual work settings following posttraining employment. Findings are discussed in terms of satiation, skills transferability, cost, and subject participation.     

WHAT GOOD IS WEALTH WITHOUT HEALTH? THE EFFECT OF HEALTH ON THE MARGINAL UTILITY OF CONSUMPTION

We estimate how the marginal utility of consumption varies with health. To do so, we develop a simple model in which the impact of health on the marginal utility of consumption can be estimated from data on permanent income, health, and utility proxies. We estimate the model using the Health and Retirement Study's panel data on the elderly and near‐elderly, and proxy for utility with measures of subjective well‐being. Across a wide range of alternative specifications and assumptions, we find that the marginal utility of consumption declines as health deteriorates, and we are able to clearly reject the null of no state dependence. Our point estimates indicate that a one‐standard‐deviation increase in the number of chronic diseases is associated with a 10%–25% decline in the marginal utility of consumption relative to this marginal utility when the individual has no chronic diseases. We present some simple, illustrative calibration results that suggest that state dependence of the magnitude we estimate can have a substantial effect on important economic problems such as the optimal level of health insurance benefits and the optimal level of life‐cycle savings.     

Cumulatively Large Benefits of Incrementally Small Intervention Effects

Abstract

Metacontingencies are relations among practices within an organizational culture and their molar environmental consequences for the culture. They can be summarized by the ratio of all revenues from operations (or budgets received) to all expenses paid for operations. Rates of attendance/absenteeism have consequences in terms of effects on a culture's ratio of revenues received (budgets funded) to expense payments that appear as profits (losses) or budget surpluses (deficits) over some time interval. For a host of reasons OBM researchers place a premium on identifying and adopting practices that result in large immediate effects on behavior and performance in the short run. However, some practices created by OBM interventions can have small short-term effects and appreciably larger cumulative effects on revenue to expense and budget to budget expenditure ratios in the longer run. The importance of estimating cumulative benefits and/or costs of OBM interventions when intervention effects are small is demonstrated in this article using data from an operant based intervention that produced an immediate small increase in attendance.     

Return to work: A comparison of two cognitive behavioural interventions in cases of work-related psychological complaints among the self-employed

We investigated the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and a combined intervention of workplace- and individual-focused techniques among self-employed people on sick leave owing to work-related psychological complaints (such as anxiety, depression, and burnout). Both interventions were based on CBT; however, one was conducted by psychotherapists and involved extensive CBT, while the other was delivered by “labour experts” and consisted of a brief CBT-derived intervention combined with both individual-focused and workplace interventions. One hundred and twenty-two self-employed people who had applied for sickness benefit from an insurance company enrolled in a randomized controlled design. These individuals were assessed before the intervention and then at 4 months and 10 months after the onset of the intervention. The outcome was assessed based on duration of sick leave until partial and full return to work and on psychological complaints. Significant effects on partial and full return were found in favour of the combined intervention: partial return occurred 17 and 30 days earlier in this group than in the CBT group and the control group, respectively. For full return to work, the difference was approximately 200 days. A decrease in psychological complaints was present in each condition but we found no significant interaction effects. The results suggest that work resumption should be addressed earlier in individuals receiving CBT. This insight is of value for the (scarce) literature concerning interventions for individuals who are on sick leave owing to work-related psychological complaints.     

Return to work: A comparison of two cognitive behavioural interventions in cases of work-related psychological complaints among the self-employed

Abstract

We investigated the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and a combined intervention of workplace- and individual-focused techniques among self-employed people on sick leave owing to work-related psychological complaints (such as anxiety, depression, and burnout). Both interventions were based on CBT; however, one was conducted by psychotherapists and involved extensive CBT, while the other was delivered by “labour experts” and consisted of a brief CBT-derived intervention combined with both individual-focused and workplace interventions. One hundred and twenty-two self-employed people who had applied for sickness benefit from an insurance company enrolled in a randomized controlled design. These individuals were assessed before the intervention and then at 4 months and 10 months after the onset of the intervention. The outcome was assessed based on duration of sick leave until partial and full return to work and on psychological complaints. Significant effects on partial and full return were found in favour of the combined intervention: partial return occurred 17 and 30 days earlier in this group than in the CBT group and the control group, respectively. For full return to work, the difference was approximately 200 days. A decrease in psychological complaints was present in each condition but we found no significant interaction effects. The results suggest that work resumption should be addressed earlier in individuals receiving CBT. This insight is of value for the (scarce) literature concerning interventions for individuals who are on sick leave owing to work-related psychological complaints.