Application of load-oriented manufacturing control in industry

This paper deals with multi-stage lotsizing models for imperfect production processes. The effect of imperfect quality on lotsizing decisions and effect ofinspection errorsare taken into consideration in the proposed models. Numerical examples are presented for illustration purposes. The developed models are very helpful for justifying quality assurance and quality improvement efforts.     

New technology and its impact on well being

Great changes have come about in the last decade regarding the organization of work. High technology and the steadily increasing ideology of technocracy has produced a profound effect on the organization of work in some workplaces. This effect has made the psychosocial and physical working environment tougher, especially for women. The results we are presenting here show that when dividing fishing factories into three technological stages; low technology, middle technology and high technology, the job strain was highest and the decision authority by the employee was lowest in the high technological factories. This even had an impact on health and on the atmosphere at the workplace, where the employees in the high technological factories were more likely to complain about several health problems as well as about low degrees of cheerfulness at the workplace and tiresome jobs. However, these same people were the most positive towards the implementation of the high technology and the new way of organizing their job that the technology introduced.     

Rewiring global networks at local events: congresses in the stock photo trade

Digital technologies have enabled the geographical expansion of production and the distribution of creative goods and communication. Simultaneously, the number of trade fairs and congresses has increased. This rise of temporary encounters has led to theorizations of events as marketplaces, learning sites and field‐configuring practices. This article elaborates on the metaphor of rewiring to propose and empirically demonstrate a further role of industry events for global business. Drawing on the case of the global stock photo trade, we use a unique survey to map the global network of sales partnerships as well as interviews conducted at international lead congresses to demonstrate how these events are enacted as social relays. Our findings demonstrate how temporary face‐to‐face contact facilitates long distance relationships between organizations and how it dynamically shapes the global industry network. Thus, we contribute to closing the gap between social action at the micro level, organizational linkages at the meso level and the structure of global industry networks at the macro level.     

Quantitative models for optimal rest period scheduling

Mathematical and simulation models studying work-rest schedules in a production process are developed to arrive at an optimal rest policy to maximize work output per unit time. A CSMP simulation study is used to test the sensitivity of the results for different specific cases.     

LEADING WITH(OUT) SACRIFICE? A PUBLIC‐GOODS EXPERIMENT WITH A PRIVILEGED PLAYER

We analyze two team settings in which one member in a team has stronger incentives to contribute than the others. If contributions constitute a sacrifice for the strong player, the other team members are more inclined to cooperate than if contributions are strictly dominant for the strong player. (JEL C91, C92, H40, H41)     

Work organization, well-being and health in geriatric care

The objective of the present study was to explore the connection between the organization of work in geriatric care and factors which have been connected to job stress and burnout, i.e. exhaustion, mental workload, job satisfaction and communication. We also analyzed how these factors were related to employee visits to doctors during the previous 12 months due to various medical conditions. The study was a cross-sectional questionnaire distributed to all employees within nursing homes and geriatric hospital wards with 10 employees or more throughout Iceland. The total response rate was 80%. The majority of respondents, or 96%, were women (n = 1432), and the results are based on their answers. Our data show that there is a high correlation between mental exhaustion and the unsatisfactory organization of work. Mental exhaustion upon completing work shifts was more closely connected to the health outcomes studied than were the other work-related factors studied. This is especially true for chronic fatigue, depression and sleeping disorders. It is important that employers and managers notice the mismatches between work and workers that this study manifests. Employers and managers must also consider the organizational factors that are influential.