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Emerging technologies such as sensors, drones, robots, digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality increasingly operate as interlinked components in large technological suites that carry out novel functions. In this article, the author outlines potential negative consequences for work, workers, and society that use of these emerging technologies pose and offers policy ideas for a proactive, strategic response. Resonating across these policy ideas is a call for government to hold corporations accountable. In addition, workers and others who tend to our social fabric, built environment, and governing institutions must participate in the process of technology development, selection, design, implementation, and use. Given the potential for the use of emerging technologies to transform work and society radically and quickly, it falls upon all of us, not just a powerful few, to make choices that support positive outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study advances organizational communication scholarship by introducing the notion of an occupational identity gap as a misalignment among the personal, relational, communal, and enacted frames of identity. Despite knowledge that occupational identity gaps exist, scholars know little about how people manage them. Interviews with 31 graphic designers explain how occupational identity gaps were forged by personal frames (e.g., "I am a creative person") that contradicted enacted (e.g., "I do boring template work") and relational frames (e.g., "It's the client's decision which [design] he or she will like"). Workers managed this misalignment by employing two novel strategies—reappraising and repositioning—that bridged personal-enacted and personal-relational occupational identity gaps. Our analysis contributes to scholarship by a) theorizing these two occupational identity gap bridging strategies, (b) extending CTI research, and (c) offering a novel conceptualization of occupational identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to improve bus driver effectiveness. Analysis of data gathered reveals the unlikelihood of improvement of individual bus driver effectiveness measures. The authors determined that the most visible benefits were seen in the automatic processing of information related to transferring passengers and in the increased speed with which emergency and maintenance calls can be handled.

Prior research suggests that boundary objects gain meaning through group interaction. Drawing from the literature on strategic ambiguity, we explore the possibility that individuals strategically create potential boundary objects in an attempt to shape the meanings that groups develop. From ethnographic observations of automotive engineers, we identify 2 creation strategies: ambiguity (to create objects that support multiple meanings) and clarity (to create objects that permit a particular meaning). We detail design activities that engineers undertook to create objects under each strategy. We find that, when creating objects, engineers favored a strategy of ambiguity, which they believed would foster healthy long-term group interactions, over a strategy of clarity, which they tended to employ only when they expected resistance to their ideas.

In a comparative field study of ten libraries, we show how technological advances in electronic and digital resources have led to an onslaught of technology questions at the reference desk while prompting new and challenging work away from the desk. Libraries in our sample varied in their approaches to dealing with technological change, with institutional factors appearing to strongly shape their choice. Large, four-year academic libraries adopted a role reinvention approach that reduced reference librarians' desk hours and permitted librarians to follow creative, often technical, pursuits. Small, four-year academic libraries took a structural defense approach that maintained the sanctity of the reference desk as the locus for substantive reference questions. Two-year academic and public libraries followed a resigned surrender approach where reference librarians staffed busy desks and were inundated with patron requests to aid with computer equipment. We discuss the implications of each approach for the work of reference librarians. (Contains 8 figures, 5 tables and 5 footnotes.)

Industrial engineering was originally founded as a discipline that focused on the study and design of work. Yet, today the field has largely distanced itself from this early concern. This paper tracks the decline of work studies in industrial engineering and explores the question of why the discipline lost its concern for work and, ultimately, its ability to speak to the kinds of social and economic changes that it was created to address. Our reading of historical documents and our analysis of data collected from nine industrial engineering departments from their founding to the present day reveal that changes in industrial engineering were tied to trends in society, to shifts in sources of funding, and to the field's concern with its own status. The decline of work studies in industrial engineering is especially problematic because the nature of work has dramatically changed over the past 50 years, as we outline in this paper. The upshot is that industrial engineering now finds itself unable to speak about the organization of work and the design of modern work systems. We explain why the time has come for the field to rekindle its interest in the nature of work and the particulars of the workplace and we suggest several paths for proceeding in this direction., 1. Introduction If any discipline is rightfully the child of the second industrial revolution and the changes it wrought in the nature of work, that discipline is industrial engineering. Forged [...]

Abstract The bulk of our understanding of teams is based on traditional teams in which all members are collocated and communicate face to face. However, geographically distributed teams, whose members [...]

Manufracturing programs aimed at improving performance often feature employee teams that address production problems at the shop-floor level. According to cognitive models of participation, performance under such programs is improved via the better utilization of skills and knowledge that occurs as employees are allowed greater decision making in their tasks. We examine the cognitive-model premise in a high-technology industry where improvement-team programs are on the rise. We study three types of improvement-team programs among a sample of eight manufacturing sites. The programs feature continuous improvement teams (CIT's), quality circles (QC's), or self-directed work teams (SDWT's) and vary in the amount of decision-making power, skill attainment via training, and skill use granted to employees. A quantitative analysis of performance reveals that CIT programs were associated with the highest direct and indirect productivity, two metrics that were available for each firm. QC and SDWT programs should not be dismissed, however, as they may lead to improvements in quality metrics, as we note in suggestions for future research. Qualitative data gathered in site visits suggest that poor implementation and failure to integrate production programs with engineering departments are two factors that inhibit program success. Index Terms - Continuous improvement, employee participation, manufacturing, quality circles, semiconductor, teams, work groups.

The increasing use of autonomous work groups in manufacturing industries has been accompanied by a growing confusion over exactly what group autonomy connotes. Our intent in this paper is to provide clarity to the quantitative measurement of work group autonomy. An examination of classic case studies from the group literature reveals how group autonomy has been conceptualized over time, while highlighting the absence of more modern-day concerns in areas such as equipment maintenance and quality improvement. In attempting to objectively assess the degree of autonomy held by work groups both in the classic studies and in a modern high-technology industry, we find that the existing measurement instrument fails at the latter. A new more finely grained measuring instrument is introduced that covers decisions in the areas of methods, scheduling, task allocation, resource allocation and management, goals, and boundary management. Items on the instrument address topics in performance evaluation, training, equipment maintenance, group membership, and production, among others. Index Terms - Autonomy, manufacturing, measurement, team, work group.

This paper examines the potential for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to improve bus driver effectiveness. Analysis of data gathered reveals the unlikelihood of improvement of individual bus driver effectiveness measures. The authors determined that the most visible benefits were seen in the automatic processing of information related to transferring passengers and in the increased speed with which emergency and maintenance calls can be handled.