Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: Productivity
- All Subjects: Knowledge workers
- All Subjects: Work stress
- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Creators: Wiezel, Avi
- Creators: Counts, Virginia
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
Using experience, observations, data, current research, and writings in the field of volunteer management, it was determined there was a need to study the effects of leadership/management practices on the productivity outcomes of a volunteer construction workforce. A simple wood bench that would be tiled and painted was designed to test the areas of Time, Waste, Quality, Safety, and Satisfaction of different volunteer groups. The challenge was bolstered by giving the teams no power tools and limited available resources. A simple design of experiment model was used to test highs and lows in the three management techniques of Instruction, Help, and Encouragement. Each scenario was tested multiple times. Data was collected, normalized and analyzed using statistical analysis software. A few significant findings were discovered. The first; the research showed that there was no significant correlation between the management practices of the leader and the satisfaction of the volunteers. The second; the research also showed when further analyzed into specific realistic scenarios that the organizations would be better to focus on high amounts of Help and Encouragement in order to maximize the productivity of their volunteer construction workforce. This is significant as it allows NPO's and governments to focus their attention where best suited to produce results. The results were shared and the study was further validated as "significant" by conducting interviews with experts in the construction nonprofit sector.
ContributorsPrigge, Diedrich (Author) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Wiezel, Avi (Committee member) / Badger, William (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
ABSTRACT Recent studies indicate that top-performing companies have higher-performing work environments than average companies. They receive higher scores for worker satisfaction with their overall physical work environment as well as higher effectiveness ratings for their workspaces (Gensler, 2008; Harter et al., 2003). While these studies indicate a relationship between effective office design and satisfaction they have not explored which specific space types may contribute to workers' overall satisfaction with their physical work environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between workers' overall satisfaction with their physical work environments and their perception of the effectiveness of spaces designed for Conceptual Age work including learning, focusing, collaborating, and socializing tasks. This research is designed to identify which workspace types are related to workers' satisfaction with their overall work environment and which are perceived to be most and least effective. To accomplish this two primary and four secondary research questions were developed for this study. The first primary question considers overall workers' satisfaction with their overall physical work environments (offices, workstations, hallways, common areas, reception, waiting areas, etc.) related to the effective use of work mode workspaces (learning, focusing, collaborating, socializing). The second primary research question was developed to identify which of the four work mode space types had the greatest and least relationship to workers' satisfaction with the overall physical work environment. Secondary research questions were developed to address workers' perceptions of effectiveness of each space type. This research project used data from a previous study collected from 2007 to 2012. Responses were from all staff levels of US office-based office workers and resulted in a blind sample of approximately 48,000 respondents. The data for this study were developed from SPSS data reports that included descriptive data and Pearson correlations. Findings were developed from those statistics using coefficient of determination.
ContributorsHarmon-Vaughan, Elizabeth (Author) / Kroelinger, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Bernardi, Jose (Committee member) / Ozel, Filiz (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The wood-framing trade has not sufficiently been investigated to understand the work task sequencing and coordination among crew members. A new mental framework for a performing crew was developed and tested through four case studies. This framework ensured similar team performance as the one provided by task micro-scheduling in planning software. It also allowed evaluation of the effect of individual coordination within the crew on the crew's productivity. Using design information, a list of micro-activities/tasks and their predecessors was automatically generated for each piece of lumber in the four wood frames. The task precedence was generated by applying elementary geometrical and technological reasoning to each frame. Then, the duration of each task was determined based on observations from videotaped activities. Primavera's (P6) resource leveling rules were used to calculate the sequencing of tasks and the minimum duration of the whole activity for various crew sizes. The results showed quick convergence towards the minimum production time and allowed to use information from Building Information Models (BIM) to automatically establish the optimal crew sizes for frames. Late Start (LS) leveling priority rule gave the shortest duration in every case. However, the logic of LS tasks rule is too complex to be conveyed to the framing crew. Therefore, the new mental framework of a well performing framer was developed and tested to ensure high coordination. This mental framework, based on five simple rules, can be easily taught to the crew and ensures a crew productivity congruent with the one provided by the LS logic. The case studies indicate that once the worst framer in the crew surpasses the limit of 11% deviation from applying the said five rules, every additional percent of deviation reduces the productivity of the whole crew by about 4%.
ContributorsMaghiar, Marcel M (Author) / Wiezel, Avi (Thesis advisor) / Mitropoulos, Panagiotis (Committee member) / Cooke, Nancy J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The 21st-century professional or knowledge worker spends much of the working day engaging others through electronic communication. The modes of communication available to knowledge workers have rapidly increased due to computerized technology advances: conference and video calls, instant messaging, e-mail, social media, podcasts, audio books, webinars, and much more. Professionals who think for a living express feelings of stress about their ability to respond and fear missing critical tasks or information as they attempt to wade through all the electronic communication that floods their inboxes. Although many electronic communication tools compete for the attention of the contemporary knowledge worker, most professionals use an electronic personal information management (PIM) system, more commonly known as an e-mail application and often the ubiquitous Microsoft Outlook program. The aim of this research was to provide knowledge workers with solutions to manage the influx of electronic communication that arrives daily by studying the workers in their working environment. This dissertation represents a quest to understand the current strategies knowledge workers use to manage their e-mail, and if modification of e-mail management strategies can have an impact on productivity and stress levels for these professionals. Today’s knowledge workers rarely work entirely alone, justifying the importance of also exploring methods to improve electronic communications within teams.
ContributorsCounts, Virginia (Author) / Parrish, Kristen (Thesis advisor) / Allenby, Braden (Thesis advisor) / Landis, Amy (Committee member) / Cooke, Nancy J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018