Feeling at home in contemporary Japan: Space,atmosphere and intimacy

Based on a long-term ethnography inside thirty urban dwellings, this article aims to explore what it means to feel ‘at home’ in contemporary Japan. Ample attention has been paid to the staging of atmospheres in public spaces, but qualitative studies about domestic atmospheres are scarce and the emphasis tends to be on ‘front-stage’ concerns such as hospitality, status, and normativity. By contrast, by focussing on ‘back-stage’ activities such as sleeping, eating, and bathing, this article will show how these bodily practices may generate, assisted by various domestic technologies, an all-encompassing heat that encourages intimate sociality without infringing on individual needs for autonomy and detachment from social demands. More generally, the article argues that by exploring the complex entanglements of ideal and actual atmospheres we might gain a more comprehensive understanding of this expansive, spatial phenomenon and its relationship with intimacy within different cultural contexts.     

Sentiment de responsabilité pour le changement et l'innovation dans le contexte du comportement de santé : le rôle de la charge de travail cognitive,le leadership,l’autonomisation et la personnalité proactive

The innovation is one of the possible answers to the actual global competitive context able to foster and cope the high standards necessary for survival and competition of the organisations. The objective of this study, realized in the health context, is the exploration of the relationships between the innovative work behaviour and three antecedents (proactive personality, job cognitive demands and empowering leadership) trying to maintain the interactionist perspective between individual factors and context factors. These relationships have been investigated with a mediator role of felt responsibility to change, the individual belief that has a person when has feeling of responsibility in a realisation of transformations and new and constructive changes.     

Assessment of driver’s attentional resource allocation to visual,cognitive, and action processing by brain and eye signals

Driving a vehicle is comprised of multiple tasks (e.g., monitoring the environment around the vehicle, planning the trajectory, and controlling the vehicle), and requires the allocation of capacity-limited attentional resources to visual, cognitive, and action processing; otherwise, the quality of task performance will deteriorate, increasing the risk of near-accidents or crashes. The present study proposes that variations in the total amount as well as the individual amounts of attentional resources allocated to visual, cognitive, and action processing depending on the driving situations could be objectively estimated by the combined use of three physiological measures: (1) the duration of eye blinks during driving, (2) the size of eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRPs), i.e., event-related potentials (ERPs) that are time-locked to the offset of saccadic eye-movements during driving, and (3) the size of auditory-evoked potentials (AEPs), i.e., ERPs time-locked to the onset of task-unrelated auditory stimuli discretely presented during driving. We implemented these measures when participants (N = 16) drove a vehicle on a slalom course under four driving conditions defined by a combination of two levels of speed requirement (fast and slow) and two levels of path width (narrow and wide). The findings suggested that, (1) when driving at fast compared to slow speeds, the total amount of resources allocated to overall processing increased, which consisted of an increase in the amount of resources allocated to cognitive (and possibly action) processing and a decrease in the amount of resources allocated to visual processing, and (2) when driving on narrow compared to wide paths, the total amount of resources allocated to overall processing remained almost the same (due to complementary speed reduction), which consisted of an increase in the amount of resources allocated to visual processing, a decrease in the amount of resources allocated to cognitive processing, and almost the same amount of resources allocated to action processing. The driver’s resource management strategies indicated by these results as well as the utility and limitations of the proposed method are discussed.     

Interactive effects of emotional dissonance and self-control demands on burnout, anxiety, and absenteeism

Two specific sources of stress at work have recently received increasing attention in organizational stress research: emotional dissonance (ED) and self-control demands (SCDs). Both theoretical arguments and experimental findings in basic research strongly suggest that ED and different SCDs draw on a common limited regulatory resource. Consequently, both kinds of stressors should exert interactive effects on indicators of job strain and well-being. Drawing on two German samples (total N = 586), we tested this prediction by examining the interaction effects of ED and different dimensions of SCDs on burnout, anxiety, and absence behavior. Latent moderated structural equation modeling provided support for the hypothesized interactive effects of ED and dimensions of SCDs in predicting burnout, anxiety, and absence behavior. More specifically, with each pair of stressors the effects of one stressor were found to be amplified by the other. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of our results.     

Resources Matter: Combined Influence of Job Demands and Job Control on Creative Process Engagement

Considerable research has been conducted on employee creativity, but it has generally focused on creative outcomes and rarely paid attention to employees’ engagement in creative processes, that is, creative process engagement. Further, job characteristics as antecedents are little understood. Drawing on the job demands-resources model and the conservation of resources theory, this study examines the relationship between challenge-hindrance demands and creative process engagement at different levels of job control. In total, 572 questionnaires from China were used to test our proposed model through hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that when job control is high, the effect of challenge demands on creative process engagement is U-shaped, while that of hindrance demands is negative. When job control is low, both challenge and hindrance demands are not related to creative process engagement.     

An intelligent fault detection system for a heat pump installation based on a geothermal heat exchanger

The heat pump with geothermal exchanger is one of the best methods to heat up a building. The heat exchanger is an element with high probability of failure due to the fact that it is an outside construction and also due to its size. In the present study, a novel intelligent system was designed to detect faults on this type of heating equipment. The novel approach has been successfully empirically tested under a real dataset obtained during measurements of one year. It was based on classification techniques with the aim of detecting failures in real time. Then, the model was validated and verified over the building; it obtained good results in all the operating conditions ranges.     

On the temporal stability of self-determined work motivation profiles: a latent transition analysis

ABSTRACT

This study extends the research and theory on work motivation by examining temporal stability and change in employees’ self-determined work motivation profiles and their differential relations to various predictors and outcomes. We gathered data at two time points over a 24-month period from a sample of 438 newly registered public health care nurses. Results of latent profile and latent transition analyses revealed four distinct profiles (strongly, moderately, self-determined, and poorly motivated), estimated from the position of global and specific behavioural regulations on the motivation continuum proposed by self-determination theory. These profiles were entirely stable at the within-sample level, although within-person changes in profile membership occurred for 30–40% of employees. Of particular interest, perceptions of job resources were consistently associated with greater likelihood of membership in the strongly and moderately motivated profiles. These profiles were also consistently associated with lower emotional exhaustion and intentions to leave the occupation and the organization and with higher in-role performance compared to the self-determined and poorly motivated profiles.     

Linking ICT Availability Demands to Burnout and Work-Family Conflict: The Roles of Workplace Telepressure and Dispositional Self-Regulation

Abstract

The advancement of technology has led to an increasingly permeable boundary between work and off-work time. As such, employees may face pressure to immediately respond to work-related information and communication technology (ICT) messages during off-work time. This study examines the mediating role of workplace telepressure on the relationships between ICT availability demands with burnout and work-family conflict, as well as the moderating effects of self-regulation on these relationships. Data were collected from 185 full-time employees at two time points. Results indicated full support for the moderated mediation model, demonstrating that workplace telepressure mediated the relationships between ICT availability demands and burnout and work-family conflict. Moreover, dispositional self-regulation strengthened the direct effect of ICT availability demands on workplace telepressure and the indirect effects of ICT availability demands on burnout and work-family conflict. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.