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1. Developing Empathy Among Drivers to Improve Safety in Highway Construction Work Zones

   Valdés, D. (August 2023, XXII Conferencia Panamericana de Ingeniería y Logística de Tránsito y Transporte)

   Temporary traffic control (TTC) in highway work zones has significant implications and challenges in terms of safety for road users and workers. Work zone workers are increasingly concerned about the risks they face due to their proximity to live traffic on the road. Drivers tend to be less aware of the risks faced by workers in highway work zones. The public should develop empathy to increase awareness about the danger construction workers are exposed in highway work zones. The research objective was to use virtual reality (VR) with a role-playing situation with almost complete sensory immersion in a controlled environment and a driving simulator to investigate if exposing drivers to the work hazards that highway construction workers typically encounter influences their behaviour while driving through work zones. The study compared the driving behaviours in the simulator between subjects sensitized using VR to the subjects who were not sensitized using VR. The simulation included the use of a GPS device that instructed drivers to turn on a road that was blocked by the TTC of the work zone as a distraction strategy. The results indicate that participants exposed to VR made safer driving decisions than participants without the VR intervention. The results suggest that drivers' empathy towards highway construction workers in a work zone can positively impact safety, communication, and well-being. 

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2. “It’s Not Like Chasing Chanel:” Spending Time, Investing in the Self, and Pandemic Epiphanies

   https://doi.org/10.1177/07308884221125246  

   Ravenelle, Alexandrea J.; Kowalski, Ken Cai (November 2022, Work and Occupations)

   The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the labor market and given rise to the Great Resignation. Drawing on a mixed methods panel study of 199 precarious and gig-based workers, we analyze how a changing conception of free time during the Covid-19 pandemic led low-wage service workers to seek more fulfilling careers. Whereas most workers initially perceived free time in terms of opportunity costs, they later reconceived this time as enabling an investment in personal growth, moving from “spending time” making money to “investing time” in themselves. This shift in temporal experience is expressed through the adoption of a “work passion” logic and “pandemic epiphanies” that motivated respondents to seek self-affirming and potentially more lucrative work opportunities. 

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3. Virtually Even: Status Equalizing in Distributed Organizations

   https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15846  

   Hinds, Rebecca; Valentine, Melissa; DeCelles, Katherine; Berg, Justin M (July 2025, Organization Science)

   In distributed organizations, perceived status differences between workers are ubiquitous and harmful. Yet research suggests that once they are formed, status beliefs in organizations become entrenched in hierarchies and are hard to dismantle. In an inductive qualitative study, we observed how established status differences between remote and in-person workers in distributed organizations dissolved during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone began working remotely. We use these data to theorize a novel status-equalizing process through which remote workers came to see themselves on an “equal playing field” with their in-person peers. We theorize how this status equalizing occurred through workers’ changing their “in-person default” use of technology—that is, their new behavior challenged embedded cultural practices that had treated the in-person workplace experience as the standard, normal, and valued perspective, implicitly guiding how employees used technology. Workers adopted new and more inclusive technology practices—including the use of asynchronous communication, greater codification of work, and virtual socializing—which resulted in remote workers perceiving new and more equal communication standards, access to information, and opportunity for social connection. As a result, these workers reported feeling less negatively stereotyped and treated more fairly in their virtual interactions with colleagues, fostering feelings of inclusion and deepening relationships across the previously established status divide. At a time when many organizations are grappling with the challenges of distributed, remote, and hybrid work, our research illuminates how inclusive technology practices can help nullify entrenched status imbalances. 

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4. Signaling and meaning in organizational analytics: coping with Goodhart’s Law in an era of digitization and datafication

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad023  

   Treem, Jeffrey_W; Barley, William_C; Weber, Matthew_S; Barbour, Joshua_B; Baym, ed., Nancy; Ellison, ed., Nicole (June 2023, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication)

   Abstract The future of work will be measured. The increasing and widespread adoption of analytics, the use of digital inputs and outputs to inform organizational decision making, makes the communication of data central to organizing. This article applies and extends signaling theory to provide a framework for the study of analytics as communication. We report three cases that offer examples of dubious, selective, and ambiguous signaling in the activities of workers seeking to shape the meaning of data within the practice of analytics. The analysis casts the future of work as a game of strategic moves between organizations, seeking to measure behaviors and quantify the performance of work, and workers, altering their behavioral signaling to meet situated goals. The framework developed offers a guide for future examinations of the asymmetric relationship between management and workers as organizations adopt metrics to monitor and evaluate work. 

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5. Workers Standing Times with Use of Sit-Stand Desks and Social Influences: An Investigation of Two Months of Office Workers’ Sit-Stand Desks Utilization

   https://doi.org/10.1177/21695067231192637  

   Duffie, Holden; Barbieri, Dechristian Franca; Fuller, Patrick; Lin, Jia-Hua; Cha, Jackie S (September 2023, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting)

   The use of sit-stand desks (SSD) has shown positive results in reducing sitting time for office workers. Different factors can help with the use of the table, such as participatory ergonomics and an SSD reminder system. However, little is known about the influence of social factors at work, such as the influence of peers or supervisors using the device. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of SSDs and how the location and proximity of office workers affects SSD utilization over the course of two months. One-hundred eighty workers with SSDs participated in this study, and their desk locations and utilization were documented. It was observed that office workers spent on average (standard deviation) 7.1% (20.8%) of their time standing at their desks each day. Among these users, 12 participants were categorized as high SSD users, which spent more than two hours a day standing on average. It was found that during the study period, participants located next to high SSD utilizers did not change the SSD usage by increasing or decreasing their time spent standing. The results from the study suggest that the relative locations and proximity of workers do not significantly influence users to increase SSD use, and high users do not impact the SSD use of other users. These results showed that SSD use by peers or supervisors is not a strong social factor in improving the worker’s behavior of using the table and that other combined strategies are necessary. 

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