A Tale of Two Cities: Software Developers Working from Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core and has provoked an overnight exodus of developers who normally worked in an office setting to working from home. The magnitude of this shift and the factors that have accompanied this new unplanned work setting go beyond what the software engineering community has previously understood to be remote work. To find out how developers and their productivity were affected, we distributed two surveys (with a combined total of 3,634 responses that answered all required questions) weeks apart to understand the presence and prevalence of the benefits, challenges, and opportunities to improve this special circumstance of remote work. From our thematic qualitative analysis and statistical quantitative analysis, we find that there is a dichotomy of developer experiences influenced by many different factors (that for some are a benefit, while for others a challenge). For example, a benefit for some was being close to family members but for others having family members share their working space and interrupting their focus, was a challenge. Our surveys led to powerful narratives from respondents and revealed the scale at which these experiences exist to provide insights as to how the future of (pandemic) remote work can evolve.

Comprehensive Indicator Bank for Resilience of Water Supply Systems

Appropriate indicators are required to measure the resilience of water supply systems (WSSs). However, it is challenging to identify appropriate indicators since there is no comprehensive database of indicators to measure its resiliency. This study will establish a comprehensive bank of indicators to assist water corporations and decision-makers in selecting appropriate indicators for their particular system. The suggested indicator bank is comprised of three layers such as dimension, attributes, and the number of indicators resulting from 12 different indicator codes that the study has analysed. In addition, this paper presents instructions on how the indicator bank can be used and integrated with water enterprises, enabling decision-makers to pick the relevant indicators. The proposed indicator bank is an exploratory approach that should be validated in a real work setting since resilience is a challenging concept, and WSSs are complex due to their dependencies to other lifelines such as power networks with too many variables that may affect the actual outcomes.

Gambaran Profil Psikologis Psychopathy Symptoms pada Tahanan Wanita Kasus Korupsi di Lapas Wanita Kelas IIA Sukamiskin Bandung

There are many crimes that happened in this era, which one of them is corruption. Corruption has become a major phenomenon for each country in this world. Even more, it is not only male who doing the corruption, but female also. They were get some money to satisfy themselves although they have to break the law. This phenomenon has attracted researcher to study the female inmates who was doing corruption, and its relation to psychopathic symptom. Three female inmates in Sukamiskin Penitentiary Institute Class IIA – Bandung, who were convicted based on corruption cases, were chosen as subjects of this study. The result showed that all of three female inmates have a tendency to become a Psychopath, but in the low level to middle level tendencies. The three dominant Psychopathic Symptoms that found: pathological lying, lack of remorse or guilt, and short-term marital relationships. It can be summarized and recommended that among 3 subjects need to receive a counseling and/or psychoeducation so they will be more honest in their work setting, and to educate them that its important to have a good relationship to build a harmonious family.

Implications and Recommendations From a Project ECHO Series on Aging With IDD

Ongoing evaluations of innovative educational programs provide opportunities for quality improvement. This paper reports results from a Project ECHO series on lifelong IDD and dementia. Participant responses (n = 85) were collected from spoke sites in various settings across the US. Using a 5-point (5 very effective) Likert scale, data were collected from assessment items on 4 didactic presentations and 5 case studies representing essential components of the ECHO model. Overall scores by spoke sites for satisfaction with the didactic and case presentations ranged from 3.94 to 4.94; relevance of case studies to the work setting ranged from 4.0 to 4.75. Knowledge gain questions showed consistently positive directionality. As a result of their participation, spokes rated intent to provide better care for patients (57% to 88%), train staff (62% to 81%), and educate family/caregivers (57% to 88%). Implications of findings for the application of quality improvement methods are discussed.

Remote Working in a Public Bureaucracy: Redeveloping Practices of Managerial Control When Out of Sight

This article examines managerial control practices in a public bureaucracy at the moment of introducing remote work as part with a new ways of working (NWW) project. The qualitative study builds on 38 interviews with supervisors and subordinates conducted before the advent of COVID-19. By interpreting interviewees’ conversations about current and anticipated future work practices in the changing work setting, we reveal tacit and hidden practices of managerial control that are currently prevalent in many organizations introducing remote working. Three constitutive moments of the organization’s transformation to NWW are analytically distinguished: (i) how implicit becomes explicit, (ii) how collective becomes self, and (iii) how personal becomes impersonal. Our findings emphasize that the transition to NWW must take into account prevailing institutional logics and must reconnect to a fundamental and often neglected question: What does doing work mean within the particular organization? Negotiating this fundamental question might help to overcome supervisors’ uncertainties about managerial control and provide clarity to subordinates about what is expected from them while working remotely. Finally, we discuss how the transition to NWW may serve as both an opportunity and a potential threat to established organizational practices while highlighting the challenge supervisors face when the institutional logics conflict with remote working.

“You are useful objects”: Economic inequality leads people to approach instrumental others

Economic inequality has been shown to increase the social distance between groups. We proposed that in more unequal societies, people’s affiliation with others depends on whether a relationship partner is instrumental for self-enhancement goals. The results from four experiments supported our proposition. We found that inequality increased people’s focus on the instrumentality aspects of others (Experiment 1). In a work setting, economic inequality prompted people to choose colleagues who were instrumental in achieving their performance goals as partners (Experiment 2). Moreover, the effect could be extended to situations where there is no clear benefit. Specifically, participants in high inequality contexts tended to approach instrumental people with instrumentality more than participants in low inequality contexts, and the effect was driven by self-enhancement goals (Experiments 3-4). Taken together, our findings suggest that economic inequality leads to an instrumentality orientation in social interactions, which changes how people view relationships and interact with others.

The Role of Health Literacy among Outpatient Caregivers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Health literacy became an important competence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite outpatient caregivers being a particularly vulnerable occupational group, their health literacy has hardly been examined yet, especially during the pandemic. Hence, this study aimed to explore this field and provide first empirical insights. Data were collected based on a cross-sectional online survey among 155 outpatient caregivers. In particular, health literacy (HLS-EU-Q16), diet and physical activity, pandemic-related worries, perceived information sufficiency and stress perception were examined. Descriptive and ordinal logistic regression analyses were run to test explorative assumptions. The majority of outpatient caregivers reported high values of health literacy (69% on a sufficient level). Although no significant associations between health literacy and health behaviours or perceived information sufficiency were found, perceived information sufficiency and perceived stress (OR = 3.194; 95% CI: 1.542–6.614), and pandemic-related worries (OR = 3.073; 95% CI: 1.471–6.421; OR = 4.243; 95% CI: 2.027–8.884) seem to be related. Therefore, dissemination of reliable information and resource-building measures to reduce worries may be important parameters for improving outpatient caregivers’ health. Our results provide first explorative insights, representing a starting point for further research. Considering outpatient caregivers’ mobile work setting, they need to be provided with adequate equipment and comprehensible information to ensure physically and mentally healthy working conditions.

Influence at Work tied to Materiality in Danish Care Work

Influence at work is known to be an important factor for workers health. Researchers have called for studies on influence at work as a contextualized phenomenon. Based on individual interviews with managers and focus group interviews with employees in three care workplaces, the article shows how the materiality of the work setting ties employees’ influence to perform tasks in both hindering and enabling ways. We show that a work environment where employees’ influence is hindered produces negative experiences in the work environment, while an environment where employees’ influence is enabled produces positive experiences. Additionally, we study how employees influence the material aspects of their workplace.We present a view of influence at work as constituted by materiality and social organization in sociomaterial assemblages. This study reintroduces materiality as a concern in psychosocial work environment research and contributes a sociomaterial view on influence at work and materiality.

Occupational Stress in U.S. Audiologists

Purpose The goal of this study was to explore interview data related to occupational stress in U.S. audiologists. This study is part of a larger project: The Lived Experience of the Audiologist, which seeks to develop a richer understanding of audiologists' lived experience via interview and survey research. Method Demographic and interview data related to occupational stress were examined from 28 virtual interviews of clinical audiologists in the United States. Qualitative data relative to workplace stressors were subjected to thematic analysis. Stress ratings were examined via descriptive statistics, correlation, and comparison with demographics. Results Self-ratings of average-day and worst-day stress were not related to work setting, years of experience, or U.S. region. Participant descriptions of workplace stressors yielded seven main themes: time, patients, administration, financial, lack of support, colleagues, and work–life balance. Some participants attributed stress response to personality traits. Conclusions Audiologists' quotes illustrate the human impact of stressors in the workplace. The most commonly reported workplace stressors were lack of time, patient-related issues, administration, and financial issues. Time and administration as common causes of stress were consistent with prior studies conducted in other countries; however, patient-related and financial stressors were more prominent stressors for U.S. audiologists. Stress ratings were not related to work setting, location, or years of experience in the current study. Participants often linked their perception of stress to personality traits, a phenomenon that has been explored as a factor in the exploration of occupational stress in other fields, but not in audiology. Future research in stress and burnout should examine personality traits in addition to extensive demographics.

Disciplinary complaints concerning transgressive behaviour by healthcare professionals: an analysis of 5 years jurisprudence in the Netherlands

ObjectivesTo study the frequency of observed cases of disciplinary law complaints concerning transgressive behaviour in Dutch healthcare by analysing disciplinary cases handled in Dutch disciplinary law.DesignRetrospective review of complaints in the Dutch disciplinary law tribunals from the period 1 January 2015 to 1 January 2020.SettingDutch healthcare.MethodDescriptive retrospective study. All judgements at regional disciplinary tribunals in the first instance from the period 1 January 2015 to 1 January 2020 concerning transgressive behaviour were investigated. The following was studied: year of judgement, number and nature of complaints, type of complainants, profession of defendant.ResultsOver the study period, 139 complaints about transgressive behaviour were handled, 90 of which involved sexual behaviour. 66/139 complaints were submitted by patients themselves (47.5%). Most complaints were directed against physicians (44.6%; n=62), followed by nurses (30.2%; n=42), psychologists (11.5%; n=16) and physiotherapists (7.9%; n=11). 80.6% of the complaints were directed against a male healthcare professional (OR 4.25; 95% CI 1.7590 to 10.2685; p=0.0013). 104/139 of the complaints originated from an outpatient work setting and about half of the complaints originated from mental healthcare. Of the 90 disciplinary cases in which the complaint was related to sexually transgressive behaviour, 83.3% (n=75) were ruled to be substantiated (5 of which partially) with a measure imposed in all cases: 6 formal warnings (8%), 11 reprimands (14.7%), 10 denials (partial suspension) (13.3%), 26 temporary suspensions (34.7%) and 22 cancellations of the licence to practice (29.3%).ConclusionThis study describes jurisprudence of disciplinary cases about transgressive behaviour of healthcare professionals in the Netherlands. The results of this study can be used to monitor trends in observed cases of transgressive behaviour.