Esse trabalho visa estudar a influência da vibração no desempenho de tarefas de pilotos de aeronaves. Para o seu desenvolvimento, foi montada uma bancada usando um assento de aeronave para avaliar a transmissibilidade da vibração vertical para os pilotos e verificar se níveis elevados de aceleração, como no caso de falha da turbina, podem prejudicar sua habilidade em desempenhar tarefas de leitura, escrita e digitação. Todos os experimentos foram realizados com sucesso, comprovando grande parte dos estudos anteriores sobre o assunto. Ainda são apresentadas comparações relacionando os mesmos níveis de aceleração usados no teste de transmissibilidade, com as normas ISO 2631-1 e ANSI S3.18 para avaliação da exposição humana à vibração de corpo inteiro, que são as mais apropriadas para a correlação com o mundo aeronáutico. / This work aims to study the influence of vibration in aircraft pilots task performance. For the study development, it was assembled a rig test using an aircraft pilot seat, in order to evaluate the transmissibility of vertical vibration to the pilots and to verify if high acceleration levels, as in the case of engine failure, are of significance to the pilots ability in performing tasks such as reading, writing and typing. All the experiments were accomplished successfully, confirming most of early studies about the subject. Comparisons are also presented, relating the same acceleration levels used in the transmissibility test with ISO 2631-1 and ANSI S3.18 standards for evaluation of human exposure to whole-body vibration which are the most appropriated for correlation with the aeronautical world.

This thesis is based around five studies examining the psychology of interpersonal communication applied to organizational settings. The studies are designed to examine the question of how the way that people in positions of power in organizations communicate with subordinates, affects various measures of health, well-being and productivity. It is impossible to study modern organisational communication without recognising the importance of electronic communication. The use of e-mail and other forms of text messaging is now ubiquitous in all areas of communication. The studies in this thesis include the use of e-mail as a medium of communication and examine some of the potential effects of electronic versus face-to-face and verbal communication. The findings of the studies support the basic hypothesis that: it is not what is said that matters but how it is said. The results showed that an unsupportive, formal, authoritarian style of verbal or written communication is likely to have a negative effect on health, well-being and productivity compared with a supportive, informal and egalitarian style. There are also indications that the effects of damaging communications may not be confined to the initial recipient of the message. Organizational communication does not take place in a vacuum. Any negative consequences are likely to be transmitted by the recipient, either back to the sender or on to other colleagues with implications for the wider organisational climate. These findings are based on communications that would not necessarily be immediately recognised as obviously offensive or bullying, or even uncivil. The effects of these relatively mild but unsupportive communications may have implications for the selection and training of managers. In the final section of the thesis there is a discussion of how examples of various electronically recorded messages might be used as training material.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p><strong>Purpose</strong></p><p>The purpose of this paper is to find out which personal-related factors are influencing on the task performance and the contextual performance of expatriate managers.</p><p><strong>Design/Methodology/Approach</strong></p><p>This research adopts a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with key-information from the managers taking international assignments.</p><p><strong>Findings</strong></p><p>The findings indicate that there is a series of significant associations between personal-related factors (personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness and previous experience) and the performance of expatriates’ assignments.</p><p><strong>Research limitations/implications</strong></p><p>One suggestion for further research is to explore deeper and more comprehensive on other less important factors or the important factors which we are overlooking; it also could be more comprehensive on the factors that relate to the performance of expatriates.</p><p><strong>Practical implications</strong></p><p>We present a table of the relationship between personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness, previous experience and the job performance of expatriates’ assignments. Thus, HR departments can follow this guidance when selecting expatriates to manage overseas assignments. Furthermore, individuals can take this model as a reference when making decisions for their career lives.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong></p><p>Expatriate assignments, personality traits, self-willingness, competences/skills, previous experience, job performance, task performance, contexture performance</p><p><strong>Paper type</strong></p><p>Master Thesis</p>

Background: For children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), the acquisition and performance of everyday visual-motor activities such as buttoning, shoe tying, cutting with scissors or writing, presents a major challenge. Regardless of the activity considered, children with DCD are typically slower and less accurate than their peers. Given the well-acknowledged difficulties of children with DCD, it is surprising to find very few research studies systematically exploring visual-motor skill acquisition and performance in children with DCD. Objective: The overall objective of this study was to systematically describe visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance in children with DCD. Methods: Twenty-four children (8 years 11 months to 12 years 11 months) were recruited for this study; 12 children with DCD, 12 children developing typically with regards to their motor skills. A computer-based aiming task completed with three different cursor controls of increasing levels of difficulty (mouse, joystick, novel controller) was designed for this study. Mixed-effect modelling and visual graph analyses were performed to describe the influence of motor ability and task difficulty on visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance. Results: Motor ability modulated the impact of task difficulty on visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance. Children with DCD were as fast and as accurate as their peers in their initial performance of the simple, well-learned task (mouse). However, they were slower and less accurate when performing the complex and novel visual-motor task. Over repeated trials, the visual-motor task performance of children with DCD improved on all tasks, even for the simple. With regard to the complex, novel task, once children with DCD understood the features of the task, their performance also improved and approached that of their peers. Conclusion: While children with DCD can generally be characterized as less accurate and slower than their peers, this characterization needs to be specified and qualified; it is probably best not applied to a well-learned task.

Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find out which personal-related factors are influencing on the task performance and the contextual performance of expatriate managers. Design/Methodology/Approach This research adopts a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with key-information from the managers taking international assignments. Findings The findings indicate that there is a series of significant associations between personal-related factors (personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness and previous experience) and the performance of expatriates’ assignments. Research limitations/implications One suggestion for further research is to explore deeper and more comprehensive on other less important factors or the important factors which we are overlooking; it also could be more comprehensive on the factors that relate to the performance of expatriates. Practical implications We present a table of the relationship between personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness, previous experience and the job performance of expatriates’ assignments. Thus, HR departments can follow this guidance when selecting expatriates to manage overseas assignments. Furthermore, individuals can take this model as a reference when making decisions for their career lives. Keywords Expatriate assignments, personality traits, self-willingness, competences/skills, previous experience, job performance, task performance, contexture performance Paper type Master Thesis

This research examines the role played by an employee¡¦s supervisor and organization in the relationship between the support perceived by an employee and his or her affective commitment, task performance, and contextual performance to the organization. Our analyses, based on data taken from a sample of 222 steel manufacturing firm employees in Taiwan, reveal that there is a significant relationship between perceived organizational support and affective commitment, whereas nonsignificant relationship are found between perceived organizational support and task performance, also between perceived organizational support and contextual performance. Our results also highlight the moderate effect of perceived supervisor support in the relationship between perceived organizational support and employee¡¦s task performance, and contextual performance.

Emotional expression has played an important role in our social life. This is especially true for leaders who have unequal power during the interaction with followers. According to the EASI model, we explored whether supervisor¡¦s negative emotional expression influenced follower¡¦s task performance by examining the moderating effects of follower's conscientiousness, agreeableness, power distance orientation, and perceived supervisor power on such relationship. In present study, we collected data from 34 companies of different kinds of industries, including 191 leader-follower dyads from 86 supervisors and 191 followers. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis showed that followers¡¦ conscientiousness and agreeableness positively moderated the relationship between supervisor¡¦s negative emotion expression and follower¡¦s task performance. Furthermore, under the condition of follower¡¦s low power distance orientation and low perceived supervisor power, the relationship between supervisor¡¦s negative emotion expression and follower¡¦s task performance became negative. Finally, theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.

Manager¡¦s managerial effectiveness is measured by how successfully he/she influences others. Leaders exert influence tactics to achieve task objective and organizational long-term objectives in a complex environment in order to maximize their job performance. By means of influence tactics, managers exert political behavior over others to achieve their organizational power settings. Thus, the purpose of the study is to understand the relationship between downward influence tactics and job performance. Results showed as following: 1. Male managers use more rationality influence tactic than that of females; female manager¡¦s contextual performance is better than that of males. 2. Managers with age between 30-39 use rationality influence tactic more than those of age 50 and above; managers with age below 30 use network and counteract influence tactics more than those of other age groups; task performance and contextual performance of managers with age over 50 are better than other age groups 3. Single managers use counteract influence tactic more than married managers; task performance and contextual performance of single managers are better than those of married managers 4. Managers with Master/Doctoral degrees use rationality, network, exchange, pressure, and counteract influence tactics more than those of other educational backgrounds. 5. Managers with 1 ~ 3 years working experiences use rationality and counteract influence tactics more than those of other years of working experiences; managers with working experiences over 10 years use network and pressure more than those of other years of working experiences. 6. High-level managers use rationality and pressure influence tactics more than those of other lower level managers; project-based managers use network and counteract influence tactics more than those of other levels of managers. 7. Middle-level managers have higher task performance than that of other levels of managers; high-level managers have higher contextual performance than that of other levels of managers. 8. After using gender, age, martial status, educational background, working experience and job level as control variables, and compare the relationship between downward influence tactics and job performance, we found: 8.1 Managers who are male, age over 35, single, college and below educational background, middle/high level, 5 years and above working experiences, the more rationality influence tactic they use, the better their job performance are. 8.2 Managers who are university and above, have 5 years and above working experiences, the more exchange influence tactic they use, the better their job performance are. 8.3 Managers who have less than 5 years of working experiences, the more pressure influence tactic they use, the better their task performance are. 8.4 Managers who are male, 35 years and above, single, university and below, and middle/high level, the more exchange influence tactic they use, the better their contextual performance they are.

This search was conducted to focus on the relationship between the type of Taiwanese managers¡¦ politics of downward influence and job performance, with responsible individual correlation, and to influence job performance. The search method this study used was group segmentations. After empirical analysis, we found out: 1. By using K-means ¡§Cluster analysis¡¨, we got three different types of Taiwanese manager¡¦s politics of downward influence. We named them by their downward influence politics and strategies as follows: 1-1 Controlling & Counteracting. 1-2 Reciprocal Networking. 1-3 Exerting Pressure. 2. The relationship between individual variable and the type of politics of downward influence are below: 2-1 Manager to the type of politics of downward influence with gender, age and martial status has no significantly effect. 2-2 Manager to the type of politics of downward influence with the education background, working experience and job level has significantly effect. 3. The relationship between the type of Taiwanese managers¡¦ politics of downward influence and job performance are below. 3-1 Manager of the ¡§Reciprocal Networking¡¨ has better contextual performance than ¡§Controlling & Counteracting¡¨. However, manager of the ¡§Exerting Pressure ¡§doesn¡¦t reveal the difference with the contextual performance. 3-2 Manager of the ¡§Exerting Pressure¡¨ has better task performance than ¡§Controlling & Counteracting¡¨. However, manager of the¡¨ Reciprocal Networking¡¨ doesn¡¦t reveal the difference with the task performance. 3-3 Manager of the¡¨ Reciprocal Networking¡¨ has better job performance than the ¡§Controlling & Counteracting¡¨. Manager of the ¡§Exerting Pressure¡¨ has better job performance than ¡§Controlling & Counteracting¡¨.

Many economists in 21th century agree that the ¡§Research ¡® Development¡¨ is an essential factor to the ling-term competitiveness and the living quality of the civilians of a country. Michael E. Porter indicates in his book, ¡§The Edge Of Nation Competitiveness¡¨, in the competitive world, the creating and exerting the new knowledge are more important than using the traditional economic edges- natural sources and capital. R ¡® D is an accumulation and innovation of knowledge, and a foundation of the technology progress and economic growth. Therefore, the enterprises worldwide emphasize more on the management of the researchers. In this area, the ¡§work redesign¡¨ gets much spotlight. The enrichment of work was designed to cope with the characteristic of research, uncertainty and complexity, and to help employees performing completely. It also helps researchers to require more self-esteem. However, as the technology developed, the work contents are different than used to be. Does the Job Characteristic Model (JCM) of the Hakman and Oldman still fit the work variety? This is an issue that a manager should pay much attention while doing work redesign. By doing documents study, this research points out that the work redesign influences the job performance and is various with the work content. There are many factors affecting the work design and work performance, such as individual character, personal trait, work satisfaction, contextual satisfaction and growth need strength. This research is focusing on the relationship between job characteristic and work performance by evaluating the individual requirement (growth need strength and contextual satisfaction). Through real case investigation, there are some results in this research. 1.The task significance is unrelated to the contextual performance; however, besides that, each factor in this research is related to another one. The higher task identity and autonomy are, the higher task performance will be. The feedback from the job itself has the significant influence on contextual performance. 2.The individual character has different influence on each factor in this research. The researcher, who receives higher education has higher contextual satisfaction and higher job performance. Besides the education, the other factors, for example, the gender, marriage and age have little influence on the contextual satisfaction and job performance. 3.The contextual satisfaction and growth need strength have the moderating effects on the relationship between job characteristic and has job performance. On the contrary, the context satisfaction has no the moderating effects on the task identity and job performance of the job characteristic. The growth need strength has the moderating effects on the relationship between production responsibility and job performance, so as on the method control and task performance. But for public organization, it has the moderating effects on the relationship between task significance and job performance as well as on the production responsibility and task performance. In the high-tech company, the moderating effects between growth need strength and task variety as well as the moderating effects between growth need strength and task identity have the influence on task performance and contextual performance. 4.Whether Hackman and Oldman job characteristic model or Jackson et al. job characteristic model has little difference in analyzing the job performance, in public organization. However, analyzing the job performance of researchers in high-tech company, using Jackson et al. job characteristic model has better result