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Vad händer med tjänstemännen i en organisation som genomgår en stor organisationstillväxt? Hinner de med sitt arbete, eller blir bördan för stor att axla när kommunikation och struktur inte hinner med organisationens förändring? Att det finns risker med organisationsförändring är känt sedan tidigare. Riskerna kan bestå av allt från hög arbetsbelastning till bristfälligt samarbete inom organisationen, och kan hanteras genom förberett planerings och åtgärdsarbete från verksamhetens ledning. Förändring inom organisationer kan även medföra arbetsrelaterad stress. Denna stress menar Karasek beror på att kraven som anställda ställs inför överstiger kontrollen de känner inför sitt arbete. Denna rapport har, med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer och kvantitativa enkäter, undersökt hur tjänstemän upplevt att deras arbete påverkats av att vara i en kraftigt växande organisation. Rapporten presenterar resultat i form av ökat samarbete mellan tjänstemännen, brist på tid och kompetens för utfärdande av arbetsuppgifter samt förslag rörande hur organisationen skulle kunna lösa den upplevda kompetensbristen. Till sist diskuterar rapporten de delade uppfattningarna kring huruvida arbetsbelastningen ökat eller minskat, vad detta skulle kunna bero på och hur de skulle kunna åtgärda den ojämna arbetsbelastningen. / What happens with the clerks in a fast-growing corporation? Do they have enough time for their tasks, or is the workload too much to handle when communication and structure cannot match the pace of the organizational change? The risks of organizational change are well known and can be anything from high workload to lacking cooperation between co-workers. The risks can be managed through prepared planning and action from the business management. Organizational changes can lead to work related stress which can come from the demands (workload etcetera) overpowering the control workers feel over their situation. This study has, with interviews and surveys, investigated how clerks have perceived the change in their workload and overall communication that could have come with the organization’s growth. The study shows results such as increased cooperation between coworkers and a lack of time and competence to handle their tasks. The study also provides suggestions on how the organization can resolve the perceived lack of competence. Lastly the study discusses the divided ideas on whether the workload has increased or decreased, what could be the reason for this and how they could sort the uneven workload if that is the case.

This research explores whether a firm's psychosocial stressors contribute to strains or outcomes important to the organization. The psychosocial stressors chosen for study include: role conflict and ambiguity, workload (qualitative and quantitative), participative decision making, autonomy, and security. Independent variables were the emotional strains of job satisfaction and job commitment. The independent variables for behavioral strains included injury, lost days, workers' compensation claims, and absenteeism. Three moderators: age, gender, and social support were evaluated for interaction effects. The study sampled 77 occupationally injured and 81 non-injured employees from one medium sized Army community hospital. This study uses multivariate hierarchical multiple set regression as its principal analytical method. The hierarchial procedure orders the sets into an a priori hierarchy and enters each set sequentially from the hierarchy, evaluating the increase in $\rm R\sp2.$ The results suggest that psychosocial stressors are significant variables to consider when investigating workers' emotional and behavioral strains. For example, age, participation, and satisfaction were found statistically significant in differentiating between the occupationally injured and the non-injured samples. The study also found that ambiguity, participation, and autonomy influenced emotional strains. Additionally, age and social support appear to moderate the relationship between some psychosocial factors and emotional and behavioral strains. Age moderated the relationship with only emotional strains, while social support moderated both emotional and behavioral strains. Further, social support was found to have a main effect on the emotional strains of satisfaction and commitment, but not on any behavioral ones. Age was found to have a direct effect on the behavioral strains of workers' compensation claims. Finally, although not statistically significant when entered as a set and evaluated using the statistical analysis techniques in this study, a relationship between age and workers' compensation claims and qualitative workload and absenteeism were suggested. The economic and human costs associated with occupational injury are staggering. These findings suggest that attention to psychosocial factors within control of the employer, can promote good management outcomes, improve employee quality of worklife, and contain costs.

<div>The proliferation of GPS-enabled devices has led to the development of numerous location-based services. These services need to process massive amounts of spatial data in real-time with high-throughput and low response time. The current scale of spatial data cannot be handled using centralized systems. This has led to the development of distributed spatial streaming systems. The performance of distributed streaming systems relies on how even the workload is distributed among their machines. However, the real-time streamed spatial data and query follow non-uniform spatial distributions that are continuously changing over time. Therefore, Distributed spatial streaming systems need to track the changes in the distribution of spatial data and queries and redistribute their workload accordingly. This thesis addresses the challenges of adapting to workload changes in distributed spatial streaming systems to improve the performance while preserving the system's security. </div><div>The thesis proposes TrioStat, an online workload estimation technique that relies on a probabilistic model for estimating the cost of partitions and machines of distributed spatial streaming systems. TrioStat has a decentralised technique to collect and maintain the required statistics in real-time with minimal overhead. In addition, this thesis introduces SWARM, a light-weight adaptive load-balancing protocol that continuously monitors the data and query workloads across the distributed processes of spatial data streaming systems, and redistribute the workloads soon as performance bottlenecks get detected. SWARM uses TrioStat to estimate the workload of the system's machines. Although using adaptive load-balancing techniques significantly improves the performance of distributed streaming systems, they make the system vulnerable to attacks. In this thesis, we introduce a novel attack model that targets adaptive load-balancing mechanisms of distributed streaming systems. The attack reduces the throughput and the availability of the system by making it stay in a continuous state of rebalancing. The thesis proposes Guard, a component that detects and blocks attacks that target the adaptive load balancing of distributed streaming systems. Guard is deployed in SWARM to develop an attack-resilient adaptive load balancing mechanism for Distributed spatial streaming systems.<br></div>

Studiens syfte är att utifrån ett didaktiskt professionsperspektiv synliggöra hur fem förskollärare identifierar sitt uppdrag och att få ökad förståelse för vilka konsekvenser uppdraget, enligt förskollärarna, har för arbetsbelastningen. De tre frågeställningar som studien har utgått ifrån är: Hur beskriver förskollärare sitt didaktiska ansvar utifrån förskolans läroplan? Hur ser, enligt förskollärare, de didaktiska förutsättningarna ut för den aktuella ansvars- och arbetsfördelningen i arbetslaget? Vilka konsekvenser har de didaktiska förutsättningarna för förskollärares arbetsbelastning? Studien har en kvalitativ metodansats och studiens empiri har samlats in med hjälp av fem semistrukturerade intervjuer.     Studiens resultat har analyserats utifrån ett teoretiskt ramverk där begreppen didaktik och profession stått centrala samt i förhållande till tidigare forskning. I resultat- och analysarbetet framkom att förskollärare identifierar sitt uppdrag som ett ansvarsfullt uppdrag och själva yrket som ett yrke i en ständigt föränderlig process. Ett yrke som följer samhällets utveckling, som kämpar med sin identitet eller status som profession och framförallt ett yrke som saknar behöriga kollegor att dela ansvaret med. Det didaktiska ansvaret utifrån förskolans läroplan upplevs som tungt dock hittar förskollärare stabiliteten i verksamheten med läroplanen som grund. Det konstateras bland annat att de didaktiska förutsättningarna för den aktuella ansvars- och arbetsfördelningen existerar, men upplevs vara sköra på grund av personalbrist, personalneddragningar och den osäkra framtiden. De konsekvenser för förskollärares arbetsbelastning som framkommer i denna studie greppas av förskollärarna bland annat genom att använda sina arbetslivserfarenheter för att tona ner arbetsbördan så att den är hanterbart, genom att använda alla kompetenser som finns i arbetslagen samt genom en bra kommunikation med ledningen och stödet därifrån.

<p>  </p> <p>Automation, as defined by Parasuraman et al. (2000, p. 287), is a “device or system that either partially or fully, accomplishes a function that was previously, partially, or fully accomplished by a human operator.” Traditionally, automation was introduced to (physical) work environments to alleviate workload associated with tedious and repetitive tasks. Over the past few decades, automation has begun to augment knowledge work, which includes high-level cognitive activities.  As automated systems expand to perform skill-based tasks, the work required of humans is inevitably altered, potentially affecting their cognitive workloads. Years of research has shown that automation can reduce cognitive workload, but other work suggests that cognitive workload may increase or remain unchanged when automation is introduced. These conflicting results prompt the need for further investigation to better delineate the relationship between automation and cognitive workload. </p> <p>A plethora of factors may explain why the relationship between automation and cognitive workload is inconsistent. Therefore, this research takes steps toward addressing knowledge gaps within the human-automation interaction literature related to understanding how automation used in knowledge work environments affects peoples’ task completion. Specifically, this work investigates how two moderators, task complexity and age, influence the automation and cognitive workload relationship. These moderators were of interest for two reasons. First, task complexity, which occurs when the structure of a task imposes demands on a person’s cognitive processes, increases the demands of a task, which can result in the use of more cognitive resources. Second, age is of interest because advanced technologies are increasingly being utilized by a wide user demographic, particularly the rapidly-growing older adult population.  </p> <p>The goals of this dissertation were achieved by employing both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine how (1) automation is assessed in knowledge work environments, (2) automation affects cognitive workload, and (3) task complexity and age moderate the relationship between automation and cognitive workload. These goals were first addressed via the construction of a conceptual framework that describes the effects that task complexity and age have on the relationship between automation and cognitive workload. Next, a systematic review of the human-automation interaction literature in knowledge work environments was performed to examine researchers’ use of cognitive workload measures. Finally, a controlled-laboratory experiment and a scenario-based survey were conducted to collect data from people of different ages about how task complexity and age influence the relationship between automation and cognitive workload. </p> <p>Findings from the systematic literature review showed that researchers primarily employ subjective and performance measures to assess cognitive workload. Results from the laboratory experiment suggested that automation improved measures of cognitive workload. Also, task complexity negatively affected the relationship between automation and cognitive workload, but age was not found to be a moderator. The scenario-based survey revealed that task performance was similar among younger, middle-aged, and older adults. However, younger adults had a more favorable opinion of automation compared to both middle-aged and older age groups. </p> <p>Overall, this research (1) enhances our knowledge of the relationship between automation and cognitive workload, (2) informs the design of future human-automation studies with strategically selected task types and measurement choices, based on patterns that emerged from the literature review, and (3) can ultimately guide designers in better developing technologies to support people in performing various activities in their work and leisure environments. </p>

The size and complexity of cloud computing systems makes runtime errors inevitable. These errors could be caused by the system having insufficient resources or an unexpected failure in the system. In order to be able to provide highly available cloud computing services it is necessary to auto- mate the resource provisioning and failure diagnosing processes as much as possible. Log files are often a good source of information about the current status of the system. In this thesis methods for diagnosing failures and predicting system workload using log file analysis are presented and the performance of different machine learning algorithms using our proposed methods are compared. Our experimental results show that classification tree and random forest algorithms are both suitable for diagnosing failures and that Support Vector Regression outperforms linear regression and regression trees when predicting disk availability and memory usage. However, we conclude that predicting CPU utilization requires further studies.

The healthcare sector is today one of the most overburdened industries and this includes a high workload on the healthcare staff. The high workload means that it is an industry that is in constant need of new employees, which in turn means that organizational socialization, which in everyday language is referred to as an onboarding, is a common phenomenon. In order for organizational socialization to take place in an effective manner, organizations usually try to develop some type of tactics for implementation. Regardless of the tactics, it appears that the role of the employees is crucial as a great deal of responsibility is placed on them, which can mean that their mental workload is affected. An overall purpose of our study has therefore been to develop knowledge about organizational socialization in the care sector, but more specifically we intended to investigate how the existing care staff experience that organizational socialization affects their own mental workload. The questions we asked focused on what experiences the existing staff have of organizational socialization in their current workplace, how they feel that their mental workload is affected in connection with it and which socialization tactics appear to be more closely connected with their mental workload being negatively affected. The study is of a qualitative nature and we chose to conduct seven semi-structured interviews with employees in the healthcare sector. Our empirical material has been analyzed on the basis of two models, one of which explains the complexity of mental workload and the other describes socialization tactics. The results showed that the care staff experience a higher mental workload in connection with organizational socialization, however, it did not appear that the choice of socialization tactics was the decisive factor but that the main reason was time pressure. / Vårdsektorn är idag en av de mest belastade branscherna och detta medför även en hög arbetsbelastning på vårdpersonalen. Den höga belastningen innebär att det är en bransch som ständigt är i behov av nya medarbetare vilket medför att organisationssocialisation, som i vardagligt språkbruk benämns som introduktion, är ett vanligt förekommande fenomen. För att organisationssocialisationen ska ske på ett effektivt sätt utgår vanligtvis organisationer från någon typ av taktik för genomförandet. Oavsett taktik framkommer att medarbetarnas roll är avgörande då ett stort ansvar läggs på dem vilket kan innebära att deras mentala arbetsbelastning påverkas. Ett övergripande syfte med vår studie har därför varit att utveckla kunskap om organisationssocialisation inom vårdsektorn men mer specifikt avsåg vi att studera hur den befintliga vårdpersonalen upplever att organisationssocialisation påverkar deras egna mentala arbetsbelastning. De frågor vi ställde oss var vilka erfarenheter den befintliga personalen har av organisationssocialisation på den nuvarande arbetsplatsen, hur de upplever att deras mentala arbetsbelastning påverkas i samband med den samt vilka socialisationstaktiker som framstår som mest framträdande i samband med att den mentala arbetsbelastningen påverkas negativt. Studien är av kvalitativ art och vi valde att utföra sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med medarbetare inom vårdsektorn. Vårt empiriska material har analyserats utifrån två modeller varav en förklarar komplexiteten i mental arbetsbelastning och den andra beskriver socialisationstaktiker. Resultaten visade att vårdpersonalen upplever en högre mental arbetsbelastning i samband med organisationssocialisation dock framstod det inte som att valet av socialisationstaktik var den avgörande faktorn utan den främsta anledningen var tidspress.

Michael Lipsky states through his theory of street-level bureaucracy that teachers, among other street-level occupations, often work under a heavy workload due to parameters built into their occupations characteristics and limited resources. Lipsky says that street-level bureaucrats therefor under the influence of their works natural discretion tend to use client-processing strategies to lighten the pressure to make their work situation bearable. Teachers in Sweden is an occupational group that has an important societal function in educating children, teenagers and young adults for their future social lives. At the same time as they work under a heavy workload. This essay aims to see if teachers in Sweden uses the three client-processing strategies tension between capability and objectives, private goal definition and defense against discretion to modify their work and students, to make their work situation more bearable. This is tested quantitively through Pearsons chi2 test of independence and regression analysis. The conclusion is that even though a tendency towards the use of client-processing strategies can be seen in the results, one cannot conclude that this is actually the case and that further studies has to be done to be able to give a more accurate response to the question.

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