Search Results (5)

This study examines job satisfaction among mobile digital platform workers in Chile, addressing the gap in understanding the interplay between autonomy, social support, and technology in the platform economy. It explores how these factors shape job satisfaction through the following research question: How do autonomy, social support, and technological factors influence job satisfaction in the platform economy? Using a quantitative methodology, 398 platform workers from three Chilean regions participated in a survey, with data analyzed via logistic regression models to evaluate the impact of sociodemographic and psychological variables. The findings highlight that autonomy and social support significantly enhance job satisfaction, while technological usability and transformation are pivotal for positive work experiences. The study concludes that fostering worker autonomy, robust support systems, and user-friendly technologies is critical for improving job satisfaction in the gig economy. These insights contribute to the academic literature and inform strategies for policymakers and platform operators, emphasizing the need for tailored approaches to enhance worker well-being and organizational outcomes. Full article

This study presents a framework for enabling autonomous pick–place operations, addressing the need for efficiency in complex logistics environments using a direct multi-target teaching interface. First, tag and segmentation information were combined to recognize products in a complex warehouse, and a camera was installed on the rack to allow workers to remotely see the work environment, allowing workers to view the work environment in real time through a tablet. Workers can access the camera view showing the rack containing the target product through a swiping action and select the target product through direct teaching action. When the target product is finally selected, an optimal path is created through task planning, and an autonomous pick–place operation is performed based on the generated path. As a result of conducting a usability evaluation using the SUS (System Usability Scale) with six users on the interface that enables these tasks, it was confirmed that high user satisfaction was achieved with an average of 77.5 points. In conclusion, the proposed interface enhances operational efficiency and provides a user-friendly solution for complex warehouse tasks. Full article

Limited understanding of health information may contribute to an increased risk of adverse maternal outcomes among migrant women. We explored factors associated with migrant women’s understanding of the information provided by maternity staff, and determined which maternal health topics the women had received insufficient coverage of. We included 401 newly migrated women (≤5 years) who gave birth in Oslo, excluding migrants born in high-income countries. Using a modified version of the Migrant Friendly Maternity Care Questionnaire, we face-to-face interviewed the women postnatally. The risk of poor understanding of the information provided by maternity staff was assessed in logistic regression models, presented as adjusted odds ratios (aORs), with 95% confidence intervals (CI). The majority of the 401 women were born in European and Central Asian regions, followed by South Asia and North Africa/the Middle East. One-third (33.4%) reported a poor understanding of the information given to them. Low Norwegian language proficiency, refugee status, no completed education, unemployment, and reported interpreter need were associated with poor understanding. Refugee status (aOR 2.23, 95% CI 1.01–4.91), as well as a reported interpreter need, were independently associated with poor understanding. Women who needed but did not get a professional interpreter were at the highest risk (aOR 2.83, 95% CI 1.59–5.02). Family planning, infant formula feeding, and postpartum mood changes were reported as the most frequent insufficiently covered topics. To achieve optimal understanding, increased awareness of the needs of a growing, linguistically diverse population, and the benefits of interpretation services in health service policies and among healthcare workers, are needed. Full article

To address the challenges of demographic aging, governments and organizations encourage extended working lives. This study investigates how individual health- and age-related workplace factors contribute to preferred, expected and actual retirement timing, as well as to the congruency between preferences vs. expectations, and preferences vs. actual retirement. We used data from a representative Swedish longitudinal sample comprising 4058 workers aged 50–64, with follow-up data regarding actual retirement timing available for 1164 respondents. Multinomial logistic regression analyses suggest that later preferred, expected, and actual retirement timing were, to different extent, influenced by better health, an age-friendly workplace and feeling positive regarding the future at work. Emotional exhaustion, age-related inequalities at work and experiencing aging as an obstacle increased the likelihood of preferring to retire earlier than one expected to, over retiring at the time one expected to. Those with better health and positive work prospects were less likely to prefer retiring earlier than they expected to, and more likely to being “pulled toward working until 65 and beyond”, compared to being “pulled toward early retirement”. Experiencing aging as an obstacle decreased the chances of being “pulled toward working until 65 and beyond”. The results provide insights on how to facilitate extended working lives. Full article

In this paper, we introduce a physical Internet architecture for fresh food distribution networks with the goal of meeting the key challenges of maximizing the freshness of the delivered product and minimizing waste. The physical Internet (PI) architecture is based on the fundamental assumptions of infrastructure sharing among various parties, standardized addressing of all entities and modularized operations. In this paper, we enhance the PI architecture by including a freshness metric and the space-efficient loading/unloading of heterogeneous perishable goods onto the trucks depending on their delivery requirements. We also discuss mechanisms for reducing empty miles of trucks and the carbon footprint of the logistics while reducing the driver’s away-from-home time for long distance delivery. Via extensive simulations, the paper shows that the proposed architecture reduces the driver’s away-from-home time by ∼93%, whereas it improves the food delivery freshness by ∼5%. We show that there is a clear tradeoff between the transportation efficiency of the trucks and the delivery freshness of the food packages. Full article