Psychological Adjustment of Women with Breast Cancer.

Conference Poceedings

Singapore

August,

ACMASS

Annual Conference on Management and Social Science

ISBBME

ACMASS

Annual Conference on Management and Social Science ISBN 978-986-89298-3-8

ISBBME

International Symposium on Business, Banking, Marketing and Economy ISBN 978-986-89298-4-5

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Content

General Information for Conference Participants ... Conference Organization ... ACMASS International Committee Board ...

ISBBME International Committee Board ...

Conference Schedule ... Social Science Keynote Speech...

Oral Sessions ... Business & Economics I...

ISBBME-1215 ... 17

ISBBME-1166 ... 30

ISBBME-1340 ... 38

ISBBME-1167 ... 53

ISBBME-1053 ... 61

ISBBME-1154 ... 62

Psychology / Education I ... ACMASS-5890 ... 85

ACMASS-5921 ... 92

ACMASS-5922 ... 98

ACMASS-5836 ... 99

ACMASS-5962 ... 100

ACMASS-5896 ... 110

Marketing, Banking, Business & Economics II ... ISBBME-1324 ... 117

ISBBME-898 ... 126

ISBBME-1253 ... 127

ISBBME-1392 ... 129

ISBBME-1288 ... 130

ISBBME-1287 ... 139

Society I ... ACMASS-5870 ... 151

ACMASS-5912 ... 159

ACMASS-5866 ... 160

ACMASS-5860 ... 161

ACMASS-5861 ... 162

ACMASS-5858 ... 163

ACMASS-5859 ... 164

Society II / Communication ... ACMASS-5905 ... 166

ACMASS-5933 ... 174

ACMASS-5806 ... 183

ACMASS-5864 ... 184

ACMASS-5868 ... 185

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ACMASS-5904 ... 198

Management I ... ACMASS-5862 ... 207

ACMASS-5887 ... 208

ACMASS-5857 ... 209

ACMASS-5878 ... 210

ACMASS-5882 ... 221

Politics/Culture/Law ... ACMASS-5854 ... 228

ACMASS-5897 ... 229

ACMASS-5903 ... 234

ACMASS-5883 ... 240

ACMASS-5894 ... 241

ACMASS-5818 ... 247

Economics / Finance/Business & Economics III ... ACMASS-5960 ... 250

ACMASS-5924 ... 256

ACMASS-5851 ... 267

ACMASS-5902 ... 268

ACMASS-5988 ... 273

ACMASS-5995 ... 277

ISBBME-1217 ... 298

Management II ... ACMASS-5873 ... 300

ACMASS-5918 ... 305

ACMASS-5876 ... 314

ACMASS-5987 ... 315

ACMASS-5856 ... 320

Education II ... ACMASS-5877 ... 322

ACMASS-5811 ... 329

ACMASS-5923 ... 334

ACMASS-5886 ... 335

ACMASS-5872 ... 336

ACMASS-5885 ... 343

ACMASS-5931 ... 351

Poster Sessions... Psychology / Society / Law / Marketing ... ACMASS-5909 ... 353

ACMASS-5879 ... 360

ACMASS-5950 ... 361

ACMASS-5895 ... 363

ISBBME-1323 ... 369

Management /Education ... ACMASS-5891 ... 382

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ACMASS-5976 ... 384 ACMASS-5907 ... 391

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General Information for Conference Participants

Information and Registration

The Registration and Information Desk will be situated on the 2nd _{floor in the Meeting Centerat}

Hotel Fort Canning Singapore during the following times:

Friday, August 15 (8:15-17:00)

Saturday, August 16 (8:15-17:00) Parallel Sessions

Parallel Sessions will run onAugust 15 and 16. Oral Sessions are usually 90 minutes in length; each presenter has 15-20 minutes.

Presentations and Equipment

All presentation rooms are equipped with a screen, an LCD projector, and a laptop computer installed with Microsoft PowerPoint. You will be able to insert your USB flash drive into the computer and double check your file in PowerPoint. We recommend that you bring two copies the file in case of one fails. You may also link your own laptop to the provided projector, however please ensure you have the requisite connector.

A Polite Request to All Participants

Participants are requested to arrive in a timely fashion for all addresses, whether to their own, or to those of other presenters. Presenters are reminded that the time slots should be divided fairly and equally between the number of presentations, and that they should not overrun. The session chair is asked to assume this timekeeping role and summarize clarify key important issues in each topic

5 Poster Sessions & Poster Requirements

Materials Provided by the Conference Organizer:

1. X-frame display & Base Fabric Canvases (60cm×160cm) 2. Adhesive Tapes or Clamps

Materials Prepared by the Presenters:

1. Home-made Poster(s)

2. Material: not limited, can be posted on the canvases 3. Size: 60cm*160cm

A 60cm*160cm Poster Illustrates the research findings.

1.Wider than 60cm (left)

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Conference Organization

ACMASS International Committee Board

Armine Ishkanian London School of Economics

Melissa Thomas The Johns Hopkins University

Ng Chong Guan University of Malaysia

Sibnath Deb Pondicherry University

Adam D. Danel Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Betsy (Sarah E.) Bledsoe-Mansori University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Rekha (Rao) Nicholson University of Bath

Ehsanul Haque University of Dhaka

T.S.Devaraja University of Mysore

Nafees Ahmad South Asian University

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ISBBME International Committee Board

Warner P. Woodworth Brigham Young University

Aloysius Ajab Amin College of Social Science

Amitabh Gupta University of Delhi

Bo Liu University of Electronic Science & Technology Eko Suyono Msc Ak Jenderal Soedirman University

Erwin Saraswati Brawijaya University

Eun Jin Hwang Indiana University of Pennsylvania Evelyn Wamboye Pennsylvania State University Henrique Schneider Department of Economics

Himanshu Tandon Vit University

Ishak Yussof Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Jai Pal Singh CCS Haryana Agricultural University

Jianhong Fan University of Macau

Kavita Sharma University of Delhi

Miao Zhao Roger Williams University

Ocean Fan Lu Camosun College

Rusli Bin Ahmad Universiti Malaysia Sarawak Navid Mollaee Tehran Institute of Technology

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Special Thanks to Session Chairs

Chin-Chia Wu _{Feng Chia University}

Gannu Praveen Kumar _{Sahasra Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences}

Pamela M. H. Kwok _{PolyU Hong Kong Community College}

Régis Chenavaz _{Kedge Business School}

Suho Bae _{Sungkyunkwan University}

Alok Satapathy _{National Institute of Technology, Rourkela}

Dhemi Harlan _{Bandung Institute of Technology}

Wan-Wen Day _{Chung-Cheng University}

Rosli Mahmood _{Universiti Utara Malaysia}

Dmitry Baluev _{Nizhniy Novgorod State University}

Hung-Yi Chen

Soochow University

Leo Huang _{National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism}

Yu-Mi Kim _{Chungbuk National University}

Pamela M.H. Kwok _{PolyU Hong Kong Community College}

Han Jo You _{University of Seoul}

Nan-Ying Yu _{I-Shou University}

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Conference Schedule

Friday, August 15, 2014

Oral Sessions

Time Information

08:30-16:30 Registration

08:40-10:10 Lavender I--- Business & Economics

Lavender III--- Psychology / Education I

10:10-10:25 Tea Break

10:25-10:30 Lavender I -Welcome Speech

10:35-12:00

Lavender I --- Keynote Speech Keynote Speaker: Carolyn M. Hurley

Paper title : Real Life Myth-busting: Identifying the truth about Deception

Lavender II---Marketing/Banking/Business & Economy II

12:00-13:30 Lunch Time

13:30-15:00 Lavender I --- Society I

15:00-15:30 Tea Break

15:30-17:00

Lavender I --- So iet II /Co u i atio Lavender II --- Ma age e t I

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Friday, August 15, 2014

Poster Sessions

Time Information

08:30-16:30 Registration

10:00-11:00 Psychology / Society

Marketing / Law

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Oral Sessions

Time Information

08:30-16:30 Registration

08:45-10:15 Lavender I --- Economics/Finance/Business & Economy III

10:15-10:30 Tea Break

10:30-12:00 Lavender I --- Management II

12:00-13:30 Lunch Time

13:30-15:00 Lavender I--- Education II

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Saturday, August 16, 2014

Poster Sessions

Time Information

08:30-16:30 Registration

10:00-11:00 Management

Education

Sunday, August 17, 2014

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Conference Venue Information

Hotel Fort Canning Singapore

Address: Canning Walk, Singapore,

Telephone number: +

Location:

Hotel Fort Canning's location in a City Park is truly central. As a hotel near Orchard Road in Singapore, it is amidst the main shopping drag and the Champs Elysees of Singapore. Located nearby is the Clarke Quay Entertainment Hub, where a myriad bars and restaurants can be found. Travellers can also visit the Museums & Civic District, with at least major museums within walking distance!

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Social Science Keynote Speech



Hotel Fort Canning Singapore

, Lavender I



/ / Friday :

-

:



Speaker : Carolyn M. Hurley



Topic: Real Life Myth

-

busting:

Identifying theTruth about Deception.

Overview:

Across cultures most people believe that liars ‘avoid eye contact’ and ‘appear nervous’ even

though there is no scientific evidence supporting these beliefs. Relying on inaccurate beliefs may lead to poor deception detection ability in interpersonal relationships, by juries, business persons and security professionals. It doesn’t help that many of these beliefs are highly publicized in the popular media, increasing their erroneous use.

Dr. Hurley’s most recent work – published in the International Journal of Psychological Studies

– examined the source of these deception beliefs, in an effort to understand who is disseminating such inaccurate information. In her keynote speech, Dr. Hurley will discuss this research, as well

as the general necessity for social scientists to expel popular myths, and differentiate ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’ for practitioners employing such practices. The study of deceptive behavior is a prime

example, as it is a field ripe with contradictions, pseudoscience, and results highly dependent on features of the experimental design. Dr. Hurley will discuss her experience as both a researcher and consultant and the challenges of conducting research for the national security community.

Biology:

Dr. Carolyn Hurley is currently an instructor for the University at Buffalo’s Undergraduate Degree Programs in Singapore, where she engages in teaching and scholarship in the fields of interpersonal and nonverbal communication. Previously she has worked with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and Department of Defense, providing training and research support for officers detecting threats to national security. Her work examining emotion and deception appears in Motivation & Emotion, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Law and Human Behavior, providing information to practitioners to inform policy and practice.

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Oral Sessions

Business & Economics I

Lavender I

2014/08/15 Friday 08:40-10:10

Session Chair:

Prof. Chin

_-

Chia Wu

ISBBME-1215

The Effects of High-Involvement Human Resource Management Systems on the Job Withdrawal: Focusing on Small & Medium- Sized Firm

Yong-Sun Chang︱Chosun University

Kang-Min Lee︱Chosun University

ISBBME-1166

A Simulated Annealing and a Largest-order-value Method for the Two-machine Flowshop Scheduling Problem to Minimize the Total Completion Time

Jan-Yee Kung︱Cheng Shiu University

Yu Cheng︱Feng Chia University

Shou-Che Wu︱Cheng Shiu University

Chun-His Wang︱National Taichung University of Science and Technology

Yan-Po Chau︱Cheng Shiu University

Chin-Chia Wu︱Feng Chia University

ISBBME-1340

Relationships between Working Hours and Productivity: The Case of Food Services and Information Communication Industries in Hong Kong

Chi Man NG︱The Open University of Hong Kong Wan Ling Tsang︱The Coventry University

ISBBME-1167

A Genetic Algorithm and a Largest-order-value Method for the Two-machine Flowshop Scheduling Problem to Minimize the Total Tardiness

Wei-Chieh Liang︱Cheng Shiu University Chih-Hou Wen︱Feng Chia University

Win-Chin Lin︱Feng Chia University Cheng-Hsiung Shin︱Cheng Shiu University

Chin-Chia Wu︱Feng Chia University Shuenn-Ren Cheng︱Cheng Shiu University

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ISBBME-1053

Pareto-Undominated and Socially-Maximal Equilibria in Non-Atomic Games

Haifeng Fu︱Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool university

Haomiao Yu︱Ryerson University

ISBBME-1154

Trend and Volatility Regime Switch Stock Index Hedging

EnDer Su︱National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology Chia-Wei Weng︱National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology

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ISBBME-1215

The Effects of High-Involvement Human Resource Management Systems on

the Job Withdrawal: Focusing on Small & Medium- Sized Firm

Yong-Sun Chang

Chosun University/Business Administration, South Korea

changk6567@hanmail.net

Kang-Min Lee

Chosun University/Business Administration, South Korea

changk6567@hanmail.net

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find out the relationships between high involvement HRM, turnover culture, job withdrawal including turnover intention and job search behavior. High involvement HRM refers to interconnected human resource management practices designed to enhance employees’ skills and motivation. Turnover culture which means organization's negative pressure to leave organization will moderate relationship between High involvement HRM and job withdrawal. To identify these relationships, empirical data was collected and theoretically arranged. This study made the research model based on the theoretical arrangement to explain these relationships between constructs. Using the collected data from 267 employees at 27 small and medium-sized firms located in Southern region in Korea, this research tested and confirmed the construct validity and internal consistency by exploratory factor analysis, reliability by Cronbach's alpha, and regression analysis of HLM. This research came to the conclusions to as follows: First, high involvement HRM of aggregating employees' perception had the negative effect to individual level's job withdrawal including turnover intention and job search behavior. Second, turnover culture also negatively influenced onto the turnover intention and job search behavior. Third, turnover culture's moderating effect was not confirmed in this research. The findings suggest that high involvement HRM and turnover culture are meaningful variables to understand job withdrawal.

Keywords: High- Involvement HRM Systems, Turnover Culture. Job Withdrawal, Turnover Intention, Job Search Behavior

I. Introduction

Until now since 1980, a significant change in the field of human resources management studies are underway. For human resource management than a microscopic approach, a lot of macro approach has been introduced (Delery & Doty, 1996). Human resource management systems increasing employee motivation, commitment, knowledge, skills, and abilities will positively affect the performance (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004).

It is possible for employees to share perception based on the HR practices they experience. HRM become shared among organizational members (Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider, 2008). Because employees in small & medium company have more reciprocal interaction than large company, Employees' perceptions of HR practices in small & medium firms are more important than large firms.

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In this study, the concept of a high-involvement HRM research was conducted by applying it to small & medium firm. Almost, HRM in small & medium firm can't be systematically developed rather than large firm. Therefore, research targeting small & medium firm will have greater meaning than large firm. The development of HRM in those is an important issue. In the 2000s than in the 1990s, small and medium-sized firms had a larger role in Korean employment. Those created new jobs to 86.4% in 2006 compared to 77.1% in 1995 (Chung, Phang, & Kim, 2008). In this context, taking into account the less developed compared to large firms, HRM development of small & medium-sized firms has the potential significance of the research. However, HRM of small & medium-sized firms compared to large firms confronts with quite harsh conditions. Those have difficulty in high turnover, insufficient education and training, low wages, uncertain vision, lack of competent worker (Lee, 2011).

Research about HRM needs analysis of cross-level influences. Takeuchi, Chen, & Lepak (2009) assert that HR systems affect firm performance by creating an organizational environment that elicits employee behaviors and capabilities that contribute to firm competitive advantage. Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider (2008) say that HR practices are associated with organizational performance through their influence on employee attitudes and behavior. Employees' perceptions of HR practices are important.

If large investments in HRM tend to be made in the long term development of employee skill, management focuses on motivating employees to work hard, and management places the importance of employee welfare, Firm's employees perceive their organization valuable.

The use of high-involvement HRM practices, including comprehensive employee recruitment and selection procedures, incentive compensation and performance management systems, and extensive employee involvement and training, can improve enhance retention of quality employees (Huselid, 1995). Therefore, HRM practices can help to create a source of sustained competitive advantage.

This research proposes a model explicating the effects of employees’ collective perceptions of high performance. We provides theoretical and empirical rationales for aggregating employees’ perceptions to HR practice of small and medium-sized firms. And, we present results from moderating effects of turnover culture in which relationships between high involvement HRM of small and medium-sized firms at the organizational level and job withdrawal at the individual levels are verified in an empirical model.

This research seeks to enhance our understanding of cross-level relationships through which an important HRM concept influences individual job withdrawal in organizations.

. Theoretical Backgrounds and Hypotheses 2.1. High- Involvement Human Resource Management Systems

High-involvement HRM systems have been defined in various ways like relatively high skill requirements, work design that it is possible opportunity to use their skills in collaboration with other workers, incentive structure that enhances motivation and commitment (Delery & Doty, 1996; Huselid, 1995; MacDuffie, 1995). Combs, Liu, Hall, & Ketchen (2006) emphasize that

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High-involvement HRM operate by (a) increasing employees' knowledge, skills, abilities, (b) empowering employees to act, (c) motivating them to do so.

The internal fit perspective suggests that the adoption of an internally consistent system of high involvement HRM Practices will be reflected in better firm performance. High involvement HRM systems refer to a group of separate but interconnected human resource (HR) practices designed to enhance employees' skills and effort (Datta, Guthrie, & Wright, 2005; Huselid, 1995). Researchers are more apt to suggest that there is an identifiable set of best practices for managing employees that have universal positive effects on organizational performance (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). HRM practices influence employee skills through the acquisition and development of a firm's human capital. Recruiting procedures will have a substantial influence over the quality and type of skills new employees possess. Providing formal and informal training experiences can further influence employees' development. Firm efforts to motivate employee behavior include the use performance appraisals that assess individual or work group performance, linking these appraisals tightly with incentive compensation systems, the use of internal promotion systems (Huselid, 1995).

In order to improve organizational performance, various human resource management practices should be integrated. Organization in order to create a competitive advantage to individual policies or practices that are separated from each other should be the limit (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). Therefore, the effects of human resources management systems have been recently analyzed as a bundle of practices than an individual human resource management practices (Arthur, 1994; Huselid, 1995; MacDuffie, 1995; Youndt et al., 1996). Internally consistent HRM systems among individual practices enhance the company's performance due to complementarity (Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Huselid, 1995). A bundle of individual human resource management practices observed in the form of a systems perspective are being supported (Macduffie, 1995). High-involvement HRM systems has been measured in a variety of forms. Perry-Smith & Blum (2000) emphasized child care, maternity leave, flexible working practices. Guthrie (2001) used internal promotions, performance based promotions, skill-based pay, group-based (gain-sharing, profit-sharing) pay, employee stock ownership, employee participatory programs, information sharing, attitude surveys, teams, cross-training or cross-utilization, and training focused on future skill requirements.

Batt (2002) conceptualized high involvement practices along three dimensions based on prior research: skill level, work design, and involvement-enhancing HR incentives. Sun, Aryee, & Law (2007) selected selective staffing, extensive training, internal mobility, employment security, clear job description, results-oriented appraisal, incentive reward, participation Youndt et al. (1996) divided HRM into administrative HR System and human-capital -enhancing HR System. Human-capital-enhancing HR System consisted of selective staffing, selection for technical and problem solving skills, comprehensive training, training for technical and problem-solving skills, developmental and behavior-based performance appraisal, external equity, group incentives, skilled-based pay, and salaried compensation. Arthur (1994) grouped HRM systems into cost reducers and commitment maximizers. Commitment human resource systems were characterized by higher levels of employee involvement in managerial decisions, formal participation

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programs, training in group problem solving, and socializing activities and by higher percentages of maintenance.

2.2 Job Withdrawal Behavior

Job withdrawal is a set of behaviors that dissatisfied individuals enact to avoid the work situation. If the job conditions cannot be changed, dissatisfied worker may be able to solve the problem by leaving the job. If the source of the dissatisfaction relates to organization wide policies like HRM, organizational turnover is likely (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2012). Three forms of withdrawal cognitions will be examined, namely, attraction of present job, job search behavior and turnover intentions. Turnover intention is an attitude about the organization. An individual develops intentions to leave a specific organization. Job dissatisfaction brings about the job search, and job search is connected to the turnover behavior (Van Hooft et al., 2004).

The perceived desirability and ease of movement cause turnover (Carsten & Spector, 1987; Price & Muller, 1981; Steers & Mowday, 1981). The perceived desirability of movement is usually taken to mean job satisfaction (Mitchell & Lee, 2001). Desirable job satisfaction and organizational commitment influences one's intention to quit (Steers & Mowday, 1981). The perceived ease of movement is reflected by job alternatives, and the perceived desirability of movement is usually taken to mean job satisfaction. The traditional viewpoint is that people become dissatisfied with their jobs, search for alternatives, compare those options with their current jobs and leave if any of the alternatives are judged to be better than their current situation (Mitchell et al., 2001). Accordingly, job dissatisfaction may lead to turnover. Job satisfaction and organizational commitment influence withdrawal cognitions.

The contextual variables of pay, integration, instrumental communication, formal communication, and centralization were the primary determinants of job satisfaction (Lee & Mowday, 1987). Organizational characteristics and experiences, conceptualized as an individual's experienced organizational reality influence on affective responses. Price and Mueller (198l) included components of an internal labor market, that is, promotional opportunity, training and career development, in their investigation of causes of turnover.

2.3. Effects of High-Involvement HRM Systems on the Job Withdrawal

High-involvement HR practices allow a firm to build firm-specific human capital, which in turn influences organizational performance in two ways: directly, via its effect on employee performance, and indirectly, via employee attachment to the firm (Batt, 2002). These increase employees' knowledge, skills, ability. The results are greater job satisfaction, lower employee turnover (Combs, Liu, Hall, & Ketchen, 2006). This research analyses that adopting a cross-level theoretical perspective, which considers aspects of high-involvement HRM, is needed to fully understand how HRM systems relate to employee attitudes and behaviors.

According to (Nishii et al., 2008), the attribution that HR practices are motivated by the organization's concern for enhancing service quality and employee well being was positively related to employee attitudes, the attribution focused on reducing costs and exploiting employees was negatively associated with employee attitudes.

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HRM affects on employee attitude and behavior. Greater autonomy is associated with higher satisfaction and lower intentions to quit at the individual level of analysis (Hom & Griffeth, 1986). Takeuchi, Chen, & Lepak (2009) explained how HRM relate to employee attitudes. They found that higher level climate acts as an important mediator of the cross-level relationships between HRM and individual job attitudes. This research provided a more explicit integration of micro and macro views of the management of human resources in work organizations. Multilevel analysis of data from hotels in China revealed that high-performance human resource practices were related to service oriented (Sun, Aryee, & Law, 2007).

Human resource incentives such as training, employment security, high relative pay, and practices that build trust are likely to induce employee attachment and commitment (Sun, Aryee, & Law, 2007). Huselid (1995) found considerable support for the hypothesis that investments in HRM practices are associated with lower employee turnover. Since higher levels of high performance work practices lead to lower turnover, and presumably greater employment security, there appears to be considerable justification for encouraging firms to make such investments. High-involvement human resource practices were related to the organizational performance indicators of turnover (Arthur, 1994; Bae & Lawler, 2000; Huselid, 1995; Guthrie, 2000). Therefore, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 1: High- Involvement HRM systems will diminish employee turnover

Hypothesis 2: High- Involvement HRM systems will diminish employee job search behavior

2.4 Turnover Culture as the Contextual and Moderating Variable

Culture means shared conceptions that act in a normative fashion to guide behavior. These social glue binds the organization (Smircich, 1983). Schein (1985, 1992) divides organizational culture into three levels. Organizational culture consists of some combination of artifacts (also called practices, expressive symbols, or forms), values and beliefs, and underlying assumptions that organizational members share about appropriate behavior.

Cultures can generate commitment to corporate values or management philosophy. Culture serves as organizational control mechanisms, informally approving or prohibiting some patterns of behavior (Martin & Siehl, 1983). Culture is holistic, historically determined, and socially constructed, and it involves beliefs and behavior, exists at a variety of levels, and manifests itself in a wide range of features of organizational life (Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990). The concept of a turnover culture derives from the organizational culture literature. The focus for the current research is to explore the concept of an organizational culture which avoids employee turnover. A turnover culture can be understood to be a set of shared understandings about the legitimacy of leaving an organization. Prior research is theoretically undeveloped and has not explained the moderating effects of organizational culture that explain the relationship between HR practices and employees attitudes.

The culture will impact on attitudes such as job satisfaction, commitment and an employee's intention to leave (Deery & Shaw, 1997). This study proposes that turnover culture has a negative effect on job withdrawal. And that moderates relationship between high involvement HRM of organizational level and employee job withdrawal.

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The cross-level effects this study examines consider the extent to which individual-level job withdrawal vary between high involvement HRM and turnover culture. The influence that high involvement HRM practices affect on individual job withdrawal attitudes may vary according to turnover culture. Therefore, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 3: Turnover culture will diminish employee turnover intention. Hypothesis 4: Turnover culture will diminish employee job search behavior.

Hypothesis 5: Turnover culture will moderate relationships between high involvement HRM and turnover intention.

Hypothesis 6: Turnover culture will moderate relationships between high involvement HRM and job search behavior.

. Research Method 3.1. Research Model

Research model shows that high-involvement HRM systems and turnover culture impact employees' attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, turnover culture moderates between high-involvement HRM systems and employees' attitudes and behaviors.

3.2. Sample and Procedure

This study targeted the small and medium-sized firms and sought to collect data from multiple managers and employees within each organization. All employees were full-time. The questionnaires from 27 companies were collected. We collected 267 questionnaire responses of 27 companies. 9.89 responses per organization were used for the analysis. The employees, on average, were 33.01 years old. Majority were male (68.5%), and mere clerk employees were (41.6%), middle management or supervisors (58.4%). 27 firms are almost manufacturing companies. As for the hypotheses, hierarchical linear modeling was conducted using HLM 6.08. High-involvement HRM practices and turnover culture were assessed at the organizational level, withdrawal behavior variables were assessed at the individual level.

3.3 Measures

High-involvement HRM systems was measured using 18 questions modified from the questions used by Delery & Dotty (1996) and Kim (2006) on a 5-point scale. The questions for measurement include clear path of promotion (1), career objective (2), promotion possibility (3), extensive education and training program (4), completion of training program (5), official training for new employees (6), official training program required for promotion (7), objective and quantitative evaluation (8), outcome-orientated evaluation (9), employment security (10),

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easiness of dismissal (11), employment stability (12), decision-making participation (13), proposal opportunity (14) open conversation (15), bonus for excess earnings (16), regulations of job descriptions (17), and concreteness of job descriptions (18).

Turnover culture was measured using 12 items. Rumery (2003) developed turnover culture measures. Measures of workgroup turnover has three facets: Attitudes toward turnover from the workgroup, for example I would feel comfortable talking with my coworkers about quitting my job , To assess overall turnover culture, 12 items was used. Higher score in turnover culture, organizational members may be pressured against turnover.

Job withdrawal measures turnover intention, job search behavior. The turnover intention was measured with 3 questions on a five-point scale. These 3 questions are the questions used in the study conducted by Hom et al. (1979), and these questions ask the intent to leave the current workplace within 1 year, level of intent to leave the current workplace within 1 year and the possibility to leave the current workplace within 1 year. The job search behavior was measured with 10 questions used by Kopelman et al. (1992). The job search was measured with 10 questions such as a question asking whether or not to read a book relating to the turnover (changing job) on a 5-point scale.

Control variables include the number of employees (organizational level), age, gender and academic backgrounds (individual level).

. Results

According to the results of exploratory factor analysis, the factors are divided into high-involvement human resource management, turnover culture, turnover intention, job search behavior. The explanation ratio was 60.630. The factor loading was based on over 0.5. The questions regarding turnover intention and job search were separately combined into each factor. On the other hand, the questions No 9, 10, 11 and 12 among the questions regarding the high-involvement human resource management were not combined into a factor. Some items of turnover culture were not combined.

The measurement result of reliability in Cronbach’s alpha value showed that high-involvement HRM systems was 0.943, turnover culture was 0.825, job search was 0.920, and the turnover intention was 0.949.

This study aggregated the measured values at individual level and analyzed at organizational level. In such case, the reliability of aggregation variable should be measured. The reliability of aggregation variable was verified through ICC (1) and ICC (2). ICC (1) indicates the ratio of the variance between groups to the variance within group. According to James (1982), the value of ICC (1) is in between 0.0 and 0.5 and the median value is 0.12 in the study on the organizational atmosphere. Also, the value of η2 indicating the proportion of between-group variance among the whole variance was calculated in this study. The aggregation of individual values according to the result of verification of ANOVA, ICC(1), ICC(2), η2 was valid.

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Table 2 and 3 show the descriptive statistics, including the means, standard deviations, correlations of individual and organizational level variables. The age has a negative correlation with the turnover intention. The turnover intention has a positive correlation with job search behavior. And, the average number of employees is approximately 119.88 employees

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Hypotheses 1 and 2 suggest that high-involvement HRM of organizational level is negatively related to turnover intention and job search behavior of individual level. As shown by Table 4 (model 2) and Table 5 (model 5), high-involvement HRM of organizational level significantly related to turnover intention of individual level (ϓ= -0.63, p<.01) and to job search behavior of individual level (ϓ= -0.32, p<.01), thereby supporting Hypotheses 1 and 2. As high-involvement HRM practices become dispersed, fewer individuals intend to leave and search their jobs.

Hypotheses 3 and 4 suggest that turnover culture will diminish turnover intention and job search behavior of individual level. According to Table 4 (model 2) and Table 5 (model 5), turnover culture significantly related to turnover intention of individual level (ϓ= -0.30, p<.01) and to job search behavior of individual level (ϓ= -0.24, p<.1). That supported Hypotheses 3 and 4.

The significance of coefficient associated with the interaction of high-involvement HRM systems and turnover culture, job search behavior in Table 4 (model 3) and Table 5 (model 6) did not support Hypothesis 5 and 6.

26

. Discussion and Conclusion

This study was to empirically analyze the underlying mechanisms through which high-involvement HRM systems relate to job withdrawal including employees' turnover intention and job search behavior. By drawing on theory and research from high-involvement HRM systems and turnover culture literatures, the results supported the cross-level linkages from high-involvement HRM systems and turnover culture (organizational level) to employees' job withdrawal (individual level). This research sketches the relationships between the contingent role of a new organizational context variable, turnover culture and job withdrawal as well as high-involvement HRM practices and that.

The findings of this study revealed high-involvement HRM systems to be related to job withdrawal indicators of turnover intention and job search behavior. HRM practices increase employee motivation through investment of a firm's human capital. This research analyses that adopting a cross-level theoretical perspective, which considers aspects of high-involvement HRM, is needed to fully understand how HRM systems relate to employee attitudes and behaviors. HRM of organizational level affects on individual employee attitude and behavior. In sum, this study contributes to universal approach of strategic HRM literature by illustrating the cross-level linkages among high-involvement HRM, turnover culture, and individual employees' behavior and attitude. Employees' perception about HR practices is likely to play an important role in influencing the ultimate effect of HR practices.

Specifically, equivocal findings about the benefits of aligning HR practices to business strategy may be explained in part by the commonly adopted methodology in which single respondents are

27

asked to report on a firm's HRM systems and strategies. Such a methodology does not permit employees' attribution about HRM practices (Nishii et al., 2008). Therefore, this study measures high-involvement HRM systems through aggregating employees' perception about HR practices. Also, this study introduces turnover culture as the moderating variables. The relationship between high-involvement HRM systems and job withdrawal may be bigger under conditions of high turnover culture. However, contrary to expectations (Hypothesis 5 and 6), no support was found for the moderating effect of turnover culture.

In sum, this study contributes to high-involvement HRM literature by illustrating the cross-level linkages. Collective employee perceptions of HRM impact on their job withdrawal in small and medium firms. HRM practices that increase employees' involvement diminish job withdrawal including turnover intention and job search behavior. That may be related with organizational performance.

In this study, because sample size is small, the reliability of the results may not be sufficient. We hope this research will stimulate much needed additional work on the multi level mechanisms through which high-involvement HRM concepts impact important outcomes of organizations. We also encourage researchers to consider other theoretical perspectives and mechanisms linking high-involvement HRM systems to outcomes, such as individual creativity and knowledge sharing. Second, we can learn more about the organizational-level factors that act as moderators of the relationship between high-involvement HRM and individual outcomes.

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30

ISBBME-1166

A Simulated Annealing and a Largest-order-value Method for the

Two-machine Flowshop Scheduling Problem to Minimize the Total Completion

Time

Jan-Yee Kung

Department of Business Administration, Cheng Shiu University, Taiwan

jennyk@mail.csu.edu.tw

Yu Cheng

Department of Statistics, Feng Chia University, Taiwan goddirk41@yahoo.com.tw

Chin-Chia Wu*

Department of Statistics, Feng Chia University, Taiwan cchwu@fcu.edu.tw

Shou-Che Wu

Department of Modern Living, Cheng Shiu University, Taiwan k0348@gcloud.csu.edu.tw

Chun-His Wang

Department of Accounting, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan wachsh@nutc.edu.tw

Yan-Po Chau

Department of Business management, Cheng Shiu University, Taiwan

rainbow@csu.edu.tw

Abstract

The precedence constraint exists in real-life scheduling problems. Application can be seen in the

medical treatments such as operating room scheduling. For example, in the scheduling of patients from multiple waiting lines or different physicians, patients in the same waiting line for scarce resources such as organs, or with the same physician often need to be treated in the first

-come-first serve sequence to avoid ethical or legal issues, and precedence constraints can restrict

their treatment sequence. In light of this observation, we consider a two-machine flowshop

scheduling problem to minimize the total completion time. For solving this problem, we apply two heuristics to find a near optimal solution and evaluate the yielded solution compared with an optimal solution obtained by full enumeration method. We conduct the experiments to test performances of all the proposed algorithms for the small and big numbers of jobs, respectively. Keywords: Scheduling; Two-machine flowshop; total completion time

31

1. Introduction

Pinedo (2008) pointed out that in many manufacturing and assembly facilities each job has to undergo a series of operations. Often these operations have to be done on all jobs in the same order implying that the jobs have to follow the same routine. The machines are then assumed to be set up in series and the environment is referred to as a flow shop. Yeung et al. (2004) pointed out that flowshop scheduling problems exist naturally in many real-world situations since there

are many practical as well as important applications for a job to be processed series with more than one stage in industry. Panwalker and Iskander (1977) pointed out that flow time and tardiness are the most prominent measures. Essentially, minimizing the flow time keeps the work-in-process inventory at a low level while minimizing the tardiness reduces the penalties

incurred for late jobs. The former represents internal efficiency while the latter represents external efficiency.

Ignall and Schrage (1965) developed some lower bounds and apply a branch-and-bound method

for the problem. Gonzalez and Sahni (1978) showed that this problem is NP-hard. They used a

branch-and-bound algorithm to derive the exact solution. Garey et al.(1979) proved that the total

completion time minimization problem is also NP hard in the two-machine flowshop. Cadambi

and Sathe (1993) developed a theorem concerning the ordering criteria on a pair of non-adjacent

jobs and then apply this dominance in a branch-and-bound method for the problem. Wang et al.

(1996) proposed three heuristic algorithms for this problem. When adding a learning effect in the problem, Lee and Wu (2004) utilize the branch-and-bound technique to search for the optimal

solution. Das and Canel (2005) pointed out that the development of an exact method affords the developer a great deal of insight into the structure of the problem.

However, the precedence constraint has not been considered in the two-machine flowshp setting.

Moreover, application can be seen in surgery scheduling, there are two types of patients, elective and nonelective. For the elective patients, surgeries can be planned in advance, whereas for nonelective patients, surgeries are unexpected and need to be performed urgently (see Chandra et al. 2014). In light of the above observations, we discuss a set of n jobs to be processed no preemptively on a two-machine flowshop that can be processed at most one job at a time.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In Section 2 we introduce some notation and formulate the problem. In Section 3 we develop two heuristics by combining three local search methods to find near-optimal solutions for the problem. In Section 4 we present extensive

computational results to determine the performance of all the proposed methods. We conclude the paper and suggest topics for future research in the last section.

2. Problem Definition

In this Section, the problem formulation is formally defined as follows. Consider a job set N={ J1, …, Jn } to be processed on machines M1 and M2. The jobs processing times of Ji on M1 and M2 are all constant and fixed numbers, say p1i and p2i, respectively. All jobs have the same processing order through the flowshop machines and are available at zero. Assume that there are no set-up times and jobs are processed without interruption or preemption. Each job can be

processed on one machine only. Specifically, we consider there are no precedence constraints among operations of different jobs but Ju and Jv has a precedent constraint only. That is, Ju should be processed before Jv, and it is also assumed that the period between Ju and Jv can be processed other jobs on machines.

32

For a given sequence S, the completion time of a job scheduled in the ith position on machines M1 and M2 are defined C1[k](S) and C2[k](S), where square brackets [ ] are used to signify the position of jobs in a sequence. The objective function of this paper is to minimize the total completion time or mean flow time of all n jobs, a widely considered performance measure in literature.

3. Heuristics Methods

In this study, we first apply a largest-order-value combined with a pairwise improvement scheme

that is one of the differential evolution (DE) algorithm, and then use a simulated algorithm (SA) to solve this problem. A brief of the steps of these algorithms are introduced as follows:

Storn and Price (1997) proposed a differential evolution (DE) approach for minimizing possibly nonlinear and non-differentiable continuous space functions. By means of an extensive test bed it

is demonstrated that the method converges faster and with more certainty than many other acclaimed global optimization methods. The major advantage is that this method requires few control variables, is robust, easy to use, and lends itself very well to parallel computation. In order to apply the DE method to solve discrete optimization problem, Bean (1994) adopted the largest-order-value method to decode a set of N initial populations, which are chosen completely

at random, to be used in the discrete optimization problems. The most important implementation details (LOV) of the algorithm are summarized as follows:

Step 1: N initial sequences were randomly generated and each is decoded by the largest-order

-value method, Say, X1, X2, …, XN. We set N to 30 in this study.

Step 2:For each Xi, we use the pairwise interchange to improve Xi.

Step 3: Compare the temporary solution with the current best sequence and keep the best one

that has the smaller objective function until N is reached.

Step 4: The process is ended at 30 iterations based on our pretests.

On the other hand, the simulated annealing (SA) approach is also adopted in this study since it has attained wide successful in solving many optimization problems after Kirkpatrick et al. (1983). Moreover, Koulamas et al. (1994) provided a survey of the SA approach in a variety of application areas. This approach has the advantage of avoiding getting trapped in a local optimum. This is due to hill climbing moves, which are governed by a control parameter. The most important implementation details of the SA algorithm are summarized as follows:

Step 1: We arrange the sequence of n jobs by smallest processing times of p1i p2i as an initial

solution. In case job v is scheduled after job u, we move the job v forward to insert before job u when job v is scheduled after job u.

Step 2: The pairwise interchange (PI) neighborhood generation method was used in the SA

process.

Step 3: When a new sequence is regenerated, it is accepted if its value in the objective function

is smaller than that of the original sequence; otherwise, it is accepted with some probability which decreases as the process evolves. The probability of acceptance is generated from an exponential distribution, P accept





exp



  TC



, where  is the control parameter and

TC

 is the change in the objective function. In addition, the method of changing  at the kth iteration is obtained from Ben-Arieh and Maimon (1992) and is given by

   k ,

33

where  is an experimental constant. If the total completion time increases as a result of a random pairwise interchange, the new sequence is accepted when P(a ccept)r, where r is a uniform random number between 0 and 1. The value of  is set to 2 in our pretests.

Step 4: Based on the tests, the process is ended at 300*n, where n is the number of jobs.

In order to get a good quality solution, we add some local search after the DE or SA process. There are including pairwise interchange, backward-shifted reinsertion, and forward-shifted

reinsertion (Della Croce et al. 1996). They are recorded as LOV, LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and LOV+FOR for the LOV; and SA, SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR for the SA without improvement or with improving by pairwise interchange, backward-shifted reinsertion, and

forward-shifted reinsertion, respectively.

4. Results

In order to take measurements of the performances of proposed LOV and SA algorithm, we carry on two experimental parts including a small job-size and big job-size numbers. All algorithms

are coded in FORTRAN using Compaq Visual Fortran version 6.6 and performed the experiments on a personal computer powered by an Intel Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6300 @

2.80GHz with 2GB RAM operating under Windows XP.

In the experiment setting, we test the number of jobs at n=8, 10 and 12. The processing times of jobs on machine M1 and M2 were generated from a uniform distribution over the integers U(1,100) and U(1,100), U(1,50) and U(100), and U(1,100) and U(1,50). They are recorded as Types I, II, and II. Total 9 cases were examined and 100 replications were tested for each case in this part.

In the first part, we test the number of jobs at n=8, 10 and 12. We first solved each instance using full enumeration to obtain an optimal solution. We then compared the solutions obtained by the DE or SA algorithm by using the 8 heuristics LOV, LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and LOV+FOR, and the SA, SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR algorithms to obtain near-optimal solutions.in terms

of the percentage error, defined as MPE= i opt 100

opt

H H H



 %,

where Hi is the objective value obtained by algorithm Hi and Hopt is the optimal objective value

obtained by full enumeration. For each case, we recorded the average (denoted as avg) and maximum (denoted as max) percentage error. Tables 1-2 summarize the results.

As shown in Tables 1-2, on average, the mean error percentages of LOV and SA are only 1.348%

and 0.671%, but the worst cases of LOV and SA are up to 7.687% and 8.916%. Based on these observations, we add three local searches into LOV and SA. It can be seen that the mean error percentages (MPE) of LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and LOV+FOR increase as the number of jobs becomes big no matter what data type. On the other hand, the mean error percentages (MPE) of SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR increase very slight. It can be seen that the performances of LOVs and SAs at type III are better than those at types I and II. The results also indicate that SAs perform better than those of LOVs. On an average, the MPEs of SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR are 0.540%, 0.433%, and 0.641%, while the MPEs of LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and

34

LOV+FOR are 0.715%, 0.744%, and 0.705%.

For the cases with a large number of jobs, i.e., n = 40, 80 and 120, we first solved each instance by using the 8 heuristics LOV, LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and LOV+FOR, and the SA, SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR algorithms to obtain near-optimal solutions. We measure the

performance of a heuristic algorithm in terms of the relative percentage deviation (RPD), defined as

min min

100%

i V V RPD

V



  ,

where Vi is the objective value obtained by a heuristic algorithm H and Vmin is the best solution among LOV, LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and LOV+FOR, and the SA, SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR algorithms. For each case, we recorded the average (denoted as mean) percentage deviation. Tables 3-4 summarize the results.

As shown in Tables 3-4 and Figures 4-6, on average, the average percentage deviation (RPD ) of

LOV and SA are 19.966% and 0.144%. The results indicates that SA outperforms than LOV at the larger jobs. The worst case of LOV is up to 34.389, but the worst case of SA is only 0.784%. When adding the improvement schemes into LOV and SA. It can be seen that the RPD of LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and LOV+FOR increase as the number of jobs becomes bigger no matter what data type. On the other hand, the RPDs of SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR decline. It can also be seen that the performances of LOVs at types II and III are better than those at type I, while the performances of SAs at type III are better than those at types I and II. The results also indicate that SAs outperform better than those of LOVs. On an average, the RPDs of SA+PI, SA+BACK, and SA+FOR are 0.031%, 0.028%, and 0.103%, while the RPDs of LOV+PI, LOV+BACK, and LOV+FOR are 17.062%, 18.220%, and 18.023%. For consuming the CPU times of LOVs and SAs, both LOVs and SAs take in a second to solve out an instance for the smaller jobs, while SAs take only about 2 seconds and LOVs takes about 340 seconds to solve out an instance for the larger jobs.

Summing up the above observation, it is recommend that SA+BACK can be used for this problem in term of the short CPU time and good solution quality.

5. Conclusions and Suggestions

In this paper we study the two-machine flowshop scheduling problem with a job constraint to

minimize the total completion time. In view as the intractability of the problem under consideration, we construct 8 heuristics based on three commonly used local search methods to approximately solve the problem. The computational results show that the SA algorithm seeded with the solution obtained by combining the pairwise interchange method performs best in terms of solution quality and solution time. Future research may consider applying other metaheuristics to solve the problem involving other scheduling objectives such as the total tardiness.

Acknowledgements

This paper was supported by the NSC of Taiwan under grant number NSC 102-2221-E-035-070-MY3.

35

6. References

Bean, J.C. (1994) Genetic algorithms and random keys for sequencing and optimization. ORSA Journal of Computing 6: 154-160.

Chandra, C., Liu, Z., He, J., Ruohonen, T. (2014) A binary branch and bound algorithm to minimize maximum scheduling cost. Omega 42: 9-15.

Cadambi, B.V., Sathe, Y.S., 1993. Two-machine flowshop scheduling to minimise mean flow time. Opsearch 30: 35-41.

Das, S., Canel, C., 2005. An algorithm for scheduling batches of parts in a multi-cell flexible manufacturing system. International Journal of Production Economics 97: 247-262.

Della Croce, F., Narayan, V., Tadei R., (1996). The two-machine total completion time flow shop problem. European Journal of Operational Research 90: 227-237

Gonzalez, T., Sahni, S., 1978. Flowshop and jobshop schedules: complexity and approximation. Operations Research 26: 36-52.

Ignall, E., Schrage, L.E., 1965. Application of the branch and bound technique to some flowshop scheduling problems. Operations Research 13: 400-412.

Storn, R., Price, K. (1997) Differential evolution- a simple and efficient heuristic for global

optimization over continuous spaces. Journal of Global Optimization 11(4): 341-359. Wang, C., Chu, C., Proth, J.M., 1996. Efficient heuristic and optimal approaches for n/2/F/



C_i

scheduling problems. International Journal of Production Economics 44: 225-237.

Garey, M.R., Johnson, D.S., and Sethi, P.R. (1979). The complexity of flowshop and jobshop scheduling. Mathematical Operational Research 1: 117-129.

Kirkpatrick, S., Gellat, .CD., and Vecchi, M.P. (1983). Optimization by simulated annealing algorithm. Science 220: 671-680.

Koulamas, C., Antony, S.R., and Jean, R. (1994). A survey of simulated annealing applications to operations research problems. Omega 22: 41-56.

Lee, W.C. and Wu, C.C. (2004). Minimizing total completion time in a two-machine flowshop with a learning effect. International Journal of Production Economics 88: 85-93.

Panwalker, S.S. and Iskander, W. (1977). A survey of scheduling rules. Operations Research 25: 45-61.

Yeung, W.K., Oğuz, C., Cheng, T.C.E. (2004). Two-stage flowshop earliness and tardiness machine scheduling involving a common due window. International Journal of Production Economics 90: 421-434.

Wu, C.C. and Lee, W.C. (2006). Two-machine flowshop scheduling to minimize mean flow time under linear deterioration. International Journal of Production Economics 103: 572-584.

38

ISBBME-1340

Relationships between Working Hours and Productivity: The Case of Food

Services and Information Communication Industries in Hong Kong

Ng Chi Man*

School of Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

cmng@ouhk.edu.hk

Tsang Wan Ling

Faculty of Business, Environment and Society, The Coventry University, United Kingdom

cmng@ouhk.edu.hk

Abstract

This paper aims to study the relationships between working hours and productivity in food services and information communication industries in Hong Kong. Though the discussion on productivities determinants and the analysis of opinions provided by management and the non

-management staff members in these two industries, the study concludes with a recommendation on a productivity enhancement scheme. In total, 312 employees responded to the questionnaire, the demographic characteristics of two industries’ employees were very similar, but the working information was different due to different workplace requirements. Statistical results revealed that the correlation between duration of working hours and productivity are not statistically significant in these two industries. However, the ideas from the management and the non

-management level were different on the correlation between critical factors in these two industries. Moreover, statistical results also indicates that the correlation between working environment and personal health with stress and job satisfaction is positive and statistically significant in the food services industry, while the correlation between the job content and information technology skills is also positive and statistically significant in information communication industry. Management should focus on these critical factors for the improvement and enhancement the productivity of employees, thereby benefitting the organization.

Keyword: Standard Working Hours, Productivity, Job Satisfaction

1. Introduction

Hong Kong is renowned for having a flexible and hardworking workforce which underpins its economic development and success in face of intense global competition (Labour Department 2012). The International Labour Organization (ILO) had advised Hong Kong to legislate for the standard working hours regulation and ILO survey results in 1996 showed that one hundred and twenty countries had already legislated the regulation of working hours. Table 1 shows hours of work statistics in Hong Kong, there were around 663.5 thousand employees (around 21% of total employment) working over 55 hours per weeks in 2000 (Census and Statistics Department 2011). The data had nearly doubled from that of 1990 which was around 393.7 thousand (around 15% of total employees) (Census and Statistics Department 2011). Until 2000, Hong Kong remained as the only developed country which had not legislated such standard yet (Legislative Council 2000), those supporting working hours legislation believe that this would enhance employees’ safety and health and in return, boost staff productivity and morale, thus benefitting

39

employers, however, those opposing legislation believe that mandatory standard working hour would affect workers of all skill and seniority levels and hence, influence the operational flexibility of businesses which has long been a key competitive edge of Hong Kong. Thus, an empirical research concerning relationship between working hours and productivity can directly acknowledge the increasing public concerns over the impact of long working hours on workers’ health and productivity, the discussion on determinants of productivity also in the end shed light on the optimal future labor market policy direction, and facilitate Hong Kong Government in mapping out the way of legislation ahead.

The number of working hours was rising rapidly since 1997, and maximum number of working hours had been became a controversial issue. On 7th June 2000, this issue had turned into a particular political issue – “Proposal for prescribing the maximum number of working hours in Hong Kong” in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (2011), of which the labor sector and the business sectors had already disputed for over ten years. The key point of the contention argued that legislating regular working hours would affect Hong Kong’s business competitiveness in the world. The labor sector thought that long working hours would increase stress and illnesses and affect the health of employees. Hong Kong Government encouraged employers and employees to improve their ability and skills, and also communicate more with their parents and take care of their children. However, employees were difficult to do these due to the long working hours. Thus, low motivation, productiveness and efficiency were resulted, and caused decreasing business competitiveness. Hence, the labor sector urged to legislate the regulation of working hours. Contrarily, if the policy of regular working hours was legislated and implemented, the business and industrial sectors were concerned on the effect to the flexibility of the economy and the overall business competitiveness in the world. Since there were several kinds of job nature in Hong Kong, regular working hours might not be suitable for all business organizations and affected the efficiency and productivity. Up till now, the consultative procedure for legislation is still not yet being commenced (Legislative Council 2011).

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2. Research Objectives

The key point of the contention focused on the effect of Hong Kong’s business competitiveness which related to productivity and efficiency. This paper aims to study the relationships between working hours and productivity, by comparing long and median working hours’ industries in Hong Kong which were the food services and the information and communication industries. In addition, by enhancing the employees’ productivity, the organizations’ competitiveness in the business market is increased.

Thus, this paper discourse in parallel what factors influencing employees’ productivity, more specifically, this paper centers around the food services industry which the working hour was relatively long compared to information and communication industry which the working hour was comparatively low and at the median of all industries (Table 2) (Census and Statistics Department 2011). Moreover, this paper collects opinion from management and non

-management level and analyzes what scheme is recommendable to these two industries.

Table 2 also indicates that the median hours of work in Hong Kong was 48 hours in 2010, which was still higher than other developed countries , such as the United States, which the working hours was limited at 40 hours per week by law (International Labour Office 2004). Also, it was found that long working hours mainly happen in retailing, accommodation and food services industries (54 hours) (Table 2) (Census and Statistics Department 2011). In short, this paper consists of three research objectives:

 To develop a conceptual framework for studying labor productivity in long working hours industry.

 To examine empirically if these conceptual variables are related to labor productivity

 To evaluate how these conceptual variables are inter-linked with each other, and investigate

if these inter-linkages are differ between management and non-management employees

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ACMASS-5907

The Study on Elderly Learners’ Narrative Learning and Self

-

integration: the

Perspective of Social Constructivism

Chia Feng Hsu

Nation Taiwan Normal University, Department of Adult and Continuing Education, Taiwan. hsuchiafeng66@gmail.com

Abstract

With the rapid rising aging population, international organization and many developed countries take education policy for the elderly as one of the important national development policies. According to E. Erikson’s stage theory of psychosocial (1950), the elderly will be confronted with the crisis of development as “self-integration and despair”. Based on narrative learning, our learning program of this study was designed to allow elderly learners to review their lives, to understand the importance and meaning of their lives, and to increase their sense of self-worth and sense of existence. The purposes of this study are to explore the development context of the elderly learners’ experiences and understand how social and culture influence the elderly learners to the state of self-integration based on the approach of social constructivism .The research method employed is narrative research, analyzing the elderly participants’ narration. The results show that by narrative learning, the elderly learners reviewed their own lives, and co-constructed past life memories. They viewed their lives positively, and accepted all the things that happened in their lives.

Keyword: Elderly Learning, Narrative Learning, Narrative Research, Self-integration, Social Constructivism

1. Introduction 1.1 Background

With the rapid increasing in aging population, international organizations and many developed countries take education policy for the elderly as one of the important national development policies. In Taiwan, the Ministry of Education made Lifelong Learning Act that established the legal basis of promoting lifelong learning in 2002. In addition, the Ministry of Education promulgated “Toward aged society: The White Paper of Elderly Education Policy” which revealed the four visions of elderly education: (1) lifelong learning; (2) healthy and happy; (3) autonomy and dignity; and (4) social participation. H. Y. McClusky(1971) advocated that educational activities for the elderly should correspond to five learning needs: coping needs, expressive needs, contributive needs, influence needs and transcendence needs. In Taiwan, many courses for the elderly emphasize on the first four needs. The learning program in this study will focuse on transcendence needs.

1.2 Theories

According to E. Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development (1950), the elderly will be confronted with the crisis of development as “self-integration and despair” about sixty-five years old. It is during this time that the elderly affirm their accomplishments and are able to developintegrityif they see themselves as leading a successful life. If tthey see their life as unproductive, or feel that they did not accomplish their life goals, they’ll be dissatisfied with life

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and developdespair, often leading to depression and hopelessness.

On the basis of social constructivism, the “self” is constructed through the language human uses and the process of interaction and negotiation. As a result, the self-integration of the elderly can’t be separated from the social and cultural context. The historical background and common memory that the elderly experienced together not only enrich their life stories but are closely related to their life meanings and self-integration.

1.3Aim

The purposes of this study are to explore the development context of the elderly learners’ experiences and understand how social and culture influence the elderly learners to the state of self-integration based on social constructivism.

2. Approach

Narrative learning is not simply learning from the stories we tell about our lives and ourselves. It is learning that happens ‘in’ and ‘through’ the narration(Goodson, Biesta, Tedder, & Adair, 2010). Based on our research purpose, our learning program of this study was designed to allow the elderly learners to review their lives, to understand the importance and meaning of their lives, and to increase their sense of self-worth and sense of existence. The research method employed is narrative research, analyzing the elderly participants’ narration. Using the approach taken by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) as a general procedural guide, the methods of conducting a narrative study do not follow a lock-step approach, but instead represent an informal collection of topics.

2.1 Learning Program-Narrative Learning Group

In this study, most participants were the post war baby boomers in Taiwan, and the topics of their narrations were the similar background and the common historical events. In our learning program, we took ‘songs’ as ‘bridge’ to the learners’ lives, and through ‘singing’, the elderly narrated their stories about different life stages. We recorded all classes. After all classes, we interviewed all learners to understand how they feel about when sharing their life stories, and whether the experiences of narrative learning influence their self-integration. Our curriculum design as the Table 1:

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2.2 Research Method-Narrative Research

In general, narrative functions as:(1) a structure of, and for, cognition and perception; (2) a negotiation of relationship(s) and connection(s) to self, others, and environment; (3) a process of social and cultural cohesion; (4) an artistic production and creation; (5) an educative inquiry and proximal experience; (6) a representational strategy for intrapersonal and interpersonal communication systems(Mello, 2002). Narrative research attaches importance to participants’ narrations of subjective feelings, lives and experiences in social context. When analyzing the narrative text, there are four modes of reading a narrative as follows: content, holistic-form, categorical-content and categorical-form (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach and Zilber, 1998).

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This study applied the modes of ‘holistic-content’ and ‘categorical-content’ to understand what kind of experiences and feelings they have in common, how the elderly learners explain their life events through narration and dialogue, and how the narrative learning group influences their self-integration.

Participants

There are fourteen participants joined our narrative learning group, age from 56 to 88. There are seven members from 55 to 65 years old, four members from 66 to 75 years old, and three older than 75 years old. There are eleven females and three males. One male do not want to be recorded.

3. Result

Based on the social context and growth processes of our participants, the researcher applies two modes of narrative analysis to analyze and discuss participants’ narration. The first part of the results, we showed that through dialogue, how the elderly learners co-construct the social context and life experiences of their life course; and the second part we discussed their opinions of their life experiences and how the life review affected their self-integration.

3.1 The Elderly Learners’ Life Stories

After World War II, Taiwan returned to China from a colony of Japan, went through the process of internal disorder, a long period of martial law, economic growing and social reform. Our participants all experienced political, economic and social change. According to their narration, the interpretation of their life stories as Table 2.

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3.2What the Elderly Learners’ View of Their Whole Life (1) Life is wonderful

As one of our member said ’ you are holding your script to play your life, and the script has been written for you.’ Our life are perhaps imperfect or even terrible, but in retrospect the processes of life are still very wonderful.

(2) Life is a series of ordeal

Many members of our group went through a lot of loses and suffering. One lost her mother in early childhood, one lost her husband and a son in her middle life, one couldn’t get along with her mother-in-law, and one had an autistic child. For them,these were great blows but they still regard these adversities as tests of their lives.

(3) I’m satisfied with my life

No matter how life is, they encountered many good person to help them. Besides, they are healthy and they can do anything they want to do now. Thus, they feel satisfied and thankful.

4. Conclusion

The results show that by narrative learning, the elderly learners reviewed their own lives, and co-constructed past life memories. They viewed their lives positively, and accepted all the things that happened in their lives. According to Erikson’s theory, the final developmental task is

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retrospection: people look back on their lives and accomplishments. Integrity in the later years of life implies acceptance of a life that was well-lived.

The elderly participated our class have common histories and similar life experiences. On the basis of social constructivism, the ‘self’ is constructed through interaction and negotiation. Through sharing and dialogue, the elderly learners co-constructed the meanings of life events and viewed the value of their lives with another perspective. They feel satisfied with their lives and feel grateful to all tests happened in their lives.

The study try to provide a new way to help the elderly to look back their life processes. As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard has famously said that life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. Through peer sharing, they know that they have a wonderful life.

5. References

Taiwan Ministry of Education(2006). Toward aged society: The White Paper of Elderly Education Policy. Taipei: Ministry of Education.

McClusky, H. Y. (1971). Education: Background issues, Washington, D. C.: White House Conference on Aging.

Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.

Goodson, I.F., Biesta, G.J.J., Tedder, M., & Adair, N. (2010). Narrative learning. London: Routledge.

Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mello, R. A. (2002). Collocation analysis: A method for conceptualizing and understanding narrative data. Qualitative Research, 2(2), 231-243.

Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, Rivka, and Zilber, Tamar.(1998). Narrative Research: reading, analysis, and interpretation ( Vol. 47). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.