Applied ergonomics
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Multicenter Study
Customer orientation among employees in public administration: a transnational, longitudinal study.
The relation between ergonomic principles and quality management initiatives, both, in the private and public sector, has received increasing attention in the recent years. Customer orientation among employees is not only an important quality principle, but also an essential prerequisite for customer satisfaction, especially in service organizations. In this context, the objective of introducing new public management (NPM) in public-service organizations is to increase customer orientation among employees who are at the forefront of service providing. ⋯ In both organizations, we observed a significant increase in customer orientation. Perceived customer orientation was related to job characteristics, organizational characteristics and employee quality of working life. Creating positive influences on these characteristics within the framework of an organizational change process has positive effects on employee customer orientation.
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A human-centered measure of floor slipperiness could be useful as an adjunct to conventional tribologic measures. This paper reports on the development and evaluation of a measure of slip distance based on variables derived from the signal of a heel-mounted accelerometer. Twenty-one participants walked on a laboratory runway under several surface slipperiness conditions at three walking speeds during a protocol designed to produce a wide range of slip distances at heel strike. ⋯ Regression analysis of slip distance and deceleration time showed the strongest relationship with R2=0.511. Large individual variation in the strength of this relationship was observed. The heel-mounted accelerometer may have utility as an adjunct measure in the evaluation of floor slipperiness, particularly for field applications where direct measurement may not be feasible.