The paradoxical effects of high involvement work practices on employees and service outcomes: a trichromatic perspective

This research delves into the complex impact of High Involvement Work Practices (HIWPs) on various facets of employee well-being and service outcomes within the framework of the trichromatic service conception. Utilizing the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, the study uncovers the dual, both beneficial and detrimental, effects of HIWPs on service performance, work-family conflict, subjective well-being, and work-family enrichment. Examining the conflicting paths of job demands (workload) and job resources (customer orientation), the analysis incorporates the moderating influence of a strategic contextual factor-supervisor support. Data was collected through self-administered questionnaires from 475 respondents in Pakistani banks, and the analysis employed moderated mediation analysis using SPSS, AMOS, and the PROCESS Macro. All proposed hypotheses received support. The results indicate that HIWPs enhance service performance by promoting customer orientation but concurrently escalate workload, leading to adverse consequences for subjective well-being and work-family conflict. The study underscores the importance of implementing HIWPs under supportive leadership to maximize positive outcomes and mitigate negative consequences. Ultimately, this approach enables employees to effectively serve customers, maintain a healthy work-family balance, and contribute to the long-term growth and sustainability of organizations.

Tailoring the structures and photonic properties of low-dimensional organic materials by crystal engineering

Low-dimensional organic materials have given rise to tremendous interest in optoelectronic applications, owing to their controllable photonic properties. However, the controlled-synthesis approaches for organic nano-/micro-architectures are very difficult to attain, because the weak interaction (van der Waals force) between the organic molecules cannot dominate the kinetic process of crystal growth. We report a simple method, which involves selective adhesion to the organic crystal plane by hydrogen-bonding interaction for modulating the crystal growth process, which leads either to the self-assembly of one organic molecule into two-dimensional (2D) microsheets with an obvious asymmetric light propagation or one-dimensional (1D) microrods with low propagation loss. The method of tailoring the structures and photonic properties for fabricating different micro-structures would provide enlightenment for the development of tailor-made mini-sized devices for photonic integrated circuits.

Regulating Molecular Aggregations of Polymers via Ternary Copolymerization Strategy for Efficient Solar Cells

For many high-performance photovoltaic materials in polymer solar cells (PSCs), the active layers usually need to be spin-coated at high temperature due to the strong intermolecular aggregation of donor polymers, which is unfavorable in device repeatability and large-scale PSC printing. In this work, we adopted a ternary copolymerization strategy to regulate polymer solubility and molecular aggregation. A series of D-A₁-D-A₂ random polymers based on different acceptors, strong electron-withdrawing unit ester substituted thieno[3,4-b]thiophene (TT-E), and highly planar dithiazole linked TT-E (DTzTT) were constructed to realize the regulation of molecular aggregation and simplification of device fabrication. The results showed that as the relative proportion of TT-E segment in the backbone increased, the absorption evidently red-shifted with a gradually decreased aggregation in solution, eventually leading to the active layers that can be fabricated at low temperature. Furthermore, due to the excellent phase separation and low recombination, the optimized solar cells based on the terpolymer P1 containing 30% of TT-E segment exhibit high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.09% with a significantly enhanced fill factor up to 72.86%. Encouragingly, the photovoltaic performance is insensitive to the fabrication temperature of the active layer, and it still could maintain high PCE of 8.82%, even at room temperature. This work not only develops the highly efficient photovoltaic materials for low temperature processed PSCs through ternary copolymerization strategy but also preliminarily constructs the relationship between aggregation and photovoltaic performance.

Propan-2-yl 2-(1,1,3-trioxo-2,3-dihydro-1λ6,2-benzothiazol-2-yl)acetate

In the title mol­ecule, C₁₂H₁₃NO₅S, the benzisothia­zole ring system is essentially planar (r.m.s. deviation = 0.0169 Å) as is the –C—C(=O)—O—C– sequence of atoms in the vicinity of the acetate group (r.m.s. deviation = 0.0044 Å). The mean plane of these atoms forms a dihedral angle of 88.41 (7)° with the benzisothia­zole ring system. In the crystal, weak C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds involving methyl­ene and methyne H atoms form R₄³(20) graph-set motifs.

3,4-Dimethyl-pyrano[2,3-c]pyrazol-6(2H)-one

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C(8)H(8)N(2)O(2), comprises two independent mol-ecules in both of which, all non-H atoms lie in a common plane (r.m.s. deviation = 0.014 and 0.017 Å). In the crystal, N-H⋯O hydrogen bonds connect the mol-ecules into zigzag chains running along [10-1]. Weak C-H⋯O inter-actions connect the chains into an infinite network.

Ultrasound user-identification for wireless sensor networks

Indoor localization and asset tracking is an area of research which is finding increasing application in monitoring the wellbeing of elderly subjects in hospital or residential care environments. Radio frequency (RF) based localization methods tend to show poor performance in indoor environments, due to multipath scatter, and simple room-level misassociations, resulting from the relative transparency of some walls to RF waves. Ultrasound (US) localization has shown excellent room-level accuracy, and as US will not easily penetrate walls, room-level misassociations do not often occur. For normal asset tracking systems, the association between an asset and a room is not of critical importance; for clinical applications, which make inferences based on a patient and carer occupying the same room, this association is paramount. This paper outlines a proof of concept for an US-based indoor localization system with sub-room-level accuracy. The proposed design uses a US-based technique, with transmitter beacons placed throughout the environment. The subject wears the receiver module and is free to move throughout the environment. Transmission collisions are alleviated by assigning a unique prime transmission interval to each beacon; meaning the beacons do not require synchronization or coordination and operate independently of one another. Preliminary results show accurate detection at a range of over 5 m at a 0° angle and at approximately 3.5 m at an angle of 30°. Testing of two collocated transmitters, transmitting in the same plane and separated by 2.5 m results in accurate reception of both signals, even within the region of overlap.