Guest Editorial on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction
TL;DR: The emerging fields of social computing and computational social science have been driven by the transdisciplinary efforts of scientists, researchers, and scholars from many fields of study.
Abstract: The emerging fields of social computing and computational social science have been driven by the transdisciplinary efforts of scientists, researchers, and scholars from many fields of study. Collaborations across the social, natural, physical, information, computer, mathematical, and health sciences in addition to the humanities have resulted in significant advancements in our understanding of human behavior.
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TL;DR: The unique real-world data set from a WeChat-based work performance evaluation system built and used by a medium-sized organization in China is collected in order to study the optimization of the employees’ work strategies, especially the work time determination, with the purpose of maximizing the total utility comprised of the work and nonwork utilities.
Abstract: In recent years, social media platforms and, especially, instant messaging applications have been witnessed to play an increasingly important role as a communication channel among employees to build effective organizations, which results in a considerably large part of individual activities moving onto the cyber-based workspace. In this paper, we collect the unique real-world data set from a WeChat-based work performance evaluation system built and used by a medium-sized organization in China, in order to study the optimization of the employees’ work strategies, especially the work time determination, with the purpose of maximizing the total utility comprised of the work and nonwork utilities. In the system, the performance evaluation is completely based on the employees’ work reports and includes three major measures including score, level, and rank. First, we formulate a dynamic optimization model, incorporating the work utility into the reputational and the substantive utility, so as to examine the employees’ work strategy. Then, we conduct both empirical studies and computational experiments to make an in-depth analysis to probe the employees’ optimal work strategies. The main results include: 1) the optimal work time is greatly affected by the weight of the reputational utility; 2) the optimal work time is always the threshold time to achieve a certain level or a certain rank; 3) the total utility is with the trend of decreasing after increasing with the growing work time; and 4) the optimal work time does not always make the employee achieve a good work performance.
7 citations
01 Oct 2018
TL;DR: This paper empirically study how the work reporting policies formulated by supervisors influence the employees' strategies and in turn their performance, using a unique real-world dataset collected from the Chinese social media platform called WeChat.
Abstract: In recent years, social media platforms and instant messaging applications have been witnessed to play an increasingly important role as a communication channel among employees to build effective organizations, which results in a considerably large part of individual activities moving onto the cyber-based workspace. The online behaviors of employees rely heavily on the policies or mechanisms formulated for the cyber-space, and are expected to impose a significant influence on their performance appraisal in the physical world. In this paper, we focus on the typical online reporting behavior, and empirically study how the work reporting policies formulated by supervisors influence the employees' strategies and in turn their performance, using a unique real-world dataset collected from the Chinese social media platform called WeChat. We consider two types of work reporting policies: the one is concerned with the reporting time and the other with the duplication degree of reporting contents. First, we establish an optimization model, taking both the reputation-based and performance-related utilities into consideration, so as to examine the employees' reporting strategies and their actual work performance. On this basis, we make further discussions about the reporting policy optimization from the perspective of organization supervisors. Then, an empirical study on a median-size organization in China is conducted to validate our proposed model and analysis. The results prove our conclusion that the reporting policy will influence not only employees' reporting strategies, but also their actual work performance.
3 citations
Cites background from "Guest Editorial on Social Computing..."
...In the literature of employee performance management, it has long been a widely-recognized consensus that communication process is one of the major factors for organization success [1][2], and open lines of communication can facilitate individual or group employees to enhance the work performance and thus contribute to organizations’ productivity [3]-[6]....
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