The claim that high levels of engagement can enhance organizational performance and individual well-being has not previously been tested through a systematic review of the evidence. To bring coherence to the diffuse body of literature on engagement, the authors conducted a systematic synthesis of narrative evidence involving 214 studies focused on the meaning, antecedents and outcomes of engagement. The authors identified six distinct conceptualizations of engagement, with the field dominated by the Utrecht Group's 'work engagement' construct and measure, and by the theorization of engagement within the 'job demands-resources' framework. Five groups of factors served as antecedents to engagement: psychological states; job design; leadership; organizational and team factors; and organizational interventions. Engagement was found to be positively associated with individual morale, task performance, extra-role performance and organizational performance, and the evidence was most robust in relation to task performance. However, there was an over-reliance on quantitative, cross-sectional and self-report studies within the field, which limited claims of causality. To address controversies over the commonly used measures and concepts in the field and gaps in the evidence-base, the authors set out an agenda for future research that integrates emerging critical sociological perspectives on engagement with the psychological perspectives that currently dominate the field.

This paper describes the architecture and implementation of an autonomous passenger vehicle designed to navigate using locally perceived information in preference to potentially inaccurate or incomplete map data. The vehicle architecture was designed to handle the original DARPA Urban Challenge requirements of perceiving and navigating a road network with segments defined by sparse waypoints. The vehicle implementation includes many heterogeneous sensors with significant communications and computation bandwidth to capture and process high-resolution, high-rate sensor data. The output of the comprehensive environmental sensing subsystem is fed into a kinodynamic motion planning algorithm to generate all vehicle motion. The requirements of driving in lanes, three-point turns, parking, and maneuvering through obstacle fields are all generated with a unified planner. A key aspect of the planner is its use of closed-loop simulation in a rapidly exploring randomized trees algorithm, which can randomly explore the space while efficiently generating smooth trajectories in a dynamic and uncertain environment. The overall system was realized through the creation of a powerful new suite of software tools for message passing, logging, and visualization. These innovations provide a strong platform for future research in autonomous driving in global positioning system-denied and highly dynamic environments with poor a priori information. C 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper describes the architecture and implementation of an autonomous passenger vehicle designed to navigate using locally perceived information in preference to potentially inaccurate or incomplete map data. The vehicle architecture was designed to handle the original DARPA Urban Challenge requirements of perceiving and navigating a road network with segments defined by sparse waypoints. The vehicle implementation includes many heterogeneous sensors with significant communications and computation bandwidth to capture and process high-resolution, high-rate sensor data. The output of the comprehensive environmental sensing subsystem is fed into a kino-dynamic motion planning algorithm to generate all vehicle motion. The requirements of driving in lanes, three-point turns, parking, and maneuvering through obstacle fields are all generated with a unified planner. A key aspect of the planner is its use of closed-loop simulation in a Rapidly-exploring Randomized Trees (RRT) algorithm, which can randomly explore the space while efficiently generating smooth trajectories in a dynamic and uncertain environment. The overall system was realized through the creation of a powerful new suite of software tools for message-passing, logging, and visualization. These innovations provide a strong platform for future research in autonomous driving in GPS-denied and highly dynamic environments with poor a priori information.

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The relationship between perceived training and development and employee retention: the mediating role of work attitudes This paper considers how utilizing a model of job-related affect can be used to explain the processes through which perceived training and development influence employee retention. We applied Russell's model of core affect to categorize four different forms of work attitude, and positioned these as mediators of the relationship between perceived training and development and intention to stay.Using data from 1,191 employees across seven organizations, multilevel analyses found that job satisfaction, employee engagement, and change-related anxiety were significantly associated with intention to stay, and were mediators of the relationship between perceived training and development and intention to stay.Contrary to our hypotheses, emotional exhaustion was not significantly associated with intention to stay nor acted as a mediator when the other attitudes were included. These findings show the usefulness of Russell's model of core affect in explaining the link between training and development and employee retention.Moreover, it suggests that studies examining employee retention should include a wider range of work attitudes that highlight pleasant forms of affect that induce motivational rather than impairment prevention effects.Keywords: employee retention, perceived training and development, job-related affect, multilevel analysis, work attitudes IntroductionTraining and development (T&D) is a systematic approach to developing and enhancing employee skills, abilities and knowledge for the purpose of increasing organizational effectiveness (Aguinus and Kraiger, 2009). As an overarching HR practice it is often considered, and evidenced, to be a broad collection of activities that refer to continual learning and development of general job-and career-related skills (e.g. Boon, den Hartog, Boselie, and Paauwe, 2011). Previous research demonstrates that perceived T&D is associated with higher levels of retention 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 More recently, researchers have become interested in understanding the exact mechanisms that underlie this relationship (e.g. Koster, de Grip and Fourage, 2011). For example, Koster et al (2011) demonstrated that job satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between perceived support in employee development and intention to quit.In contrast, Dysvik and Kuvaas (2008) showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediated the relationship between perceived T&D and turnover intention.While these studies have enhanced our understanding of how T&D is related to retention, exploring mediators individually is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it encourages researchers to add potential mediators into the literature with little consideration of how they are differentia...

Current road safety initiatives are approaching the limit of their effectiveness in developed countries. A paradigm shift is needed to address the preventable deaths of thousands on our roads. Previous systems have focused on one or two aspects of driving: environmental sensing, vehicle dynamics or driver monitoring. Our approach is to consider the driver and the vehicle as part of a combined system, operating within the road environment. A driver assistance system is implemented that is not only responsive to the road environment and the driver's actions but also designed to correlate the driver's eye gaze with road events to determine the driver's observations. Driver observation monitoring enables an immediate in-vehicle system able to detect and act on driver inattentiveness, providing the precious seconds for an inattentive human driver to react. We present a prototype system capable of estimating the driver's observations and detecting driver inattentiveness. Due to the "look but not see" case it is not possible to prove that a road event has been observed by the driver. We show, however, that it is possible to detect missed road events and warn the driver appropriately.

In this review paper, we critically examine the evidence base relating to engagement within the public sector given a wide range of public services have faced acute human resource challenges over recent years. Our review of 188 empirical studies reveals that much of the evidence focuses attention on individual and job level factors, such that specific public sector contextual contingencies have rarely been considered. Through identifying significant 'context gaps', we present a future research agenda addressing the following key areas: i) clarifying the relationship between engagement and public service motivation, ii) further contextualizing general engagement models, iii) exploring cultural, socio-political, and institutional factors in more depth, iv) encouraging a more critical perspective on engagement, v) understanding the variation in the experience of engagement across different public services/delivery models, and vi) connecting more strongly with practical concerns and initiatives within public organizations. In presenting this agenda, we highlight how engagement and HRM scholars can more strongly embed their research within a sectoral context.

BackgroundRecent studies have suggested engagement is linked with beneficial outcomes for individuals and organisations. Despite growing demand for resources and advice on engagement within the NHS, there has been no systematic evaluation of how engagement strategies can be developed and operationalised within the NHS.Objectives and research questionsTo evaluate evidence and theories of employee engagement within the NHS and the general workforce to inform policy and practice. Four research questions focused on definitions and models of engagement; the evidence of links between engagement and staff morale and performance; approaches and interventions that have the greatest potential to create and embed high levels of engagement within the NHS; and the most useful tools and resources for NHS managers in order to improve engagement.Review methodsEvidence was evaluated using a narrative synthesis approach involving a structured search of relevant academic databases and grey literature. The search yielded a final data set of 217 items, comprising 172 empirical papers, 38 theoretical articles, four meta-analyses and three books. From the grey literature, only 14 items were used in the analysis.Main findingsThere is no one agreed definition or measure of engagement. Existing approaches were grouped under three headings: a psychological state; a composite attitudinal and behavioural construct; and employment relations practice. Most fell under the first category, with the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale being the most prevalent. Most theorising around engagement used the job demands–resources framework. Thirty-five studies considered engagement and morale, and the most consistent finding was a positive link between engagement and life satisfaction, and a negative link between engagement and burnout. Some studies suggested that engagement was positively associated with organisational commitment and job satisfaction and negatively linked to turnover intentions. Of 42 studies that looked at performance and engagement, the strongest support was found for a link between engagement and individual in-role performance and a negative link between engagement and counterproductive performance outcomes. A link between engagement and higher-level performance outcomes was also found. Of 155 studies that explored approaches and interventions that promote engagement, the strongest support was found for the following: positive psychological states including resilience; job-related resources and job design features; positive leadership; perceived organisational support; team-level engagement; training and development. Only a small proportion of studies were based in health-care settings, making the application of evidence to wider contexts limited. Studies identified in the grey literature suggested that the focus of practitioner material was more on wider managerial issues than on psychological factors.ConclusionsThe synthesis highlights the complex nature of the engagement evidence base. The quality of evidence was mixed. Most studies were cross-sectional, self-report surveys, although the minority of studies that used more complex methods such as longitudinal study designs or multiple respondents were able to lend more weight to inferences of causality. The evidence from the health-care sector was relatively sparse. Only a few studies used complex methods and just two had taken place in the UK. The evidence synthesis suggests that employers might consider several factors in efforts to raise levels of engagement including development and coaching to raise levels of employee resilience, the provision of adequate job resources, and fostering positive and supportive leadership styles.FundingThis project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research (HSDR) programme.