Just more of the same, or different? An integrative theoretical framework for the study of cumulative interruptions at work

How do cynical employees serve their customers? A multi-method study

“…Because service encounters are social in nature and in line with SIP theory, we focus on two social job characteristics: (1) the number of observed interruptions during service encounters, which is a social job demand, and (2) colleague support, which represents a social job resource (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001). Whereas social interruptions concern the temporary suspension of a person's goal-directed action during service encounters (Baethge, Rogotti, & Roe, 2015), jobs high on social support elicit pleasant emotions and facilitate understanding employees' emotions, which makes it relevant for the management of emotions inherent in service encounters (Côté, 2005).…”

Interruptions in the wild: portraying the handling of interruptions in manufacturing from a distributed cognition lens

“…Baethge et al 2015;Ho and Intille 2005;Westbrook 2014), and we recognise an upcoming trend in current interruption research where field investigations are gaining interest across disciplines. Walter et al (2015) requested rigorous observational studies and Baethge et al (2015) argued for the importance of complementing existing research with studies of interruptions in the broader socio-technical context. Similarly, Jones (2010, 2015) stated the need for interruption research to emphasise the cognitive, social, and relational context as fundamental factors for understanding interruptions.…”

“…Prior interruption research has almost exclusively focused on one primary task and one interruption task that existed simultaneously, without explicitly considering that one primary task and multiple interruption tasks could exist at the same time (see Baethge et al 2015 for a related exception). For example, the primary task of the maintenance workers was to perform planned and scheduled maintenance work on machines (primary task).…”

“…Effective manufacturing management requires supporting communications between managers, team leaders, and workers (Bäckstrand 2009), and any type of information exchange or delivery requires some form of interruption. Thus, whereas proper distribution of information is vital for efficient work, unnecessary or untimely interruptions could have great repercussions on work quality, both regarding the primary and the interruption task (McFarlane 1999).…”

“…The need to advance the research agenda to more naturalistic settings and complementing existing research with studies of interruptions in the broader sociotechnical context has been noted (e.g. Baethge et al 2015;Ho and Intille 2005;Walter et al 2015;Westbrook 2014).…”