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One thing that I maybe haven't made clear is that this book isn't intended to be an exhaustive treatment of this, or any, phenomenon — it's a parenting book, designed to give advice to parents with kids heading off to college.
Some of my wishes for what might show up in these pages, therefore, should be read as unreasonable.
So, on to Chapter 3. Can College Kids Grow Up on an Electronic Tether?
This is the chapter that should be getting into where we might see connections between this research and the big body of student development research that exists out there. The authors point out at start that there has been very little research on this specific phenomenon, but there is certainly a lot that we "know" about how students have developed in the past – and I am sure that research informed the present study.
Research question: What happens to the independence of college students who are in constant contact with their parents?
Method: To get at this question, they designed the surveys to also capture information about:
- students' psychological development
- parental involvement in students' lives
- relationships between students and parents
The chapter starts by making with the argument that traditionally, students have been able to control the level of contact with parents, and parents have expected that the amount of contact they have with their offspring will go down. That separation from parents is essential for students to develop a mature relationship with their parents — if they stay too connected, then the dynamics that existed in high school won't get a chance to change.
Most of this initial part is an exhortation for parents to let their students make their own decisions and their own mistakes. This is important not only for the students – who need to develop their own skills and to solve their own problems — but also for the parents. It is only when the student develops autonomy that they are capable of seeing their parents as people – with with lives that aren't entirely defined by their children.
Nothing here is cited, but it seems to be heavily informed by Arthur Chickering's seven vectors of college student development. Chickering's revised third vector is called Moving through Autonomy toward Interdependence, and deals with the same issues of connectedness – and how the relationship between student and parent can improve and mature better when there is some autonomy, or separation.
In fact, Chickering's initial model focused a great deal more on autonomy as leading to independence — it was in a relatively recent revision that he refined this category to recognize the ways that the relationships that students bring with them to college continue — and the ways that these relationships change. Hence, interdependence.
(Which I've always liked – I like the idea that one of the things we do in college is become capable of bringing more to our relationships – that we can become a source of support to people who have always supported us.)
So – then we move into a summary of results. And the one-line summary?
…students who have the most frequent contact with their parents are less autonomous than other students.
Evidence? Those students are less likely to hit their benchmarks, according to the standard psychological tests that were embedded in the surveys.
Subtopics examined include: decision making, relationships, self-regulation and parental regulation
Decision Making — The focus in this section is on majors. Parents are pushing "practical" majors where they can see an immediate employment benefit. Students are asking about other majors, and hearing they should change. At Michigan, only 2 students reported parents steering them away from econ or business, as opposed to many stories where the reverse was true. Of course, all parents aren't the same – some were described as "not heavy handed" with their advice, others felt they needed to offer perspectives and warnings, even as they encouraged their children to follow their interests.
Student/Parent Relationships — Relationships are generally strong, but the researchers did find that those students who get called the most are more likely to have relationships with their parents that are "fraught" & marked by conflict. Students who control the contact — who make the calls – report more positive feelings about their parents. There are also students who are controlling the contact, but who are maybe calling too much – which the researchers describe as "trading independence for closeness."
Self-Regulation & Parental Regulation — Students with good self regulation (what we might call "time management" and "study skills" in other contexts) get better grades AND report positive feelings about relationships with parents. Students who reported high levels of parental regulation (parents taking responsibility for the timeliness and/or quality of the students' work), on the other hand, reported negative outcomes. Not surprisingly, those who scored high on the "parental regulation" scale also reported high levels of contact with parents. They also reported MORE trouble with school. So parental regulation doesn't just hurt relationships – but in terms of academic success, it doesn't work.
Conclusions & Advice for Parents
Not surprisingly – the main conclusion of this chapter is that parents need to back off and let their kids grow up. This will have positive impacts not only on the students' academic skills and success in college, but also leads to better parent/student relationships.
My reactions
From the start of the chapter, there's the suggestion that there are two types of students here — those who want more independence, but find that college doesn't really change anything in terms of the reminders and suggestions and direction they get on a daily basis from parents
AND those who maintain those lines of contact themselves – who actively resist the separation that the research suggests is necessary.
Probably not surprisingly, because of the "this is a guide for parents" nature of the book, the advice is heavily directed towards the first situation. Parents, after all, can best control their own behavior and it makes sense that the book would focus on those situations where the parents' behaviors are more problematic.
I was curious what advice they would have for parents who aren't initiating the contact, but who have kids who are, as they say, sacrificing independence and development for contact. How can parents diagnose a situation where their student might be relying on them too much? What are the warning signs that your student is too dependent upon you? And then what do you do about it? I hope this is addressed more in later chapters.
And the other thing I found most striking from this chapter was the discussion of majors. That's something that I think we need to worry about – exploration is an important part of college and intellectual exploration is one of the most important kinds of exploration students do. If that's getting short-circuited, it needs to be addressed.


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The U.S. federal transport safety regulator is coming around to the view that rules could be updated so that computers in autonomous cars can be considered as drivers, but added that the rule-making could take some time.
The move by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could be a major boost for Google and a number of companies including traditional car makers that are working on partially or fully autonomous vehicles.
"If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the driver as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving," Paul A. Hemmersbaugh, chief counsel of the NHTSA, wrote in a Feb 4 letter in reply to a Google proposal relating to its self-driving cars.
Under current federal motor vehicle standards, a rule known as 49 CFR 571.3 describes a driver as the occupant of a motor vehicle seated immediately behind the steering control system. As it designs and tests more autonomous systems that will be controlled by computers, called self-driving systems (SDSs), including some without steering wheels and brakes, Google has asked the NHTSA for advice on the interpretation of provisions in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSSs) for the operation of the new cars.
Google's description of its proposed vehicles corresponds to Level 4 Full Self-Driving Automation defined by a May 2013 preliminary policy statement of the NHTSA on automated vehicles, according to Hemmersbaugh.
"In essence, Google seeks to produce a vehicle that contains L4 automated driving capabilities, and removes conventional driver controls and interfaces (like a steering wheel, throttle pedal, and brake pedal, among many other things)," he wrote in the letter to Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project.
Google did not immediately comment on the letter.
The company is said to have expressed concern that giving mechanisms to human occupants of the vehicle, like a driver, that would let them control steering, acceleration, braking, or turn signals, or providing human occupants with information about vehicle operation controlled entirely by the SDS, could be detrimental to safety because the occupants could attempt to override the decisions of the computer.
NHTSA will consider updating Section 571.3 in response to the changing circumstances, but acknowledged that it could take time. It has suggested that Google should seek exemptions from existing rules in the interim, including rules that govern the requirement of service brakes that can be activated by a foot control, and the location, identification, color, and illumination of motor vehicle controls, telltales, and indicators.
In 2013, NHTSA said in its preliminary statement of policy that if a state permits operation of self-driving vehicles, other than for testing, at a minimum a licensed driver should "be available at all times in order to operate the vehicle in situations in which the automated technology is not able to safely control the vehicle." It said it would review its decision as innovation in the area continued and the maturity of self-driving technology increased.
The U.S. plans to spend close to US$4 billion over the next 10 years on pilot projects in the area of autonomous vehicles and will also come up with a model regulatory framework to govern the use of the technology on public roads, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said last month.

subset: commoncrawl


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When you look at things from two different points of view, nearby objects appear to shift with respect to more distant ones. This is called parallax, and it's a basic tool for measuring astronomical distances. The same technique can be used to measure distances to objects on Earth.
Background Reading: Stars & Planets, p. 10 to 12 (Star distances).
Astronomers first used parallax to measure distances to other planets in 1672, but living organisms have been using parallax for several hundred million years - ever since the first animals having two eyes evolved. Two eyes are better than one because they give you two different views of the world; by combining these views, your brain can estimate distances to nearby objects. The parallax measurements we will make in this lab use a technique you have been practicing since infancy. In some sense, you are already an expert at using parallax to measure distances, but at the same time, you may not know how your brain accomplishes this very useful trick.
A simple experiment illustrates the role of binocular vision - that is, vision using two eyes - in judging distance. First, close both eyes and lift one hand over your head. Have your lab partner place a coin (or other small object) on the table within reach in front of you. Now open both eyes and quickly lower your hand so that the tip of your finger lands on the middle of the coin. You should have no trouble doing this; try it a few times - with the coin in a different place each time - to convince yourself that you can always place your finger more or less exactly on top of the coin. (If you consistently miss the coin, you may not be employing both eyes - get your vision checked!)
Now try the same thing again, but this time, open only one eye (no peeking - cover your other eye to make sure). You will probably have much more trouble putting your finger down on top of the coin. Again, try this a few times with the coin in a different place each time. About how often do you hit the coin? Do you tend to reach too far, or not far enough? Try using your other eye - is it any better?
Fig. 1 shows an overhead view of the geometry of a parallax measurement. Such a measurement requires observations from two different places separated by a known distance. This distance, the baseline, is represented by the symbol b. Pick a fairly nearby target which you can view in front of a background much further away (for example, you might use the pole of a streetlight as your target, with the side of the valley as a background). For the first observation, line the target up with some definite landmark in the background (for example, a rock on the side of the valley). Now move to your second observation point, and use a cross-staff to measure the angle between your target and the background landmark.
|Fig. 1. Overhead view of a parallax measurement. Observations of the target are made from the two positions on the left. From the first observation point, the target is aligned with a very distant landmark. From the second observation point, the angle between the target and the landmark is measured. Simple geometry then gives the distance D to the target in terms of the distance b between the two observation points.
Once the baseline b and parallax angle have been measured, the distance D to
your target is
The pictures below show how to make a parallax measurement. For simplicity, I chose a fairly unexciting target - the top of an electricity pole near my home, which I can view in front of the side of a hill somewhat further away. As the background landmark, I used a transformer on another electricity pole on the distant hillside. Fig. 2 shows the overall situation. One important fact, which may not be obvious from this picture, is that the background landmark was much further away than the target.
|Fig. 2. Target and background landmark for a parallax measurement. Arrows mark target (top of pole, on right) and landmark (transformer, on left).
To make the first observation, I moved around to line up the target and background landmark, as shown in Fig. 3b. I used a pebble to mark the location of my first observation. I then shifted to my left until the target and the background were no longer lined up, as shown in Fig. 3a. The distance to shift depends on the situation, but the key thing is to make sure that the target and background landmark appear comfortably separated from each other. I used another pebble to mark the location of my second observation. The baseline distance between the two pebbles was b = 45 inches.
|Fig. 3a. Second observation: target is visibly shifted with respect to background.
|Fig. 3b. First observation: target and background landmark are lined up with each other.
Now, from my second observation point, I used a cross-staff to measure the angle between the target and the background object. This was a little tricky, since it's hard to keep the background, target, and ruler all in focus at the same time; Fig. 4 shows that my camera also had some trouble focusing. Nonetheless, even this fuzzy image is clear enough to show that the background landmark fell at the 16.0 cm mark on the ruler, while the target fell at about 16.8 cm. Thus the apparent separation between the target and the background was 16.8 cm - 16.0 cm = 0.8 cm. Since 1 cm on the ruler represents an angular separation of 1°, the angle between the target and the background landmark was about = 0.8°.
|Fig. 4. Measurement of parallax angle. Dotted lines show where the background landmark (left) and target (right) appear on the cross-staff ruler.
Using b = 45 inches and = 0.8° in the formula above, I got D = 3200 inches = 270 feet. My results are given to slightly better than one significant figure; the measurement of could easily be off by ±0.1°, so there's no point in trying to claim any higher level of accuracy. The most serious source of error is probably my use of a background landmark which was only a few times further away than the target. For example, if the background was about five times further away than the target, the resulting value of D would be about 20% too large.
In addition to the simple experiment on distance judging described above, you will also make two measurements of distance using parallax. One measurement will be performed during the lab; we will set up a suitable target and coach everybody on the proper technique. The second measurement should be made later, using a target and background that you select. The key here is not just to make a measurement - you will also have to make some choices, and explain why you made those choices. At every step, your choices affect the accuracy of your result, so think carefully when choosing.
Do the experiments described in the sections on JUDGING DISTANCES and PARALLAX EXPERIMENTS, and write a report on your work. This report should include, in order,
In more detail, here are several things you should be sure to do in your lab report:
Last modified: January 26, 2004


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Ayler Chair, Weiman
A fresh interpretation of a classic club chair, the Ayler Chair surrounds with comfort and is available in a range of sumptuous neutral fabrics.
Please contact us for details.
Please contact us for details.
About Weiman
Weiman / Preview offers many fabrics and colors. Their leather collection, Colours, is a full grain protected aniline that is dyed for color and then receives a layer of pigment to ensure color consistency. Without pigment, protected leather is not color consistent. Since this is a full grain, that grain will vary from hide to hide, it is a more natural looking product that is instantly recognized as the High End beautiful natural product that it is. Expect natural characteristics such as healed scars, scratches, neck and belly wrinkles throughout the hides.


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Give an elegant twist to your classic mac and cheese with My Baked four-cheese pasta with creamy butternut squash.
Beyond Pumpkin Pie: A Cake For Hazelnuts Lovers
Since my first Thanksgiving in the USA I have been trying to bring a little bit of Italy to the holiday's table. After all, in Italy we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, pumpkin pie is not an Italian typical dessert, and turkey is definitely not one of my preferred meal. Two days until Thanksgiving; Are visions of …
Continue reading Beyond Pumpkin Pie: A Cake For Hazelnuts Lovers
Baroque & Chocolate . . . This is Modica, Sicily
It is no secret that I love architecture and chocolate. I knew that no trip to Sicily would have been complete without a trip to Modica.
Fall is for Chestnuts…Vellutata Di Castagne
This recipe was inspired by a trip to the market where on display they had a barrel full of Italian chestnuts, le castagne. Chestnuts and hazelnuts are two of the main species of trees that grows in the mountain surrounding my hometown in Italy. In the cold nights of fall and winter, il carretto delle caldarroste, …
Continue reading Fall is for Chestnuts…Vellutata Di Castagne
Gingerly Stepping Into Cold Waters.
Post inspired by Daily Prompt: Gingerly I will be honest and say that as I looked at the daily prompt, the first thing that came to mind reading the word "gingerly", was ginger, as in tuber. I love ginger with its pungent but refreshing taste and its sweet, exotic fragrance. Not to mention that its …


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Get Live Help
Welcome to the syslog-ng Premium Edition 7 Administration Guide.
This document describes how to configure and manage syslog-ng Premium Edition (syslog-ng PE). Background information for the technology and concepts used by the product is also discussed.
Introduction to syslog-ng describes the main functionality and purpose of syslog-ng PE.
The concepts of syslog-ng discusses the technical concepts and philosophies behind syslog-ng PE.
Installing syslog-ng PE describes how to install syslog-ng PE on various UNIX-based platforms using the precompiled binaries.
The syslog-ng PE quick-start guide provides a briefly explains how to perform the most common log collecting tasks with syslog-ng PE.
The syslog-ng PE configuration file discusses the configuration file format and syntax in detail, and explains how to manage large-scale configurations using included files and reusable configuration snippets.
Collecting log messages — sources and source drivers explains how to collect and receive log messages from various sources.
Sending and storing log messages — destinations and destination drivers describes the different methods to store and forward log messages.
Routing messages: log paths, flags, and filters explains how to route and sort log messages, and how to use filters to select specific messages.
Global options of syslog-ng PE lists the global options of syslog-ng PE and explains how to use them.
TLS-encrypted message transfer shows how to secure and authenticate log transport using TLS encryption.
Advanced Log Transfer Protocol shows how to log using the Advanced Log Transfer Protocol protocol.
Manipulating messages describes how to customize message format using templates and macros, how to rewrite and modify messages, and how to use regular expressions.
parser: Parse and segment structured messages describes how to segment and process structured messages like comma-separated values.
Processing message content with a pattern database explains how to identify and process log messages using a pattern database.
Correlating log messages details how to correlate log messages.
Enriching log messages with external data details how to import data from external sources to include in the log messages, thus extending, enriching, and complementing the data found in the log message.
Monitoring statistics and metrics of syslog-ng details the available statistics that syslog-ng PE collects about the processed log messages.
Multithreading and scaling in syslog-ng PE describes how to configure syslog-ng PE to use multiple processors, and how to optimize its performance.
Troubleshooting syslog-ng offers tips to solving problems.
Best practices and examples gives recommendations to configure special features of syslog-ng PE.
The syslog-ng manual pages contains the manual pages of the syslog-ng PE application.
This guide is intended for system administrators and consultants responsible for designing and maintaining logging solutions and log centers. It is also useful for IT decision makers looking for a tool to implement centralized logging in heterogeneous environments.
The following skills and knowledge are necessary for a successful syslog-ng administrator:
At least basic system administration knowledge.
An understanding of networks, TCP/IP protocols, and general network terminology.
Working knowledge of the UNIX or Linux operating system.
In-depth knowledge of the logging process of various platforms and applications.
An understanding of the legacy syslog (BSD-syslog) protocol and the new syslog (IETF-syslog) protocol standard.
One Identity would like to express its gratitude to the syslog-ng users and the syslog-ng community for their invaluable help and support.
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The itinerary and the instructions are below the map Click on the marker, select your address in the information bubble and validate.
The itinerary will appear below. This itinerary is offered as a guide and does not take normal traffic conditions into consideration. It is possible that road works, traffic conditions or other circumstances may alter the suggested results.


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If you have a garden or are inclined to drive to a pick-your-own-fruit field, you are in for a big reward right now: fresh ripe strawberries. It is high season for this luscious, unbelievably fragrant fruit, one that so many people—myself included—consider not only one of the edible joys of summer but also an essential ingredient in plein-air entertaining. A simple way to use a couple of perfumed pints is to make strawberry sundaes. But as this month's foolproof recipe reveals, with just a little extra effort, you can give this traditional crowd-pleaser a more sophisticated presence.
Part of the surprise is in the presentation—footed glass goblets put the dessert's delectably rosy blush on a pedestal. Carefully layering the ingredients is another adjustment. A foundation of homemade strawberry gelée receives a generous dollop of the ruby-red diced fruit, followed by a snowy scoop of vanilla ice cream. Then you top it off with a sweet whipped-cream cloud dappled with the soft green of chopped pistachios. With a sundae this pretty, it seems a shame to disturb it with a spoon. Correction—almost a shame.
What to Drink
The naturally sweet, deliciously fragrant aspects of a strawberry sundae—as well as the recipe's charm and simplicity—led Daniel Johnnes, the wine director of Daniel restaurants, to the Piedmont region of Italy to find a complementary quaff. His choice is a bubbly Brachetto made by wineries near the town of Acqui. "It is a lovely, slightly sweet sparkling red wine suffused with raspberry and strawberry flavors," he says. "Very festive and beautifully colored, it is a light, fruity wine to drink as an aperitif or serve with lunch or a dessert." Braida makes a terrific Brachetto d'Acqui (about $24). So does Castello Banfi; its Rosa Regale is about $21.
Click here to see the recipe for Strawberry Sundae.


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We already know Huawei is getting really serious about tablets. Their original MediaPad (which is offered by T-Mobile and AT&T in the U.S.) is a solid 7 incher and now they're out with a 10-inch model called MediaPad 10 FHD, where "FHD" means it has a 1920×1200 pixels screen. Moreover, the 8.8mm-thick (or that's thin) tablet rocks Huawei's K3V2 quad-core processor clocking at 1.5GHz, and most likely (we haven't got the full specs sheet) some 3G/4G and Wi-Fi connectivity support, decent amount of built-in storage (32GB?), Bluetooth, sensors and so on.
In terms of design, the new MediaPad looks like its predecessor, boasting an all-metal back with a plastic cutout on the top, presumingly for making wireless radio reception possible. In that sense, it does remind us on the HTC Flyer, though we can't tell they actually stole the design – one could see they invested significant effort to make MediaPad 10 FHD a real product.
On the other hand, we can't say it feels like a best Android tablet we ever touched, though I guess that's not the point at this moment. You see, the Huawei brand is still not as known as Samsung, Motorola or Toshiba, and it's my sense the MediaPad 10 will be a more affordable (rather than premium) option. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised that this quad-core device ends up selling for less than some dual-core tablets.
Yup, if priced correctly (i.e. not too expensive), they may have a winner here. We'll see how that goes and in the meantime, check out our (almost) hands-on gallery below. That's "almost" because we actually weren't allowed to play with the MediaPad 10 FHD — rather we could only touch the device from Huawei-employed models' hands, making our photos that much better. 😉


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A legendary maker of sports cars. A legendary maker of technology. Put them together and what do you get? Well, nothing really—yet! Elsewhere, John Browett is on the clock and Sprint is all about breaking limits. Not unlike Bradley Cooper, the remainders for Wednesday, April 25, 2012 are truly limitless.
Ferrari excites Silicon Valley. Montezemolo talks at Stanford and meets heads of Apple and Google (Ferrari)
Look, I'm not one to monger rumors but the chairman of Ferrari met with Tim Cook. I know Tim said you can't merge a refrigerator with a toaster, but if he can merge an iPad with a Ferrari, I'm interested.
John Browett Officially Joins Apple as Retail Chief, Receives Stock Rights Worth $60 Million (MacRumors)
Apple's new retail chief, John Browett, has begun work with the company for reals. According to an SEC filing, his start date is listed as April 20, at which point he also received 100,000 restricted stock units that vest periodically. I'm sure Browett is ready to make his mark on things—how do you feel about shag carpeting in every Apple Store?
Sprint confirms unlimited data plan for next iPhone (CNet)
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told CNet that the carrier will likely stick with unlimited data for the next generation of iPhone. No surprise there, since it's a key differentiator from the company's rivals, none of which currently offer unlimited data. Except, of course, for the Justice League. (They have a great roaming plan.)
Cheap data just got cheaper at AT&T (TUAW)
Speaking of carrier data, AT&T has apparently improved its Pay as You Go offerings. Now $5 will get you 50MB, instead of 10MB; $15 will get you 200MB instead of 100MB; and $25 will get you 1GB instead of 500MB. But your firstborn will only still get you 2GB.
Product News:
PDFpen and PDFpenPro 5.8 – Smile's PDF creation and editing software has been updated to version 5.8, bringing support for iCloud folders and documents on OS X Lion, fixing issues with optical character recognition (OCR), and dropping support for 32-bit processors in favor of ARC memory management. Free updates; for new users, $50 for PDFpen, $100 for PDFpenPro.
Skitch 1.0.9 – Skitch reaches version 1.0.9, adding a Save To Evernote button within the toolbar, an ability to choose a destination notebook, and a fix for an image-uploading crash. Free.


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Birds as Pets
Birds can be great pets for older adults
En español | Birds have been cultural touchstones for Latinos for centuries — from the mythical chonchón that brings bad luck in Chilean and Argentinian folktales, to the resplendent quetzal celebrated on Guatemala's flag and coins. Birds also are Americans' third most popular pet (after dogs and cats), offering affectionate, loyal companionship and an ability to do tricks and sometimes talk.
Jesse Avila, 70, is among those won over by these two-legged friends. He wasn't impressed when his wife and daughter first brought home a pair of cockatiels in 1995. "I said, 'What are we going to do with these?'" he says, chuckling because he now helps run Avila Aviary outside Denver. "Once they become pets, they become part of the family."
Birds can be great pets for older adults, says exotic and domestic animal behaviorist and trainer Diana L. Guerrero. One plus: You're not likely to trip over a feathered friend, which should be caged. And the maintenance can be far more manageable: no twice-daily long walks, for example. But that doesn't mean all birds are laid-back, easy-to-care-for companions. Parrots, for example, can have the smarts of a chimp and, according to Guerrero, myriad emotional and physical needs.
Avian experts advise starting out with smaller "fids" (feathered kids), and possibly hand-raised ones. Hand-fed and hand-raised birds receive formula daily from humans until they're weaned and ready to join your family. "Hand-reared birds are habituated to human contact and make better pets," says Dr. Sam Rivera, an avian-certified veterinarian from Puerto Rico who works at Zoo Atlanta.
So what's a good option for first-time bird owners who live alone or have limited space or time? Parakeets "are exceptional little birds," says Jerry Nolan, who operates J & M Aviaries and Austin Avian Rescue & Rehabilitation in Texas. Both sexes can become talkers and easily entertain themselves with appropriate toys.
Cockatiels produce little mess and have just small beaks to "discipline" you while you're learning to read their needs. They can whistle, mimic sounds and are intelligent. Solitary male cockatiels sometimes mimic speech to attract mates, Guerrero says: "The males tend to be more vocal and so pick up speech more than females. In general, color, displays and vocalizations attract mates."
Have a large family? Laid-back birds such as conures also make good pets, says Guerrero, who recommends that beginners try species such as green-cheeked and maroon-bellied conures, a medium-sized parrot from Central and South America; Senegal and other African parrots in the genus poicephalus; and pionus parrots from Mexico, Central and South America.
All birds need toys and a cage placed in a stimulating environment, downtime for naps and nighttime sleep, and at least two hours of people time daily if they're alone most of the day. Unstructured time offers good bonding time. Avila relaxes with 18-year-old Barney each evening. "We watch television, and he'll just sit there on your shoulder and grind his beak, which means he's pretty happy," says Avila.
Birds also need to be taught commands and their human family's pecking order. "We're the boss," says Nolan, comparing birds to little children. "There have to be rules and limitations."
This is harder because parrots haven't been bred as companion animals. "Exotic animals are wired for survival of the fittest in the wild," Guerrero says, "so they're more likely to challenge you."
Parrots' strong social bonds make them good companions, but proper care is a must. Guerrero's triumphs include teaching a challenging conure named Leon not to dive bomb from his cage and other good manners.
As a bird owner, I've faced my own challenges with Charlie, my Quaker parrot. It wasn't easy teaching him to let me pick him up
from his cage door, a spot he considered off limits. But now, I'm regularly rewarded for disciplining and caring for him. Arriving home after dusk, I often hear an upbeat chirp, what I consider a sign he's glad his human buddy has come home to roost.


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South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences
On-line version ISSN 2222-3436
Print version ISSN 1015-8812
S. Afr. j. econ. manag. sci. vol.17 n.1 Pretoria Jan. 2014
Multiple project team membership and performance: empirical evidence from engineering project teams
Kai-Ying Chan
Graduate School of Technology Management, University of Pretoria
Individuals are increasingly involved in more than one project team. This implies that an employee simultaneously has multiple memberships in these project teams, a phenomenon known as multiple team membership (MTM). Previous, predominantly theoretical studies have acknowledged the impacts that MTM has on performance but very scarce empirical evidence exists. The aim of this study is to provide empirical support for some of these theoretical claims using data collected from 435 team members in 85 engineering project teams in South Africa. Results show that MTM has an inverted-U shaped relationship with individual performance and a positive linear relationship with team performance. When a person is working in multiple project teams simultaneously, he/she may encounter more diverse sources of ideas across all teams and thus enhances his/her innovative performance. However, as the number of MTM increases, the negative effect of task switching and fragmented attention will negatively impact on individual performance. At the project team level, a large number of MTM in a focal team allows the team members to integrate diverse sources of knowledge and resources into the focal team. This study also found that individuals' emotional skills and cognitive skills impact on individual performance. It is recommended to programme and project portfolio managers, who often are involved in scheduling human resources to multiple projects, to acknowledge both the positive and negative impacts of MTM on performance. Moreover, in high MTM situations, project team members with high emotional and cognitive skills should be selected.
Key words: multiple team membership, individual performance, team performance, project teams.
1 Introduction
Since the 1990s modern organisations have relied more and more on project-based structures (Whittington, Pettigrew, Peck, Fenton & Conyon, 1999). Projects can be defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems that are constituted of teams (governed by mechanisms of trust and control) to accomplish particular tasks (in order to meet project goals) under time constraints" (Manning, 2008:31). Moreover, empirical evidence shows that up to 90 per cent of all projects are carried out concurrently in a multi-project context (Payne, 1995). In order to utilize resources more efficiently, the same resource or individual may be allocated across multiple projects. Studies have shown that individuals who work in teams are often involved in more than one (project) team at the same time (Chudoba, Wynn, Lu & Watson-Manheim, 2005; O'Leary, Wooley & Mortensen, 2011) and this simultaneous involvement in multiple project teams by an individual is known as "multiple team membership" (MTM) (O'Leary et al, 2011). As the number of project teams that an individual is simultaneously involved in (MTM) increases, there are various benefits and challenges. For example, Edmondson and Nembhard (2009) mention that team members need time to get acquainted with each other before they can work together effectively as a team. This implies that by being involved in multiple teams, an individual has the repeated opportunities to learn "to team-up" and to build swift trust with new members. However, too many team memberships can increase a person's stress level (such as burn-out) due to working excessive hours in meeting the demands of various leaders or clients across projects. As a result, a decrease of his/her performance may occur (Wageman, Gardner & Mortensen, 2012).
O'Leary et al. (2011) propose several hypotheses on the impact that multiple team memberships (MTM) has on productivity. (O'Leary, Mortensen & Wooley, 2011). To find out whether there already is empirical support for the hypotheses proposed by O'Leary et al. (2011), a literature search was conducted using Google Scholar, Web of Science and Proquest and papers that have cited O'Leary et al. were identified and reviewed. There were 44 forward citations found in Google Scholar, 15 in Web of Science and 20 in Proquest. However, no empirical evidence using quantitative research methods was found in empirically proving O'Leary et al. (2011) models. Maynard, Gilson and Mathieu (2012) also performed a literature review and found that there is a lack of empirical studies examining the impact of multiple team member- ship (MTM) on performance. In sum, on the one hand, we observe a growing prevalence of the involvement of individuals simultaneously in multiple teams, whereas on the other hand there is limited empirical evidence of the performance effects of MTM. This article contributes to closing this gap in the literature on MTM.
This leads to the main research question: To what extent does MTM impact on individual and team performance? The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence for a number of untested hypotheses proposed by O'Leary et al. (2011) regarding the impact of MTM on performance at the individual and team level.
2 Theoretical framework and hypotheses
The first proposition developed by O'Leary et al. (2011:468) reads:
"Proposition 1: The relationship between the number of teams individuals are members of and productivity at the individual and team levels is curvilinear; the positive relationship increases at a decreasing rate and eventually turns negative".
O'Leary et al. (2011) theorised that up to a certain point the higher the number of teams an individual is concurrently a member of, the more he/she is able to focus on the main tasks that are key priorities to him/her and due to- this focus, work can be done more efficiently. However, when above a moderate level, the individual may experience temporal misalignment which causes the work in the different project teams to be done asynchronously and the increase of queue time can offset the individual's work efficiency. The authors defined productivity at the individual and team level as "the ability to create products or services that meet the expectations of key stakeholders in a given time period with a given set of human and other resources" (O'Leary et al., 2011:466; cited from Adler et al., 2009). In this paper, individual productivity is seen as one of the many dimensions of individual job performance. The project teams in this study are engineering-related and technology driven, thus team members often encounter complex problems that need to be solved innovatively. Individuals with high innovative performance can be seen as an indication of how well they are able "to exceed their standard work behaviours by generating, promoting and realizing new ideas" (Janssen, 2001:1042). By engaging in multiple teams concurrently, the individual may encounter more diverse sources of ideas across all teams and thus he/she is inspired to solve problems in more innovative ways. As the number of multiple team memberships increases however, an individual is overloaded with work. This may result in the individual being more focused on getting the job done (i.e. standard work behaviours) and less time is available to share ideas with other team members in order to find a creative way to 'exceed their standard work'. Consequently, our first hypothesis reads:
Hypothesis 1: The relationship between the number of multiple team memberships that an individual has and the individual innovative performance is curvilinear; the positive relationship increases at a decreasing rate and eventually turns negative.
Project team performance is commonly seen as the adherence to quality, time and budget, and the (business) objective (de Wet, 1988). When members in a specific focal team concurrently have multiple memberships with other teams, this may allow the team members to integrate the diverse sources of knowledge and resources into the focal team so that the focal team's performance can be improved.
Beyond the moderate level, the more multiple team memberships a team's members have, the less time they have to discuss new ideas and/or integrate the resources they have obtained in other teams. Moreover, they may experience temporal misalignment individually and thus the focal team's performance is affected by the accumulation of these misalignments as they create coordination problems. This leads to hypothesis 2:
Hypothesis 2: The relationship between the number of multiple team memberships that a focal team's members have concurrently with other teams and team performance is curvilinear; the positive relationship increases at a decreasing rate and eventually turns negative.
In the human resource (HR) literature, personnel selection for teams is frequently based upon competencies of the workers such as their education and experience because they are believed to have an impact on job performance (Medoff & Abraham, 1980; McDaniel, Schmidt & Hunter, 1988). Empirical evidence shows that competencies of workers yield superior work performance (Spencer & Spencer, 1993). McDaniel et al. (1988:329) found, for example, that "for all levels of job experience and for both low- and high-complexity jobs, the correlation between job experience and job performance is positive". When facing new challenges, an experienced person is able to relate the new experience to his/her past experience in order to identify potential risks and work through these challenges more effectively (Jansen et al., 2013). In the project management literature, lessons learnt through previous experience in projects are important so that similar mistakes can be avoided and the best practices can be implemented (Camilleri, 2011). A higher level of education is an indication that a person not only has more general knowledge but also possesses specialised knowledge if he/she pursues further into his/her professional field (Piazza-Georgi, 2002). Singer and Bruhns' study (1991) found that educational qualifications significantly predict performance in certain skilled occupations. From the above arguments, Hypotheses 3 and 4 are proposed as follows:
Hypothesis 3: Project experience positively impacts individual innovative performance.
Hypothesis 4: Level of education positively impacts individual innovative performance.
Besides experience and education level, individual skills have been positively associated with performance (Spencer & Spencer, 1993; Hartle, 1995; Sandberg, 2000). In this study, three skills are considered to be important for innovative performance, namely: emotional skills, cognitive skills and social skills.
Emotional skills
Côté and Miners (2006:4) conceptualised emotional intelligence (EI) as "the ability to grasp and reason correctly with emotional abstractions (emotional concepts) and solve emotional problems". Emotional skills allow an individual to regulate their emotions, especially under stressful situations, so that they can perform effectively in teams (Lopes et al., 2006). While working with others in a team, individual team members engage in interpersonal conflict, an important work related stressor and research to date shows that effective emotional regulation, buffers against the negative effects of intra-team conflict (Curseu, Boros & Oerlemans, 2012). Moreover, emotional intelligence allows individuals to foster a heuristic way of processing information by using the automatic process of cognition. Thus information is processed quickly due to the heuristic type of reasoning (Curseu, Vermeulen & Bakker, 2008). Positive emotions are useful for creative tasks (Isen, Daubman & Nowicki, 1987). Day and Carroll (2004) argue that although there are many (unpublished) studies that claim that there is a strong correlation between EI and job performance, there is unfortunately little empirical support for the claim. To test this claim, Hypothesis 5 reads:
Hypothesis 5: Emotional skills positively impact on individual innovative performance.
Cognitive skills
Individuals working in engineering-related project teams deal with tasks that are technological complex. Cognitive skills are thus necessary as they allow individuals to gain knowledge of facts, procedures and rules that are necessary to perform the technical core of their job (Cöté & Miners, 2006). Moreover, studies have shown that people with cognitive skills are able to develop techniques and strategies to obtain the required information from the external environment (Verplanken, Hazenberg & Palenewen, 1992; Xie, 2000). Curseu (2011:415) cites from other studies and mentiones that individuals with need of cognition are "better in solving complex problems" (Bertrams & Dickhäuser, 2009); "invest more cognitive resources in information processing" (Fleischhauer et al., 2010); "are rational in their decision making style" (Curseu, 2006) and "tend to seek, acquire, think about and reflect on relevant information when solving cognitive tasks" (Coutinho, Wiemer-Hastings, Skowronski & Britt, 2005). Based on the above theoretical arguments Hypothesis 6 is proposed:
Hypothesis 6: Cognitive skills positively impact on individual innovative performance.
Social skills
Interdependence amongst members in a team may result in conflicts and thus social skills are important for individuals to coordinate and- integrate their work (Morgeson, Reider & Campion, 2005). Individuals with social skills are able to accumulate more social capital (Glaeser, Laibson & Sacerdote, 2002) which is beneficial for work performance (Thompson, 2005; Ellinger et al., 2011). When an individual is well-connected to other actors, he/she is able to gain social capital which exists in these relationships. From these ties, one is able to obtain diverse knowledge and/or information, share understanding and build trust with the others (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Daniel, Schwier & McCalla, 2003). Hence, Hypothesis 7 reads:
Hypothesis 7: Social skills positively impact on individual innovative performance.
The above seven hypotheses form the research model that this study is exploring empirically. This research model is shown in Figure 1.
3 Research methodology
3.1 Sample and data collection process
In this study, data were collected from temporary project teams that conducted engineering- related tasks and in which engineers formed a substantial part of the team. A total of 88 individuals (who are part of a post graduate course in project management at a South African university) involved in projects in their own work environment were identified as field operators to help with data collection for this research. Among them 50 were project leaders of their own project teams. These field operators were subsequently requested to identify project teams with the following criteria and collect data from the team:
• A project team that the field operator is mostly involved in.
• The field operator is preferably (but not necessarily) the team leader.
• The size of the project team is less than 30 people.
• The project team has already completed 50 per cent or more of its activities; and
• The field operator may choose a project team that consists of team members from his/her own organisation or a mixture of team members from other organisations.
After the field operator has decided which project team he/she would like to collect data from, he/she needs to identify at least 5 core team members as respondents for questionnaires. Core team members are defined as those who are responsible for most of the activities which are important for the team task. Initial recruitment consists of 88 project teams from 88 different companies, comprising 455 team members.
The field operator sent out emails assuring anonymity and inviting the targeted respondents to fill in an online questionnaire. After the data collection period (one month) had ended, a total of 437 team members from 86 project teams returned completed questionnaires. Teams with less than three team members were dropped (based on a response criterion as suggested by Zhang, Hempel Han & Tjosvold, 2007). This results in a sample consisting of 85 project teams corresponding to a 98.8 per cent team-level response rate, with 435 team members (95.6 per cent individual-level response rate).
3.2 Measures and construct validation
Constructs for performance at individual- and team-level were measured with existing scales. Details of the items used and the scale reliability are summarised in Appendix 1. In this section, when constructing our measurements we used only variables with multiple items as discussed in terms of literature sourced, as well as the reliability statistics (Cronbach's alphas) of the scales used.
3.2.1 Dependent variables
Individual innovative performance
In this study, individual innovative performance was measured using the nine items proposed by Janssen ((2001); Cronbach's alpha is 0.85 in his study). These items were based on Scott and Bruce's (1994) scale for individual innovative behaviour in the workplace, which draws on Kanter's (1998) work on the stages of innovation, namely, idea generation, idea promotion and idea realization. The Cronbach's alpha in this study was 0.94 for members' self-rated individual innovative performance. Cronbach's alpha of 0.6 was used as a threshold value which suggests that this variable can be measured with a single, uni-dimensional latent construct.
Team performance
Team performance in project environments is commonly measured with three criteria: (technical) quality, schedule performance and cost performance (Keller, 2006; Chiocchio, 2007; Rousseau & Aubé, 2010). McComb et al. (1999) used 12 items (originally developed by Green, Welsh & Dehler, (1992)) which included these three commonly used criteria in measuring project team performance. These data were collected from the team members. In this study, the reliability of this scale was (Cronbach's alpha of) 0.867, indicating a reliable scale.
3.2.2 Independent variables
Three independent variables have constructs with multiple items: emotional, cognitive and social skills. Emotional skills are measured by seven items, which were used by Barchard and Hakstian (2004) to measure "ability emotional intelligence" (emotional skill). The Cronbach's alpha found in this study is 0.670. Cognitive skills are conceptualized as "need for cognition" and based on the literature by Cacioppo, Petty and Kao (1984). Five items were used and this measure is reliable (Cronbach's alpha is 0.614). The concept of "social sensitivity" is used to measure social skills. It is defined as "verbal listening skill, but also ability to read social situations, and general knowledge of social rules and norms" (Riggio & Reichard, 2008). The five items were highly reliable (Cronbach's alpha of 0.851) to measure this theoretical construct.
3.3 Level of analysis and measurement equivalence
The data features in this study are multi-level in which the individuals (first level) were nested in the team (second level) they belonged to. It is important to statistically verify the reliability of aggregating the individual scores as team-level performance and learning (Bliese, 2000). Both Interrater Agreement Index, rwg(j) and Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICCs) are examined. Rwg(j) is an indication whether there is within-team agreement (James, Demaree & Wolf, 1984). Median rwg(j) was 0.95 for team performance. The median rwg(j) were all greater than 0.70 which indicates a strong within-team agreement (LeBreton & Senter, 2008). Hence the individual responses could be aggregated to the team level analysis (Janz, Colquitt & Noe, 1997). In addition to the agreement measure using rwg(j), the two multilevel reliability measures ICC(1) and ICC(2) were examined, using oneway analysis of variance on the individual-level data. ICC is defined as "the measure of the relative homogeneity of the scores within the classes in relation to the total variation" (Haggard 1958: 6). These two measures show- the extent to which group membership accounted for members rating (Bliese, 2000). ICC(1) provides an estimate of the group-level properties of the data unbiased by either group size or number of groups in the sample (James, 1982; Bliese & Halverson, 1998). The team sizes were different, thus k was calculated with a formula recommended by Bliese and Halverson (1998). ICC(1) was 0.43 for team performance. According to Bliese (2000), ICC(1) of greater than 0.1 shows reliability, thus the ICC(1) scores in this study supported the aggregation. ICC(2) provides an estimation of the reliability of mean differences across teams (Bliese & Halverson, 1998). The value is 0.79 for team performance. This score indicates that the teams can be reliably differentiated in terms of team performance.
4 Results
4.1 Descriptive statistics
Means, standard deviation as well as the correlation matrix associated with the variables in this study are presented in Table 1.
4.1.2 Individual level
At the individual level, in the past six months respondents were on average involved simultaneously in 3.54 project teams (with a standard deviation of 3.12). The respondents are mainly male (76.7 per cent) and most of them are educated at a post-graduate level (average education level is close to 3). The average project experience that the respondents have is 8.71 years, but a large range exists (standard deviation of 8.55 years). Of the three skills measured, the respondents on average possess high cognitive skills (mean value of 4.12), followed by social skills (mean value of 3.96) and emotional skills (mean value of 3.70). When respondents self-rated their innovative performance, the average score is 5.28 (on a 7 points Likert scale).
Correlation statistics indicate that the emotional, cognitive and social skills have positive and statistically significant linear relationships with individual innovative performance (r of 0.291, 0.285 and 0.174 respectively). Correlations were found amongst the skills: emotional skill correlates with cognitive skill with correlation coefficient (r) of 0.396; and social skills correlate with emotional skill (r=0.391) as well as cognitive skill (r=0.268). The variable of interest in this study, i.e. number of MTM, correlates positively with age (r=0.216) and project experience (r=0.168). It is not surprising that age and project experience have a strong and positive relationship (r=0.752). The size of the correlation coefficient reported above allows for the conclusion that no multi-collinearity problems exist in our data.
4.1.3 Project team level
At the project team level, the average of team tenure is 18.27 months with a standard deviation of 11.67 months. On average, there are 9 core team members per project team. The diversity of teams is viewed in terms of separation in team tenure (standard deviation of team tenure of the team members in a team) and separation in education level (i.e. standard deviation of education level of the team members in a team). Looking at the separation of team tenure, the average is 10.59 months; whereas the education separation has a mean value of 1.29. This means that teams consist of team members who are diverse in term of their- team tenures and education levels. The number of MTM per team is 14.24 projects on average (standard deviation of 8.90). The members in each team assessed their team's performance and the mean value is 3.72 indicating a quite high team performance (on a 5 point Likert scale).
From the correlation matrix, three control variables have negative linear relationships with team performance, namely: team tenure (r=-0.376), team tenure separation (r=-0.323) and education (r=-0.195). Number of MTM per team on the other hand has a positive and significant correlation with team performance (r=0.210).
4.2 Multivariate regression analysis
The models in this study are estimated by conducting Ordinary Least Square-based hierarchical regression analyses. All variables mentioned in the previous section are entered in the following steps:
4.2.1 Individual level analysis
Model 1 contains the control variables, including age and gender of the respondents. Next, in Model 2, emotional skills, cognitive skills, social skills, education level and project experience are added to test hypotheses 3 to 7. In Model 3, the number of MTM (mean centered) is entered to test linear relationship. To investigate Hypothesis 1, the curvilinear relationship between MTM and innovative performance at individual level, a squared term of number of MTM (mean centered) is entered in Model 4. Table 2 shows the results of the regression analyses.
In Table 2, with the exception of Model 1 (control variables only), all models have statistically significant F-values (p < 0.01) allowing for the conclusion that the proposed regression models fit the data. As a point of interest, in all models the control variables, age and gender do not impact significantly on individual innovative performance. The results presented in Model 2 show that emotional and cognitive skills explain for 12 per cent variance of individual innovative performance and indicated positive and statistically significant impacts implying that hypotheses 5 and 6are supported. In Model 4, the number of MTM that the respondent has showed a significant curvilinear relationship (beta coefficient= -0.206; p<0.01). Thus, hypothesis 1 is supported. The Variable Inflation Factor (VIF) values associated with variables in the regression models were less than 10, indicating that no serious multicollinearity problems exist in these models.
4.2.2 Team level analysis
Once again Model 1 contains the control variables, including team tenure, team tenure separation, team size, education and education separation. Next, the total number of MTM of all the members in the team (mean centered) is entered to test the linear relationship. To- investigate hypothesis 2, the curvilinear relationship between MTM and innovative performance at group level the squared term of number of MTM (mean centered) of the team is entered in Model 3. Table 3 shows the results of our empirical analyses.
All the models have significant F-values (p<0.01) indicating that the data fit the proposed regression models. The variables that account for the highest percentage of variance in team performance are the control variables team tenure and education in Model 1, with a R2 change equal to 23.2 per cent. Both control variables indicate a negative linear relationship with team performance. In model 2, the number of MTM is entered and it explains an additional 7.3 per cent of the variance in the dependent variable with a statistically significant beta coefficient of 0.275. The squared form of number of MTM is entered in Model 3 and it does not show a statistically significant beta coefficient value. As a consequence, hypothesis 2 (curvilinear relationship) is rejected in this study. The results in Table 3 indicate that there is no curvilinear relationship between number of MTM and team performance, but a positive linear relationship between the two variables.
5 Conclusion and recommendations
Working in teams is regarded to be more effective than working individually especially when individuals are working on complex tasks (Hinsz, Tindale & Vollrath, 1997).
Within a multi-project-environment, scheduling human resources in simultaneous projects is inevitable. This implies that an individual may simultaneously work in multiple project teams. Having multiple team memberships concurrently (MTM) will impact on both the individual and the team's performance as suggested by O'Leary et al. (2011). This study was guided by the following research question: To what extent does MTM impact on performance at individual and team level? The aim of the research was to provide the empirical evidence to the first proposition developed by O'Leary et al. (2011): The relationship between the number of teams individuals are members of and performance at the individual and team levels is curvilinear; the positive relationship increases at a decreasing rate and eventually turns negative. In this section, the most important findings of this study are provided and some managerial recommendations as well as recommendations for future research are provided.
At the individual project team member level, this study provided the empirical evidence for an inverted-U shaped relationship between concurrent MTM and individual innovative performance. In other words, when an individual is simultaneously involved in multiple project teams, at first he/she will have higher individual innovative performance; however, there exists an optimal number of MTM and beyond this number, the individual innovative performance will start to decrease. O'Leary et al. (2011) stated that focused "attention on efficiency-oriented practices" explains the positive slope of the relationship, while fragmented attention" explains the negative slope of this curvilinear relationship. Other theoretical arguments for the negative relationship may be stress due to multiple demands from different project leaders (Wageman et al., 2012) and the decrease of high quality leader-member exchange (LMX) due to a stressful, dissatisfactory, and anxiety-provoking situation related to multiple LMX relationships in MTM (Alfaro, 2009).
Besides MTM, this study also proposed several other factors that may impact on an individual's innovative performance, namely: project experience, education, emotional skills, cognitive skills and social skills. It was found that only emotional and cognitive skills of project team members had a positive impact on individual innovative performance. These two skills also correlate with one another (r=0.396). Curseu and others (2008) stated that "emotion and cognition are linked into a single interdependent representational system" (cited from Forgas, 1995) where "positive emotional states strengthen judgements based on intuition, while negative emotions strengthen rational and analytical processes" (Curseu et al., 2008:66). These two skills accounted for 12.1 per cent of the variance in the individual performance whereas MTM only accounts for 1.6 per cent. Effective coping strategies with task and teamwork related demands are plausible explanations for the positive effect of cognitive and emotional skills on individual work performance in project teams. Individuals scoring high on cognitive skills have a stronger task engagement, are more rational in their choices (Curseu, 2006) and make better use of different others in the team as information sources, essential in the learning on the job process (Curseu, 2011).
Moreover, as working with others in a team often poses emotional challenges associated with conflict (Curseu, Boros & Oerlemans, 2012), emotional skills are essential for coping with these challenges and as such are beneficial for individual performance. To conclude, group members scoring high on cognitive and emotional skills are likely to develop more effective strategies for coping with task and teamwork related demands and ultimately perform better than individual scoring low on cognitive and emotional skills.
At the project team level, the proposition formulated by O'Leary et al. (2011) did not find empirical support. Hypothesis 2 was rejected as the results showed a positive relationship rather than an inverted-U shape. This study supported the O'Leary et al. (2011) argument that when individuals gather lessons learnt from other teams, the focal team will be able to improve upon their work practices (e.g. more efficient routines, knowing more alternatives sources of resources needed) and thus improve team performance. However, this study did not find empirical evidence of the negative impact of too many MTM on team performance as O'Leary et al. (2011) argued that poor team performance is due to the introduction of lags/delays where one task of a member may be dependent on the task completion of another who is busy with tasks in another team. One of the explanations for this absence of negative slop can be that in multiple-project environment, a programme or portfolio manager is appointed to manage these simultaneous multiple projects. These managers need to have important competencies namely scheduling and staffing human resources, especially when facing the problem of resource constraints. To solve this problem, many advanced scheduling techniques are developed and applied; for example, a simulated annealing algorithm for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem was developed by Bouleimen and Lecocq (2003). Thus, the problem of lags/delays can be eliminated for possible negative impact on team performance. In this study, the control variable education separation indicates how diverse teams are in terms of education level. This variable impacts positively on team performance. This result supports the compositional effect of teams on team performance.
From cognitive resource diversity theory, it can be derived that teams that consist of heterogeneous members reach higher performance levels because these members bring unique cognitive resources to the team (Horwitz, 2005). The other two control variables, team tenure and education, have significant and negative relationships with team performance. The team performance in this study is assessed by the team members. Those teams with a lower education level may not be able to critically assess the team or their perception of the team's performance is higher than their expectations; as a result they could over rate team performance. An explanation for the negative tenure effects is that newcomers in a group are more likely to possess proactive behaviours, such as changing work procedures, feedback seeking and networking (Cooper-Thomas & Burke, 2012). They may stimulate other members to revise their shared cognition about how to perform the tasks and thus improve group function and performance (Levine & Choi, 2004).
The findings of this research have important implications for managerial practices, especially for programme or portfolio managers who manage multiple projects. In multi-project environment, scheduling human resources across simultaneous projects implies that an individual may be involved in more than one project teams at the same time. Managers should be aware of the possible positive and negative impacts of scheduling a person to involve simultaneously in too many or few project teams on his/her individual performance. If a large number of MTM is inevitable due to resource constraints, then the managers need to select members who have high emotional and cognitive skills as these two personal attributes have positive impacts on individual performance. If the managers apply good scheduling techniques, the problems of lags or delays do not occur amongst the projects; then the large number of MTM of a project team will result in high team performance. Lastly, managers could select team members with diverse job-related attributes, such as education level as was shown in this study, when composing project teams. Studies (e.g. Naranjo-Gil, Hartmann & Maas, 2008; Van Dijk, Van Engen & Van Knippenberg, 2012) have shown a positive association between educational diversity and team performance.
Some limitations in this study exist and these also shed some light on future research avenues. First, this study only tests one of the propositions proposed by O'Leary et al. (2011). Other propositions can be empirically tested so that the impact of MTM can be fully examined. For example, O'Leary et al. (2011) identified the other dimension of MTM, as "variety" (i.e. the diversity in tasks, technologies, locations, etc) of the teams that individuals are members of and that a focal team overlaps with. Second, individual performance is self-assessed; thus there might be a common method bias problem. In order to mitigate this problem, multisource measurement procedures can be used "where performance dimensions were treated as traits and raters or rater sources- as methods" (Lance, Dawson, Birkelbach & Hoffman, 2010). Third, this study focuses on engineering-related project teams. These project teams often face challenges such as technology complexity and the team's performance may be related to technology-related problems. Other type of projects with different tasks can be investigated so that the impact of MTM on performance can be examined without these technology-related factors. Finally, the impact of MTM on performance is examined at two levels, namely individual and team levels. For organisations that are project-based (so-called project-based organisations), the impact of MTM on performance at organisational level can be explored as well because pressures on teams, team members and their leaders might be more severe.
I wish to express my gratitude towards dr. Petre Curseu of the Department of Organization Studies at Tilburg University for his valuable suggestions for improving the paper. I also would like to thank Mr. Corro van Waveren of the Graduate School of Technology Management at University of Pretoria who has helped me throughout the data gathering process in South Africa.
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Accepted: December 2013
Appendix 1


text:
#16 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2012.
If you give a poet a cookie, she will eat it, learn to make more, and then grow up to write a poem about it that millions of people will hear on the radio.
I'm talking about Sondra Gash's, "Rugelah, 5 a.m.," of course, which Garrison Keillor read on The Writer's Almanac back in August 2010. Sondra's poem made me hungry to learn more about this popular Jewish confection, which is enjoyed year round and often called "cream cheese cookies" here in the U.S.
Depending upon whom you talk to, the Yiddish term"rugelach," can be translated as "royal," "little twists," or "horns." The practice of combining cream cheese or sour cream with fruit, nuts, jams, and spices to make cookies, cakes and other pastries is a central European tradition with ancient Middle Eastern roots.
We have to thank Eastern European immigrants for bringing the first rugelach recipes to this country. According to Joan Nathan (Jewish Cooking in America), "There is no other Jewish sweet that has gone more mainstream than rugelach." Though I have yet to bake any myself, thus far I've been unable to resist these rich, flaky little crescents whenever they appear on a holiday cookie tray or in a bakery window: raspberry jam and dark chocolate! marzipan and walnuts! cinnamon, poppy seeds, apricot preserves, raisins! A bite of history that stays with you forever.
Though Sondra's poem stands beautifully on its own, it's actually one of 80 sequential poems from Silk Elegy (CavenKerry Press, 2002), a poignant narrative about the Bronsky family, early 20th century Jewish immigrants who fled Poland and settled in Paterson, NJ, the silk capital of the country and a center of radical unionism.
Sondra calls Silk Elegy "a blending of poetry and novella"; the poems are told in three alternating voices, mainly that of teenage daughter Faye, whose life is disrupted by her mother's mental illness (the characters are based on Sondra's mother and grandparents). I love the quiet ritual described in "Rugelah, 5 a.m.," the intimate, dreamlike atmosphere, just these two in a world of their own baking before dawn, greeting a new day.
Sondra: This poem was inspired by my grandmother. On Friday afternoons, when I was a girl, I would stop by my Grandmother's house on the way home from school to help her with her chores and as a reward she would send me home with a little carton of her rugelah. My mother also made it and when I grew older I too, baked it.
RUGELAH, 5 a.m.
by Sondra Gash
The house is dark
and breathing deep
under the covers
when she comes to the sofa.
In our nightgowns
we tiptoe into the kitchen.
I'm barefoot,
she's wearing slippers.
We lift bowls from the shelf,
soften cream cheese and butter,
roll dough into a circle,
spread blackberry jam
with the back of a spoon.
Flour dusts our fingers.
We work quickly, lightly —
it's a dance — she leads,
I follow, together we lean
over the table,
our hands shaping ovals —
folding, pressing the edges.
As light sifts through the window
we slide the trays into the oven
and glide through the quiet
to wait for the rising.
Copyright © 2002 Sondra Gash (Silk Elegy, CavanKerry Press). All rights reserved.
¼ lb butter
¼ lb cream cheese
1 cup flour
Mix and soften
Create two balls
Refrigerate for at least two hours.
Take out and allow to reach room temperature.
Roll out each ball – one at a time
Between two pieces of wax paper.
Roll out dough with a rolling pin
About ¼ of an inch thick.
Remove top piece of wax paper,
Spread apricot jam over dough.
Add raisins, chopped walnuts,
dash of cinnamon sugar,
Squeeze one slice of lemon over all.
Roll dough into a log
Repeat with second ball
Grease a cookie sheet
And bake at 350 degrees about 35 minutes
until lightly browned.
When cool cut into pieces about 1 ½ inches each.
Sondra Gash is a recipient of fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (for both fiction and poetry), the Corporation of Yaddo, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been awarded a Puffin Foundation grant to conduct a series of creative writing workshops designed to help workers, teachers and others explore their lives and communicate the experience of the American worker. She has read and led a workshop at the Dodge Foundation in Waterloo, NJ and at other venues including a reading and workshop for teachers on immigrant experience at Ellis Island.
Silk Elegy, a collection of poems that tells the story of a young girl from an immigrant family disrupted by her mother's mental illness, was chosen as a Finalist for the 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times, Calyx, Paterson Literary Review, U. S. 1 Worksheets and the anthology, Washing Lines, a collection of poems.
Learn more about Silk Elegy in this interview.
Previously: Menu/Giveaway/Door Prizes, April Pulley Sayre, Mary Quattlebaum, Helen Frost, Linda Ashman, Gail Gerwin, Martha Calderaro, Kathi Appelt, Robyn Hood Black, Charles Waters, Adele Kenny, Linda Baie, Lesa Medley, Leslie Muir, Margarita Engle.
Noodle-y Doodle-y Diane is hosting this week's Poetry Friday Roundup at Random Noodling. Put on your bibs and check out the full menu of lip-smacking posts being laid out on the blogospheric table. And please give Diane a fork.
This post is also being linked to Beth Fish Read's Weekend Cooking, where all are invited to share food-related posts (fiction/nonfiction/cookbook/movie reviews, recipes, photos, musings, etc.).
Copyright © 2012 Jama Rattigan of Jama's Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.


text:
EPA tries to map a toxic legacy in and under Metachem site
Snow flurries rode a faint chemical breeze across Red Lion Creek marsh near Delaware City on Thursday as Environmental Protection Agency contractors maneuvered a sediment probe across cold muck and crackling reeds.
The labor, science and mothball-like aromas were legacies of the Standard Chlorine/Metachem debacle, a 2002 chemical plant bankruptcy that followed years of spills, loose regulation and illegal operations that left state and federal taxpayers with a cleanup bill last estimated at $100 million.
It is a number that could push higher, even after a dozen years of government control and study, as efforts to locate and measure contamination and nail down new cleanup and containment strategies for soil and groundwater continue. A separate agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, is assisting, while also mapping threats to a deep aquifer, the Potomac, used for public utility drinking water wells to the north and south.
"It's a highly complex site. I think all Superfund sites are, but this, given the nature of the contamination we have and the volume of contamination, has been complex from Day One," said Brad White, the EPA's remedial project manager.
David Carter, conservation chairman for Delaware Audubon Society, said the costly exercise proved the value of Delaware's ban on new heavy industry in the Coastal Zone, and the public stakes in discussions about stretching or amending the conservation law for jobs and economic development.
"The brutal reality is that we do not currently have the technology, knowledge, and/or financial resources to adequately clean up this toxic industrial site," Carter said. "Under such circumstances, the proposed cures may come at risk of being worse than the damage done."
White said Thursday that the EPA is wrapping up weeks of sediment sampling, at 80 different spots near the creek, to help scientists figure out what, if any, method to use for decontaminating about 30 acres of wetlands and adjacent areas where chlorinated benzenes spilled into the landscape.
Toxic chlorinated benzenes, dioxins and poly-chlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs have been found in sediments to a depth of about 24 feet, and in groundwater nearby at depths of 150 feet or more. Even in wetlands hundreds of yards from former production and storage areas, workers are required to wear protective suits and, in some conditions, air-filtering masks.
For decades, the factory produced chemicals used to make herbicides and pesticides, in some cases stockpiling wastes and fending off safe disposal orders with promises of recycling. Although owners were under orders for years to finance cleanup and containment studies, federal officials after the bankruptcy described the work as superficial or incomplete, leaving taxpayers to undercover the depth of the problems.
Many of the chemicals used and produced at the plant are carcinogenic and long-lived, with a tendency to accumulate in plant and animal tissues. Federal regulators in recent years reassessed and tightened public health and exposure standards for some of the site's more-common contaminants, ratcheting up risk calculations.
State officials cannot say for certain what materials moved in and out of the plant over the years. Some of the operations inventories were byproducts imported from older and more loosely regulated pesticide manufacturing processes in Europe, or were recycled from solvents used by businesses that cleaned PCBs from electrical transformers.
For a time, the plant's byproducts were shipped to another company for use in making Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide that earned notoriety in Vietnam.
"The goal of this event is to fill in data gaps, both vertically and areally, for places where we don't have a lot of information," White said. "Hopefully, this is one of our last characterization events. Over the next year we'll be combing through the data and hopefully sometime in 2015 we'll have a better idea on the final remedial strategy out here."
On Thursday morning, a tank-like crawler built in Louisiana and specially leased for the Red Lion Creek work, lumbered along the wetland edge. Workers on top, wearing protective suits, peered at a hand-held global positioning system to find the right spot, then positioned sections of pipe and rattled them into the sediment, part of the chore of pulling up long tubes of sediment for analysis.
"Our goal is to look at: 'Where is the contamination, what is the risk to human health and the environment and what will it take to clean it up," White said.
Options for the wetlands range from letting nature take its course to installation of big ground filters containing chemical-eating bacteria, to digging out and treating sediments in complex "bio-reactors." A last resort: excavation and disposal.
Nearby, in the concrete slab-strewn area that marks Metachem's former production area, officials are waiting for federal appropriations to carry out another option: entombment. As much as $19 million would be needed to permanently seal ground where chemicals have soaked down to depths of 70 feet and more, leaving no hope for even an expensive recovery. EPA is still waiting for money to begin the capping project.
"I didn't want to start crushing concrete pads out here because I'm not sure what's underneath them." White said. "That's all material that will be under the cap, and I didn't want to make matters worse" by disturbing contamination ahead of time.
A 3-foot wide, 70-foot deep, 1-mile in circumference buried wall surrounds the entire production area, underlain by a "pump and treat" well system capturing toxic groundwater from the worst part of the site year-round.
Delaware City Manager and former state representative Richard Cathcart said that his community is watching the process closely.
"It's not an immediate problem for us, but it is a concern," Cathcart said.
"We're interested in anything that's going on in the aquifer. They're more shallow than ours, but we're keeping abreast of it. There's still always the concern that it could damage our aquifer."
Contact Jeff Montgomery at 463-3344 or email@example.com.