队列里有什么？对作业排序、自主权与队列可见性的实验研究
What's in a Queue? An Experimental Study of Job Ordering, Autonomy and Queue Visibility
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中文总结 AI 辅助
该研究通过在线实验探究队列设计对工人绩效的影响，明确EF排序的绩效差异原因、强制排序的效果及队列信息的作用，为队列设计和工人筛选提供指导。
中文摘要 AI 辅助
问题定义：作业队列的排列与呈现方式是服务运营中的重要设计问题，涵盖作业执行顺序、工人在设定顺序中的话语权、工人接收的队列与到达信息等方面。方法/结果：为探究队列设计（作业排序、自主权、可见性）如何影响工人绩效（速度、质量），我们开展了一系列预先注册的在线实验，采用真实努力任务，工人需处理随时间动态到达的不同复杂度的拣货作业。结果如下：（1）当工人自行选择拣货顺序时，我们复现了实地研究发现——“先易后难（EF）”排序比“先到先服务（FIFO）”排序的绩效更差，且该差异主要源于工人自我选择，而非排序本身；（2）外生强制的EF排序相较于FIFO和自主排序，能提升工作质量（拣货准确率）；（3）强制排序可能降低能力最强工人的速度；（4）看到新作业到达会带来短期生产力爆发，但完全移除作业到达与队列信息不会影响长期绩效。管理启示：我们的结果为管理者针对特定绩效目标（速度或质量）和工人能力水平选择最优队列设计提供指导，还确定了可用于筛选易出错工人的人格测量指标。
英文摘要
Problem Definition: How a queue of jobs is arranged and presented to workers is an important design problem in service operations. This includes choosing the order in which jobs are performed, how much say workers have in setting that order, and how much queue and arrival information workers receive. Methodology/Results: To better understand how queue design (job ordering, autonomy, visibility) affects worker performance (speed, quality), we run a series of pre-registered online experiments. We use a new, real-effort task in which workers fulfill order-picking jobs of varying complexity that arrive dynamically over time. Our results are as follows: (1) When workers choose their own picking order, we reproduce the field finding that Easy First (EF) ordering is associated with worse performance than First-in-first-out (FIFO), and show that this is mainly due to worker self-selection rather than due to the ordering itself; (2) Exogenously imposed EF ordering improves work quality (picking accuracy) relative to both FIFO and discretionary ordering; (3) Imposing an ordering may reduce speed for the most capable workers; (4) Seeing a new job arrival leads to a short-term productivity burst; however, removing job arrival and queue information altogether does not affect performance in the long term. Managerial implications: Our results provide guidance on which queue design works best for a given performance goal (speed or quality) and worker ability level. We also identify personality measures that can help managers screen for error-prone workers.
