Abstract
The sense of busyness has been suggested to lead to human errors, while the factors influential on this sense of busyness remain unclear. We investigated the factors influential on the sense of busyness among employees in an organizational environment and examined the underlying factorial relationship. We surveyed 1,404 plant workers using a questionnaire consisting of 39 items. The results showed that the sense of highly concentrated work, the feeling of incompetence and a tendency to receive little support affected one’s sense of busyness. The “sense of highly concentrated work” was primarily concerned with one’s subjective view of work quantity, a tendency to receive multiple assignments at once and the amount of information given to each employee. The “feeling of incompetence” was predominantly concerned with whether or not the employee possessed work-related skills and could understand the full picture of operations. The “tendency to receive little support” described one’s way of acting within a group. Overall, the sense of busyness was found to be the most strongly influenced by the sense of highly concentrated work, with feelings of incompetence and a tendency to receive little support affecting one’s sense of busyness through the sense of highly concentrated work.
