Outsourcing and Organizational Change, An employee perspective

Outsourcing seems to have become the new trend in organizational strategy. In outsourcing, part of the organization’s production or service process is discontinued and transferred to another party, along with personnel and other resources. Although the potential economic benefits of outsourcing are thought to be considerable, a growing number of evaluation studies show disappointing outcomes. Cost savings tend to be less than expected and quality sometimes declines. A reason for these outcomes may be that - just like with downsizing and mergers-acquisitions in earlier days - managers tend to focus almost exclusively on economic aspects, ignoring the human and social impacts. Morespecifically, one might explain unsatisfactory economic results from a failure to consider the change implications of outsourcing. This paper analyzes the nature of the organizational change implied in outsourcing, comparing it to mergersacquisitions and downsizing. Next, it identifies some critical aspects of the transition management process which, when dealt with effectively, may enhance the success of outsourcing. The theoretical analysis is contrasted with findings from an empirical study on outsourcing in the Netherlands. In interviews with 11 experts and 10 workers on three phases of outsourcing, 70 aspects of(un)successful transition management were identified. Next, 36 employees involved in outsourcing rated the importance of these aspects and indicated their presence during the outsourcing process. Discrepancy ratings, showing which aspects of transition management received insufficient attention, confirm the results of the theoretical analysis. This underlines the importance of organizational change when implementing outsourcing.Economics ;

Seawater transfer alters the intestinal microbiota profiles of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.)

This study was funded by a BBSRC Eastbio PhD studentship to CED and BBSRC grant BB/M026604/1. The authors wish to thank Ana Rita Sancho Silva for facilitating the sampling for the experiment. Furthermore we would like to express our gratitude to Ian and Alastair Fraser for their support at the SFF fish farms on the Isle of Mull.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Variation in the μ-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) moderates the influence of early maternal care on fearful attachment

There is evidence that both early experience and genetic variation play a role in influencing sensitivity to social rejection. In this study, we aimed at ascertaining if the A118G polymorphism of the k-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) moderates the impact of early maternal care on fearful attachment, a personality trait strongly related to rejection sensitivity. In 112 psychiatric patients, early maternal care and fearful attachment were measured using the Parental Bonding Inventory and the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ), respectively. The pattern emerging from the RQ data was a crossover interaction between genotype and maternal caregiving. Participants expressing the minor 118 G allele had similar and relatively high scores on fearful attachment regardless of the quality of maternal care. By contrast, early experience made a major difference for participants carrying the A/A genotype. Those who recalled higher levels of maternal care reported the lowest levels of fearful attachment whereas those who recalled lower levels of maternal care scored highest on fearful attachment. Our data fit well with the differential susceptibility model which stipulates that plasticity genes would make some individuals more responsive than others to the negative consequences of adversity and to the benefits of environmental support and enrichment

Bootstrapping One-Loop QCD Amplitudes with General Helicities

The recently developed on-shell bootstrap for computing one-loop amplitudes in non-supersymmetric theories such as QCD combines the unitarity method with loop-level on-shell recursion. For generic helicity configurations, the recursion relations may involve undetermined contributions from non-standard complex singularities or from large values of the shift parameter. Here we develop a strategy for sidestepping difficulties through use of pairs of recursion relations. To illustrate the strategy, we present sets of recursion relations needed for obtaining n-gluon amplitudes in QCD. We give a recursive solution for the one-loop n-gluon QCD amplitudes with three or four color-adjacent gluons of negative helicity and the remaining ones of positive helicity. We provide an explicit analytic formula for the QCD amplitude A_{6;1}(1^-,2^-,3^-,4^+,5^+,6^+), as well as numerical results for A_{7;1}(1^-,2^-,3^-,4^+,5^+,6^+,7^+), A_{8;1}(1^-,2^-,3^-,4^+,5^+,6^+,7^+,8^+), and A_{8;1}(1^-,2^-,3^-,4^-,5^+,6^+,7^+,8^+). We expect the on-shell bootstrap approach to have widespread applications to phenomenological studies at colliders.Comment: 77 pages, 17 figures; v2, corrected minor typos in text and small equation

New communities of large filamentous sulfur bacteria in the eastern South Pacific

New complex communities of morphologically diverse and sometimes abundant large, multicellular, filamentous bacteria were discovered in the oxygen-deficient, organically laden, shelf sediments under the oxygen minimum zone off the coast of the eastern Pacific, i.e., off the coasts of central and northern Chile; central and northern Perú; Roca Redonda, Galápagos Archipielago, Ecuador; and off the Pacific coasts of Panamá and Costa Rica. Similar microbial communities were also observed in the reduced layer of a muddy-sand beach adjacent to a mangrove swamp on Coiba Island, Pacific Panamá, and in the organically laden bottom underneath a salmon culture pen in southern Chile (region X). Of varying morphology, the diameters of the bacteria range fro

Hacia una arquitectura financiera regional. El sistema SUCRE

Dentro del camino hacia la arquitectura financiera regional una de las propuestas más recientes y polémicas ha resultado la creación del Sistema Unitario de Compensación Regional (SUCRE). Lanzada en la Tercera Cumbre Extraordinaria de los países del ALBA el 26 de Noviembre de 2008 esta iniciativa entró en vigor el 27 de Enero de 2010 con los objetivos explícitos de propiciar un desacople progresivo de las divisas internacionales y en particular del dólar estadounidense (usd); incrementar el comercio intrarregional, reducir las asimetrías a través de proyectos conjuntos de inversión y crear las bases para desarrollar una moneda común entre los países miembros. Acerca del SUCRE y su futuro existen muchas preguntas, algunas sin respuestas conclusivas y no cabe otra opción que manejar una duda razonable y esperar por el desarrollo de las relaciones entre los países firmantes, por la marcha del proceso de integración regional y en particular por el futuro del esquema ALBA