Mentoring Relationships, Gender and Work-Family Conflict: The Case of IT Careers

Mentoring has long been considered important in career advancement in many fields. It is important to pay attention to issues related to mentoring because it appears to be related to a number of organizational and individuallevel outcomes. In this paper, we examine certain factors that may lead to a more effective mentoring relationship, thereby increasing the likelihood that the relationship will be lasting and beneficial for the individual and organization. Specifically, we suggest similarities based on gender and work-family conflict will be related to effectiveness of mentoring relationships. Propositions are presented with respect to these relationships. Although we do not directly link mentoring with retention, the outcomes discussed above will likely result in reduced turnover in IT-related jobs. These outcomes are likely to be negatively associated with women\u27s likelihood of remaining in IT fields and their performance and advancement in the IT field

Sustainability of a Virtual Community: Integrating Individual and Structural Dynamics

This study investigates how virtual communities retain active members and maintain sustainability as they grow in size. By integrating the individual and structural dynamics of a virtual community, this study develops a multi-level research model that explores how structural factors (i.e., membership and clique sizes) at the community level interact with individual factors (i.e., the extent of use of collaborative tools, the strength of emotional ties, and shared information resources) to predict an active member’s intention to stay. We tested the proposed cross-level hypotheses using survey data collected from 164 participants and 15 virtual communities. The results of this study emphasize the need to consider individual and structural dynamics simultaneously to understand virtual communities’ sustainability. Results indicate that membership size does not directly influence an active member’s intention to stay but that it exerts an indirect effect by strengthening the positive relationship between the extent of use of collaborative tools and shared information resources. This study supports the notion that, because members form cliques, the strength of emotional ties among individuals in a virtual community does not decrease despite an increase in membership size. Notably, the results suggest that, in a virtual community, a large clique size may weaken the relationship between the strength of emotional ties and the intention to stay

The Role of Socioemotional Wealth in Entrepreneurial Persistence Decisions for Family Businesses

Many factors may influence entrepreneurial persistence in various contexts. For example, scholars find that family business entrepreneurs are more persistent than other entrepreneurs. However, the reasons why they are more persistent are not as well known. Utilizing a conjoint experiment with 64 entrepreneurs and 376 decisions, this paper examines the influence of socioemotional wealth (SEW) on persistence decisions in a family business context. The results of the Hierarchical Linear Modelling show that the expected financial returns, expected non-financial benefits, expected switching costs, and probability of expected outcomes influence entrepreneurial persistence decisions. Further, family business entrepreneurs with higher levels of SEW focus more on non-financial benefits when facing alternative opportunities. This study also provided empirical evidence for different dimensions of SEW. The results show that the emotional attachment of family members and the renewal of family bonds to the firm are effective indicators, which provide a direct measurement of SEW. The findings of this study increase scholarly understanding of both entrepreneurial persistence literature founded in threshold theory and SEW literature

Association of CCR2-CCR5 Haplotypes and CCL3L1 Copy Number with Kawasaki Disease, Coronary Artery Lesions, and IVIG Responses in Japanese Children

BACKGROUND: The etiology of Kawasaki Disease (KD) is enigmatic, although an infectious cause is suspected. Polymorphisms in CC chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) and/or its potent ligand CCL3L1 influence KD susceptibility in US, European and Korean populations. However, the influence of these variations on KD susceptibility, coronary artery lesions (CAL) and response to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) in Japanese children, who have the highest incidence of KD, is unknown. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used unconditional logistic regression analyses to determine the associations of the copy number of the CCL3L1 gene-containing duplication and CCR2-CCR5 haplotypes in 133 Japanese KD cases [33 with CAL and 25 with resistance to IVIG] and 312 Japanese controls without a history of KD. We observed that the deviation from the population average of four CCL3L1 copies (i.e., <or>four copies) was associated with an increased risk of KD and IVIG resistance (adjusted odds ratio (OR)=2.25, p=0.004 and OR=6.26, p=0.089, respectively). Heterozygosity for the CCR5 HHF*2 haplotype was associated with a reduced risk of both IVIG resistance (OR=0.21, p=0.026) and CAL development (OR=0.44, p=0.071). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The CCL3L1-CCR5 axis may play an important role in KD pathogenesis. In addition to clinical and laboratory parameters, genetic markers may also predict risk of CAL and resistance to IVIG

Matrix metalloproteinase haplotypes associated with coronary artery aneurysm formation in patients with Kawasaki disease.

Aneurysms of the vascular wall represent a final common pathway for a number of inflammatory processes, including atherosclerosis and idiopathic vasculitis syndromes. Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute, self-limited vasculitis in children and the leading cause of acquired coronary artery aneurysms. We sought to identify shared molecular mechanisms of aneurysm formation by genotyping eight polymorphisms in matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-1, 3, 7, 12 and 13 in the gene cluster on Chr.11q22, whose gene products have been implicated in aneurysm formation or are known to have elastase activity. We genotyped 482 US-UK KD patients (aneurysm+: n=111, aneurysm-: n=371) and tested our findings in an independent cohort of 200 Japanese KD patients (aneurysm+: n=58, aneurysm-: n=142). Analysis of the five MMP genes identified modest trends in allele and genotype frequencies for MMP-3 rs3025058 (-/T) and haplotypes containing MMP-3 rs3025058 (-/T) and MMP-12 rs2276109 (A/G) (nominal P=2 to 4 × 10(-5)) that conferred increased risk of aneurysm formation in US-UK subjects. This finding was validated in Japanese subjects and suggests the importance of this locus in aneurysm formation in children with KD. The region encompassing these risk haplotypes is a prime candidate for resequencing to look for rare genetic variation that may influence aneurysm formation

“So what if ChatGPT wrote it?” Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy

Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistinguishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts for organisations, society, and individuals. Offering multi-disciplinary insight into some of these, this article brings together 43 contributions from experts in fields such as computer science, marketing, information systems, education, policy, hospitality and tourism, management, publishing, and nursing. The contributors acknowledge ChatGPT’s capabilities to enhance productivity and suggest that it is likely to offer significant gains in the banking, hospitality and tourism, and information technology industries, and enhance business activities, such as management and marketing. Nevertheless, they also consider its limitations, disruptions to practices, threats to privacy and security, and consequences of biases, misuse, and misinformation. However, opinion is split on whether ChatGPT’s use should be restricted or legislated. Drawing on these contributions, the article identifies questions requiring further research across three thematic areas: knowledge, transparency, and ethics; digital transformation of organisations and societies; and teaching, learning, and scholarly research. The avenues for further research include: identifying skills, resources, and capabilities needed to handle generative AI; examining biases of generative AI attributable to training datasets and processes; exploring business and societal contexts best suited for generative AI implementation; determining optimal combinations of human and generative AI for various tasks; identifying ways to assess accuracy of text produced by generative AI; and uncovering the ethical and legal issues in using generative AI across different contexts

Are All Distributed Teams The Same?: Differentiating Between Temporary And Ongoing Distributed Teams

Distributed teams, sometimes called virtual teams, are becoming increasingly prevalent as businesses bring geographically dispersed members together to achieve a common goal. A framework for understanding geographically distributed teams based on their time span is yet to be developed. The authors believe that theory building in this area has centered on temporary teams and propose that many distributed teams have ongoing and recurring tasks. Using attention focus and the shadow of the future models, this article presents a framework for understanding the differences between temporary and ongoing distributed teams\u27 structure, processes, and outcomes, suggesting that ongoing distributed teams must tackle more process and structural issues than temporary teams and that findings of virtual teams research thus far may not always apply here. The model also implies that ongoing distributed teams are more difficult to manage and experience greater variance in well-being outcome levels, whereas in temporary teams, members are more focused on task-related (production) outcomes. © 2006 Sage Publications

IS Offshore Project Risk, Contracts and Team Structure

Offshore information systems (IS) project team structures are often treated as given in extant IS research and there is little insight about what criteria should be used to structure these teams. In this study we sought to understand how IS project risks shape the structure of project teams in offshoring. Drawing on the IS project risk literature, we predicted that social and technical subsystem risks shape the contract provisions that govern offshore relationships. We further posit that IS project risks indirectly influence offshore project team structure (client participation and temporal dispersion) through their effects on contract provisions. The model is tested in a field study of 87 offshore IS projects. We found support for the relationship of social and technical subsystem risk with contract provisions. We also found support for the role of contract provisions as mediating mechanisms between social and technical subsystem risks and offshore IS project team structure