Bridging the faultline gap : antecedents of cooperative decision-making in crossed-groups social dilemmas

Teamwork has gained increasing importance in organizations for both decision-making and production. For companies to retain a competitive advantage, more emphasis is placed on processes as creativity and social innovation where added value is created by bundling forces via cooperation in work groups. At the same time in our globalized world, these teams have become more diverse due to increasing internationalization of organizations, in operations and in workforce. Furthermore, strategic processes within and between organizations - such as mergers and acquisitions, alliances, joint ventures and other internal organizational restructurings - result in the formation of newly composed teams, with employees originating from different organizations or departments that are now restructured into one. In these heterogeneous teams, (at least) two subgroups arise. Team members represent two (or more) social entities and categorize members of their own subgroup as ‘in-group’, while considering the other subgroup as ‘out-group’. They are confronted with a crossed-groups social dilemma: continue to act in their self-interest or that of their former team – which is now only a subgroup in the new team – or act in everyone’s interest and contribute to the newly composed team? Free-riding always results in more individual profit on the short-term, regardless of other group members’ choices, but all team members and the organization as a whole are better off if all members cooperate. Aim of this doctoral research is to identify individual and contextual antecedents of cooperation in such heterogeneous teams, in which members – in the presence of subgroups – are confronted with a crossed-groups social dilemma. To realize this objective, five empirical studies investigating these antecedents were conducted. In the first part, we describe the development of the crossed-groups social dilemma game. This game allows to study individual decision-making in heterogeneous teams, in the presence of two (or more) subgroups. Two empirical studies show the effect of group composition: team members cooperate more if their in-subgroup forms a majority than when their own subgroup represents a minority. We also study the effect of social value orientation as an antecedent of cooperation in these heterogeneous teams. Results show that individuals with a prosocial value orientation cooperate consistently, irrespective of group composition, whereas a proself value orientation results in consistent defection. In the second part, we investigate the effect of faultline deactivation as a contextual antecedent of cooperative decision-making in heterogeneous teams. ‘Faultlines’ are hypothetical dividing lines that split up a team in two (or more) subgroups based on one or more attributes, such as pre-merger team membership. The results of two empirical studies show that faultline deactivation – via a common goal for the team – makes team members less sensitive for (sub)group composition when deciding to cooperate (or not): more team members cooperate consistently, irrespective of group composition, but also more team members defect consistently. To address the latter phenomenon it can be of importance to combine a common goal for the team with other managerial strategies, such as leadership. In the third part, we describe the impact of a visionary leader, with a common goal and a long-term vision for the future of the team, on cooperation in these heterogeneous teams. Results of the empirical study show that the visionary leader can increase cooperation levels in the heterogeneous team. Moreover, there is not only more consistent cooperation of team members, but also less consistent defection. The leader’s affiliation with the ‘in-subgroup’ or the ‘out-subgroup’ has no impact on team members’ cooperation in this study

Do employer preferences contribute to sticky floors?

We investigate the importance of employer preferences in explaining Sticky Floors, the pattern that women are, compared to men, less likely to start to climb the job ladder. To this end we perform a randomised field experiment in the Belgian labour market and test whether hiring discrimination based on gender is heterogeneous by whether or not jobs imply a promotion (in comparison with employees’ current position). We find that women get 33% less interview invitations when they apply for jobs implying a first promotion in functional level. On the other hand, their hiring chances are not significantly affected by the job authority level of the job

The FANCM:p.Arg658* truncating variant is associated with risk of triple-negative breast cancer

Abstract: Breast cancer is a common disease partially caused by genetic risk factors. Germline pathogenic variants in DNA repair genes BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, ATM, and CHEK2 are associated with breast cancer risk. FANCM, which encodes for a DNA translocase, has been proposed as a breast cancer predisposition gene, with greater effects for the ER-negative and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtypes. We tested the three recurrent protein-truncating variants FANCM:p.Arg658*, p.Gln1701*, and p.Arg1931* for association with breast cancer risk in 67,112 cases, 53,766 controls, and 26,662 carriers of pathogenic variants of BRCA1 or BRCA2. These three variants were also studied functionally by measuring survival and chromosome fragility in FANCM−/− patient-derived immortalized fibroblasts treated with diepoxybutane or olaparib. We observed that FANCM:p.Arg658* was associated with increased risk of ER-negative disease and TNBC (OR = 2.44, P = 0.034 and OR = 3.79; P = 0.009, respectively). In a country-restricted analysis, we confirmed the associations detected for FANCM:p.Arg658* and found that also FANCM:p.Arg1931* was associated with ER-negative breast cancer risk (OR = 1.96; P = 0.006). The functional results indicated that all three variants were deleterious affecting cell survival and chromosome stability with FANCM:p.Arg658* causing more severe phenotypes. In conclusion, we confirmed that the two rare FANCM deleterious variants p.Arg658* and p.Arg1931* are risk factors for ER-negative and TNBC subtypes. Overall our data suggest that the effect of truncating variants on breast cancer risk may depend on their position in the gene. Cell sensitivity to olaparib exposure, identifies a possible therapeutic option to treat FANCM-associated tumors

Functional mechanisms underlying pleiotropic risk alleles at the 19p13.1 breast-ovarian cancer susceptibility locus

A locus at 19p13 is associated with breast cancer (BC) and ovarian cancer (OC) risk. Here we analyse 438 SNPs in this region in 46,451 BC and 15,438 OC cases, 15,252 BRCA1 mutation carriers and 73,444 controls and identify 13 candidate causal SNPs associated with serous OC (P=9.2 × 10-20), ER-negative BC (P=1.1 × 10-13), BRCA1-associated BC (P=7.7 × 10-16) and triple negative BC (P-diff=2 × 10-5). Genotype-gene expression associations are identified for candidate target genes ANKLE1 (P=2 × 10-3) and ABHD8 (P<2 × 10-3). Chromosome conformation capture identifies interactions between four candidate SNPs and ABHD8, and luciferase assays indicate six risk alleles increased transactivation of the ADHD8 promoter. Targeted deletion of a region containing risk SNP rs56069439 in a putative enhancer induces ANKLE1 downregulation; and mRNA stability assays indicate functional effects for an ANKLE1 3′-UTR SNP. Altogether, these data suggest that multiple SNPs at 19p13 regulate ABHD8 and perhaps ANKLE1 expression, and indicate common mechanisms underlying breast and ovarian cancer risk