Biogeochemical evolution of ponded meltwater in a High Arctic subglacial tunnel

Subglacial environments comprise ∼10 % of Earth's land surface, host active microbial ecosystems, and are important components of global biogeochemical cycles. However, the broadly inaccessible nature of subglacial systems has left them vastly understudied, and research to date has been limited to laboratory experiments or field measurements using basal ice or subglacial water accessed through boreholes or from the glacier margin. In this study, we extend our understanding of subglacial biogeochemistry and microbiology to include observations of a slushy pond of water that occupied a remnant meltwater channel beneath a polythermal glacier in the Canadian High Arctic over winter. The hydraulics and geochemistry of the system suggest that the pond water originated as late-season, ice-marginal runoff with less than ∼15 % solute contribution from subglacial sources. Over the 8 months of persistent sub-zero regional temperatures, the pond gradually froze, cryo-concentrating solutes in the residual water by up to 7 times. Despite cryo-concentration and the likely influx of some subglacial solute, the pond was depleted in only the most labile and biogeochemically relevant compounds, including ammonium, phosphate, and dissolved organic matter, including a potentially labile tyrosine-like component. DNA amplicon sequencing revealed decreasing microbial diversity with distance into the meltwater channel. The pond at the terminus of the channel hosted a microbial community inherited from late-season meltwater, which was dominated by only six taxa related to known psychrophilic and psychrotolerant heterotrophs that have high metabolic diversity and broad habitat ranges. Collectively, our findings suggest that generalist microbes from the extraglacial or supraglacial environments can become established in subglacial aquatic systems and deplete reservoirs of nutrients and dissolved organic carbon over a period of months. These findings extend our understanding of the microbial and biogeochemical evolution of subglacial aquatic ecosystems and the extent of their habitability.</p

Barnard\u27s Regret: Zones of Accountability and the Limits of Authority

Abstract Nearly two decades after his seminal Functions of the Executive was published, ChesterBarnard came to believe that moral responsibility and accountability might be a more powerful principle for guiding individual actions within organizations than the executiveauthority it emphasized. This article elaborates one direction in which Barnard might have developed his insight, by adopting ethical acceptance rather than self-interested indifference as the metaphor describing organization members\u27 willingness to act in accordance with institutional needs rather than purely individual preferences. The alternative metaphor opens up opportunities for understanding how organizations structure their members\u27 ethical commitments, and suggests that leaders can enhance organizational behavior by working to recognize, understand, and (re)design organizational accountability and discretion

Imagining and Managing Organizational Evil

In this chapter, we argue that organizational evil (OE) is, at the same time, a fundamentally nonsensical idea and a concern of real importance for those studying or leading organizations. Nonsensical, we believe, because the senses in which the expression “organizational evil” is typically used—to describe a property or characteristic of organizations generally or a form of conduct perpetrated by particular organizations—do not correspond in any meaningful way to actual social or natural phenomena. Genuinely important, however, because the use of the language is subjectively meaningful, and therefore consequential and actionable for a wide range of actors in (and concerned with) organizations.The chapter is organized into three major sections. First, we make the case that, because organizations and evil are both quintessentially social facts (see Searle, 1995) with no existence independent of their social context, the common ways of speaking about organizational evil as a thing in-and-of-itself (i.e., existing independently of the volition and actions of individuals) are largely nonsensical. Yet organizational evil understood as a contextually contingent, functional social construct is, in fact, a socially meaningful concept. Next, we explore how that understanding helps us to make sense of the very real ways in which scholars, managers, and laypeople respond to acts and actors that seem so egregiously bad as to be morally incomprehensible. Developing a typology of expressive as well as instrumental reactions to perceived evil acts and actors associated with organizations allows us to categorize some familiar historical cases and to see how certain types of reactions can have either destructive or constructive consequences.Finally, we conclude by noting paradoxically that so-called organizational evil, if properly understood, may (if also properly managed or accommodated) be functionally beneficial, serving to promote constructive moral vigilance and correction among an organization’s members and other stakeholders. We offer as both tentative prescription and research hypothesis the central claim that the ordinary practical ethical reasoning employed by nonsociopaths in their daily life provides a firm underlying basis for the prevention, detection, and correction of actions that would be regarded as organizational evil. This can fruitfully be nurtured by organizations’ leaders, with any tradeoffs of individual ethical empowerment against efficiency and obedience adapted to the circumstances of specific organizations and tasks. Moreover, because ethical reasoning is a learned skill, it can also be further developed in specific organizational environments and task contexts and for specific members of organizations, in appropriate degrees