The function of fear in institutional maintenance: Feeling frightened as an essential ingredient in haute cuisine

Fear is a common and powerful emotion that can regulate behaviour. Yet institutional scholars have paid limited attention to the function of fear in processes of institutional reproduction and stability. Drawing on an empirical study of elite chefs within the institution of haute cuisine, this article finds that the multifaceted emotion of fear characterised their experiences and served to sustain their institution. Chefs’ individual feelings of fear prompted conformity and a cognitive constriction, which narrowed their focus on to the precise reproduction of traditional practices whilst also limiting challenges to the norms underpinning the institution. Through fear work, chefs used threats and violence to connect individual experiences of fear to the violation of institutionalized rules, sustaining the conditions in which fear-driven maintenance work thrived. The study also suggests that fear is a normative element of haute cuisine in its own right, where the very experience and eliciting of fear preserved an essential institutional ingredient. In this way, emotions such as fear do not just accompany processes of institutionalization but can be intimately involved in the maintenance of institutions

Disorders of sex development : insights from targeted gene sequencing of a large international patient cohort

Background: Disorders of sex development (DSD) are congenital conditions in which chromosomal, gonadal, or phenotypic sex is atypical. Clinical management of DSD is often difficult and currently only 13% of patients receive an accurate clinical genetic diagnosis. To address this we have developed a massively parallel sequencing targeted DSD gene panel which allows us to sequence all 64 known diagnostic DSD genes and candidate genes simultaneously. Results: We analyzed DNA from the largest reported international cohort of patients with DSD (278 patients with 46, XY DSD and 48 with 46, XX DSD). Our targeted gene panel compares favorably with other sequencing platforms. We found a total of 28 diagnostic genes that are implicated in DSD, highlighting the genetic spectrum of this disorder. Sequencing revealed 93 previously unreported DSD gene variants. Overall, we identified a likely genetic diagnosis in 43% of patients with 46, XY DSD. In patients with 46, XY disorders of androgen synthesis and action the genetic diagnosis rate reached 60%. Surprisingly, little difference in diagnostic rate was observed between singletons and trios. In many cases our findings are informative as to the likely cause of the DSD, which will facilitate clinical management. Conclusions: Our massively parallel sequencing targeted DSD gene panel represents an economical means of improving the genetic diagnostic capability for patients affected by DSD. Implementation of this panel in a large cohort of patients has expanded our understanding of the underlying genetic etiology of DSD. The inclusion of research candidate genes also provides an invaluable resource for future identification of novel genes

Melhoramento genetico do gergelim para o nordeste.

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Mobilizing the social networks beyond project team frontiers: the case of polar expeditions

International audienceNew movements in project management are pushing project teams to hunt down contacts well outside their regular networks, to tackle problems encountered throughout project rollout. This raises the issue of initiating cooperation with someone unknown—that is, harnessing weak ties to tap into resources well outside the comfort zone. Our investigations into polar expedition projects has led us to develop the notion of a potentially cooperative weak tie, converging Granovetter's approach with a synthesis about cooperation differentiating identity-sense and utilitarian mechanisms. We conclude that a weak tie can initiate a cooperation only if it includes one of these two sources of cooperation

The benefits and pitfalls of social capital: empirical evidence from two organizations in the United Kingdom

Recently, there has been a shift in the way management scholars view the firm, from traditional models that are based on ideas of opportunism and market failure to newer knowledge-based theories that argue for a more socialized perspective. One of the key components of these theories is the notion of social capital. Social capital is the set of resources that accrue to an individual or group by virtue of their social connections. As such, it is a resource that is jointly owned. Most recent research adopts a more-is-better approach to social capital, suggesting that individuals with larger quantity of ties derive more positive benefits. However in this paper, we argue that using social capital has both benefits and drawbacks for organizations, and that these positive and negative aspects of social capital occur simultaneously. To substantiate our claim, we use data collected from sets of interviews with senior and middle managers in two organizations in the United Kingdom. Our findings indicate that while social capital has many beneficial effects with respect to information access and retrieval, community building, and underlying group norms, there are also a number of less-beneficial aspects, which are under-explored in the current empirical literature. Furthermore, we suggest that organizations must develop an understanding of the bridging and bonding elements of social capital, as these are critical for its implementation. Implications of the research findings and future research directions are discussed