Maximizing Influence and Sensesight: A Grounded Theory Study of How Executives Make Sense and Lead in Complexity

U.S. health care reform is a significant driver of complexity in healthcare organizations. The highly regulated directive began with the Affordable Care Act of 2008 and seeks to improve value of patient care by reducing costs and improving quality. However, to implement the required changes, executives must continue daily operations while they dismantle and reassemble core clinical and financial processes of the organization. The shift toward value exacerbates complexity in the already complicated and high stakes healthcare field. Complexity challenges improvement efforts and negatively impacts quality of care. Complexity also affects how executives make sense and lead. For success, executive leaders must understand the environment and maximize their influence as they balance operational logistics and cultural aspects of change. Cognitive and social-cognitive processes, such as sensemaking and sensegiving, play a pivotal role in how the leader calibrates a direction and influences the organization. This qualitative constructivist grounded theory study of 17 executive leaders explains the processes executives used to make sense and maximize influence in complex circumstances. The major finding in this study theorizes how sensesight, or insight emerging from sensemaking about sensegiving, maximizes influence during situational demands. The findings provide a theoretical model illustrating the processes and could benefit executives attempting to lead in complexity

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Maximizing Influence and Sensesight: A Grounded Theory Study of How Executives Make Sense and Lead in Complexity

U.S. health care reform is a significant driver of complexity in healthcare organizations. The highly regulated directive began with the Affordable Care Act of 2008 and seeks to improve value of patient care by reducing costs and improving quality. However, to implement the required changes, executives must continue daily operations while they dismantle and reassemble core clinical and financial processes of the organization. The shift toward value exacerbates complexity in the already complicated and high stakes healthcare field. Complexity challenges improvement efforts and negatively impacts quality of care. Complexity also affects how executives make sense and lead. For success, executive leaders must understand the environment and maximize their influence as they balance operational logistics and cultural aspects of change. Cognitive and social-cognitive processes, such as sensemaking and sensegiving, play a pivotal role in how the leader calibrates a direction and influences the organization. This qualitative constructivist grounded theory study of 17 executive leaders explains the processes executives used to make sense and maximize influence in complex circumstances. The major finding in this study theorizes how sensesight, or insight emerging from sensemaking about sensegiving, maximizes influence during situational demands. The findings provide a theoretical model illustrating the processes and could benefit executives attempting to lead in complexity

Directional Adhesion of Monodomain Liquid Crystalline Elastomers

Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are widely employed in consumer goods, health care, and commercial industry. Anisotropic adhesion of PSAs is often desirable to enable high force capacity coupled with facile release and has typically been realized through the introduction of complex surface and/or bulk microstructures while also maintaining high surface conformability. Although effective, microstructure fabrication can add cost and complexity to adhesive fabrication. Here, we explore aligned liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) as directional adhesives. Aligned LCEs exhibit direction-dependent stiffness, dissipation, and nonlinear deformation under load. By varying the cross-link content, we study how the bulk mechanical properties of LCEs correlate to their peel strength and peel anisotropy. We demonstrate up to a 9-fold difference in peel force measured when the LCE is peeled parallel vs perpendicular to the alignment axis. Opportunities to spatially localize adhesion are presented in a monolithic LCE patterned with different director orientations

Directional Adhesion of Monodomain Liquid Crystalline Elastomers

Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are widely employed in consumer goods, health care, and commercial industry. Anisotropic adhesion of PSAs is often desirable to enable high force capacity coupled with facile release and has typically been realized through the introduction of complex surface and/or bulk microstructures while also maintaining high surface conformability. Although effective, microstructure fabrication can add cost and complexity to adhesive fabrication. Here, we explore aligned liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) as directional adhesives. Aligned LCEs exhibit direction-dependent stiffness, dissipation, and nonlinear deformation under load. By varying the cross-link content, we study how the bulk mechanical properties of LCEs correlate to their peel strength and peel anisotropy. We demonstrate up to a 9-fold difference in peel force measured when the LCE is peeled parallel vs perpendicular to the alignment axis. Opportunities to spatially localize adhesion are presented in a monolithic LCE patterned with different director orientations

Directional Adhesion of Monodomain Liquid Crystalline Elastomers

Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are widely employed in consumer goods, health care, and commercial industry. Anisotropic adhesion of PSAs is often desirable to enable high force capacity coupled with facile release and has typically been realized through the introduction of complex surface and/or bulk microstructures while also maintaining high surface conformability. Although effective, microstructure fabrication can add cost and complexity to adhesive fabrication. Here, we explore aligned liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) as directional adhesives. Aligned LCEs exhibit direction-dependent stiffness, dissipation, and nonlinear deformation under load. By varying the cross-link content, we study how the bulk mechanical properties of LCEs correlate to their peel strength and peel anisotropy. We demonstrate up to a 9-fold difference in peel force measured when the LCE is peeled parallel vs perpendicular to the alignment axis. Opportunities to spatially localize adhesion are presented in a monolithic LCE patterned with different director orientations

Directional Adhesion of Monodomain Liquid Crystalline Elastomers

Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are widely employed in consumer goods, health care, and commercial industry. Anisotropic adhesion of PSAs is often desirable to enable high force capacity coupled with facile release and has typically been realized through the introduction of complex surface and/or bulk microstructures while also maintaining high surface conformability. Although effective, microstructure fabrication can add cost and complexity to adhesive fabrication. Here, we explore aligned liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) as directional adhesives. Aligned LCEs exhibit direction-dependent stiffness, dissipation, and nonlinear deformation under load. By varying the cross-link content, we study how the bulk mechanical properties of LCEs correlate to their peel strength and peel anisotropy. We demonstrate up to a 9-fold difference in peel force measured when the LCE is peeled parallel vs perpendicular to the alignment axis. Opportunities to spatially localize adhesion are presented in a monolithic LCE patterned with different director orientations