Prophets vs. profits: How market competition influences leaders' disciplining behavior towards ethical transgressions

We investigate how market competition influences the way organizational leaders discipline moral transgressions of employees. In a cross-sectional study among organizational leaders at various hierarchical levels (Study 1), we find that strong market competition is related to an instrumental decision frame (business practices being perceived as focused on serving the organization’s interest). This decision frame explains why strong market competition is related to leaders’ perceptions of the evaluation of wrongdoing in terms of instrumental rather than moral concerns. In two subsequent experiments (Study 2 and 3), we find that high (relative to low) market competition makes leaders’ disciplining of moral transgressions contingent upon the instrumentality of the transgression to the organization. We find that the same transgression is punished less severely when it resulted in profit for the organization than when it resulted in loss. This research is among the first to identify conditions that determine the disciplinary responses of organization leaders to employees’ moral transgressions, and it feeds the debate on whether market competition - a fundamental characteristic of capitalist economies - promotes the display of moral or immoral behavior within organization

Macrophyte abundance in Waquoit Bay : effects of land-derived nitrogen loads on seasonal and multi-year biomass patterns

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Estuaries and Coasts 31 (2008): 532-541, doi:10.1007/s12237-008-9039-6.Anthropogenic inputs of nutrients to coastal waters have rapidly restructured coastal ecosystems. To examine the response of macrophyte communities to land-derived nitrogen loading, we measured macrophyte biomass monthly for six years in three estuaries subject to different nitrogen loads owing to different land uses on the watersheds. The set of estuaries sampled had nitrogen loads over the broad range of 12 to 601 kg N ha-1 y-1. Macrophyte biomass increased as nitrogen loads increased, but the response of individual taxa varied. Specifically, biomass of Cladophora vagabunda and Gracilaria tikvahiae increased significantly as nitrogen loads increased. The biomass of other macroalgal taxa tended to decrease with increasing load, and the relative proportion of these taxa to total macrophyte biomass also decreased. The seagrass, Zostera marina, disappeared from the higher loaded estuaries, but remained abundant in the estuary with the lowest load. Seasonal changes in macroalgal standing stock were also affected by nitrogen load, with larger fluctuations in biomass across the year and higher minimum biomass of macroalgae in the higher loaded estuaries. There were no significant changes in macrophyte biomass over the six years of this study, but there was a slight trend of increasing macroalgal biomass in the latter years. Macroalgal biomass was not related to irradiance or temperature, but Z. marina biomass was highest during the summer months when light and temperatures peak. Irradiance might, however, be a secondary limiting factor controlling macroalgal biomass in the higher loaded estuaries by restricting the depth of the macroalgal canopy. The relationship between the bloom-forming macroalgal species, C. vagabunda and G. tikvahiae, and nitrogen loads suggested a strong connection between development on watersheds and macroalgal blooms and loss of seagrasses. The influence of watershed land uses largely overwhelmed seasonal and inter-annual differences in standing stock of macrophytes in these temperate estuaries.This research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technologies (CICEET-UNH#99-304, NOAA NA87OR512), NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve Graduate Research Fellowship NERRS GRF, #NA77OR0228), and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) STAR Fellowship for Graduate Environmental Study (U-915335-01-0) awarded to J. Hauxwell. S. Fox was supported by a NOAA NERRS GRF (#NA03NOS4200132) and an EPA STAR Graduate Research Fellowship. We also thank the Quebec-Labrador Foundation Atlantic Center for the Environment's Sounds Conservancy Program and the Boston University Ablon/Bay Committee for their awarding research funds

Untangling the effects of overexploration and overexploitation on organizational performance: The moderating role of environmental dynamism

Because a firm's optimal knowledge search behavior is determined by unique firm and industry conditions, organizational performance should be contingent oil the degree to which a firm's actual level of knowledge search deviates from the optimal level. It is thus hypothesized that deviation from the optimal search, in the form of either overexploitation or overexploration, is detrimental to organizational performance. Furthermore, the negative effect of search deviation oil organizational performance varies with environmental dynamism: that is, overexploitation is expected to become more harmful. whereas overexploration becomes less so with all increase in environmental dynamism. The empirical analyses yield results consistent with these arguments. Implications for research and practice are correspondingly discussed

Safety of the SQ Tree Sublingual Immunotherapy Tablet: Pooled safety analysis of clinical trials.

BACKGROUND: The standardised quality (SQ) treesublingual immunotherapy (SLIT)-tablet has recently been approved for treatment of tree pollen allergy. Health care workers should be providedwith detailed safety data for clinical use. OBJECTIVE: To assess the tolerability and safety of the SQ tree SLIT-tablet (12 SQ-Bet)in adults and adolescents. METHODS: Safety data were pooled fromthree double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trials (2 phase-II/1 phase-III) including adults and adolescents 12-65 years with allergic rhinitis and/orconjunctivitis treated before and during one pollen season once-daily with 12 SQ-Bet (n=471) or placebo (n=458): EudraCTno:2012-000031-59; NCT02481856; EudraCT 2015-004821-15. RESULTS: The most frequently reportedinvestigational medicinal product(IMP)-related AEs with 12 SQ-Bet were oral pruritis (39% of subjects)and throat irritation (29%).IMP-related AEs were mainly mild or moderate in severity,and the majority resolved without treatment and did not lead to treatment interruption/discontinuation. With 12 SQ-Bet, oral pruritus was more frequent among subjects with pollen food syndrome (PFS) (45%) than without PFS (29%).The 12 SQ-Bet did not seem to induce an increased risk of asthma: 7 events were reported in 7 subjects with 12 SQ-Bet and 11 in 10 subjects with placebo. No differences were seen in the risk of moderate to severe IMP-related AEs regardless of age, PFS status and asthma medical history. CONCLUSIONS: The 12 SQ tree SLIT-tablet was well tolerated in tree pollen allergic subjects with no major safety concerns detected.This safety profile supports daily at-home sublingual administration once the first dose is tolerated when administered under medical supervision