Negative employee corporate brand identification: A case study of a prominent Malaysian University corporate brand

The purpose of this paper is to investigate negative employee corporate brand identification towards a business school in Malaysia. The research marshals the nascent literature of corporate brand identification (Balmer and Liao 2007; Balmer, Liao and Wang 2008) which marked new ground by drawing on social identity theory in corporate branding contexts. Corporate brand identification is relatively new concept but has been recognized as very important facet of corporate marketing (Balmer and Liao 2007). Additionally, issues of corporate brand identification have been identified in the previous works to affect not only the consumers (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003) but also other stakeholders with the corporate brand such as student corporate brand identification (Balmer and Liao 2007; Balmer et al., 2008) and employees or member organisation or institution identification (Dutton, Dukerich and Harquail, 1994). However, limited past research was found to examine corporate brand identification from employee’s perspective. Although some research have attempt looking into organizational or institutional employee/member identification (Mael and Ashforth’ 1992; Dutton et al., 1994; Bhattacharya, Rao and Glynn, 1995), most of these studies however report on the positive attachment of the members have with the organisations or institutions and furthermore, they are only focusing on institutional or organisation, which is somewhat different from corporate brand identification. Corporate brand identification emphasizes the degree to which customers, and other stakeholders have feel there is an affinity with their own identity and that of a corporate brands whereas organisation and institutional identification typically focusses on organisational members affinity with their own identity and that of an organization per se. Understandably, the former takes and explicit corporate marketing approach whereas the latter is underpinned by an organisational behaviour perspective. Identification relates to social identity theory. Social identity theory refers to how individual define themselves in their social environment. The identification relates to the concept of singleness with or belongingness to the group that could affect the level of satisfaction and effectiveness. In this study, employees’ identification to the business school is investigated to gauge their level of belongingness, attachment and their perception about the school particularly after changes in policy took place within the university which affect the business school. Strong and positive corporate brand identification will help to understand how employees respond to organization’s action, increase corporate brand performance and subsequently, corporate reputation. Balmer and Liao (2007) explain that corporation should recognise the strength and strategic importance of their corporate brand and the importance of employees, customers, stakeholder (corporate brand identification). This is due to all personnel are seen as corporate brand spokesperson (Balmer et al., 2008) and corporate brand image begins from within the organisation, i.e. corporate brand identity which is reflected by the personality of the employees (Keller and Richey, 2006). Moreover, members’ attachments to an organisation are not only based on economic transactions alone rather, heavily depends on: (a) Images they have about what the organisation means to them and (b) What they mean to others. A continuity of positive image evaluation will result in strengthen their attachment through organisational identification (Dutton et al., 1994). Furthermore, lessons should be learnt from organisation that possibly overlooks these issues (Balmer and Liao 2007). This is especially the case of higher education where stakeholder identification appears to be highly emotional (from the study of student corporate brand identification, Balmer and Liao 2007) and possibly the employees as arguably both of these stakeholders belong to life-long organisational member of corporate brand community (Balmer and Liao 2007). We focus on a single case – a business school in Malaysia. Malaysia universities place high importance on ranking. As a result, in order to be competitive and sore high up in the ranking (e.g. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings), the university has done some changes to the present systems, structure as well as internal culture within the university. Dutton et al. (1994) explains that these changes could have significant psychological effects such as declining on organizational performance, weakening organisational identification and creating less cooperation with the school among the members/employees. We uses a theory-building case study within the phenomenology/qualitative research tradition (Balmer and Liao, 2007; Balmer et al., 2008). We investigate three groups of employees within the business schools (academic, administrative and top management). 25 in-depth interviews and one focus group discussion were conducted among the academics, administrative and top management of the business school. Content analyses were used to analyses the results and preliminary insights reveal the importance of considering negative identification in corporate branding contexts: this area is underexplored. The present study enhances previous works on corporate brand identification by focusing on employee and, in particular, the negative aspects of this in a business school context

Retinoic Acid-Dependent Signaling Pathways and Lineage Events in the Developing Mouse Spinal Cord

Studies in avian models have demonstrated an involvement of retinoid signaling in early neural tube patterning. The roles of this signaling pathway at later stages of spinal cord development are only partly characterized. Here we use Raldh2-null mouse mutants rescued from early embryonic lethality to study the consequences of lack of endogenous retinoic acid (RA) in the differentiating spinal cord. Mid-gestation RA deficiency produces prominent structural and molecular deficiencies in dorsal regions of the spinal cord. While targets of Wnt signaling in the dorsal neuronal lineage are unaltered, reductions in Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF) and Notch signaling are clearly observed. We further provide evidence that endogenous RA is capable of driving stem cell differentiation. Raldh2 deficiency results in a decreased number of spinal cord derived neurospheres, which exhibit a reduced differentiation potential. Raldh2-null neurospheres have a decreased number of cells expressing the neuronal marker β-III-tubulin, while the nestin-positive cell population is increased. Hence, in vivo retinoid deficiency impaired neural stem cell growth. We propose that RA has separable functions in the developing spinal cord to (i) maintain high levels of FGF and Notch signaling and (ii) drive stem cell differentiation, thus restricting both the numbers and the pluripotent character of neural stem cells

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector

Very little is known about how vector-borne pathogens interact within their vector and how this impacts transmission. Here we show that mosquitoes can accumulate mixed strain malaria infections after feeding on multiple hosts. We found that parasites have a greater chance of establishing and reach higher densities if another strain is already present in a mosquito. Mixed infections contained more parasites but these larger populations did not have a detectable impact on vector survival. Together these results suggest that mosquitoes taking multiple infective bites may disproportionally contribute to malaria transmission. This will increase rates of mixed infections in vertebrate hosts, with implications for the evolution of parasite virulence and the spread of drug-resistant strains. Moreover, control measures that reduce parasite prevalence in vertebrate hosts will reduce the likelihood of mosquitoes taking multiple infective feeds, and thus disproportionally reduce transmission. More generally, our study shows that the types of strain interactions detected in vertebrate hosts cannot necessarily be extrapolated to vectors

Brain drain

Brain drain is a well-established concept in migration studies. Originally coined in the 1960s, the term refers to profoundly negative effects of large-scale emigration of skilled workers, especially in low-income economies. The terminologies on brain mobility have proliferated to include notions such as brain circulation and brain chains for analysing increasingly transient and multidirectional movements of skilled people in the context of globalization. The notion of brain drain remains important for identifying uneven development through skills migration and the creation of policies and strategies for mitigating resulting detrimental effects, whether at the level of supranational regions and states, or more recently, sub-national regions, cities, places, and institutions. Global patterns of migration indicate substantial loss of talent for some countries and gain for others, whereas empirical findings on the motivations, experiences, and outcomes of brain drain, gain, and circulation paint a more nuanced picture of changing mobilities and networks. Recent conceptual debates in human geography suggest to situate brain drain within wider brain chains to provide more holistic views on skilled migrants’ journeys, from first considerations of emigration via the route taken to settlement, commuting practices, and potential return, including involved and affected people, institutions, infrastructures, and im/materialities

Making pathogens sociable: the emergence of high relatedness through limited host invasibility

Cooperation depends upon high relatedness, the high genetic similarity of interacting partners relative to the wider population. For pathogenic bacteria, which show diverse cooperative traits, the population processes that determine relatedness are poorly understood. Here, we explore whether within-host dynamics can produce high relatedness in the insect pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis. We study the effects of host/pathogen interactions on relatedness via a model of host invasion and fit parameters to competition experiments with marked strains. We show that invasibility is a key parameter for determining relatedness and experimentally demonstrate the emergence of high relatedness from well-mixed inocula. We find that a single infection cycle results in a bottleneck with a similar level of relatedness to those previously reported in the field. The bottlenecks that are a product of widespread barriers to infection can therefore produce the population structure required for the evolution of cooperative virulence

A highly efficient L-estimator for the location parameter of the Cauchy distribution

Asymptotic efficiency, The Cramér-Rao lower bound, Maximum likelihood estimator, Mean square error, Order statistics,