What we know about anticonsumption: An attempt to nail jelly to the wall

Despite burgeoning academic interest in anticonsumption, a lack of definitional clarity and overlapping constructs beleaguer the pertinent literature, preventing research in the field from reaching its full potential. This paper aims to strengthen the foundations for advancing knowledge in this fragmented field by (a) undertaking a thorough systematic review of literature; (b) charting the scope of anticonsumption literature based on network analysis and attempting to delineate overlapping areas; (c) providing an integrated framework of anticonsumption research, including antecedents, moderators, and consequences; and (d) suggesting a set of specific research propositions that will enable the field to move forward. Toward these aims, we analyzed 120 anticonsumption papers revealed in the literature review, identifying a number of important anticonsumption‐related topics that warrant further investigation. Moreover, we suggest a research framework which reveals antecedents, causal sequences, and consequences of anticonsumption. Finally, a research agenda based on this integrated framework indicates promising areas for future research

What do we know about succession in family businesses? Mapping current knowledge and unexplored territory

We review studies on succession in family businesses that have been done since Handler’s (1994) seminal literature review on the topic in an effort to synthesize existing research and outline paths for future studies. We offer three contributions. First, we select succession studies that adhere to established methodological standards. Second, we review these studies based on the perspective that succession is a process comprising five stages across three levels of analysis. Finally, we outline current gaps in our knowledge and ask researchers to adopt a more holistic approach when studying succession

Retaining older experienced nurses in the Northern Territory of Australia: a qualitative study exploring opportunities for post-retirement contributions

Introduction: Many countries are facing an ageing of the nursing workforce and increasing workforce shortages. This trend is due to members of the ‘baby boomer’ generation leaving the workforce for retirement and a declining pool of younger people entering the nursing profession. New approaches to engaging older nurses in the workforce are becoming common in nursing globally but have yet to be adapted to remote contexts such as the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia. This article reports findings from a qualitative study of 15 participants who explored perceived opportunities for and barriers to implementing flexible strategies to engage older nurses in the NT workforce after they resign from full-time work. Methods: The study used a descriptive qualitative design. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with NT nurses approaching retirement (six nurses aged 50 years and over) and their managers (n=9). Clinicians were employed in practice settings that included hospitals, community health and ‘Top End’ (north of and including the town of Katherine), as well as Central Australian remote area communities. One participant who was employed as primary health centre manager in a remote community also held a clinical role. Managers were employed in both senior and line management positions in community and remote health as well as NT hospitals. Results: Three major themes emerged from the data. First, interview participants identified potential for flexible post-retirement engagement of older nurses and a range of concrete engagement opportunities 'on and off the floor’ were identified. Second, the main barriers to post-retirement engagement were an existing focus on the recruitment of younger Australian and overseas-trained nurses, and the remoteness of nursing practice settings from the residential locations of retired nurses. Third, existing informal system of post-retirement working arrangements, characterized by ad hoc agreements between individual nurses and managers, is poorly suited to scaling up. Conclusion: A knowledge and change-management approach is required to change employers’ views of the value of older nurses. Better engagement of those nurses may assist the NT Department of Health address the severe nursing workforce shortages and prevent the loss of significant remote area nursing knowledge

The Role of Entrepreneurial Orientation and Modularity for Business Model Innovation in Service Companies

The phenomenon of business model innovation (BMI) is taking up speed in researchers' attention. Specifically service firms find it difficult to protect their intellectual property and need dynamic capabilities to invent and launch their new business models. This study on service firms' BMI applies the dynamic capability view (DCV) to understand how two capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and modularity produce BMI. These two capabilities consider two sides of BMI. BMI relates to opportunity-seeking behaviour, creating new values and opportunity exploitation that then allows monetising and capturing value. In this respect, BMI takes advantage of the two dynamic capabilities: EO and modularity. The results of our study of 299 international service firms show that EO and modularity trigger BMI, and that EO is especially favourable for BMI in the context of high environmental uncertainty

Understanding the Processes that Regulate Positive Emotional Experience: Unsolved Problems and Future Directions for Theory and Research on Savoring

In this paper, we focus on unanswered questions and future directions in positive psychology, with a special emphasis on savoring processes that regulate positive emotions. To advance our understanding of the savoring processes underlying positive experience, we highlight three unresolved issues that must be addressed: (1) discriminating the distinctive neuropsychological profiles associated with different savoring processes; (2) developing viable methods of measuring and analyzing the mediational mechanisms involved in real-time savoring; and (3) clarifying the developmental processes through which people acquire different strategies to savor positive experiences across the life span. We propose several potentially fruitful lines of attack aimed at addressing these unsolved problems, each of which requires new methods of assessment to advance theory and refine our conceptual understanding of savoring

Autonomy Infused Teleoperation with Application to BCI Manipulation

Robot teleoperation systems face a common set of challenges including latency, low-dimensional user commands, and asymmetric control inputs. User control with Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) exacerbates these problems through especially noisy and erratic low-dimensional motion commands due to the difficulty in decoding neural activity. We introduce a general framework to address these challenges through a combination of computer vision, user intent inference, and arbitration between the human input and autonomous control schemes. Adjustable levels of assistance allow the system to balance the operator's capabilities and feelings of comfort and control while compensating for a task's difficulty. We present experimental results demonstrating significant performance improvement using the shared-control assistance framework on adapted rehabilitation benchmarks with two subjects implanted with intracortical brain-computer interfaces controlling a seven degree-of-freedom robotic manipulator as a prosthetic. Our results further indicate that shared assistance mitigates perceived user difficulty and even enables successful performance on previously infeasible tasks. We showcase the extensibility of our architecture with applications to quality-of-life tasks such as opening a door, pouring liquids from containers, and manipulation with novel objects in densely cluttered environments

Dissecting the role of putative CD81 binding regions of E2 in mediating HCV entry: Putative CD81 binding region 1 is not involved in CD81 binding

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hepatitis C virus (HCV) encodes two transmembrane glycoproteins E1 and E2 which form a heterodimer. E1 is believed to mediate fusion while E2 has been shown to bind cellular receptors including CD81. In this study, alanine substitutions in E2 were generated within putative CD81 binding regions to define residues critical for viral entry. The effect of each mutation was tested by challenging susceptible cell lines with mutant HCV E1E2 pseudotyped viruses generated using a lentiviral system (HCVpp). In addition to assaying infectivity, producer cell expression and HCVpp incorporation of HCV E1 and E2 proteins, CD81 binding profiles, and E1E2 association of mutants were examined.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Based on these characteristics, mutants either displayed wt characteristics (high infectivity [≥ 50% of wt HCVpp], CD81 binding, E1E2 expression, association, and incorporation into viral particles and proper conformation) or segregated into 4 distinct low infectivity (≤ 50% of wt HCVpp) mutant phenotypes: (I) CD81 binding deficient (despite wt E1E2 expression, incorporation and association and proper conformation); (II) CD81 binding competent, but lack of E1 detection on the viral particle, (despite adequate E1E2 expression in producer cell lysates and proper conformation); (III) CD81 binding competent, with adequate E1E2 expression, incorporation, association, and proper E2 conformation (i.e. no defect identified to explain the reduced infectivity observed); (IV) CD81 binding deficient due to disruption of E2 mutant protein conformation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although most alanine substitutions within the putative CD81 binding region 1 (amino acids 474–492) displayed greatly reduced HCVpp infectivity, they retained soluble CD81 binding, proper E2 conformation, E1E2 association and incorporation into HCVpp suggesting that region 1 of E2 does not mediate binding to CD81. In contrast, conformationally correct E2 mutants (Y527 and W529) within the second putative CD81 binding region (amino acids 522–551) disrupted binding of E2 to CD81-GST, suggesting that region 2 is critical to CD81 binding. Likewise, all conformationally intact mutants within the third putative CD81 binding region (amino acids 612–619), except L615A, were important for E2 binding to CD81-GST. This region is highly conserved across genotypes, underlining its importance in mediating viral entry.</p