ILR Impact Brief – Diversity and Inclusion: Is There Really a Difference?

By almost any measure, workforce heterogeneity is increasing. With more women, ethnic and racial. minorities, and people with different lifestyles and learning styles holding down jobs, employers are searching for strategies that effectively and efficiently put these varied skills and perspectives to maximal use. Traditional approaches to diversity management include targeted recruitment, career development, mentoring, and education and training. Some organizations, however, take a broader view and seek to eliminate barriers to full utilization of varied worker competencies. This latter approach stresses inclusion, rather than diversity, and typically involves initiatives that focus on employee participation, enhanced communication, and stronger community relations. Despite the apparent distinction between diversity and inclusion strategies, employers may use the words interchangeably

Examining the Link Between Diversity and Firm Performance: The Effects of Diversity Reputation and Leader Racial Diversity

Given the scarcity of empirical research on the impact of diversity on organizational performance, we used longitudinal data for 100 firms to test hypotheses related to the effects of diversity reputation and leader racial diversity on firm financial outcomes. The results showed a positive relationship between diversity reputation and book-to-market equity, and a curvilinear U-shaped relationship between leader diversity and revenues, net income and book-to-market equity. Our analyses suggest that economic benefits generated from diversity reputation may primarily derive from capital rather than product markets. Further, firm performance declines with increases in the representation of racial minorities in leadership up to a point, beyond which further increases in diversity are associated with increases in performance

The Effects of Recruitment Message Specificity on Applicant Attraction to Organizations

We used the elaboration likelihood model from marketing research to explain and examine how recruitment message specificity influences job seeker attraction to organizations. Using an experimental design and data from 171 college-level job seekers, the results showed that detailed recruitment messages led to enhanced perceptions of organization attributes and person-organization fit. Perceptions of fit were found to mediate the relationship between message specificity and intention to apply to the organization. In addition, perceptions of organization attributes and person-organization fit were found to influence intentions to apply under circumstances of explicit recruitment information while attractiveness and fit perceptions were shown to influence application intentions under conditions of implicit recruitment information. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

The Language of Bias: A Linguistic Approach to Understanding Intergroup Relations

[Excerpt] This chapter explores the role of language in the relationship between diversity and team performance. Specifically, we consider how a linguistic approach to social categorization may be used to study the social psychological mechanisms that underlie diversity effects. Using the results of a study examining the effects of gender, ethnicity and tenure on language abstraction, we consider the potential implications for team processes and effectiveness. In addition, we propose a revised team input-process-output model that highlights the potential effects of language on team processes. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research linking diversity, linguistic categorization and team effectiveness

The Attack and Defense of Weakest-Link Networks

This paper experimentally examines behavior in a two-player game of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets, in which the attacker’s objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender’s objective is diametrically opposed. We apply two benchmark contest success functions (CSFs): the auction CSF and the lottery CSF. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, under the auction CSF, attackers utilize a stochastic “guerilla warfare” strategy — in which a single random target is attacked — more than 80% of the time. Under the lottery CSF, attackers utilize the stochastic guerilla warfare strategy almost 45% of the time, contrary to the theoretical prediction of an equal allocation of forces across the targets.Colonel Blotto, conflict resolution, weakest-link, best-shot, multi-dimensional resource allocation, experiments

The Attack and Defense of Weakest-Link Networks

This paper experimentally examines behavior in a two-player game of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets, in which the attacker’s objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender’s objective is diametrically opposed .We apply two benchmark contest success functions (CSFs): the auction CSF and the lottery CSF. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, under the auction CSF, attackers utilize a stochastic “guerilla warfare” strategy - in which a single random target is attacked - more than 80% of the time. Under the lottery CSF, attackers utilize the stochastic guerilla warfare strategy almost 45% of the time, contrary to the theoretical prediction of an equal allocation of forces across the targets.Colonel Blotto, conflict resolution, weakest-link, best-shot, multi-dimensional resource allocation, experiments

The Attack and Defense of Weakest-Link Networks

This paper experimentally examines behavior in a two-player game of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets, in which the attacker's objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender's objective is diametrically opposed. We apply two benchmark contest success functions (CSFs): the auction CSF and the lottery CSF. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, under the auction CSF, attackers utilize a stochastic “guerilla warfare” strategy — in which a single random target is attacked — more than 80% of the time. Under the lottery CSF, attackers utilize the stochastic guerilla warfare strategy almost 45% of the time, contrary to the theoretical prediction of an equal allocation of forces across the targets.Colonel Blotto, conflict resolution, weakest-link, best-shot, multi-dimensional resource allocation, experiments.

Automated classification of three-dimensional reconstructions of coral reefs using convolutional neural networks

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Hopkinson, B. M., King, A. C., Owen, D. P., Johnson-Roberson, M., Long, M. H., & Bhandarkar, S. M. Automated classification of three-dimensional reconstructions of coral reefs using convolutional neural networks. PLoS One, 15(3), (2020): e0230671, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230671.Coral reefs are biologically diverse and structurally complex ecosystems, which have been severally affected by human actions. Consequently, there is a need for rapid ecological assessment of coral reefs, but current approaches require time consuming manual analysis, either during a dive survey or on images collected during a survey. Reef structural complexity is essential for ecological function but is challenging to measure and often relegated to simple metrics such as rugosity. Recent advances in computer vision and machine learning offer the potential to alleviate some of these limitations. We developed an approach to automatically classify 3D reconstructions of reef sections and assessed the accuracy of this approach. 3D reconstructions of reef sections were generated using commercial Structure-from-Motion software with images extracted from video surveys. To generate a 3D classified map, locations on the 3D reconstruction were mapped back into the original images to extract multiple views of the location. Several approaches were tested to merge information from multiple views of a point into a single classification, all of which used convolutional neural networks to classify or extract features from the images, but differ in the strategy employed for merging information. Approaches to merging information entailed voting, probability averaging, and a learned neural-network layer. All approaches performed similarly achieving overall classification accuracies of ~96% and >90% accuracy on most classes. With this high classification accuracy, these approaches are suitable for many ecological applications.This study was funded by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (BMH, BR2014-049; https://sloan.org), and the National Science Foundation (MHL, OCE-1657727; https://www.nsf.gov). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Insulin direct pancreatic progenitor cell differentiation via Pdx1 regulation

poster abstractDifferentiation of early foregut endoderm into pancreatic endocrine and exocrine cells depends on a sequence of gene expression directed by various signals secreted from nearby tissue. Prior studies have shown that the pancreas is derived from Pdx1+ progenitor cells; however Pdx1 is turned off in pancreatic exocrine cells and α cells while maintained in β cells. Here, using zebrafish genetic knockdown, we showed that insulin secreted by early β cells can repress Pdx1 expression in pancreatic progenitor cells allowing them to differentiate to different pancreatic cell types. Knockdown of insulin gene severely impairs exocrine pancreas development. My results further demonstrate that inhibition of insulin signaling can induce pre-differentiation of Pdx1+ progenitor cells to β cells and Pdx1+ α cells. These Pdx1+ α cells can transdifferentiate to β cells following β cell ablation. Overall, these data represent the first in vivo evidence of local insulin signaling on pancreas development via regulation of Pdx1 expression

Measurements at low energies of the polarization-transfer coefficient Kyy' for the reaction 3H(p,n)3He at 0 degrees

Measurements of the transverse polarization coefficient Kyy' for the reaction 3H(p,n)3He are reported for outgoing neutron energies of 1.94, 5.21, and 5.81 MeV. This reaction is important both as a source of polarized neutrons for nuclear physics experiments, and as a test of theoretical descriptions of the nuclear four-body system. Comparison is made to previous measurements, confirming the 3H(p,n)3He reaction can be used as a polarized neutron source with the polarization known to an accuracy of approximately 5%. Comparison to R-matrix theory suggests that the sign of the 3F3 phase-shift parameter is incorrect. Changing the sign of this parameter dramatically improves the agreement between theory and experiment.Comment: 12 pages, RevTeX, 5 eps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.