When culture meets digital platforms: value creation and stakeholders' alignment in big data use

Research on big data has highlighted that a crucial element to create value from data is the capability of aligning different stakeholders’ interests. However, it has not yet been investigated empirically how this process of alignment can be realized. We conduct a multiple case study on the two leading platforms involved in the online dissemination of cultural heritage – Europeana and Google Arts & Culture. Our findings reveal that a platform overtakes a rival one when it turns on multiple drivers of value creation in such a way that the drivers contribute to realigning the interests expressed by the stakeholders whose strategic objectives and beliefs were formerly divergent – or simply unrelated – to each other. This capability of realigning different stakeholders’ interests is independent of the level of industry-specific knowledge that the platform orchestrator has. The dynamics we document imply that Google has assumed a system integration role in the cultural ecosystem. This generates new trade-offs for museums in the way they generate value for the tourism industry. The paper enriches our understanding of what strategies digital platforms adopt to create value in big data contexts and provides a base to continue the investigation on other ecosystems driven by big data

The challenges of implementing packaged hospital electronic prescribing and medicine administration systems in UK hospitals: premature purchase of immature solutions?

The UK National Health Service is making major efforts to implement Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicine Administration (HEPMA) to improve patient safety and quality of care. Substantial public investments have attracted a wide range of UK and overseas suppliers offering Commercial-Off –The-Shelf (COTS) solutions. A lack of (UK) implementation experience and weak supplier-user relationships are reflected in systems with limited configurability, poorly matched to the needs and practices of English hospitals. This situation echoes the history of comparable corporate information infrastructures - Enterprise Resource Planning systems - in the 1980s/1990s. UK government intervention prompted a similar swarming of immature, often unfinished, products into the market. This resulted, in both cases, in protracted and difficult implementation processes as vendors and adopters struggled to get the systems to work and match the circumstances of the adopting organisations. An analysis of the influence of the Installed Base on Information Infrastructures should explore how the evolution of COTS solutions is conditioned by the structure of adopter and vendor ‘communities’

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research

Human cerebrovascular contractile receptors are upregulated via a B-Raf/MEK/ERK-sensitive signaling pathway

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cerebral ischemia results in a rapid increase in contractile cerebrovascular receptors, such as the 5-hydroxytryptamine type 1B (5-HT_1B), angiotensin II type 1 (AT₁), and endothelin type B (ET_B) receptors, in the vessel walls within the ischemic region, which further impairs local blood flow and aggravates tissue damage. This receptor upregulation occurs via activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway. We therefore hypothesized an important role for B-Raf, the first signaling molecule in the pathway. To test our hypothesis, human cerebral arteries were incubated at 37°C for 48 h in the absence or presence of a B-Raf inhibitor: SB-386023 or SB-590885. Contractile properties were evaluated in a myograph and protein expression of the individual receptors and activated phosphorylated B-Raf (p-B-Raf) was evaluated immunohistochemically.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>5-HT_1B, AT₁, and ET_Breceptor-mediated contractions were significantly reduced by application of SB-590885, and to a smaller extent by SB-386023. A marked reduction in AT₁receptor immunoreactivity was observed after treatment with SB-590885. Treatment with SB-590885 and SB-386023 diminished the culture-induced increase of p-B-Raf immunoreactivity.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>B-Raf signaling has a key function in the altered expression of vascular contractile receptors observed after organ culture. Therefore, specific targeting of B-Raf might be a novel approach to reduce tissue damage after cerebral ischemia by preventing the previously observed upregulation of contractile receptors in smooth muscle cells.</p

Smoking particles enhance endothelin A and endothelin B receptor-mediated contractions by enhancing translation in rat bronchi

BACKGROUND: Smoking is known to cause chronic inflammatory changes in the bronchi and to contribute to airway hyper-reactivity, such as in bronchial asthma. To study the effect of smoking on the endothelin system in rat airways, bronchial segments were exposed to DMSO-soluble smoking particles (DSP) from cigarette smoke, to nicotine and to DMSO, respectively. METHODS: Isolated rat bronchial segments were cultured for 24 hours in the presence or absence of DSP, nicotine or DMSO alone. Contractile responses to sarafotoxin 6c (a selective agonist for ET(B )receptors) and endothelin-1 (an ET(A )and ET(B )receptor agonist) were studied by use of a sensitive myograph. Before ET-1 was introduced, the ET(B )receptors were desensitized by use of S6c. The remaining contractility observed was considered to be the result of selective activation of the ET(A )receptors. ET(A )and ET(B )receptor mRNA expression was analyzed using real-time quantitative PCR. The location and concentration of ET(A )and ET(B )receptors were studied by means of immunohistochemistry together with confocal microscopy after overnight incubation with selective antibodies. RESULTS: After being cultured together with DSP for 24 hours the bronchial segments showed an increased contractility mediated by ET(A )and ET(B )receptors, whereas culturing them together with nicotine did not affect their contractility. The up-regulation of their contractility was blunted by cycloheximide treatment, a translational inhibitor. No significant change in the expression of ET(A )and ET(B )receptor mRNA through exposure to DMSO or to nicotine exposure alone occurred, although immunohistochemistry revealed a clear increase in ET(A )and ET(B )receptors in the smooth muscle after incubation in the presence of DSP. Taken as a whole, this is seen as the presence of a translation mechanism. CONCLUSION: The increased contractility of rat bronchi when exposed to DSP appears to be due to a translation mechanism

Stimuli of Sensory-Motor Nerves Terminate Arterial Contractile Effects of Endothelin-1 by CGRP and Dissociation of ET-1/ETA-Receptor Complexes

Endothelin-1 (ET-1), a long-acting paracrine mediator, is implicated in cardiovascular diseases but clinical trials with ET-receptor antagonists were not successful in some areas. We tested whether the quasi-irreversible receptor-binding of ET-1 (i) limits reversing effects of the antagonists and (ii) can be selectively dissociated by an endogenous counterbalancing mechanism.-receptor complexes.-receptors by ET-1 (i) occur at an antagonist-insensitive site of the receptor and (ii) are selectively terminated by endogenously released CGRP. Hence, natural stimuli of sensory-motor nerves that stimulate release of endogenous CGRP can be considered for therapy of diseases involving ET-1

Constructing a climate change logic: An institutional perspective on the "tragedy of the commons"

Despite increasing interest in transnational fields, transnational commons have received little attention. In contrast to economic models of commons, which argue that commons occur naturally and are prone to collective inaction and tragedy, we introduce a social constructionist account of commons. Specifically, we show that actor-level frame changes can eventually lead to the emergence of an overarching, hybrid "commons logic" at the field level. These frame shifts enable actors with different logics to reach a working consensus and avoid "tragedies of the commons." Using a longitudinal analysis of key actors' logics and frames, we tracked the evolution of the global climate change field over 40 years. We bracketed time periods demarcated by key field-configuring events, documented the different frame shifts in each time period, and identified five mechanisms (collective theorizing, issue linkage, active learning, legitimacy seeking, and catalytic amplification) that underpin how and why actors changed their frames at various points in time-enabling them to move toward greater consensus around a transnational commons logic. In conclusion, the emergence of a commons logic in a transnational field is a nonlinear process and involves satisfying three conditions: (1) key actors view their fates as being interconnected with respect to a problem issue, (2) these actors perceive their own behavior as contributing to the problem, and (3) they take collective action to address the problem. Our findings provide insights for multinational companies, nation-states, nongovernmental organizations, and other stakeholders in both conventional and unconventional commons