Composite relations: Democratic firms balancing the general and the particular

This paper focuses on a central coordinative tension in alternative, democratic organizations: They need to maintain formal equality and democratic governance, but they also have to support their members in their autonomy and be sensitive toward their particularities. Based on an empirical study of two democratic-collectivist firms, this paper combines insights from Laurent Thévenot’s sociology of engagement, and Zelizer’s notion of relational work to analyze how firms can establish “composite relations” that enable to balance the general and the particular. The paper offers two main contributions to the literature on alternative organizations: First, it describes possibilities for compositions between particular, personal relations, which are often of high importance in alternative organizations, and general, standardized relations, which are centrally important for all modern organizations. Second, while influential work on alternative organization assumes, that the tension between social values and business is quasi-equal to a tension between informal and formalized coordination in organizations, this paper develops a more nuanced perspective on the interrelation between morality and coordination in alternative organizations.Peer Reviewe

Advancing Dispute Resolution by Unpacking the Sources of Conflict: Toward an Integrated Framework

Organizational leaders, public policy makers, dispute resolution professionals, and scholars have developed diverse methods for resolving workplace conflict. But there is inadequate recognition that the effectiveness of a dispute resolution method depends on its fit with the source of a particular conflict. Consequently, it is essential to better understand where conflict comes from and how this affects dispute resolution. To these ends, this paper uniquely integrates scholarship from multiple disciplines to develop a multi-dimensional framework on the sources of conflict. This provides an important foundation for theorizing and identifying effective dispute resolution methods, which are more important than ever as the changing world of work raises new issues, conflicts, and institutions

Making Stronger Causal Inferences: Accounting for Selection Bias in Associations Between High Performance Work Systems, Leadership, and Employee and Customer Satisfaction

©American Psychological Association, 2018. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at: 10.1037/apl0000315Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#430-2014-00383)We develop competing hypotheses about the relationship between high performance work systems (HPWS) with employee and customer satisfaction. Drawing on 8 years of employee and customer survey data from a financial services firm, we used a recently developed empirical technique—covariate balanced propensity score (CBPS) weighting—to examine if the proposed relationships between HPWS and satisfaction outcomes can be explained by reverse causality, selection effects, or commonly omitted variables such as leadership behavior. The results provide support for leader behaviors as a primary driver of customer satisfaction, rather than HPWS, and also suggest that the problem of reverse causality requires additional attention in future human resource (HR) systems research. Model comparisons suggest that the estimates and conclusions vary across CBPS, meta-analytic, cross-sectional, and time-lagged models (with and without a lagged dependent variable as a control). We highlight the theoretical and methodological implications of the findings for HR systems research

Effect of ovulatory follicle size on steroidogenic capacity, molecular markers of oocyte competence and bovine pregnancy associated with glycoproteins in beef cows

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on June 7, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Thesis advisor: Dr. Michael F. SmithVita.Includes bibliographical references.M.S. University of Missouri--Columbia 2011."December 2011"Artificial insemination (AI) and estrus synchronization (ES) are effective tools for the genetic advancement of cattle. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) is used at the beginning of ES protocols to induce ovulation and start a new follicular wave, and(or) at the end of a protocol to induce ovulation in combination with insemination. However, GnRH-induced ovulation of physiologically immature follicles negatively affected pregnancy rates in beef heifers and postpartum cows and increased late embryonic/early fetal loss. Mechanisms associated with reduced pregnancy rates and late embryonic/fetal survival are not clear, but may be due to inadequate oocyte competence and(or) a compromised uterine environment. Therefore, two studies were conducted to deterimine the effect of ovulatory follicle size on oocyte competence (experiment 1) and placental function (experiment 2-4). Based on the above experiments, ovulatory follicle diameter was positively associated with serum and intrafollicular estradiol; however, the relationship between ovulatory follicle size and markers of oocyte competence was not conclusive (experiment 1). Furthermore, there was no relationship between bovine pregnancy associated glycoproteins (bPAGs; marker of placental function) and ovulatory follicle size, stage of embryonic development, or embryo quality; however, cows that lost an embryo after d 28 of gestation had lower concentrations of bPAGs on d 28 compared to cows that maintained pregnancy (experiment 2-4)

Molecular and cellular factors determining the functional pleiotropy of cytokines

Cytokines are soluble factors vital for mammalian physiology. Cytokines elicit highly pleiotropic activities, characterized by their ability to induce a wide spectrum of functional responses in a diverse range of cell subsets, which makes their study very challenging. Cytokines activate signalling via receptor dimerization/oligomerization, triggering activation of the JAK (Janus kinase)/STAT (signal transducer and activator of transcription) signalling pathway. Given the strong crosstalk and shared usage of key components of cytokine signalling pathways, a long-standing question in the field pertains to how functional diversity is achieved by cytokines. Here, we discuss how biophysical – for example, ligand-receptor binding affinity and topology – and cellular – for example, receptor, JAK and STAT protein levels, endosomal compartment – parameters contribute to the modulation and diversification of cytokine responses. We review how these parameters ultimately converge into a common mechanism to fine-tune cytokine signalling that involves the control of the number of Tyr residues phosphorylated in the receptor intracellular domain upon cytokine stimulation. This results in different kinetics of STAT activation, and induction of specific gene expression programs, ensuring the generation of functional diversity by cytokines using a limited set of signalling intermediaries. We describe how these first principles of cytokine signalling have been exploited using protein engineering to design cytokine variants with more specific and less toxic responses for immunotherapy.</p

Identifying cytokine signaling signatures in primary human Th-1 cells by phospho-proteomics analysis

Summary: Stable isotope labeling by amino acid-based high-resolution phosphoproteomics is a powerful technique that allows for direct comparison of cells stimulated under different experimental conditions. This feature makes it the ideal methodology to identify cytokine signaling networks. Here, we present an optimized protocol for the isolation and identification of phosphopeptides from IL-6-stimulated primary human Th-1 cells.For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Martinez-Fabregas et al. (2020)

Von Aushandlungen und Feststellungen. Konventionentheoretische Analyseperspektiven auf Organisationen

In der französischen Soziologie der Konventionen werden Organisationen als „compromise devices“ (Thévenot 2001) gesehen, als sozio-materielle Arrangements, deren Funktion es ist, unterschiedliche Formen der Koordination zu verbinden. Der Ansatz hat eine spezifische, aber genuin praxistheoretische Vorstellung von Organisationen: Diese werden als eine Form der Herstellung von Generalisierbarkeit gesehen, als Versuche, einen Kompromiss zwischen verschiedenen Praktiken mit unterschiedlichen„general understandings“ und „teleoaffective structures“ (Schatzki 2005) herzustellen. Organisationen sind damit „mehrdeutigkeitsbewältigende Strukturen“ (Knoll 2014), die es ermöglichen, die Unsicherheit, die durch die Gleichzeitigkeit von widersprüchlichen Rationalitäten entsteht, zu überwinden.Die methodische Präferenz der Konventionentheorie ist die der Analyse von „kritischen Momenten“ (Boltanski und Thévenot 2007) in denen Konflikte ausgetragen und Einigungen ausgehandelt werden. Ich analysiere ein „virtuelles Kollektiv“ in einem kritischen Moment, in dem die Bedeutung, die Grenzen und der Charakter des Kollektivs in Frage gestellt werden. Hier wird deutlich, dass eine praxistheoretische Analyseperspektive hilft, die Aushandlungen und Feststellungen zu verstehen, auf denen Organisationen beruhen.Während praxistheoretische Ansätze oft die Bedeutung von informellen Regeln, Routinen und impliziten Wissen betonen, nutze ich Werkzeuge der Theorie der Konventionen um zu verfolgen, wie die Kollektivmitglieder versuchen von einem relativ offenen Zusammenhang zu einem gemeinsamen und fixierbaren Verständnis, zur „Feststellung“ ihres Kollektivs zu kommen. Hier erweist sich das Konzept der Prüfung als nützlich. Es bezeichnet Praktiken, in denen Äquivalenzbeziehungen zwischen Menschen und Objekten hergestellt werden, um diese dann nach ihren jeweiligen Wertigkeiten (an)ordnen zu können und die Richtigkeit oder Gerechtigkeit einer (An)Ordnung zu überprüfen. Über diesen Zugang werden die konfligierenden Wertvorstellungen deutlich, die in Organisationen miteinander in Einklang gebracht werden müssen und die Kompromisse, die hierfür notwendig sind. Gleichzeitig wird auch klar, welche Bedeutung explizierbares und überprüfbares Wissen und damit verbunden, Investitionen in Messwerkzeuge und sozio-technische Systeme (Thévenot 1984), für die notwendigen Feststellungen haben

Development of macrophage precursors into B220+ LAK effectors

Macrophage precursor cells obtained from murine bone marrow culture supplemented with interleukin-2 (IL-2) are known to possess NK/LAK-like characteristics. In the present work, these cells were tested for their expression of B220 marker on their surface, because the B220 marker was reported as a marker expressed on the activated stages of splenic NK cells. We found that, at the stage with highly lytic activity (LAK-activity), the effector cells derived from bone marrow macrophage precursors do express B220 marker on their surface. This kind of B220 acquisition on the macrophage precursor cells was induced by high-dose interleukin-2, but did not seem to be related with the production of cytosol protein perforin, a cytolytic molecule that can be induced in macrophage precursors upon the stimulation with interleukin-2. On the other hand, a down-regulation of the myeloid markers Mac-1 and F4/80 was observed on the surface of macrophage precursors when the cells began to express B220 marker. As a result, a highly lytic B220+ population lacking myeloid cell markers appeared. Since this population displayed an antigenic profile (B220+ NK-1.1+ CD3– CD8– Thy-1.2+) that is similar to the LAK effectors derived from splenic NK cells, we suggest that this in vitro observed phenotypic variation of bone marrow macrophage precursors during their differentiation under the influence of interleukin-2 may represent the actual developing process of NK/LAK cells, of which the cell lineage has long been remained as unclarified

Metathese- und Nicht-Metatheseaktivitäten von Ruthenium-Carben-Komplexen

Metathese und Nicht-Metatheseaktivitäten von Ruthenium-CarbenkomplexenDie Grubbs-Katalysatoren der 1. und 2. Generation zeigen in vielen Anwendungenunterschiedliche Aktivitäten in der Metathese und auch abweichende Reaktivitätendarüber hinaus. Die höhere Aktivität des Katalysators der 2. Generation wird anhandder Synthese ausgewählter 5-Ring-Systeme herausgearbeitet. Die Ru-Komplexekönnen durch Zugabe anorganischer Hydride in effiziente und selektiveKatalysatoren überführt werden, welche eine unmittelbare Hydrierung desMetatheseproduktes unter milden Bedingungen ermöglichen. Qualitativunterschiedliche Produkte werden mit diesen Katalysatoren unter ansonstenidentischen Bedingungen erhalten, führt man wenig aktive Ringschlussmetathesen(RCM) in mehrfach chlorierten Lösungsmitteln durch. Während der Einsatz desKatalysators der 2. Generation selektiv zum RCM-Produkt führt, katalysiert jener der1. Generation hoch diastereoselektiv eine radikalische Atom-Transfer-Reaktion.Darüber hinaus wurden Protokolle entwickelt, welche die Metathese mit derRadikalreaktion zu einer Tandemsequenz verbindet

Improving Beef Cattle Profitability by Changing Calving Season Length

We determined the impacts of calving season length on net returns and variability in net returns for spring-and fall-calving herds in Tennessee. Weaning weight as a function of calving date was estimated using a 19-year data set and simulation models generated distributions of net returns for 45-, 60-, and 90-day calving periods with and without using hypothetical improved reproductive management (IRM) practices. Shortening the calving period from 90 days increased expected net returns in the spring-and fall-calving herds. The 45-day fall-calving period with IRM maximized profits, but an extremely risk-averse producer would select a 45-day fall-calving period without IRM