How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms

Trust is an important driver of superior alliance performance. Alliance managers are influential in this regard because trust requires active involvement, commitment and the dedicated support of the key actors involved in the strategic alliance. Despite the importance of trust for explaining alliance performance, little effort has been made to systematically investigate the mechanisms that managers can use to purposefully create trust in strategic alliances. We use Parkhe’s (1998b) theoretical framework to derive nine hypotheses that distinguish between process-based, characteristic-based and institutional-based trust-building mechanisms. Our meta-analysis of 64 empirical studies shows that trust is strongly related to alliance performance. Process-based mechanisms are more important for building trust than characteristic- and institutional-based mechanisms. The effects of prior ties and asset specificity are not as strong as expected and the impact of safeguards on trust is not well understood. Overall, theoretical trust research has outpaced empirical research by far and promising opportunities for future empirical research exist

The basidiomycetous yeast Trichosporon may cause severe lung exacerbation in cystic fibrosis patients - clinical analysis of Trichosporon positive patients in a Munich cohort

Background: The relevance of Trichosporon species for cystic fibrosis (CF) patients has not yet been extensively investigated. Methods: The clinical course of CF patients with Trichosporon spp. in their respiratory secretions was analysed between 2003 and 2010 in the Munich CF center. All respiratory samples of 360 CF patients (0 - 52.4 years; mean FEV1 2010 81.4% pred) were investigated. Results: In 8 patients (2.2%, 3 male, mean age 21.8 years) Trichosporon was detected at least once. One patient carried T. asahii. One patient carried T. mycotoxinivorans and one patient T. inkin as determined by DNA sequencing. As potential risk factors for Trichosporon colonization steroid treatment, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) and CF associated diabetes were identified in 6, 5, and 2 patients respectively. For one patient, the observation period was not long enough to determine the clinical course. One patient had only a single positive specimen and exhibited a stable clinical course determined by change in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), body-mass-index (BMI), C-reactive protein (CRP) and immunoglobulin G (IgG). Of 6 patients with repeatedly positive specimen (mean detection period 4.5 years), 4 patients had a greater decline in FEV1 than expected, 2 of these a decline in BMI and 1 an increase in IgG above the reference range. 2 patients received antimycotic treatment: one patient with a tormenting dry cough subjectively improved under Amphotericin B inhalation; one patient with a severe exacerbation due to T. inkin was treated with i.v. Amphotericin B, oral Voriconazole and Posaconazole which stabilized the clinical condition. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the potential association of Trichosporon spp. with severe exacerbations in CF patients

B7-H1-Deficiency Enhances the Potential of Tolerogenic Dendritic Cells by Activating CD1d-Restricted Type II NKT Cells

Background: Dendritic cells (DC) can act tolerogenic at a semi-mature stage by induction of protective CD4+ T cell and NKT cell responses. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we studied the role of the co-inhibitory molecule B7-H1 (PD-L1, CD274) on semimature DC that were generated from bone marrow (BM) cells of B7-H12/2 mice and applied to the model of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis (EAE). Injections of B7-H1-deficient DC showed increased EAE protection as compared to wild type (WT)-DC. Injections of B7-H12/2 TNF-DC induced higher release of peptide-specific IL-10 and IL-13 after restimulation in vitro together with elevated serum cytokines IL-4 and IL-13 produced by NKT cells, and reduced IL-17 and IFN-c production in the CNS. Experiments in CD1d2/2 and Ja2812/2 mice as well as with type I and II NKT cell lines indicated that only type II NKT cells but not type I NKT cells (invariant NKT cells) could be stimulated by an endogenous CD1d-ligand on DC and were responsible for the increased serum cytokine production in the absence of B7-H1. Conclusions/Significance: Together, our data indicate that BM-DC express an endogenous CD1d ligand and B7-H1 to ihibit type II but not type I NKT cells. In the absence of B7-H1 on these DC their tolerogenic potential to stimulate tolerogenic CD4+ and NKT cell responses is enhanced

Abundance and scarcity: classical theories of money, bank balance sheets and business models, and the British restriction of 1797‐1818.

The thesis looks through the lens of bank balance sheet accounting to investigate the structural change in the British banking system between 1780 and 1832, and how classical quantity theorists of money attempted to respond to the ensuing financialisation of the wartime economy with its growing reliance on credit funded with paper-based instruments (the ‘Vansittart system’ of war finance). The thesis combines contributions to three separate fields to construct a holistic historical example of the challenges faced by monetary economists when ‘modelling’ financial innovation, credit growth, ‘fringe’ banking, and agent incentives – at a time of radical experimentation: the suspension of the 80-year-old gold standard (“the Restriction”). First, critical text analysis of the history of economics argues that the 1809-10 debate between Ricardo and Bosanquet at the peak of the credit boom, bifurcated classical theory into two timeless competing policy paradigms advocating the ‘Scarcity’ or ‘Abundance’ of money relative to exchange transactions. The competing hypotheses regarding the role of money and credit are identified and the rest of the thesis examines the archival evidence for each. Second, the core of the thesis contributes to the historical literature on banking in relation to money by reconstructing a taxonomy of bank business models, their relationships with the London inter-bank settlement system, and their responses to the Restriction - drawing on some 17,000 mostly new data points collected from the financial records of London and Country banks. The final section contributes to the economic history of money by constructing aggregated views of total bank liabilities from the firm-level data, scaled to recently available British GDP estimates. These are examined to establish (with hindsight) the relative merits and lacuna of the competing theoretical hypotheses postulated by political economists. It was the period of deleveraging after 1810 that revealed the lacuna of both paradigms