Application of Information Processing Theory on the inter-relationship of organizational culture and organizational structure

Conference Theme: Securing high Performance through Cultural awareness and Dispute AvoidanceA conceptual model of the inter-relationship between organizational culture and organizational structure has been formulated. However, it is still unable to explain the direction of interaction of organizational culture and organizational structure in real day-to-day operation. This paper explains this relationship through the application of Information-Processing Theory. It has been established that, on one hand, organizational structure modifies organizational culture and, on the other hand, organizational culture determines organizational structure. Based on the Information-Processing Theory, it is hypothesized that a good fit between organizational structure and organizational culture, has a positive relationship with the effectiveness of the organization. This model is illustrated by an empirical study of the Facilities Management Unit (FMU) of a public health care institution. The information-processing requirements of organizational culture and information-processing capacities of organizational structure of FMU are measured through a questionnaire adopted from the Competing Values Model and a self-administered questionnaire respectively. Preliminary results show that the information-processing requirement of the FMU is high as the organizational culture is dominated by clan. However, the information-processing capacity of the FMU is low as the organizational structure is highly formalized and centralized while the level of integration is only medium. The organizational culture of the FMU is not fitted by its organizational structure.postprin

Directional interaction of organizational culture and structure through information processing theory

A new theoretical model has been developed to explain the interaction of organizational culture and organizational structure, which, together, influence the effectiveness of the organization under a Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm. It is found that through a loop of 'People-Behaviour-Performance- Organizational Structure-People', culture affects the organizational structure and through another 'Goals-Organizational Structure-Output- Organizational Culture-Gaols' loop, the structure of an organization modifies the organizational culture. Furthermore, with the support of Information Processing Theory, it is able to explain the direction of the interaction of organizational culture and organizational structure. It is found that if the information-processing requirement of an organization dominated by a specific culture fits the information-processing capacity of a particular structure of the organization, the effectiveness of the organization increases. The model is applied in a case study of public healthcare institution. This paper presents both the model and its analysis in application.postprintThe 24th Annual Conference of Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM 2008), Cardiff, U.K., 1-3 September 2008. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM 2008), 2008, v. 1, p. 465-47

A semi-analytical method for bending, buckling, and free vibration analyses of sandwich panels with square-honeycomb cores

A semi-analytical method for bending, global buckling, and free vibration analyses of sandwich panels with square-honeycomb cores is presented. The discrete geometric nature of the square-honeycomb core is taken into account by treating the core sheets as thin beams and the sandwich panel as composite structure of plates and beams with proper displacement compatibility. Based on the classical model of sandwich panels, the governing equations of motion of the discrete structure are derived using Hamilton's principle. Closed-form solutions are developed for bending, global buckling, and free vibration of simply supported square-honeycomb sandwich panels by employing Fourier series and the Galerkin approach. Results from the proposed method agree well with available results in the literature and those from detailed finite element analysis. The effects of various geometric parameters of the sandwich panel on its behavior are investigated. The present method provides an efficient way of analysis and optimization of sandwich panels with square-honeycomb cores. © 2010 World Scientific Publishing Company.postprin

Double blind ultrafast pulse characterization by mixed frequency generation in a gold antenna

Ultrafast pulse characterization requires the analysis of correlation functions generated by frequency mixing of optical pulses in a nonlinear medium. In this work, we use a gold optical nanoantenna to generate simultaneously Four Wave Mixing and Sum Frequency Generation across the tuning range of a Ti: Sapphire and Optical Parametric Oscillator (OPO) system. Since metal nanoparticles create remarkably strong nonlinear responses for their size without the need for phase matching, this allows us to simultaneously characterize the unknown OPO pulse and its pump pulse using a single spectrogram. The nonlinear mixing is efficient enough to retrieve pulses with energies in the picojoule range

The PB2 mutation with lysine at 627 enhances the pathogenicity of avian influenza (H7N9) virus which belongs to a non-zoonotic lineage

A novel avian-origin influenza A (H7N9) virus emerged in China in 2013 and has caused zoonotic disease in over 1123 persons with an overall mortality around 30%. Amino acid changes at the residues 591, 627 and 701 of polymerase basic protein 2 (PB2) have been found frequently in the human H7N9 isolates but not in viruses isolated from avian species. We have recently identified a cluster of H7N9 viruses in ducks which circulated in China prior to the first recognition of zoonotic disease in 2013. These duck viruses have genetic background distinct from the zoonotic H7N9 lineage. We found that the introduction of PB2 mutation with K at 627 but not K at 591 or N at 701 to the duck H7N9 virus led to increased pathogenicity in mice. We also found that the induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNF-α, IP-10, MCP-1 and MIP-1α were associated with increased severity of infection. We conclude that introduction of the mammalian adaptation mutations into the PB2 gene of duck H7N9 viruses, which are genetically unrelated to the zoonotic H7N9 lineage, can also enhance pathogenicity in mice.published_or_final_versio

A contextualização como estruturante curricular na educação em ciências : uma discussão a partir dos documentos oficiaisbra sileiros e artigos especializados

As Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional desencadearam políticas educacionais para a redefinição do Ensino Médio no Brasil. Como parte dessa política, os Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais incorporam a contextualização como princípio curricular central. Empregando análise de conteúdo,analisamos artigos de periódicos que atribuem diferentes sentidos para a contextualização no Ensino de Ciências. Com a construção de categorias inspiradas na análise vigotskiana, dimensionamos o conteúdo da contextualização como sentido epistemológico/cognitivo, ético e híbridos destes dois.Encontramos a preponderância de um hibridismo entre uma contextualização que busca dar um sentido cognitivo ao conhecimento e uma contextualização que busca um sentido ético, articulação nem sempre presentes de forma explicita nos documentos oficiais

Characterizing Operations Preserving Separability Measures via Linear Preserver Problems

We use classical results from the theory of linear preserver problems to characterize operators that send the set of pure states with Schmidt rank no greater than k back into itself, extending known results characterizing operators that send separable pure states to separable pure states. We also provide a new proof of an analogous statement in the multipartite setting. We use these results to develop a bipartite version of a classical result about the structure of maps that preserve rank-1 operators and then characterize the isometries for two families of norms that have recently been studied in quantum information theory. We see in particular that for k at least 2 the operator norms induced by states with Schmidt rank k are invariant only under local unitaries, the swap operator and the transpose map. However, in the k = 1 case there is an additional isometry: the partial transpose map.Comment: 16 pages, typos corrected, references added, proof of Theorem 4.3 simplified and clarifie

Effect of Al addition on the microstructure and electronic structure of HfO₂film

Author name used in this publication: P. F. LeeAuthor name used in this publication: J. Y. Dai2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Nonlinear Impurity Modes in Homogeneous and Periodic Media

We analyze the existence and stability of nonlinear localized waves described by the Kronig-Penney model with a nonlinear impurity. We study the properties of such waves in a homogeneous medium, and then analyze new effects introduced by periodicity of the medium parameters. In particular, we demonstrate the existence of a novel type of stable nonlinear band-gap localized states, and also reveal an important physical mechanism of the oscillatory wave instabilities associated with the band-gap wave resonances.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; To be published in: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop "Nonlinearity and Disorder: Theory and Applications" (Tashkent, 2-6 Oct, 2000) Editors: P.L. Christiansen and F.K. Abdullaev (Kluwer, 2001