The Impact of Sexual Harassment on Turnover Intentions, Absenteeism, and Job Satisfaction: Findings from Argentina, Brazil and Chile

This study, which tested the effects of sexual harassment on consequences previously indicated in US studies, (i.e., overall turnover intentions, overall absenteeism and job dissatisfaction), was conducted with 8108 employees chosen by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in three Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Multivariate and logistic regression were employed while controlling for age, education, gender, marital status, and race to analyze ILO’s database. Significant results revealed that Latin American employees who were sexually harassed were likely to have more turnover intentions and to engage in more absenteeism; yet they did not experience a significant decrease in job satisfaction. These results differ from US findings indicating that there are cross cultural differences in the consequences of sexual harassment. However, the more costly outcomes of sexual harassment (i.e., turnover intentions and absenteeism) are consistent with US findings, indicating the need for multinational companies to establish sexual harassment policies in Latin America as well despite their different legal systems

Cultural Long-Term Orientation and Facework Strategies

This study added to extant research by investigating the relationship between cultural long term orientation (LTO) or Confucian Dynamism and harmony and cooperation facework strategies. Studying intercultural communication is particularly vital at this time given the increasing global nature of today’s communication interactions. Respondents from two cultures -- Hong Kong and the United States --completed questionnaires. Multivariate analysis of variance results showed that LTO culture members were more likely to use harmonious and cooperative facework strategies than their short-term orientated counterparts. An inadvertent finding from this study was that Hong Kong, originally thought to be high on the LTO dimension, actually scored moderate. This finding brings into question the assumption that “culture” can be classified by country

Communication practices in the US and Syria

This study highlights Syrian communication practices using comparative tests with the United States communication as a baseline. Additionally, theoretical findings on individualism and collectivism theory are extended to include findings from Syria. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance was used to test culture’s effect in demographically similar (in age, SES, and education) student convenience samples, with the covariate communication adaptability, on dependent variables: empathy, social confirmation, social composure, friendships, non-verbal immediacy, social self-efficacy, and general self-efficacy. Results indicated that Syrians possess more empathy, social confirmation, and perceived general self-efficacy in comparison to U.S. citizens who have greater social composure, friendships, non-verbal immediacy and social self-efficacy. These results indicate that Syrians have the strength of self-efficacy to succeed in intercultural relationships while U.S. Americans have the assets of warmth and sociability to enable successful interactions with Syrian

Comparative analysis of the transcriptome across distant species

The transcriptome is the readout of the genome. Identifying common features in it across distant species can reveal fundamental principles. To this end, the ENCODE and modENCODE consortia have generated large amounts of matched RNA-sequencing data for human, worm and fly. Uniform processing and comprehensive annotation of these data allow comparison across metazoan phyla, extending beyond earlier within-phylum transcriptome comparisons and revealing ancient, conserved features. Specifically, we discover co-expression modules shared across animals, many of which are enriched in developmental genes. Moreover, we use expression patterns to align the stages in worm and fly development and find a novel pairing between worm embryo and fly pupae, in addition to the embryo-to-embryo and larvae-to-larvae pairings. Furthermore, we find that the extent of non-canonical, non-coding transcription is similar in each organism, per base pair. Finally, we find in all three organisms that the gene-expression levels, both coding and non-coding, can be quantitatively predicted from chromatin features at the promoter using a 'universal model' based on a single set of organism-independent parameters