Organisational Resilience and the Roles of Learning and Unlearning - An empirical study on organizational capabilities for resilience during the COVID-19 crisis

Faced with disturbances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations seek for ways to better anticipate, cope with, and adapt to them. Their aim is to emerge even more productively from the crisis external threats bring about - namely to stay resilient. This paper takes a capability approach to organizational resilience, focusing on the learning and unlearning capabilities. Using a quantitative survey research design, first, propositions from theory stating that learning has a positive effect on organizational resilience were empirically tested. Second, based on those insights, the role of unlearning - a concept that lately has received increased attention and may be beneficial for effective organizational learning - as a moderator in this relationship was tested. Results show that the learning capability positively affects organizational resilience, particularly the capacity of an organization to adapt to its environment. However, the hypothesis that unlearning moderates this relationship is not supported. This paper advances research on organizational resilience and unlearning by providing much needed empirical quantitative evidence in the context of a current crisis. It is suggested that organizations should enhance their learning capability to proactively develop organizational resilience. Moreover, the process of unlearning may be independent from organizational learning in a crisis context but also conceptually overlap with learning, and has to be further investigated, which provides ground for future research

Can PEth be Detected with a Cutoff of 20 ng/mL after Single Alcohol Consumption?

Phosphatidylethanol (PEth) can be determined in capillary blood collected as dried blood spots (DBS) and is a promising direct alcohol biomarker for determination of drinking habits. Its use for abstinence monitoring needs to be evaluated. Studies with patients undergoing alcohol withdrawal have shown that elimination of PEth can take up to two months. For the determination of PEth 16:0/18:1, a cutoff of 20 ng/mL has been agreed upon in the major US laboratories. However, it is not yet clear what minimum blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) have to be achieved by a single drinking episode to result in PEth concentrations above this cutoff after previous long-term abstinence. To determine whether low drinking amounts can result in a positive PEth concentration above 20 ng/mL, we recruited 12 participants ("social" drinkers). After four weeks of abstinence, alcohol was consumed at two separate drinking events with target BACs of 0.5 and 0.3 g/kg, resulting in maximum BACs in the ranges of 0.30-0.63 g/kg and 0.10-0.28 g/kg, respectively. Capillary blood was collected at different time points of the drinking experiment and PEth was extracted from dried blood spots (DBS) and analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Despite drinking doses up to 0.58 g ethanol per kg body weight and reaching BACs of up to 0.63 g/kg, PEth 16:0/18:1 and PEth 16:0/18:2 could not be detected at or above the 20 ng/mL cutoff in any participant at any time after the drinking events. We conclude that after long-term abstinence the cutoff of 20 ng/ml for single alcohol consumption leading to blood alcohol concentrations up to 0.63 g/kg is not exceeded

Interprofessional approach for teaching functional knee joint anatomy

AbstractProfound knowledge in functional and clinical anatomy is a prerequisite for efficient diagnosis in medical practice. However, anatomy teaching does not always consider functional and clinical aspects. Here we introduce a new interprofessional approach to effectively teach the anatomy of the knee joint. The presented teaching approach involves anatomists, orthopaedists and physical therapists to teach anatomy of the knee joint in small groups under functional and clinical aspects. The knee joint courses were implemented during early stages of the medical curriculum and medical students were grouped with students of physical therapy to sensitize students to the importance of interprofessional work. Evaluation results clearly demonstrate that medical students and physical therapy students appreciated this teaching approach. First evaluations of following curricular anatomy exams suggest a benefit of course participants in knee-related multiple choice questions. Together, the interprofessional approach presented here proves to be a suitable approach to teach functional and clinical anatomy of the knee joint and further trains interprofessional work between prospective physicians and physical therapists as a basis for successful healthcare management