Hitting the ‘reset button’: The role of digital reorientation in successful turnarounds

Seismic shifts in industries brought about by radical technological innovations usually lead to a misalignment between the capabilities of many incumbent firms and the requisites of their new environment, and eventually, organizational decline. The current turnaround literature, while emphasizing operating and strategic responses to organizational decline that focus on efficiency and fine tuning product/market strategy respectively, ignores such organizational decline that requires fundamental reengineering of the whole firm and its value chain. This paper introduces the concept of digital reorientation as a long term turnaround strategy to respond to situations in which a firm’s environment has been fundamentally restructured. Digital reorientation is a technology-enabled, simultaneous and multilevel change that transforms the organization’s core architecture and the way it serves its customers. We develop a framework to understand this turnaround strategy relative to traditional operational and strategic options and formulate propositions on internal and external contingencies that will likely influence the effectiveness of its implementation. Finally, using the newspaper publishing industry as an example of an environment that has undergone such disruptive change driven by digital technological innovations, we examine how the use of digital reorientation could help declining firms in that industry successfully turnaround their performance

Finite Element Model for Hysteretic Friction Damping of Traveling Wave Vibration in Axisymmetric Structures

A finite element method is developed to treat the steady-state vibration of two axisymmetric structures—a base substructure and an attached dampersubstructure—that are driven by traveling wave excitation and that couplethrough a spatially distributed hysteretic friction interface. The base substructure is representative of a rotating brake rotor or gear, and the damper is a ring affixed to the base under preload and intended to control vibration through friction along the interface. In the axisymmetric approximation, the equation of motion of each substructure is reduced in order to the number of nodal degrees of freedom through the use of a propagation constant phase shift. Despite nonlinearity and with contact occurring at an arbitrarily large number of nodal points, the response duringsticking, or during a combination of sticking and slipping motions, can be determined from a low-order set of computationally tractable nonlinear algebraic equations. The method is applicable to element types for longitudinal and bending vibration, and to an arbitrary number of nodal degrees of freedom in each substructure. In two examples, friction damping of the coupled base and damper is examined in the context of in-plane circumferential vibration (in which case the system is modeled as two unwrapped rods), and of out-of-plane vibration (alternatively, two unwrapped beams). The damper performs most effectively when its natural frequency is well below the base\u27s natural frequency (in the absence of contact), and also when its natural frequency is well separated from the excitationfrequency

The interaction effect of relational norms and agent cooperativeness on opportunism in buyerâ supplier relationships

In this study, we examined the effect of relational norms and agent cooperativeness on opportunism in buyerâ supplier relationships. Drawing from the theoretical grounding of transaction cost economics, personality trait theory, and contingency theory, we proposed three distinct perspectives on opportunism mitigation in buyerâ supplier relationships: (1) organizationalist, (2) individualist, and (3) interactionist, where relational norms, agent cooperativeness, and the interaction between them, respectively, serve as the key predictors in these three perspectives. The results of replicated experiments indicated that relational norms and agent cooperativeness interact with each other in mitigating opportunism and that the interactionist perspective yielded the highest explained variance in opportunism. This suggests that the interactionist perspective, a multiâ level theoretical lens encompassing the dynamic interplay between organizationâ level and individualâ level factors, was a more complete model in explaining opportunism than either the organizationalist or individualist perspectives. The consensus which emerged from postâ experimental interviews of purchasing professionals is that agent personalities play an important role in buyerâ supplier relationships. Some purchasing professionals had observed that uncooperative agents or personnel turnover in the boundaryâ spanning functions can substantially undermine even established relational exchanges. These qualitative findings are in line with our theoretical arguments and experimental outcomes.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146947/1/joom398.pd

Strategic Agility, Business Model Innovation and Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation

Despite the robust literature on the nature of business models and their implications for firm performance, research on the organizational antecedents of business model innovations (BMIs) is still evolving. In this paper, we empirically examine the extent to which firm-level strategic agility predicts the adoption of three (value creation, value capture, and value proposition) types of BMIs. Furthermore, we propose that the relationship between firm-level strategic agility and BMI adoption is contingent on the degree of environmental turbulence. Finally, we explore the mediating role that BMI plays in the relationship between firm-level strategic agility and firm performance. Our analysis of data from 432 German firms in the electronics industry indicates that strategic agility is positively related to BMI and that this relationship is indeed strengthened by the degree of environmental turbulence. Additionally, our findings show that, while value proposition and value creation BMIs have positive relationships with firm performance, value capture innovation is negatively related to firm performance; these findings are contrary to our prediction. Finally, the results of our mediation tests indicate that BMI serves as an important intermediary mechanism through which firms’ strategic agility contributes to superior firm performance

Anti-Inflammation Property of Syzygium cumini

Indomethacin, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAIDs), induced gastric damage and perforation through the excess generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Syzygium cumini (L.) Skeels is commonly used as a medicinal plant and is claimed to have antioxidant activities. The effects of Syzygium cumini (L.) Skeels aqueous extract (SCC) on antifree radical, anti-inflammation, and antiulcer of SCC on indomethacin induced acute gastric ulceration were determined in our study. Scavenging activity at 50% of SCC is higher than ascorbic acid in in vitro study. Mice treated with indomethacin revealed mucosal hemorrhagic lesion and inhibited mucus content. Pretreatment with SCC caused discernible decrease in indomethacin induced gastric lesion and lipid peroxide content. In addition, oxidized glutathione (GSSG), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), nitric oxide (NO) levels, and gastric wall mucus were restored on acute treated mice model. Indomethacin induced inflammation by activated inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) proinflammatory cytokines to release large amount of ROS/RNS which were ameliorated in mice pretreatment with SCC. SCC showed restoration of the imbalance of oxidative damage leading to amelioration of cyclooxygenase enzyme (COX). In conclusion, SCC acts as an antioxidant, anti-inflammation, and antiulcer against indomethacin

A Food Recommender Based on Frequent Sets of Food Mining Using Image Recognition

Food recommendation is an important service in our life. To set a system, we searched a set of food images from social network which were shared or reviewed on the web, including the information that people actually chose in daily life. In the field of representation learning, we proposed a scalable architecture for integrating different deep neural networks (DNNs) with a reliability score of DNN. This allowed the integrated DNN to select a suitable recognition result obtained from the different DNNs that were independently constructed. The frequent set of foods extracted from food images was applied to Apriori data mining algorithm for the food recommendation process. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of our proposed method

Pharmacological and ADMET-based pharmacokinetic properties of Syzygium samarangense var. parviflorum leaf extract in in vitro, in vivo and in silico models

This research investigated pharmacological properties mainly the anti-inflammatory, anthelmintic, thrombolytic and anxiolytic potential of methanol extract of Syzygium samarangense (MESS) var. parviflorum. Anti-inflammatory action by bovine serum albumin, egg albumin denaturation and membrane stabilization, anthelmintic by live parasites, thrombolytic by clot lysis and anxiolytic by elevated plus maze (EPM) and light and dark box (LDB) tests were measured. The four targeted pharmacological properties were further justified using the most prevalent compounds, isolated from this plant, to be undergone for their pharmacokinetic property’s analyses, sitemap analyses and lignad-receptor interactions by computational models through SwissADME and Schrödinger, 2018 softwares against PDB 6COX, 6D6T, 1JFF receptors. MESS was found to display statistically significant (P < 0.05) inhibition of Bovine Serum albumin and Egg albumin denaturation compared to reference drug diclofenac sodium. Remarkable vermicidal effect on the paralysis and death of anthelmintic parasites was observed at MESS concentration 200 mg/dL. A nondescript clot lysis of MESS compared to streptokinase was evident in in vitro thrombolytic assay. MESS increased the number of times the animal crossed from one compartment to the other and the time spent in the brightly-lit chamber of the LDB. Three-methylchalcone derivatives out of seven MESS compounds were undertaken, based on cut off value and sitemap prediction score, for further ligand-receptor binding efficiency. All these three compounds showed promising docking score, glide emodel and glide energy against PDB 6COX, 6D6T and 1DDJ, plasmin proteins demonstrating the prospects of MESS to be materialized for anti-inflammatory, anthelmintic, and thrombolytic therapeutics with further clarification

First report of Cryptosporidium hominis in a freshwater sponge

Identification of Cryptosporidium oocyst is essential in ensuring water quality fit for human use, consumption, and recreation.This communication proposes the supplemental analysis of substrateassociated biofilms, in particular, freshwater sponges in improving case finding of waterborne-protozoan pathogens (WBPP) in environmental aquatic samples. In this study, a small portion of a mature freshwater sponge under the Genus Radiospongilla was subjected to microscopic and molecular analysis to identify the presence of Cryptosporidium. Microscopic screening with modified Kinyoun's staining (MK) and microscopic confirmation using direct antibody fluorescent testing (IFT) returned with Cryptosporidium spp. positive findings. Molecular investigation resulted in the confirmation of Cryptosporidium hominis upon sequencing of PCR products and phylogenetic analysis. This is the first report of a pathogenic protozoan, C. hominis isolated from a freshwater sponge. The results of this study provide evidence of the value of expanding water quality assessment strategies to the analysis of substrate-associated biofilms and sponges in improving case finding of WBPP in natural aquatic environments