Individual perceptions of culture and change: a unifying perspective on change-oriented organizational cultures

2018 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.Organizational change has become a mainstay for today's organizations. Yet, organizational change efforts overwhelmingly represent unsuccessful and stressful events for both organizations and employees. Much of the extant literature on organizational change focuses on a modified culture as an outcome of change, but this ignores the potential for organizational culture itself to facilitate organizational change efforts by engendering an inherent value for organizational change in employees before changes even happen. I propose that one potential solution to unsuccessful change efforts is for organizations to adopt a change-oriented culture, making change acceptable rather than an obstacle to overcome. Because a changed culture is the typical change outcome, existing organizational culture frameworks are broad and therefore address organizational change (e.g., adaptive culture in the competing values framework, or learning organizations) in a cursory manner. Furthermore, these broad frameworks were developed in parallel yet isolated streams of research; hence, their value for predicting organizational change outcomes is limited. Therefore, to address failing organizational change efforts and disjointed culture frameworks, I synthesize the facets of existing organizational culture frameworks that focus on change to create and define a change-oriented culture. Data from multiple samples of a total of 963 Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers were used to test the psychometric properties of a new measure of change-oriented organizational culture. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the relationship of change-oriented organizational culture to its nomological network above and beyond existing cultural frameworks. Results from structural equation modeling indicated that change-oriented culture directly relates to organizational change attitudes, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment; indirectly relates to change-related behaviors through readiness for change; and indirectly relates to perceptions of change success through resistance to change. Moreover, change-oriented organizational culture related to change-related attitudes and organizationally relevant outcomes significantly better than the adhocracy dimension of the competing values framework, the innovative dimension of Wallach's organizational culture measure, and perceptions of learning organizational culture. However, both change-oriented organizational culture and perceptions of learning organizational culture related to affective commitment to change and organizational commitment equally well. This study advances the organizational culture literature by proposing a new theoretical orientation to change – that the culture can facilitate change efforts rather than simply serve as an outcome of change interventions – and furthermore, provides a first attempt at defining and collecting empirical data to support the validity of a change-oriented culture dimension

Providing Public Transport for Tourists in Rural Areas

Travel, both to the destination area and within the area, accounts for a high proportion of tourism’s emissions. Yet, relatively little attention has been directed at reducing emissions through encouraging visitors to use public rather private transport. This paper reports the findings of surveys of bus passengers within British rural tourist areas and demonstrates how they bring extra visitors and spending to attractions, while reducing car use. It discusses the potential of using public transport to enhance the tourism offer and the problems, and some solutions, of funding such services. Recent developments are introduced

An orthogonal C-H borylation - cross-coupling strategy for the preparation of tetrasubstituted "A(2)B(2)''-chrysene derivatives with tuneable photophysical properties

Cl-substituents serve as a functionalisable regiocontrol element for the orthogonal functionalisation of chrysene.</p

The HANDE-QMC Project: Open-Source Stochastic Quantum Chemistry from the Ground State Up.

Building on the success of Quantum Monte Carlo techniques such as diffusion Monte Carlo, alternative stochastic approaches to solve electronic structure problems have emerged over the past decade. The full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method allows one to systematically approach the exact solution of such problems, for cases where very high accuracy is desired. The introduction of FCIQMC has subsequently led to the development of coupled cluster Monte Carlo (CCMC) and density matrix quantum Monte Carlo (DMQMC), allowing stochastic sampling of the coupled cluster wave function and the exact thermal density matrix, respectively. In this Article, we describe the HANDE-QMC code, an open-source implementation of FCIQMC, CCMC and DMQMC, including initiator and semistochastic adaptations. We describe our code and demonstrate its use on three example systems; a molecule (nitric oxide), a model solid (the uniform electron gas), and a real solid (diamond). An illustrative tutorial is also included

Cluster M Mycobacteriophages Bongo, PegLeg, and Rey with Unusually Large Repertoires of tRNA Isotopes

Genomic analysis of a large set of phages infecting the common hostMycobacterium smegmatis mc2155 shows that they span considerable genetic diversity. There are more than 20 distinct types that lack nucleotide similarity with each other, and there is considerable diversity within most of the groups. Three newly isolated temperate mycobacteriophages, Bongo, PegLeg, and Rey, constitute a new group (cluster M), with the closely related phages Bongo and PegLeg forming subcluster M1 and the more distantly related Rey forming subcluster M2. The cluster M mycobacteriophages have siphoviral morphologies with unusually long tails, are homoimmune, and have larger than average genomes (80.2 to 83.7 kbp). They exhibit a variety of features not previously described in other mycobacteriophages, including noncanonical genome architectures and several unusual sets of conserved repeated sequences suggesting novel regulatory systems for both transcription and translation. In addition to containing transfer-messenger RNA and RtcB-like RNA ligase genes, their genomes encode 21 to 24 tRNA genes encompassing complete or nearly complete sets of isotypes. We predict that these tRNAs are used in late lytic growth, likely compensating for the degradation or inadequacy of host tRNAs. They may represent a complete set of tRNAs necessary for late lytic growth, especially when taken together with the apparent lack of codons in the same late genes that correspond to tRNAs that the genomes of the phages do not obviously encode

Two novel human cytomegalovirus NK cell evasion functions target MICA for lysosomal degradation

NKG2D plays a major role in controlling immune responses through the regulation of natural killer (NK) cells, αβ and γδ T-cell function. This activating receptor recognizes eight distinct ligands (the MHC Class I polypeptide-related sequences (MIC) A andB, and UL16-binding proteins (ULBP)1–6) induced by cellular stress to promote recognition cells perturbed by malignant transformation or microbial infection. Studies into human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) have aided both the identification and characterization of NKG2D ligands (NKG2DLs). HCMV immediate early (IE) gene up regulates NKGDLs, and we now describe the differential activation of ULBP2 and MICA/B by IE1 and IE2 respectively. Despite activation by IE functions, HCMV effectively suppressed cell surface expression of NKGDLs through both the early and late phases of infection. The immune evasion functions UL16, UL142, and microRNA(miR)-UL112 are known to target NKG2DLs. While infection with a UL16 deletion mutant caused the expected increase in MICB and ULBP2 cell surface expression, deletion of UL142 did not have a similar impact on its target, MICA. We therefore performed a systematic screen of the viral genome to search of addition functions that targeted MICA. US18 and US20 were identified as novel NK cell evasion functions capable of acting independently to promote MICA degradation by lysosomal degradation. The most dramatic effect on MICA expression was achieved when US18 and US20 acted in concert. US18 and US20 are the first members of the US12 gene family to have been assigned a function. The US12 family has 10 members encoded sequentially through US12–US21; a genetic arrangement, which is suggestive of an ‘accordion’ expansion of an ancestral gene in response to a selective pressure. This expansion must have be an ancient event as the whole family is conserved across simian cytomegaloviruses from old world monkeys. The evolutionary benefit bestowed by the combinatorial effect of US18 and US20 on MICA may have contributed to sustaining the US12 gene family

The Fate of Firms: Explaining Mergers and Bankruptcies

Using a uniquely complete data set of more than 50,000 observations of approximately 16,000 corporations, we test theories that seek to explain which firms become merger targets and which firms go bankrupt. We find that merger activity is much greater during prosperous periods than during recessions. In bad economic times, firms in industries with high bankruptcy rates are less likely to file for bankruptcy than they are in better years, supporting the market illiquidity arguments made by Shleifer and Vishny (1992). At the firm level, we find that, among poorly performing firms, the likelihood of merger increases with poorer performance, but among better performing firms, the relation is reversed and chances of merger increase with better performance. Such a changing relation has not been detected in prior merger studies. We also find that low-growth, resource-rich firms are prime acquisition targets and that firms’ debt capacity relates negatively to the likelihood of a merger. Debt-related variables, leverage and secured debt, play an especially prominent role in distinguishing between which firms merge and which firms go bankrupt