The double-edged sword of exemplar similarity

We investigate how a firm’s positioning relative to category exemplars shapes security analysts’ evaluations. Employing a two-stage model of evaluation (initial screening and subsequent assessment), we propose that exemplar similarity enhances a firm’s recognizability and legitimacy, increasing the likelihood that it passes the initial screening stage and attracts analyst coverage. However, exemplar similarity may also prompt unfavorable comparisons with exemplar firms, leading to lower analyst recommendations in the assessment stage. We further argue that category coherence, distinctiveness, and exemplar typicality influence the impact of exemplar similarity on firm evaluation. Leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze a sample of 7,603 US public firms from 1997 to 2022, we find robust support for our predictions. By highlighting the intricate role of strategic positioning vis-àvis category exemplars in shaping audience evaluations, our findings have important implications for research on positioning relative to category exemplars, category viability, optimal distinctiveness and security analysts

Overcoming Institutional Voids: A Reputation-Based View of Long Run Survival

Emerging markets are characterized by underdeveloped institutions and frequent environmental shifts. Yet they also contain many firms that have survived over generations. How are firms in weak institutional environments able to persist over time? Motivated by 69 interviews with leaders of emerging market firms with histories spanning generations, we combine induction and deduction to propose reputation as a meta-resource that allows firms to activate their conventional resources. We conceptualize reputation as consisting of prominence, perceived quality, and resilience, and develop a process model that illustrates the mechanisms that allow reputation to facilitate survival in ways that persist over time. Building on research in strategy and business history, we thus shed light on an underappreciated strategic construct (reputation) in an under-theorized setting (emerging markets) over an unusual period (the historical long run)

Dynamic Silos: Modularity in intra-organizational communication networks before and during the Covid-19 pandemic

Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by Covid-19, work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. We analyze aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within over 4000 organizations worldwide to examine changes in network community structures from 2019 through 2020. We find that, during 2020, organizations around the world became more siloed, evidenced by increased modularity. This shift was concurrent with decreased stability, indicating that organizational siloes had less stable membership. We provide initial insights into the implications of these network changes -- which we term dynamic silos -- for organizational performance and innovation.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figue

A plant-based diet supplemented with Hermetia illucens alone or in combination with poultry by-product meal: one step closer to sustainable aquafeeds for European seabass

Background: Increasing demand for high-value fish species and pressure on forage fish is challenging aquaculture to ensure sustainable growth by replacing protein sources in aquafeeds with plant and terrestrial animal proteins, without compromising the economic value and quality of the final fish product. In the present study, the effects of a plant protein-based diet (CV), two plant-based diets in which graded amounts of plan protein mixtures were replaced with Hermetia illucens meal alone (VH10) or in combination with poultry by-product meal (PBM) (VH10P30), a fishmeal (FM) diet (CF) and an FM diet supplemented with H. illucens (FH10) on growth performance, gut health and homeostasis of farmed subadult European seabass were tested and compared. Results: Fish fed the VH10 and VH10P30 diets showed the highest specific growth rates and lowest feed conversion ratios among the tested groups. Expectedly, the best preservation of PI morphology was observed in fish fed the CF or FH10 diets, while fish fed the CV diet exhibited significant degenerative changes in the proximal and distal intestines. However, PBM supplementation mitigated these effects and significantly improved all gut morphometric parameters in the VH10P30 group. Partial substitution of the plant mixture with insect meal alone or PBM also induced most BBM genes and activated BBM enzymes, suggesting a beneficial effect on intestinal digestive/absorption functions. Regarding intestinal microbiota, fish fed diets containing H. illucens meal (FH10, VH10, VH10P30) had the highest richness of bacterial communities and abundance of beneficial genera such as Lactobacillus and Bacillus. On the other hand, fish fed CV had the highest microbial diversity but lost a significant component of fish intestinal microbiota, the phylum Bacteroidetes. Finally, skin pigmentation most similar to that of farmed or even wild seabass was also observed in the fish groups fed CF, FH10 or VH10P30. Conclusion: Plant-based diets supplemented with PBM and H. illucens pupae meal have great potential as alternative diets for European seabass, without affecting growth performance, gut homeostasis, or overall fitness. This also highlights the importance of animal proteins in diets of European seabass, as the addition of a small amount of these alternative animal protein sources significantly improved all measured parameters

Characterization of thunderstorm downburst winds through CFD techniques

The characteristic wind field of a certain region is mostly governed by the climatology of its larger scale area. In the case of mid-latitude regions (e.g. Europe), their climatology is determined by the extra-tropical cyclones at the larger synoptic scale. Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) winds based on synoptic-scale structures are hence considered as the foundation for codes and standards used to assess the wind loading of structures and to design structures to prevent wind-related damage accordingly. In addition to the ABL winds, the mid-latitude regions are also prone to winds of a non-synoptic origin at the mesoscale level, with thunderstorm outflows or downbursts being the representative of such non-synoptic wind action. Since they are determined by a set of features that makes them fundamentally different from the ABL winds, downbursts can produce the corresponding wind action that is often fatal to low-rise and mid-rise structures. On these grounds, a comprehensive initiative to enable a better understanding of fundamental downburst flow features relevant for the structural loading was framed under the umbrella of the ERC THUNDERR Project. The present thesis, as the numerical modeling part of the THUNDERR Project framework, aims to address the physical characteristics of thunderstorm downbursts through the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique. The focus of this work is placed on the CFD reconstruction of experimental tests of the reduced-scale thunderstorm downbursts carried out in the WindEEE Dome Research Institute (University of Western Ontario, Canada). Although they recreate the downburst flow field, the experimental analysis is restricted to the limited number of probe points. In that perspective, CFD allows expanding the analysis of experimental tests to the entire flow field, which can reveal phenomenological aspects that are either challenging or impossible to retrieve from experimental tests only. Two fundamental downburst scenarios were analyzed: (i) an isolated vertical downburst, and (ii) a downburst embedded inside the approaching ABL flow. For that purpose, three CFD approaches of a ranging complexity level were adopted. The unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS), hybrid Scale-Adaptive Simulations (SAS), and Large-Eddy Simulations were used, and their overall reliability was examined. Theimplications of the WindEEE Dome specific geometrical features (i.e. bell-mouth inflow nozzle) on the downburst flow reconstruction by the facility were further discussed. The bulk of the thesis discusses the dominant flow features of the downburst with the particular emphasis on the dynamics of dominant vortex structures (i.e. primary vortex, secondary vortex, trailing ring vortices) and their spatio-temporal influence on the vertical profiles of radial velocity component. The non-dimensional flow characteristics of interest were evaluated such as the trajectory of the primary vortex and the spatial dependence of the velocity of primary vortex propagation. Analyses were further extended for the case of a joint downburst and ABL wind interaction to address the dynamics between two different wind fields, and the genesis of the worst condition in terms of the maximum radial velocity due to the ABL wind entrainment was discussed. The flow field was analyzed across various azimuth angles with respect to the ABL flow to report on the flow asymmetry, and general implications of such downburst configuration on spatio-temporal evolution of wind velocity profiles which can produce severe conditions for low-rise and mid-rise structures