An Examination of Middle Manager Innovation Behaviors and Institutional Factors Impact on Organizational Innovation in the USA and Mexico

Several scholars have suggested mid-level management is an important factor that explains strategic outcomes (Wooldridge, Schmidt, & Floyd, 2008), but little research has investigated how this relationship actually works in multiple institutional environments. The resource-based view of the firm argues that competitive advantage is a function of resource heterogeneity and immobility (Barney, 1991) and the discretionary decisions made by managers about resource creation, development, and allocation (Amit & Shoemaker, 1993). These boundedly-rational managers (Simon, 1957) make these decisions facing an uncertain and complex internal and external environment. Thus, this dissertation extends the current research by developing and testing a new comprehensive model of middle management innovative behavior and organizational innovation that contemporaneously incorporates the isomorphic pressures of the institutional environment; and subsequent impact on organizational performance. The extant literature on middle managers is reviewed and research gaps in the literature are identified. The resource-based view and institutional theory are used to develop nine hypotheses, which are empirically tested. Findings show that middle manager innovation behavior positively impacts organizational innovativeness. This study also shows a positive relationship between organizational innovativeness and organizational performance. The findings also breaks new ground by finding that organizational context, in terms of participatory decision-making and organizational trust, is an important moderating factor that influences middle management\u27s role in organizational innovation. This study also considers how the external environment influences innovation outcomes, and introduces the importance of subnational regions on organizational middle manager innovation behavior and organizational innovation. Results show that urbanized settings moderate the middle manager innovative behavior and organizational innovation relationship. However, the national context does not appear to systematically influence middle managers impact on organizational innovation. For practitioners, this study identifies specific mid-level managerial behavior that contributes to organizational innovation and the firm-, regional-, and national level variables that impact the mid-manager-organizational innovation relationship

Sequestration of Martian CO2 by mineral carbonation

Carbonation is the water-mediated replacement of silicate minerals, such as olivine, by carbonate, and is commonplace in the Earth’s crust. This reaction can remove significant quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere and store it over geological timescales. Here we present the first direct evidence for CO2 sequestration and storage on Mars by mineral carbonation. Electron beam imaging and analysis show that olivine and a plagioclase feldspar-rich mesostasis in the Lafayette meteorite have been replaced by carbonate. The susceptibility of olivine to replacement was enhanced by the presence of smectite veins along which CO2-rich fluids gained access to grain interiors. Lafayette was partially carbonated during the Amazonian, when liquid water was available intermittently and atmospheric CO2 concentrations were close to their present-day values. Earlier in Mars’ history, when the planet had a much thicker atmosphere and an active hydrosphere, carbonation is likely to have been an effective mechanism for sequestration of CO2

Gravitating σ\sigma Model Solitons

We study axially symmetric static solitons of O(3) nonlinear $\sigma$ model coupled to (2+1)-dimensional anti-de Sitter gravity. The obtained solutions are not self-dual under static metric. The usual regular topological lump solution cannot form a black hole even though the scale of symmetry breaking is increased. There exist nontopological solitons of half integral winding in a given model, and the corresponding spacetimes involve charged Ba$\tilde n$ados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black holes without non-Abelian scalar hair.Comment: 35 pages, RevTe

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bb pair in events with one charged lepton and large missing transverse energy using the full CDF data set

We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a W boson in sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV p-pbar collision data collected with the CDF II detector at the Tevatron corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45 fb-1. In events consistent with the decay of the Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair and the W boson to an electron or muon and a neutrino, we set 95% credibility level upper limits on the WH production cross section times the H->bb branching ratio as a function of Higgs boson mass. At a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV/c2 we observe (expect) a limit of 4.9 (2.8) times the standard model value.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett (v2 contains clarifications suggested by PRL

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bbˉb\bar{b} pair in events with no charged leptons and large missing transverse energy using the full CDF data set

We report on a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a vector boson in the full data set of proton-antiproton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 1.96$ TeV recorded by the CDF II detector at the Tevatron, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45 fb$^{-1}$. We consider events having no identified charged lepton, a transverse energy imbalance, and two or three jets, of which at least one is consistent with originating from the decay of a $b$ quark. We place 95% credibility level upper limits on the production cross section times standard model branching fraction for several mass hypotheses between 90 and $150 \mathrm{GeV}/c^2$. For a Higgs boson mass of $125 \mathrm{GeV}/c^2$, the observed (expected) limit is 6.7 (3.6) times the standard model prediction.Comment: Accepted by Phys. Rev. Let

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bb pair in events with two oppositely-charged leptons using the full CDF data set

We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson in data collected with the CDF II detector at the Tevatron, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45/fb. In events consistent with the decay of the Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair and the Z boson to electron or muon pairs, we set 95% credibility level upper limits on the ZH production cross section times the H -> bb branching ratio as a function of Higgs boson mass. At a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV/c^2 we observe (expect) a limit of 7.1 (3.9) times the standard model value.Comment: To be submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Evidence for the h_b(1P) meson in the decay Upsilon(3S) --> pi0 h_b(1P)

Using a sample of 122 million Upsilon(3S) events recorded with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at SLAC, we search for the $h_b(1P)$ spin-singlet partner of the P-wave chi_{bJ}(1P) states in the sequential decay Upsilon(3S) --> pi0 h_b(1P), h_b(1P) --> gamma eta_b(1S). We observe an excess of events above background in the distribution of the recoil mass against the pi0 at mass 9902 +/- 4(stat.) +/- 2(syst.) MeV/c^2. The width of the observed signal is consistent with experimental resolution, and its significance is 3.1sigma, including systematic uncertainties. We obtain the value (4.3 +/- 1.1(stat.) +/- 0.9(syst.)) x 10^{-4} for the product branching fraction BF(Upsilon(3S)-->pi0 h_b) x BF(h_b-->gamma eta_b).Comment: 8 pages, 4 postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE