Assessing The Impact of Conflict-Type on Decision-Effectiveness in Top Management Teams: The Moderating Effect of Attributions, Emotions, Conflict-Handling Behavior, and The Environment

Conflict is considered a multi-dimensional concept conveying both constructive and destructive overtones. Within a strategic decision-making team, conflict can have positive and negative effects, which collectively are considered `paradoxical\u27 because they can simultaneously lead to improved group decisions along with decreased member commitment. Decision quality and commitment to the decision are a requisite of high performance; yet, some suggest that these cannot co-exist because of conflict\u27s paradoxical effects in the decision-making process. The early consensus on conflict research suggests that one form of conflict, i.e. cognitive, yields positive effects, whereas another form of conflict, i.e. affective, yields negative results. Not surprisingly, then, these findings have led to practical implications that organizations should encourage increasing levels of cognitive conflict while completely avoiding affective conflict. However, recent findings have suggested that cognitive conflict has a threshold beyond which its positive effects cease to exist. Additionally, other findings suggest that affective conflict may yield a silver lining. This dissertation puts forth that existing conflict theory is incomplete because it marginalizes certain real-world phenomenon (e.g. presence and assessment of emotions, attributions, conflict-handling behaviors, and organizational crises). The findings in this dissertation suggest that the effects of conflict are not as direct or unwavering as currently believed. First, this dissertation establishes that cognitive conflict is a nonlinear phenomenon and also establishes the threshold beyond which cognitive conflict ceases to have functional effects. Through the effects of certain moderating influences, the findings reveal how higher levels of cognitive conflict can be achieved while still yielding positive results from the conflict episode. Next, this dissertation addresses gaps in the literature to assess the effects of emotions, conflict-handling behaviors, and the environmental context in the conflict process. Additionally, the effects of individual attributions in the conflict process are also assessed. The findings in this dissertation reveal that the relationships between conflict-type and decision outcomes (e.g. speed, quality, and commitment) are conditional upon the moderating influence of anger, competitive and collaborative behaviors, and high- and low-level crisis situations. Additionally, this dissertation finds that the relationships between conflict-type, anger, and conflict-handling behavior are themselves conditional upon an individual\u27s attribution inferences. The biggest contributions of this dissertation are in establishing the moderating roles of emotions, conflict-handling behavior, environmental context, and attributional inferences, respectively. Important findings are discussed, in terms of significant theoretical contributions and practical implications, within the scope of the dissertation\u27s limitations. Finally, this dissertation culminates with suggestions for future research

Contrasting The Effects of Leadership Styles On Different Workgroups – An Empirical Study On Employee Perceptions of Justice, Leader Credibility, and Group Commitment

This study examined the effects of contrasting leadership styles on the behavior of team members in different group settings. Two leadership styles (directive and transformational) and two types of teams (functional and cross-functional) were controlled in an experiment to assess their impact on perceptions of procedural and interpersonal justice. The subsequent impact of procedural and interpersonal justice perceptions on leadership credibility and group commitment were also examined. The results suggested that leadership style and group type have different effects on team member’s perceptions of procedural justice and interpersonal justice. Leadership credibility was found to fully mediate the effects of procedural justice and interpersonal justice perceptions on group commitment

Positional Authority and Influence in Servant Leadership: A Conceptual Model

This conceptual research paper reviews how positional authority affects the servant leadership-organizational performance relationship and provides insight on how servant leadership can be implemented and effective in the absence of positional authority, i.e. through the cultivation and leveraging of influence. A review of servant leadership literature is used to propose that servant leadership is positively associated with increased organizational performance. Through the lens of upper echelon theory as well as research on the performance of organizations whose executive team practices servant leadership, we develop a model and make a case that positional authority is an important moderator of the relationship between servant leadership and organizational performance. Our model also considers the contingency that not all leaders in an organization are in a position of authority. As such, we review the servant leadership example of Jesus Christ to understand how servant leadership can be implemented in the absence of positional authority

The Mediating Influence of Confidence, Autonomy, and Identification on the Relationship Between Servant Leadership and Harmonious Passion

The current paper explores the relationship between servant leadership and harmonious passion. Harmonious passion refers to a strong desire to freely engage in an activity and is a result of an autonomous internalization of the activity into one\u27s identity. While passion and leadership have been generally linked, the specific relationship between servant leadership and harmonious passion is underdeveloped within the field of servant leadership research. Our paper presents a conceptual model and propositions linking servant leadership and harmonious passion through the mediating mechanisms of follower confidence, autonomy, and identification. Implications and future research are discussed

Efficacy of early PET-CT directed switch to carboplatin and paclitaxel based definitive chemoradiotherapy in patients with oesophageal cancer who have a poor early response to induction cisplatin and capecitabine in the UK: a multi-centre randomised controlled phase II trial induction cisplatin and capecitabine in the UK: a multi-centre randomised controlled phase II trial

Background: The utility of early metabolic response assessment to guide selection of the systemic component of definitive chemoradiotherapy (dCRT) for oesophageal cancer is uncertain.// Methods: In this multi-centre, randomised, open-label, phase II substudy of the radiotherapy dose-escalation SCOPE2 trial we evaluated the role of 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET) at day 14 of cycle 1 of three-weekly induction cis/cap (cisplatin (60 mg/m2)/capecitabine (625 mg/m2 days 1–21)) in patients with oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) or adenocarcinoma (OAC). Non-responders, who had a less than 35% reduction in maximum standardised uptake value (SUVmax) from pre-treatment baseline, were randomly assigned to continue cis/cap or switch to car/pac (carboplatin AUC 5/paclitaxel 175 mg/m2) for a further induction cycle, then concurrently with radiotherapy over 25 fractions. Responders continued cis/cap for the duration of treatment. All patients (including responders) were randomised to standard (50Gy) or high (60Gy) dose radiation as part of the main study. Primary endpoint for the substudy was treatment failure-free survival (TFFS) at week 24. The trial was registered with International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number 97125464 and ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02741856.// Findings: This substudy was closed on 1st August 2021 by the Independent Data Monitoring Committee on the grounds of futility and possible harm. To this point from 22nd November 2016, 103 patients from 16 UK centres had participated in the PET-CT substudy; 63 (61.2%; 52/83 OSCC, 11/20 OAC) of whom were non-responders. Of these, 31 were randomised to car/pac and 32 to remain on cis/cap. All patients were followed up until at least 24 weeks, at which point in OSCC both TFFS (25/27 (92.6%) vs 17/25 (68%); p = 0.028) and overall survival (42.5 vs. 20.4 months, adjusted HR 0.36; p = 0.018) favoured cis/cap over car/pac. There was a trend towards worse survival in OSCC + OAC cis/cap responders (33.6 months; 95%CI 23.1-nr) vs. non-responders (42.5 (95%CI 27.0-nr) months; HR = 1.43; 95%CI 0.67–3.08; p = 0.35).// Interpretation: In OSCC, early metabolic response assessment is not prognostic for TFFS or overall survival and should not be used to personalise systemic therapy in patients receiving dCRT

Genomic mining of prokaryotic repressors for orthogonal logic gates

Genetic circuits perform computational operations based on interactions between freely diffusing molecules within a cell. When transcription factors are combined to build a circuit, unintended interactions can disrupt its function. Here, we apply 'part mining' to build a library of 73 TetR-family repressors gleaned from prokaryotic genomes. The operators of a subset were determined using an in vitro method, and this information was used to build synthetic promoters. The promoters and repressors were screened for cross-reactions. Of these, 16 were identified that both strongly repress their cognate promoter (5- to 207-fold) and exhibit minimal interactions with other promoters. Each repressor-promoter pair was converted to a NOT gate and characterized. Used as a set of 16 NOT/NOR gates, there are >10[superscript 54] circuits that could be built by changing the pattern of input and output promoters. This represents a large set of compatible gates that can be used to construct user-defined circuits.United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Award FA9550-11-C-0028)American Society for Engineering Education. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (32 CFR 168a)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Chronical of Lineage Indicative of Origins (N66001-12-C-4016)United States. Office of Naval Research (N00014-13-1-0074)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (GM095765)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SA5284-11210