Examination of How Attraction Dimensions Predict Collaborative Mentoring Relationships in College Students.

Research has identified that one limitation of traditional mentoring occurs when there is a mismatch between the mentor and the protégé in work styles and personalities. Further, most of the literature on mentoring has not examined the informal mentoring that occurs between college students. Recent research has identified this type of peer mentoring as collaborative mentoring. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of interpersonal attraction in the development and success of collaborative mentoring relationships and to further examine which attraction dimension was the best predictor of the success of the relationship. Multiple regression analysis showed task attraction was the best predictor of the overall success of a collaborative mentoring relationship. This work is significant because it shows a person\u27s perceived level of competence directly influences the success of a collaborative mentoring relationship more than likeability or physical appearance

Profit Centers, Single-Source Suppliers and Transaction Costs

© 1991 by Cornell UniversityThis paper addresses criticisms of transaction-cost theory that it overstates the effect of asset specialization on vertical integration and understates the costs of managing interunit relationships within an organization, particularly for nonstandard organizations and markets. We apply the theory simultaneously to decentralized supply relationships in a manufacturing corporation and to the corporation's relationships with single-source suppliers. Our results support the core proposition of the theory-that specialized assets have lower transaction costs within the organization. However, the hybrid characteristics of these supply relationships challenge both the theory's basic assumptions and its predictive power. Corporate decentralization and relational contracting in the market diminish the role of asset specificity as a necessary condition for low transaction costs in-house and as a sufficient condition for high transaction costs in the market. Therefore, how the theory should be used as a predictor of shifts in the current boundaries of the corporation is unclear

When Can You Trust ‘Trust'? Calculative Trust, Relational Trust, and Supplier Performance

Our research empirically assesses two distinct bases for trust: calculative trust, based on a structure of rewards and penalties, versus relational trust, a judgment anchored in past behavior and characterized by a shared identity. We find that calculative trust and relational trust positively influence supplier performance, with calculative trust having a stronger association than relational trust. Yet, important boundary conditions exist. If buyers invest in supplier-specific assets or when supply side market uncertainty is high, relational trust, not calculative trust, is more strongly associated with supplier performance. In contrast, when behavioral uncertainty is high, calculative trust, not relational trust, relates more strongly to supplier performance. These results highlight the value of examining distinct forms of trust. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.postprin

A WWW-Based Group Cognitive Mapping Approach to Support Case-Based Learning

One of the most difficult learning tasks is to solve complex, abstract, and unstructured problems. In many business problem domains, advanced students are required to perform numerous tasks that involve such higher-order cognitive processing as analyzing the arguments presented, making inferences, drawing logical conclusions, and critically evaluating all relevant alternatives, as well as the consequences of the decisions. This is especially true in the business school capstone courses, such as strategic management

The alpha-amylase gene in Drosophila mdanogaster: nucleotide sequence, gene structure and expression motifs

ABSTRACT We present the complete nucleotide sequence of a Drosophlla a-amylaae gene and its flanking regions, as determined by cDNA and genoralc sequence analysis. This gene, unlike Its mammalian counterparts, contains no lntrons. Nevertheless the Insect and mammalian genes share extensive nucleotide similarity and the Insect protein contains the four amlno acid sequence blocks common to all a-amylasea. In Drosophila melanogaster, there are two closely-linked copies of the a-amylase gene and they are divergently transcribed. In the 5'-regions of the two gene-copies we find high sequence divergence, yet the typical eukaryotic gene expression motifs have been maintained. The 5'-terminus of the a-amylase mRNA, as determined by primer extension analysis, maps to a characteristic Drosophila sequence motif. Additional conserved elements upstream of both genes may also be Involved In amylase gene expression which is known to be under complex controls that Include glucose repression. INTRODPCTIO

Outsourcing and financial performance: A negative curvilinear effect

This study asks how a firm's degree of outsourcing across all activities influences financial performance. We argue there is an optimal degree of outsourcing, where firms outsource some activities yet integrate others, and that deviations lower performance in a negatively curvilinear fashion. We find empirical support, using 1995 and 1998 data on a sample of manufacturing businesses in the Netherlands, and show that the steepness of the curve increases under conditions of high uncertainty. We show the magnitude of the uncertainty effect on performance outcomes through a post hoc scenario analysis. Thus we provide a specific, theoretically and empirically grounded prediction of how outsourcing affects performance with implications for theory and practice

How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms

Trust is an important driver of superior alliance performance. Alliance managers are influential in this regard because trust requires active involvement, commitment and the dedicated support of the key actors involved in the strategic alliance. Despite the importance of trust for explaining alliance performance, little effort has been made to systematically investigate the mechanisms that managers can use to purposefully create trust in strategic alliances. We use Parkhe’s (1998b) theoretical framework to derive nine hypotheses that distinguish between process-based, characteristic-based and institutional-based trust-building mechanisms. Our meta-analysis of 64 empirical studies shows that trust is strongly related to alliance performance. Process-based mechanisms are more important for building trust than characteristic- and institutional-based mechanisms. The effects of prior ties and asset specificity are not as strong as expected and the impact of safeguards on trust is not well understood. Overall, theoretical trust research has outpaced empirical research by far and promising opportunities for future empirical research exist