Group Atmosphere, Shared Understanding, and Perceived Conflict in Virtual Teams: Findings from an Experiment

In this paper, we present a theoretical model on the relationships among group atmosphere, shared understanding, and perceived task conflict in virtual teams. We validate the theoretical model by analyzing data that was collected in a laboratory experiment on virtual teams. We find that cultural diversity of virtual team adversely affects group atmosphere and group atmosphere has a positive influence on the development of shared understanding in these teams. We also find that the development of shared understanding weakens perceived task conflict in virtual teams. However, we do not find a strong support for the moderating effect of avoidance conflict management style on the relationship between shared understanding and perceived task conflict

Cultural Diversity, Perceived Work Atmosphere, and Intragroup Conflict in Global Virtual Teams: Findings from a Laboratory Experiment

In this paper we focus on the relationships among cultural diversity, perceived work atmosphere, and intra-groupconflict in global virtual teams. We report the findings of a laboratory experiment that was conducted involving thesubjects who were geographically dispersed. The participants used IBM’s Lotus Sametime to perform a group task.The findings of the study reveal that in virtual teams, task conflict overshadows relationship conflict; the culturalheterogeneity of the team members influences their perception of the work atmosphere, which in its turn aggravatestask conflict in the teams. We also find that Intra-group conflict adversely affects team members’ satisfaction andcollaborative conflict management style has a moderating effect on this relationship

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT PRACTICES FOR IMPROVING CARE & SANITATION FACILITIES OF PUBLIC HEALTHCARE DELIVERY SYSTEM: A CASE STUDY IN INDIA

In spite of being one of the fastest growing economies of the world, and having taken steps to improve the country’s health status after independence, India still has a long way to go. The healthcare system is challenging in India, particularly because of huge population size, economic and social factors coupled with the rising burden of both communicable and non-communicable diseases. Capital and technology perhaps are the most necessary conditions for achieving health gains, but experience in many countries confirms that they are not sufficient. Organizations must combine financial, physical and human resources for better performance. Public hospitals are heavily utilized by lower income groups of the society, up to ninety percent in case of free patients. While this is a good indication of the level of access of people to public health facilities, this also casts an obligation on the Government to improve their infrastructure and systems. Reports of numerous patients dying due to lack of oxygen supply in wards or wrong sterilization procedures, patients delayed admission and treatment due to shortage of medical staff or unavailability of necessary drugs and equipments in the hospital is prevalent. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the quality of sanitation and care of a tertiary level public healthcare facility in India. Data was collected from the inpatients and support staff of the hospital by using standard instruments. All ethical guidelines were fulfilled. Infrastructural scarcity and manpower allocation were a major issue. Staffs were significantly more negative in rating many aspects of hospital services. &nbsp;The researcher recommends accountability based work environment, periodic training modules for health workers, policy and infrastructural changes for improvement of the healthcare facilities.&nbsp