How Board of Directors’ Social Capital Enhances the Effectiveness of IT and R&D Resources Toward More Effective Innovation

A board of directors (BOD) plays a critical governance and strategic oversight role in an organization; acting as a fiduciary for shareholders, advising strategic decision making, and providing supportive resources and information to key decision makers. Especially critical is the role and contribution of corporate governance in guiding firm innovation. Such guidance has implications for investment in new products and services. In this paper, we examine the synergistic relationship between a firm’s BOD and technology and R&D inputs to innovation. We focus on the influence of the social capital of a BOD on different types of innovation. Our longitudinal findings show IT, R&D, and BOD social capital individually contribute to innovation performance, reflected in exploitative and exploratory innovation productivity. Moreover, BOD social capital enhances innovation enabled by IT activities. However, the combination of R&D activities and dimensions of BOD social capital leads to both negative and positive innovation performance

The Impact of Corporate Sustainability and Technology Investment on Firm Innovation

Corporate sustainability is becoming an important component of corporate strategy, resulting in new areas of goal setting, planning, and process-level change. Despite the growing importance of corporate sustainability in organizations, there is a lack of research examining how the coexistence of corporate sustainability practices and a firm’s technology investment impacts critical processes such as innovation. In this study, we use resource orchestration theory and the information disclosure perspective to examine how the combination of a firm’s corporate sustainability efforts and technology investment can influence and impact a firm’s innovation process. Using a longitudinal data of S&P firms, from 2017 to 2020, we show that corporate sustainability performance, as reflected through ESG (environmental, social, and governance) measures, and technology investment positively impact a firm’s innovation process outcomes. Surprisingly however, the combination of these two individually contributing factors leads to a lower innovation performance. Implications for practitioners and academics are discussed. Keywords Corporate sustainability, ESG, innovation, information disclosure, resource orchestration, technolog

Resilience through Technology Intensity and International Related Management Experience: An Explorative Examination of European Firms during the COVID-19 Crisis

Recovering from disruption and responding to a crisis is becoming a major concern for firms, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior research suggests that in the presence of uncertainty and disruption, resilience is influential in retaining performance. Less is known, however, about how organizational and technological factors come together to build a resilient firm. Using organizational information processing theory (OIPT), our study helps to fill this gap by examining the interplay between technology intensity and international related management experience to build a resilient mechanism. The empirical findings show this resilience mechanism can strengthen business performance during times of crisis. Moreover, further analysis provides new insights based on the scope of a firm’s market, supply dependency, and its business sector. Specifically, the interaction of technology intensity with international related management experience makes a greater impact on the performance for firms that are operating and selling their products or services internationally, have more dependency on an international supply, and service firms. Our findings support the complementary role of international related management experience to build a resilient firm and provide managerial insights for crisis response strategies

Treatment of a horizontally impacted permanent incisor in a 9-year-old girl: A Case Report

Impaction of maxillary central incisors is not common. Treatment of an impacted central incisor is challenging as it relates to facial esthetics and dental function.Although impaction of permanent teeth is rarely diagnosed in mixed dentition period, an impacted central incisor is usually diagnosed when there is a delay in the eruption of tooth.Tooth impaction may result from a number of local etiological factors such as lack of space for eruption, presence of supernumerary teeth, disturbances in the path of eruption and presence of pathological cysts. Management options for such teeth include (1) surgical extraction and moving the lateral incisor to replace the central incisor and changing the anatomy of other teeth, (2) extraction of the impacted tooth followed by bridge or implant placement, (3) surgical repositioning of the impacted tooth, and (4) orthodontic correction of the impacted tooth.The purpose of this article was to describe surgical exposure and orthodontic treatment of a horizontally impacted permanent maxillary central incisor, parallel to the occlusal plane in a 9-year-old girl. The impacted tooth was surgically exposed and traction was done with orthodontic intervention

Considerations for the Development of Innovative Therapies Against Aggressive Neuroblastoma: Immunotherapy and Twist1 Targeting

Neuroblastoma (NB) is one of the major challenges of pediatric oncology with a 5‐year survival rate of less than 40% despite intense therapy. The aggressiveness of the disease has been recently correlated to the degree of myeloid cells infiltrating the tumor. Together with the tumor cells and immunosuppressive cytokines (e.g., IL‐10 and TGF‐β), these cells hamper the generation of an efficient antitumor immune response and, therefore, favor tumor growth and metastasis. Novel therapeutic approaches are designed to target immune cells instead of cancer cells. To improve their efficacy, recent cancer immunotherapy strategies have focused on the depletion, blockade, or reprogramming of these tolerogenic immune effectors. Therefore, the principal clinical challenge is currently to identify therapeutic strategies which could overcome the primary and secondary resistances to these cancer immunotherapies. In this review, we discuss the dialogue of immune microenvironment of neuroblastoma and the immunotherapeutic strategies to cure neuroblastoma

The Impact of Data Analytics on Hospital Performance

The healthcare industry has yet to harness the full potential of data analytics in administrative and clinical care operations. Indeed, evidence of data analytics impacts on hospital operations is sparse. This study helps close this research gap by examining the effect of data analytics on hospital clinical operations. A conceptual model is proposed, anchored to dynamic capabilities theory. Using ten years of secondary data for more than 2,500 US hospitals, econometrics analyses provide evidence of a positive impact of clinical data analytical systems (CDAS) on patient experience. However, no similar evidence is found with overall hospital operational performance. Thus, while data analytics can have a targeted impact, organizational-wide effects appear to be more complex. Implications for practitioners and academics are discussed

Cement selection criteria for full coverage restorations : a comprehensive review of literature

Proper cement selection in fixed prosthesis plays a determinative role in providing long-term serviceability, retention, caries prevention, and patient satisfaction. This study, reviews different luting agent characteristics and their application based o

Toward a circular supply chain:Understanding barriers from the perspective of recovery approaches

The integration of the concept of the circular economy (CE) within the supply chain is known as the circular supply chain (CSC). Although various articles have identified barriers to implementing CE, no comprehensive study has investigated the impacts of barriers focusing on CSC. This study includes a systematic literature review to contextualize the impact of barriers from the perspective of 3R (i.e., reusing, remanufacturing, and recycling) recovery approaches. It classifies barriers into seven main groups in the context of CSC. The most often observed barriers hindering 3R recovery approaches are identified, and their impacts are discussed. The results demonstrate that barriers related to “economics and finance,” “governments and regulations,” and “society and culture” substantially impact the ability of organizations in the initial phase of adopting recovery approaches. In particular, key findings outline that consumer willingness to purchase recovered products impacts reuse, deficient supportive regulations impact 3R approaches (especially recycling), and a lack of support in the market impacts the ability of organizations to execute remanufacturing effectively. In addition, conducting empirical research is still desirable and creates a meaningful link between theory and practice. It helps to understand the barriers to remanufacturing, reusing, and recycling

In Vitro Culture of Mouse Preantral Follicle in Supplemented Medium with Bone Morphogenetic Protein 15 (BMP15)

Background: BMD-15 is a member of the superfamily of transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β), which has a determinant role in fertility. This protein is essential for the development of ovarian follicles and acts mainly by binding to its receptor on the surface of granulosa cells. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of BMP-15 on in vitro ovarian follicle growth and embryo development. Methods: In this study, preantral follicles were isolated mechanically from 12 days NMRI mouse ovaries, then the follicles were cultured in basic growth medium enriched by FBS, FSH, and ITS‏ and BMP-15-enriched for 12 days. During the culture, survival rate and follicular maturation, follicular diameter, level of estrogen, and progesterone secretion and embryo developmental rate were evaluated. Results: The results of this study showed that the percentage of antral follicles, maturation rate and hormone levels and the diameter of follicles was significantly higher in BMP-15 supplemented media in comparison to basic media. Embryo development was also higher at BMP-15 enriched group in comparison to the group of follicles, which were grown in the basic culture media. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that supplemented media with BMP-15 to the ovarian preantral follicle culture enhances the in vitro growth of follicle embryo development

Cold Tumors: A Therapeutic Challenge for Immunotherapy

Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies targeting immune checkpoints (ICPs) have changed the treatment landscape of many tumors. However, response rate remains relatively low in most cases. A major factor involved in initial resistance to ICP inhibitors is the lack or paucity of tumor T cell infiltration, characterizing the so-called “cold tumors.” In this review, we describe the main mechanisms involved in the absence of T cell infiltration, including lack of tumor antigens, defect in antigen presentation, absence of T cell activation and deficit of homing into the tumor bed. We discuss then the different therapeutic approaches that could turn cold into hot tumors. In this way, specific therapies are proposed according to their mechanism of action. In addition, ‘‘supra-physiological’’ therapies, such as T cell recruiting bispecific antibodies and Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells, may be active regardless of the mechanism involved, especially in MHC class I negative tumors. The determination of the main factors implicated in the lack of preexisting tumor T cell infiltration is crucial for the development of adapted algorithms of treatments for cold tumors