Knowledge management and team innovation: understanding the team processes underlying high innovativeness

Being innovative means being willing ‘to go the extra mile’ beyond routine tasks in teams. It also means that team members are willing to consider different perspectives in heterogeneous teams and to share information. Important antecedents of team innovation are successful information sharing and helping behaviour among team members. Although the importance of information sharing for innovation is seemingly self-evident, we still know very little about the group processes that support team innovation (West, 2002). Information sharing is a group process that is an indispensable part of team integration. Team roles and team tasks need to be discussed to successfully achieve team goals. In heterogeneous teams with members from different occupational backgrounds integrating processes such as information sharing are even more important. To date, research on information sharing has focused mainly on the type of information that is shared or unshared (Brodbeck, Kerschreiter, Mojzisch, Frey, & Schulz-Hardt, 2002; Stasser, Stewart, & Wittenbaum, 1995) and on antecedents of information sharing, such as trust (Butler, 1999), task and reward interdependence (Moser & Wodzicki, 2007), or how person perception might affect information exchange (de Bruin & Van Lange, 2000). The link between output measures of group performance, such as innovativeness, and information sharing has always been implied and has been explored theoretically to some extent (Diehl & Ziegler, 2000), but empirical studies that go beyond organisational case studies (Basadur & Gelade, 2006) are still scarce. If we define innovation as the introduction of new ideas and new ways of doing things at work as suggested by West (2002), then sharing information about these new ideas and developing ideas further in the team through information sharing is a prerequisite for team innovation. However, the role of information is likely to be very different for routine team tasks and for team innovation. Especially in heterogeneous teams with members from different occupational backgrounds, task interdependence is likely to be lower for new and innovative processes than for established procedures and routine tasks. This means that information sharing is ‘nice to have’ and would be expected to affect team innovation, but is at the same time not indispensable for completing routine team tasks. This distinction is important, because under low task interdependence different social processes come into play in groups (Moser & Wodzicki, 2007). Information sharing under low task interdependence can be defined as a form of prosocial behaviour at work. It means that team members are willing to put in an extra effort and ‘go the extra mile’ to discuss their perspectives on the team task with colleagues from a different disciplinary background. In the studies presented here we argue that the importance of information sharing and helping behaviour for team innovation should therefore increase if occupational diversity is high and team size is large. The hypothesis was tested in two independent samples of health care teams (N1=72 breast cancer care teams, N2=113 community mental health teams), using team innovation rated by independent experts as outcome variable. Multiple regression analysis showed that helping behaviour had a significant independent effect on innovation for both team types, while information sharing only had a significant association with innovation for breast cancer teams. The interaction effects of team size and occupational diversity were tested with moderated regression analysis for both helping behaviour and information sharing. Both team processes showed strong main effects, which were even stronger if occupational diversity was high. There was also a main effect of team size on innovation, which is increased especially if helping behaviour in the team is strong. The interaction effect with team size could thus be confirmed for both teams, while the interaction with team size was only found for the mental health care teams. The partially different results for the two different team types could be explained by the differences in task and team structures. While mental health teams have stable membership and meet less regularly than breast cancer teams, breast cancer teams are cross-functional teams with multiple team memberships. In conclusion, it can be said that especially helping behaviour seems to be crucial for team innovation. If teams are large, and helping behaviour among team members is strong, the capacity for innovation seems to be greatly increased. Implications for understanding the psychological processes underlying team innovation and for managing knowledge sharing in teams are discussed

Effectiveness of a brief community outreach tobacco cessation intervention in India: a cluster-randomised controlled trial (the BABEX Trial)

BACKGROUND: Tobacco use kills half a million people every month, most in low-middle income countries (LMICs). There is an urgent need to identify potentially low-cost, scalable tobacco cessation interventions for these countries. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a brief community outreach intervention delivered by health workers to promote tobacco cessation in India. DESIGN: Cluster-randomised controlled trial. SETTING: 32 low-income administrative blocks in Delhi, half government authorised ('resettlement colony') and half unauthorised ('J.J. cluster') communities. PARTICIPANTS: 1213 adult tobacco users. INTERVENTIONS: Administrative blocks were computer randomised in a 1:1 ratio, to the intervention (16 clusters; n=611) or control treatment (16 clusters; n=602), delivered and assessed at individual level between 07/2012 and 11/2013. The intervention was single session quit advice (15 min) plus a single training session in yogic breathing exercises; the control condition comprised very brief quit advice (1 min) alone. Both were delivered via outreach, with contact made though household visits. MEASUREMENTS: The primary outcome was 6-month sustained abstinence from all tobacco, assessed 7 months post intervention delivery, biochemically verified with salivary cotinine. RESULTS: The smoking cessation rate was higher in the intervention group (2.6% (16/611)) than in the control group (0.5% (3/602)) (relative risk=5.32, 95% CI 1.43 to 19.74, p=0.013). There was no interaction with type of tobacco use (smoked vs smokeless). Results did not change materially in adjusted analyses, controlling for participant characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: A single session community outreach intervention can increase tobacco cessation in LMIC. The effect size, while small, could impact public health if scaled up with high coverage. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTCN23362894

The Social Gradient in Tobacco Use Does Not Generalize to Low-Income Urban Communities in India: Findings From a Census Survey.

INTRODUCTION: The existence of a social gradient in tobacco use has been clearly established in a number of countries with people with lower socioeconomic status being more likely to use tobacco. It is not clear how far this gradient is evident within severely deprived communities. This study assessed the association between occupation as a marker of socioeconomic status and use of smoked and smokeless tobacco within "slum" areas of Delhi, India. METHODS: A census survey of 11 888 households, comprising 30 655 adults from 28 low-income communities (14 government-authorized and 14 unauthorized settlements called "Jhuggi-Jhopri/JJ" clusters) was conducted in 2012. The survey assessed age, sex, household size, occupational group, and current tobacco use. Independent associations with tobacco use were conducted using complex samples regression analysis, stratified by gender. RESULTS: A quarter of participants (24.3%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 21.5-27.5) used any tobacco. Slightly more people used smoked (14.6%, 95% CI 12.9-16.3) than smokeless (12.6%, 95% CI 10.7-14.8) tobacco, with a small minority being dual users (2.7%, 95% CI 2.1-3.5). Prevalence of any tobacco use was highest in unskilled (45.13%, 95% CI 42.4-47.9) and skilled (46.2%, 95% CI 41.1-51.4) manual occupations and lower in nonmanual (30.3%, 95% CI 26.2-34.7) occupations and those who were unemployed (29.0%, 95% CI 25.3-33.0). This was confirmed in adjusted analysis in men but associations were more complex in women. CONCLUSIONS: Use of smoked and smokeless tobacco in low-income urban communities in India has a complex association with occupational status with both nonmanual occupation and unemployment being associated with lower prevalence of smoked and smokeless tobacco in men. IMPLICATIONS: Tobacco use in high-income countries shows a strong inverse relationship with social grade, income, and deprivation such that use is much more common among those who can least afford it. This study is the first to look at this social gradient in the context of low-income communities in India, finding that both unemployment and nonmanual occupation were associated with lower rates of tobacco use in men. The data present a challenge to existing explanations of the social gradient, requiring further consideration of the conditions under which affordability may work to reduce health inequalities arising from tobacco use

Multiscale correlative tomography: an investigation of creep cavitation in 316 stainless steel

Creep cavitation in an ex-service nuclear steam header Type 316 stainless steel sample is investigated through a multiscale tomography workflow spanning eight orders of magnitude, combining X-ray computed tomography (CT), plasma focused ion beam (FIB) scanning electron microscope (SEM) imaging and scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) tomography. Guided by microscale X-ray CT, nanoscale X-ray CT is used to investigate the size and morphology of cavities at a triple point of grain boundaries. In order to understand the factors affecting the extent of cavitation, the orientation and crystallographic misorientation of each boundary is characterised using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Additionally, in order to better understand boundary phase growth, the chemistry of a single boundary and its associated secondary phase precipitates is probed through STEM energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) tomography. The difference in cavitation of the three grain boundaries investigated suggests that the orientation of grain boundaries with respect to the direction of principal stress is important in the promotion of cavity formation

Nitrogen forms affect root structure and water uptake in the hybrid poplar

The study analyses the effects of two different forms of nitrogen fertilisation (nitrate and ammonium) on root structure and water uptake of two hybrid poplar (Populus maximowiczii x P. balsamifera) clones in a field experiment. Water uptake was studied using sap flow gauges on individual proximal roots and coarse root structure was examined by excavating 18 whole-root systems. Finer roots were scanned and analyzed for architecture. Nitrogen forms did not affect coarse-root system development, but had a significant effect on fine-root development. Nitrate-treated trees presented higher fine:coarse root ratios and higher specific root lengths than control or ammonium treated trees. These allocation differences affected the water uptake capacity of the plants as reflected by the higher sapflow rate in the nitrate treatment. The diameter of proximal roots at the tree base predicted well the total root biomass and length. The diameter of smaller lateral roots also predicted the lateral root mass, length, surface area and the number of tips. The effect of nitrogen fertilisation on the fine root structure translated into an effect on the functioning of the fine roots forming a link between form (architecture) and function (water uptake)

VEZF1 elements mediate protection from DNA methylation

There is growing consensus that genome organization and long-range gene regulation involves partitioning of the genome into domains of distinct epigenetic chromatin states. Chromatin insulator or barrier elements are key components of these processes as they can establish boundaries between chromatin states. The ability of elements such as the paradigm β-globin HS4 insulator to block the range of enhancers or the spread of repressive histone modifications is well established. Here we have addressed the hypothesis that a barrier element in vertebrates should be capable of defending a gene from silencing by DNA methylation. Using an established stable reporter gene system, we find that HS4 acts specifically to protect a gene promoter from de novo DNA methylation. Notably, protection from methylation can occur in the absence of histone acetylation or transcription. There is a division of labor at HS4; the sequences that mediate protection from methylation are separable from those that mediate CTCF-dependent enhancer blocking and USF-dependent histone modification recruitment. The zinc finger protein VEZF1 was purified as the factor that specifically interacts with the methylation protection elements. VEZF1 is a candidate CpG island protection factor as the G-rich sequences bound by VEZF1 are frequently found at CpG island promoters. Indeed, we show that VEZF1 elements are sufficient to mediate demethylation and protection of the APRT CpG island promoter from DNA methylation. We propose that many barrier elements in vertebrates will prevent DNA methylation in addition to blocking the propagation of repressive histone modifications, as either process is sufficient to direct the establishment of an epigenetically stable silent chromatin stat

Double Field Theory Formulation of Heterotic Strings

We extend the recently constructed double field theory formulation of the low-energy theory of the closed bosonic string to the heterotic string. The action can be written in terms of a generalized metric that is a covariant tensor under O(D,D+n), where n denotes the number of gauge vectors, and n additional coordinates are introduced together with a covariant constraint that locally removes these new coordinates. For the abelian subsector, the action takes the same structural form as for the bosonic string, but based on the enlarged generalized metric, thereby featuring a global O(D,D+n) symmetry. After turning on non-abelian gauge couplings, this global symmetry is broken, but the action can still be written in a fully O(D,D+n) covariant fashion, in analogy to similar constructions in gauged supergravities.Comment: 28 pages, v2: minor changes, version published in JHE

The Emerging Scholarly Brain

It is now a commonplace observation that human society is becoming a coherent super-organism, and that the information infrastructure forms its emerging brain. Perhaps, as the underlying technologies are likely to become billions of times more powerful than those we have today, we could say that we are now building the lizard brain for the future organism.Comment: to appear in Future Professional Communication in Astronomy-II (FPCA-II) editors A. Heck and A. Accomazz

Multilevel models of age-related changes in facial shape in adolescents

Here we study the effects of age on facial shape in adolescents by using a method called multilevel principal components analysis (mPCA). An associated multilevel multivariate probability distribution is derived and expressions for the (conditional) probability of age-group membership are presented. This formalism is explored via Monte Carlo (MC) simulated data in the first dataset; where age is taken to increase the overall scale of a three-dimensional facial shape represented by 21 landmark points and all other “subjective” variations are related to the width of the face. Eigenvalue plots make sense and modes of variation correctly identify these two main factors at appropriate levels of the mPCA model. Component scores for both single-level PCA and mPCA show a strong trend with age. Conditional probabilities are shown to predict membership by age group and the Pearson correlation coefficient between actual and predicted group membership is r = 0.99. The effects of outliers added to the MC training data are reduced by the use of robust covariance matrix estimation and robust averaging of matrices. These methods are applied to another dataset containing 12 GPA-scaled (3D) landmark points for 195 shapes from 27 white, male schoolchildren aged 11 to 16 years old. 21% of variation in the shapes for this dataset was accounted for by age. Mode 1 at level 1 (age) via mPCA appears to capture an increase in face height with age, which is consistent with reported pubertal changes in children. Component scores for both single-level PCA and mPCA again show a distinct trend with age. Conditional probabilities are again shown to reflect membership by age group and the Pearson correlation coefficient is given by r = 0.63 in this case. These analyses are an excellent first test of the ability of multilevel statistical methods to model age-related changes in facial shape in adolescents

Systematic review of pre-operative exercise in colorectal cancer patients

The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence for exercise interventions prior to surgery for colorectal cancer resection. The evidence for use of exercise to improve physical fitness and surgical outcomes is as yet unknown. A systematic search was performed of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED and BNI databases for studies involving pre-operative exercise in colorectal cancer patients. Eight studies were included in the review. There is evidence that pre-operative exercise improves functional fitness, and to a lesser extent objectively measurable cardio-respiratory fitness prior to colorectal cancer resection. There is no clear evidence at present that this improvement in fitness translates into reduced peri-operative risk or improved post-operative outcomes. Current studies are limited by risk of bias. This review highlights the common difficulty in transferring promising results in a research setting, into significant improvements in the clinical arena. Future research should focus on which type of exercise is most likely to maximise patient adherence and improvements in cardio-respiratory fitness. Ultimately, adequately powered, randomised controlled trials are needed to investigate whether pre-operative exercise improves post-operative morbidity and mortality