Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: Infobesity in Multicultural Firms During Covid-19

Globalized firms maintain a presence across multiple countries encompassing multiple cultures. Cross-border, multicultural firms can leverage digital technologies to harness diverse information spread across the organization to generate insights and innovation. Conversely, digital technologies can cause organizations to suffer from infobesity. We examine this dialectic tension in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. We theorize that multicultural firms exhibited better performance, assessed through market measures, during the onset of the pandemic. We further maintain that the use of digital technologies to generate insights from data has a negative effect on the relationship between multiculturism and firm performance due to infobesity. Analysis of Fortune 500 firms, having 56,587 subsidiaries present in 179 distinct countries, demonstrates that multicultural firms witnessed relatively superior stock market returns during the first quarter of 2020. We make significant contributions to information systems and cross-cultural research and to broader inter-disciplinary management research

Leveraging BI Systems to Overcome Infobesity: A Comparative Analysis of Incumbent and New Entrant firms

Infobesity is a condition whereby firms collect more information than they need or more information than they can efficiently use. As both incumbent firms and new entrant firms face different information-rich technological and economic environments, they are at a greater risk of infobesity which can compromise their innovation outcomes. In this study we leverage a research design that integrates inductive analytics and abductive discovery to uncover how incumbent and new-entrant firms leverage Business Intelligence systems and digital collaboration activities to innovate in the face of infobesity. We find that new entrant firms encounter a threshold effect governed by the use of BI systems to filter information from their customer network. On the other hand, we found that while most incumbents are able to innovate, there are uninventive incumbents that are unable to develop new products when they deploy only moderate levels of BI systems to filter their supplier data

Magnetized matter effects on dilaton photon mixing

Dilatons ($\phi(x)$) are a class of bosonic scalar particles associated with scaling symmetry and its compensation (under the violations of the same). Due to two photon coupling, they can produce optical signatures in a magnetic field. In vacuum or plain matter they couple to one of the transversely polarized state of the photon. But in a magnetized matter, they couple to both the transversely polarized state of photon (due to emergence of a parity violating part of photon self energy contribution from a magnetized matter). A part of this work is directed towards understanding the issue of mixing of scalar with various polarizations states of photon in a medium ( magnetized or unmagnetized ) due to the constraints from different discrete (CPT) symmetries associated with the interaction. Based on these symmetry aided arguments, the structure of the mixing matrix is found to be $3 \times 3$. Thus there exists non-zero finite probabilities of oscillation between different polarization states of photon to dilaton. Our analytical and numerical analysis show no existence of periodic oscillation length either in temporal or spatial direction for most general values of the parameters in the theory. Possible astrophysical consequences of these results, those can be detected through observations are discussed.Comment: 39 pages; Accepted for the publication in Phys. Rev.

Stock Market Reactions to IT Endowment at the Onset of COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis represented an unprecedented test to organizations with respect to its systemic severity and the unique policy response of governments around the world. Policies to curb the pandemic\u27s spread resulted in severe cratering of demand and diverse supply disruptions to firms. Research demonstrates significant heterogeneity in the impacts of the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns on firm performance due to diverse firm characteristics. Our study advances this body of work by assessing the moderating impact of a firm’s pre-existing Information Technology (IT) endowment on changes in market and operational performance caused by the pandemic. Impacts of specific classes of IT investments, analyses of the social media activity of the firm, and textual analyses of news articles pertaining to the firm provide insights into underlying mechanisms. More generally, our results provide insights into the resilience accorded by IT in the face of exogenous disasters

Unravelling the Origins of Infobesity: The Impact of Frequency on Intensity

Infobesity is characterized by information overload whereby firms and decision makers collect more information than they need, or they can efficiently use. While recent studies have begun to unravel the antecedents of infobesity in organizations, there is a need to examine the relationship between the frequency and the degree of experiencing infobesity originating from enterprise systems. We use a research design that integrates inductive analytics and abductive discovery to uncover the interaction of multi-level antecedents of infobesity and conclude that the rate at which firms encounter infobesity drives the perception of the intensity at which the overload will be experienced

Unusual case of seizures due to prolonged QT syndrome - A Case Report

Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a cardiac electrical disorder. One of the rare symptoms of long QT caused by ventricular arrhythmia is seizure. Patients with LQTS may develop seizures due to an acute hypoxic-ischemic event associated with a ventricular arrhythmia. We present a case of a 47-year-old male who came to the Emergency Department (ED) with seizures and was diagnosed as LQTS. The cardiac cause of seizures was suspected because the patient was pulseless during the episode of seizures. The patient developed refractory ventricular tachycardia in the ED and was cardioverted (synchronized) multiple times. He was also put on amiodarone infusions. The patient was then urgently shifted to the Coronary Cath Lab for temporary pacemaker insertion with overdrive pacing. He was advised for an automated implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. This case illustrates that prolonged QT syndrome can masquerade as seizure. Therefore, a careful examination should be done in the patient presenting with the same and a cardiac cause should be excluded. Delays in recognition and treatment may expose the patient to a high risk of sudden cardiac death

ST elevation myocardial infarction in a healthy teenager with no risk factors

Myocardial infarction is not common in patients younger than 45 years. Young patients can experience a myocardial infarction in the presence or absence of atherosclerosis. We report a case of an 18-year-old male patient who presented with chest pain in the emergency department. There were neither any risk factors of coronary artery disease nor any co-morbidity. Investigations revealed an acute myocardial infarction with ST-segment elevation in ECG. On coronary angiography, mid 90% thrombus was seen in the left anterior descending artery, the cause of which remains unknown. Although rare, acute myocardial infarction should be considered in young adults or teenagers presenting with chest pain. Also, it can affect teenagers in the absence of traditional coronary risk factors or co-morbidities

Deodorant cap lodged in the rectum: A case report

Anorectal foreign bodies are rare but have shown a rising trend in recent times. Various kinds of a foreign object may be observed in the rectum, including sharp instruments which may pierce rectum, colon, or create visceral organ injuries. Most common presenting symptoms include abdominal, rectal pains and bleeding per rectum. Without proper history and examination, these foreign objects can easily be missed in the emergency department as these are still a matter of taboo especially in countries like India. We report a case of anelderly gentleman who presented to the emergency with bleeding per rectum and did not initially give a history of foreign body insertion