We address calls for contextualization in the study of slack resources by examining the pursuit of strategic change as a contingency that shapes the effects of human resource (HR) slack and financial ...slack on firm performance. Using data on U.S. commercial banks from 2002 to 2014, we demonstrate that HR slack is more positively related to firm performance in firms pursuing strategic change, and that this relationship is stronger in the presence of greater financial slack. Moreover, we find that the moderating effect of financial slack on HR slack in the strategic change context operates through changes in organizations' human capital investment, offering a unique examination of a key mechanism through which slack resources create value and through which complementarities between different types of slack come to fruition. Our paper advances the contingency perspective within the slack literature and brings important insights from the resource management perspective to the conversation on slack and performance.
The authors investigate potential discrimination against people with disabilities through a field experiment that sent job applications to 6,016 accounting positions for which the applicants’ ...disabilities are unlikely to affect productivity. One-third of the cover letters disclosed that the applicant had a spinal cord injury, one-third disclosed the presence of Asperger’s syndrome, and one-third did not mention disability. The disability applications received 26% fewer expressions of employer interest. This gap was concentrated among experienced applicants and small private companies that are not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Tests suggest possible positive effects of the ADA, but not of state laws, in reducing the disability gap. Results indicate there may be substantial room for employer and policy initiatives to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
We examine how firms' prepandemic investments in human capital influence their use of workforce reductions and layoffs (hereafter, workforce reductions) as a response to financial pressures during ...the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. We contend that workforce reductions must be examined in the context of firms' broader financial and resource orchestration environments. First, we suggest that firms' relative exposure to pandemic financial pressures (PFPs) will determine their need to cut costs during the pandemic. Second, we argue that a firm's prior investments in employees' human capital will reduce the attractiveness of workforce reductions as a cost-cutting response to PFPs, as human capital investment (HCI) increases the value of employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities and motivation, thus inducing firms to seek alternative measures to reduce costs. We then argue that the attenuating influence of HCI on the effect of PFPs on workforce reductions will be stronger when HCI is matched with greater investments in physical capital, as employees' human capital will create more value-and will translate to a bigger loss following employee departures-in such circumstances. We demonstrate support for our hypotheses in a sample of 1,364 U.S. banks using data from quarterly Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reports, news articles, and Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARN) Act filings through the fourth quarter of 2020. We discuss implications for our understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organizations and employees and for research on resource orchestration and human capital.
Building on the notion of cumulative advantage, we undertake a nuanced examination of how collaborating with a star affects attributions of credit and blame to nonstars in collaborative endeavors. ...Situating our inquiry in the US hedge fund industry, we hypothesize two‐way interactions predicting that collaboration with a star comanager will weaken both the positive effect of comanaged fund success and the negative effect of comanaged fund failure on nonstar managers’ professional status attainment (i.e., the status of a manager's subsequent employing firm). Specifically, we argue that the involvement of a star comanager will weaken prospective employers’ attributions for positive or negative performance to a focal nonstar manager, due to presumptions of the star's disproportionate influence in collaborative decisions. We then theorize a series of three‐way interactions specifying the roles of other signals of a nonstar manager's competence in this process. More precisely, we argue that a nonstar's performance outside the collaborative context and the status of the nonstar's current employer will weaken the dampening effect of comanaging with a star in the context of success and strengthen the favorable, blame‐reducing effect of comanaging with a star in the context of failure. Therefore, we suggest that nonstars who can signal their competence with these independent status signals will achieve greater professional status attainment than will those lacking such signals following both collaborative success and collaborative failure with a star. Our primary analyses support our hypotheses, while our supplementary analyses offer corroborative support for theorized mechanisms and evidence to address alternative explanations.
We develop a new typology of star employees, wherein we identify three types of stars—universal stars, performance stars, and status stars—on the basis of stars’ unique combinations of task ...performance and external status. By classifying stars in this way and disentangling task performance and external status as unique and simultaneously important qualities underlying the distinct contributions of different types of stars, we provide a basis for more accurately identifying the full range of individuals who create exceptional value, and we offer novel insights into stars’ various influences in organizations. With this foundation, we explore how different types of stars’ distinct qualities and bases of value creation affect both the security of their star standing and their relative abilities to appropriate value. We then expand our focus to consider stars in the broader organizational contexts in which they exist, discussing the implications of stars’ distinct attributes for patterns of value creation, value capture, and value preservation associated with stars’ complementarities and redundancies with other organizational resources. Finally, we propose several lines of inquiry through which future research may leverage the proposed typology to address issues related to the management of different types of stars in the broader organizational contexts in which they are embedded.
In this study, we theorize that chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) peer pay comparisons influence their decisions to engage in layoffs, and we consider the conditions under which layoffs deliver ...“payoffs” in the form of increases in subsequent CEO relative pay. Our results indicate that CEOs receiving compensation below their peers are significantly more likely to announce layoffs in the subsequent year, relative to those receiving compensation above their peers. Further, we find that the relationship between layoffs and subsequent changes in CEO relative pay depends on postlayoff changes in firm performance, with CEOs in firms with the largest performance gains receiving the largest increases in relative pay. We also show that our results are robust to an alternative operationalization of CEO relative pay. We provide evidence that external social comparisons may have predictable consequences for both CEOs’ propensities to engage in particular strategic actions and future changes in CEOs’ relative pay.
We characterized electrode stability over twelve weeks of impedance and neural recording data from four chronically-implanted Utah arrays in two rhesus macaques, and investigated the effects of glial ...scarring and interface interactions at the electrode recording site on signal quality using a computational model.
A finite-element model of a Utah array microelectrode in neural tissue was coupled with a multi-compartmental model of a neuron to quantify the effects of encapsulation thickness, encapsulation resistivity, and interface resistivity on electrode impedance and waveform amplitude. The coupled model was then reconciled with the in vivo data. Histology was obtained seventeen weeks post-implantation to measure gliosis.
From week 1-3, mean impedance and amplitude increased at rates of 115.8 kΩ/week and 23.1 μV/week, respectively. This initial ramp up in impedance and amplitude was observed across all arrays, and is consistent with biofouling (increasing interface resistivity) and edema clearing (increasing tissue resistivity), respectively, in the model. Beyond week 3, the trends leveled out. Histology showed that thin scars formed around the electrodes. In the model, scarring could not match the in vivo data. However, a thin interface layer at the electrode tip could. Despite having a large effect on impedance, interface resistivity did not have a noticeable effect on amplitude.
This study suggests that scarring does not cause an electrical problem with regard to signal quality since it does not appear to be the main contributor to increasing impedance or significantly affect amplitude unless it displaces neurons. This, in turn, suggests that neural signals can be obtained reliably despite scarring as long as the recording site has sufficiently low impedance after accumulating a thin layer of biofouling. Therefore, advancements in microelectrode technology may be expedited by focusing on improvements to the recording site-tissue interface rather than elimination of the glial scar.
Crop populations derived from experimental crosses enable the genetic dissection of complex traits and support modern plant breeding. Among these, multi-parent populations now play a central role. By ...mixing and recombining the genomes of multiple founders, multi-parent populations combine many commonly sought beneficial properties of genetic mapping populations. For example, they have high power and resolution for mapping quantitative trait loci, high genetic diversity and minimal population structure. Many multi-parent populations have been constructed in crop species, and their inbred germplasm and associated phenotypic and genotypic data serve as enduring resources. Their utility has grown from being a tool for mapping quantitative trait loci to a means of providing germplasm for breeding programmes. Genomics approaches, including de novo genome assemblies and gene annotations for the population founders, have allowed the imputation of rich sequence information into the descendent population, expanding the breadth of research and breeding applications of multi-parent populations. Here, we report recent successes from crop multi-parent populations in crops. We also propose an ideal genotypic, phenotypic and germplasm 'package' that multi-parent populations should feature to optimise their use as powerful community resources for crop research, development and breeding.
Sea turtles represent an ancient lineage of marine vertebrates that evolved from terrestrial ancestors over 100 Mya. The genomic basis of the unique physiological and ecological traits enabling these ...species to thrive in diverse marine habitats remains largely unknown. Additionally, many populations have drastically declined due to anthropogenic activities over the past two centuries, and their recovery is a high global conservation priority. We generated and analyzed high-quality reference genomes for the leatherback (
) and green (
) turtles, representing the two extant sea turtle families. These genomes are highly syntenic and homologous, but localized regions of noncollinearity were associated with higher copy numbers of immune, zinc-finger, and olfactory receptor (OR) genes in green turtles, with ORs related to waterborne odorants greatly expanded in green turtles. Our findings suggest that divergent evolution of these key gene families may underlie immunological and sensory adaptations assisting navigation, occupancy of neritic versus pelagic environments, and diet specialization. Reduced collinearity was especially prevalent in microchromosomes, with greater gene content, heterozygosity, and genetic distances between species, supporting their critical role in vertebrate evolutionary adaptation. Finally, diversity and demographic histories starkly contrasted between species, indicating that leatherback turtles have had a low yet stable effective population size, exhibit extremely low diversity compared with other reptiles, and harbor a higher genetic load compared with green turtles, reinforcing concern over their persistence under future climate scenarios. These genomes provide invaluable resources for advancing our understanding of evolution and conservation best practices in an imperiled vertebrate lineage.
Abstract
Cereal crop breeders have achieved considerable genetic gain in genetically complex traits, such as grain yield, while maintaining genetic diversity. However, focus on selection for yield ...has negatively impacted other important traits. To better understand multi-trait selection within a breeding context, and how it might be optimized, we analysed genotypic and phenotypic data from a genetically diverse, 16-founder wheat multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross population. Compared to single-trait models, multi-trait ensemble genomic prediction models increased prediction accuracy for almost 90 % of traits, improving grain yield prediction accuracy by 3–52 %. For complex traits, non-parametric models (Random Forest) also outperformed simplified, additive models (LASSO), increasing grain yield prediction accuracy by 10–36 %. Simulations of recurrent genomic selection then showed that sustained greater forward prediction accuracy optimized long-term genetic gains. Simulations of selection on grain yield found indirect responses in related traits, involving optimized antagonistic trait relationships. We found multi-trait selection indices could effectively optimize undesirable relationships, such as the trade-off between grain yield and protein content, or combine traits of interest, such as yield and weed competitive ability. Simulations of phenotypic selection found that including Random Forest rather than LASSO genetic models, and multi-trait rather than single-trait models as the true genetic model accelerated and extended long-term genetic gain whilst maintaining genetic diversity. These results (i) suggest important roles of pleiotropy and epistasis in the wider context of wheat breeding programmes, and (ii) provide insights into mechanisms for continued genetic gain in a limited genepool and optimization of multiple traits for crop improvement.
PDF
