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This paper questions the notion that expatriates should adjust to their host country, by showing that adjustment and its consequences are affected by cosmopolitanism and expected assignment duration. A study of 260 expatriates in the U.S. reveals that cosmopolitans expecting shorter (longer) assignments adjust more (less) to both work and non-work aspects of their host country, and that this is associated with increased well-being. In contrast, for non-cosmopolitans, more well-being occurs when longer (shorter) expected assignments are accompanied by increased (decreased) work and non-work adjustment. Further, from the findings emerges a clash between two aspects of successful expatriation - well-being and professional success: while non-work adjustment is not always associated with well-being, work adjustment is positively related to assignment performance across conditions and subjects.

 

View all ESMT Working Papers in the ESMT Working Paper Series here. ESMT Working Papers are also available via SSRN, RePEc, EconStor, and the German National Library (DNB).

In this article we report on the design, prototyping and results of a research effort aimed at identifying if and how trust affects the creativity of a partnership between two economic agents. The methodology combines an experiment and two questionnaires. The purpose of the research is to increase our understanding of trust and its impact on the outcome of cooperation, and to derive some guidance for economic actors, namely R&D managers and executives who want to build trustful innovation oriented relationships with their business partners. Specifically, we investigate the effect of trust on partners' creativity and willingness to invest financially in a joint development. Our results show that more trustful partners invest higher amounts in the alliance, while there seems to be an optimum amount of mutual trust between partners to maximize their joint creativity; if the level of mutual trust is below or above this threshold; their joint creativity seems to decrease.

 

View all ESMT Working Papers in the ESMT Working Paper Series here. ESMT Working Papers are also available via SSRN, RePEc, EconStor, and the German National Library (DNB).

Using a large longitudinal, nationally representative workplace-level dataset, we explore the productivity gains associated with computer use and organizational redesign. The empirical strategy involves the estimation of a production function, augmented to account for technology use and organizational design, correcting for unobserved heterogeneity. We find large returns associated with computer use. We also find that computer use and organizational redesign may be complements or substitutes in production, and that the productivity gains associated with organizational redesign are industry-specific.

Aside from major and minor histocompatibility antigens, genetic polymorphisms of various donor and host genes have been found to be risk factors for graft-versus-host disease and transplantation-related mortality (TRM). The heme oxygenase I (HO-I) protein has been implicated in regulating inflammatory response and has been described as a ßÂ"ßÂ"protective gene'' in solid organ transplantation. In humans, the promoter region displays length polymorphism due to a variable number of GT repeats. Individuals exhibiting 29 or fewer GT repeats express higher levels of HO-I on cellular stress compared with individuals with 30 or more GT repeats. We retrospectively analyzed length polymorphisms of 92 donor-host pairs undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Our findings demonstrate that mainly donor polymorphism leading to high expression of HO-1 (\30 GT repeats) on stress signals is associated with reduced overall survival, and that TRM is significantly increased in this group. This reduction in survival was most prominent when unrelated donors were used. Polymorphisms of the recipient HO-1 genes did not influence posttransplantation outcomes. We conclude that HO-1 polymorphism represents a new genetic risk factor for TRM and overall survival.

With permission of Elsevier