Publication records

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

The cases are used to introduce the concept of collective responsibility and leadership in team situations by applying the concept of Crew Resource Management for teams in a management setting. By drawing from the metaphor of aircrews to corporate scenarios challenges in leadership teams could be discussed in a wider context. Both cases describe the interaction of airline crews who are confronted with a non-routine problem that they have to solve. In the case of United Airlines 173 the crew ceases to function as team and the fully functional plane eventually crashes. As a result of this accident the concept of Crew Resource Management has been developed to optimize teamwork within the hierarchical structure of a cockpit crew. The case of United Airlines 232 complements the first case as it describes an airline crew that was confronted with a severe engine failure making their plane almost uncontrollable (similar prior accidents always resulted in the loss of the aircraft in non-survivable crashes). Using core elements of Crew Resource Management the crew was nevertheless able to achieve a survivable landing of the plane. Both cases cover essentially the last 30 minutes of both flights and focus on the communication of the flight crews.

The cases are used to introduce the concept of collective responsibility and leadership in team situations by applying the concept of Crew Resource Management for teams in a management setting. By drawing from the metaphor of aircrews to corporate scenarios challenges in leadership teams could be discussed in a wider context. Both cases describe the interaction of airline crews who are confronted with a non-routine problem that they have to solve. In the case of United Airlines 173 the crew ceases to function as team and the fully functional plane eventually crashes. As a result of this accident the concept of Crew Resource Management has been developed to optimize teamwork within the hierarchical structure of a cockpit crew. The case of United Airlines 232 complements the first case as it describes an airline crew that was confronted with a severe engine failure making their plane almost uncontrollable (similar prior accidents always resulted in the loss of the aircraft in non-survivable crashes). Using core elements of Crew Resource Management the crew was nevertheless able to achieve a survivable landing of the plane. Both cases cover essentially the last 30 minutes of both flights and focus on the communication of the flight crews.

The article refers to a technology commercialization strategy that was proposed by Teece (1986) and presents a game-theory model that considers complementary assets in the marketing process, strategic alliances, and hybrid contracts. The discussion focuses on: establishing co-promotion and the right to participate in the commercialization of an alliance product; using leverage in negotiations for gaining knowledge from a firm's complementary activities which can be applied to the commercialization of future products; learning in horizontal alliances between firms with complementary technology portfolios; and analyzing the structure of and access to knowledge in vertical arrangements.

We use proprietary data to analyze the importance of retail banking relationships to commercial banks and their depositors when banks underwrite securities. We find lead underwriters' retail customers benefit as they demand and end up with significantly more of the highly underpriced issues. We find it is actual underpricing beyond that predicted by grey markets that drive the differential demand from the lead bank retail clientele, suggesting that banks pass on information about underpriced initial public offerings to their retail depositors. We analyze banks' incentives for such behavior and find evidence of banks benefiting through retail cross-sellingâ€Â"both brokerage accounts and consumer loans increase significantly.

With permission of Elsevier

Nonprofit firms sometimes engage in for-profit activities for the purpose of generating revenue to subsidize their mission activities. The organization is then confronted with a consumption vs. investment trade-off, where investment corresponds to providing capacity for revenue customers, and consumption corresponds to serving mission customers. Exemplary of this approach are the Aravind Eye Hospitals in India, where profitable paying hospitals are used to subsidize care at free hospitals. We model this problem as a multi-period stochastic dynamic program. In each period, the organization must decide how much of the current assets should be invested in revenue-customer service capacity, and at what price the service should be sold. We provide sufficient conditions under which the optimal capacity and pricing decisions are of threshold type. Similar results are derived when the selling price is fixed but the banking of assets from one period to the next is allowed. We compare the performance of the optimal threshold policy with heuristics that may be more appealing to managers of nonprofit organizations, and assess the value of banking and of dynamic pricing through numerical experiments.

The immediate motivation of this paper is California Bill AB 394, legislation which mandates fixed nurse-to-patient staffing ratios as a means to address the current crisis in the quality of health care delivery. Modeling medical units as closed queueing systems, we seek to determine whether or not ratio policies are effective at managing nurse workload. Our many-server asymptotic results suggest that ratio policies cannot provide consistently high service quality across medical units of different sizes. As a remedy, we recommend policies that deviate from the restrictive linear nature of ratio policies, employing the 'square root rule' commonly used to staff large service systems. Under some quality of care assumptions, our policies exhibit a type of 'super' pooling effect, in which, for large systems, the requisite workforce is significantly smaller than the nominal patient load.

 

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Quicker, Higher, Stronger: A couple of years ago, the Russian branch of a global professional services firm published its annual partner promotion announcement in a leading Russian business journal, giving the names and pictures of the newly appointed partners. To the readers' surprise, most of these partners looked like a fresh-faced class of new university graduates. In some countries people of this age have not even graduated yet: the youngest partner was 26 years old. Just four years previously he had joined a competing professional organization as an intern, combining his last academic year's study with on-the-job training. With the growth of market opportunities and lack of more senior staff, he was quickly put on assignments with increasing complexity and responsibility and then made responsible for developing new business and delivering it successfully. A combination of personal qualities, learning opportunities and luck (or perhaps because the employer had no other choice) eventually led to his becoming a partner very early in life...

With permission of Elsevier