The Impact of Dominant IT Infrastructure in Multi-Establishment Firms: The Moderating Role of Environmental Dynamism

Multi-establishment firms (MEFs) rely on digitized processes enabled by advanced IT infrastructure;however, environmental dynamism is a major influence on their operations. Environmental dynamism threatens the efficacy of current operations, requiring firms to evolve their processes. Firms’ IT infrastructure may catalyze or hinder their endeavors and performance as they respond to environmental dynamics. Little previous research has examined which IT infrastructure types are high-performing and whether their effects vary across environments. We investigate the impacts of IT infrastructure, examining microlevel implementation—the constitution of technical and human assets—across the establishments of a multi-establishment firm (MEF). Specifically, we use the notion of a dominant IT infrastructure to unravel the heterogeneity of IT infrastructure across establishments. We explore dominant IT infrastructures—technology, human, or both—and assess their impacts across environmental conditions. To test our hypotheses, we used a panel dataset from 2007 to 2009 comprising 355 unique firms. Our findings reveal that the impact of establishment-level IT infrastructure types on MEF performance is contingent on environmental dynamism. A technology-dominant IT infrastructure leads to greater MEF performance in less dynamic environments, while a human-dominant IT infrastructure leads to greater MEF performance in more dynamic environments. The MEF performance is enhanced through a combination of technology- and human-dominant IT infrastructures in more dynamic environments. We conclude by discussing the theoretical insights and managerial implications of our findings.

Psyche Project Implementation During the COVID Pandemic

In January 2017, 'Psyche: Journey to a Metal World' was selected for implementation as part of NASA's Discovery program. The Psyche mission will utilize electric propulsion with SPT-140 Hall thrusters to rendezvous and orbit the metal-rich asteroid (16) Psyche, in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche spacecraft requires no chemical propulsion and, when launched in 2022, will be the first mission to use Hall thrusters beyond lunar orbit. The Psyche spacecraft is a hybrid development with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-provided deep-space avionics and communications equipment mounted on a high-heritage MAXAR (formerly Space Systems Loral) Solar-Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis, based on their 1300 series of GEO communications satellites. The spacecraft is equipped to support a suite of science instruments, as well as a demonstration of the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology. The spacecraft has sufficient onboard resources, autonomy, redundancy, and operability to complete a 3.5-year cruise to 16 Psyche, followed by a 20-month campaign of science investigations while orbiting the asteroid. The mission's early concept design and progress through Preliminary Design Review (PDR) has been described in previous work. The paper will cover the recent mission progress from the Critical Design Review (CDR) through the start of Spacecraft Environmental Testing, which took place during the COVID pandemic. The authors will highlight the successful remote collaboration between the major partners: ASU, JPL, MAXAR, and the Payload teams that led to the initiation of the Assembly, Test, Launch, Operations Phase (ATLO) in early March 2021. Emphasis will be placed on the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the work environment over the last 16+ months, including challenges to delivery of flight hardware and test equipment. In addition to the COVID-19 challenges, other significant anomalies discovered during design and test will be described along with any impacts to the overall science capability of the mission. © 2022 IEEE.

Unveiling the Direct Effects of Family Firm Heterogeneity on Environmental Performance

By combining agency theory and the resource- and capabilities-based view, this paper aims to unveil the influence of family firm heterogeneity on environmental performance. Previous results are inconsistent about how the specific features of this type of business contribute to better environmental protection performance. We analyse a number of variables related to the management, ownership and corporate governance characteristics of the family business and their individual influence on environmental performance. We test our hypotheses using a database of 748 family firms in the Spanish tourism sector. This economic sector, which is mostly composed of family businesses, puts great pressure on the environment. As such, family firms must take an active role in the resolution of the environmental problems that afflict society. We find that the effects of a family-controlled ownership and management structure on environmental performance are negative. Family-founder firms with a high degree of family control also are shown to have a negative relationship with environmental performance. However, the existence of a formal management mechanism, such as a management committee, emerges as the most powerful structural factor in facilitating the achievement of environmental objectives. The conclusions drawn from this study allow us to outline future lines of research as well as recommendations for practitioners. Our study responds to the call made in the literature to delve deeper into the heterogeneity of the family business, and specifically to determine which of its characteristic features allow this type of business to achieve better environmental performance.

A Carbon Nanotube-Functional Polymer Composite Film for Low-Power Indoor CO₂ Monitoring

Indoor air quality (IAQ) has been a growing concern in recent years, only to be expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic. A common provisional measure for IAQ is carbon dioxide (CO2), which is commonly used to inform the ventilation control of buildings. However, few commercially available sensors exist that can reliably measure CO2 while being low cost, exhibiting low power consumption, and being easily deployable for use in applications such as occupancy monitoring. This work presents a polymer composite-based chemiresistive CO2 sensor that leverages branched poly(ethylenimine) (PEI) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) as the CO2 absorbing layer. This polymer blend was incorporated with single wall carbon nanotubes (CNT), which serve as the charge carriers. Prototype sensors were assessed in a bench-top environmental test chamber which varied temperature (22–26 °C), relative humidity level (20–80%), CO2 concentration (400–20,000 ppm), as well as other gas constituents to simulate typical and extreme indoor conditions. The results indicate that the proposed system could ultimately serve as a low-power alternative to current commercially available technologies for indoor CO2 monitoring.

SARS-CoV-2 monitoring by automated target-driven molecular machine-based engineering.

Biosensors based on nucleic acid-structured electrochemiluminescence are rapidly developing for medical diagnostics. Here, we build an automated DNA molecular machine on Ti3C2/polyethyleneimine-Ru(dcbpy)3 2+@Au composite, which alters the situation that a DNA molecular machine requires laying down motion tracks. We use this DNA molecular machine to transduce the target concentration information to enhance the electrochemiluminescence signal based on DNA hybridization calculations. Complex bioanalytical processes are centralized in a single nucleic acid probe unit, thus eliminating the tedious steps of laying down motion tracks required by the traditional molecular machine. We found a detection limit of 0.68 pM and a range of 1 pM to 1 nM for the analysis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) specific DNA target. Recoveries range between 96.4 and 104.8% for the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in human saliva. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10311-022-01434-9.

Employee Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Impact of Environmental Transformational Leadership and GHRM

We investigated the impact of environmental transformational leadership (ETL) on pro-environmental behavior (PEB) of employees in Kazakhstan. The study also examined the potential mediating effect of environmental awareness and green human resource management (GHRM) as a moderating effect, using the theory of planned behavior. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted with 268 Kazakh employees from private and public organizations. Structural equation modeling was used to test the theory-driven model. The results show that environmental leadership predicted employees’ PEB, environmental awareness mediated the relationship, and GHRM partially moderated the relationship. The results of bootstrapping tests reveal that environmental awareness played successive mediating roles in the link between ETL and PEBs, but the simple slope test did not support the moderating effect of GHRM. Environmental awareness and GHRM were identified as fundamental mechanisms that accounted for the connection between ETL and PEBs.