Conflict and Conflict Management in Innovation Processes in the Life Sciences

Research on social conflicts in innovation processes has been rare, leaving an important research gap, as conflicts often arise in innovation processes and are even part of a researcher's everyday life. This study examines innovation and the variables of innovation success in the life sciences; it tests a conflict management model and examines the impact of both conflict type and conflict management style on innovation performance. This study surveyed 152 basic and applied researchers on their conflict management style through a multi‐method approach incorporating both survey and qualitative methods. The substantive aspects and relational effectiveness of conflict management styles were compared, considering their number of publications and patents, problem solution quality, project newness, conflict de‐escalation and communication. Applied researchers showed significantly more domination than did basic researchers, and a dominating conflict management style was significantly related to project newness. Moreover, problem solving was not always the most successful conflict management style. These findings have important practical implications for conflict management training and can help managers and researchers strengthen their co‐operation and improve productivity.     

Orthogonal Graph Drawing with Flexibility Constraints

Traditionally, the quality of orthogonal planar drawings is quantified by either the total number of bends, or the maximum number of bends per edge. However, this neglects that in typical applications, edges have varying importance. In this work, we investigate an approach that allows to specify the maximum number of bends for each edge individually, depending on its importance. We consider a new problem called FlexDraw that is defined as follows. Given a planar graph G=(V,E) on n vertices with maximum degree 4 and a function $\operatorname{flex}: E \longrightarrow\mathbb{N}_{0}$ that assigns a flexibility to each edge, does G admit a planar embedding on the grid such that each edge e has at most $\operatorname{flex}(e)$ bends? Note that in our setting the combinatorial embedding of G is not fixed. FlexDraw directly extends the problem β-embeddability asking whether G can be embedded with at most β bends per edge. We give an algorithm with running-time O(n ²) solving FlexDraw when the flexibility of each edge is positive. This includes 1-embeddability as a special case and thus closes the complexity gap between 0-embeddability, which is $\mathcal{NP}$ -hard to decide, and 2-embeddability, which is efficiently solvable since every planar graph with maximum degree 4 admits a 2-embedding except for the octahedron. In addition to the polynomial-time algorithm we show that FlexDraw is $\mathcal{NP}$ -hard even if the edges with flexibility 0 induce a tree or a union of disjoint stars.     

Schizophrenic patients in the psychiatric interview: An experimental study of their effectiveness at manipulation.

This study attempted to examine whether chronic schizophrenic patients could effectively engage in the manipulative strategy of impression management in an evaluative interview situation. The data supported the expectation that schizophrenic mental patients can effectively present themselves as "sick" or "healthy," whichever is more suited to their needs and goals. Thus, when the patients' open ward status was questioned, they convincingly presented themselves in the interview as "healthy" and eligible for open ward living; when their residency status was questioned, they convincingly presented themselves as "sick" and ineligible for discharge. These findings were interpreted as supporting assumptions of patient effectiveness in implementing goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

HPLC analysis of tonka bean extracts

Based on the results of GC-MS analysis, an HPLC procedure was developed for the determination of coumarin, dihydrocoumarin, melilotic acid (o-dihyd-rocoumaric acid), methyl melilotate, ethyl melilotate, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural ando-coumaric acid which are characteristic compounds of tonka beans. The presence of melilotic acid and ethyl melilotate in tonka beans has not been reported previously. Following HPLC analysis of tonka bean extracts produced in the laboratory and one sample of commercially available tonka bean absolute, evidence was provided that solvents used for production are decisive for the kind and amount of the compounds detected.