Beyond “Doing as the Romans Do”: A review of research on countercultural business practices

There has long been a dominant logic in the international business literature that multinational corporations should adapt business practices to “fit” host cultures. Business practices that are congruent with local cultural norms have been advocated as effective and desirable, while practices that are incongruent have been deemed problematic. We examine and challenge this persistent assumption by reviewing the literature showing evidence for both benefits and acceptance of countercultural practices (i.e., practices that are seemingly incongruent with local cultural norms or values), and disadvantages and rejection of local practices. Drawing on the literature reviewed, we offer four types of theoretical (ontological, epistemological, causal, and functional) explanations as to why and when countercultural business practices might be preferred. Finally, we provide a springboard for a future research agenda on countercultural practices, centered around understanding the circumstances under which businesses and local stakeholders might benefit from the use of countercultural practices based on such factors as strategic intent, local preferences, institutional drivers, and social responsibility.

How “is” shapes “ought” for folk-biological concepts

Knowing which features are frequent among a biological kind (e.g., that most zebras have stripes) shapes people’s representations of what category members are like (e.g., that typical zebras have stripes) and normative judgments about what they ought to be like (e.g., that zebras should have stripes). In the current work, we ask if people’s inclination to explain why features are frequent is a key mechanism through which what “is” shapes beliefs about what “ought” to be. Across four studies (N = 591), we find that frequent features are often explained by appeal to feature function (e.g., that stripes are for camouflage), that functional explanations in turn shape judgments of typicality, and that functional explanations and typicality both predict normative judgments that category members ought to have functional features. We also identify the causal assumptions that license inferences from feature frequency and function, as well as the nature of the normative inferences that are drawn: by specifying an instrumental goal (e.g., camouflage), functional explanations establish a basis for normative evaluation. These findings shed light on how and why our representations of how the natural world is shape our judgments of how it ought to be.

Futures literacy in the loop

This article proposes a functional historicist explanation to explicate the core ideas and underlying logic embedded in the futures literacy concept.Futures literacy assumes a capacity to reflect on the past, sense and make sense of the present and use this reflective body of knowledge when anticipating the future.Arguably, futures literacy must be learned, sustained, and regained; it requires a continuous, anticipative, and recursive loop. Recursivity, where an effect in an initial period acts as a cause in the next period, retroacts between the future and present, regaining anticipation. Anticipation has causal effects in the way it structures our images of the future and the avenue we follow when striving to achieve this image. Such a causal structure implies both feedforward and feedback control and is contained in the logic of functional explanations used in sociology.

Developmental Disconnects: Adults and Teachers Deprioritize Mechanistic Content when Introducing Young Children to STEM

How do adults consider explaining science to young children? We examined adult prioritization of different kinds of explanatory science content when teaching young children both in and outside of the classroom. Across five studies, we predicted and found that adults and K-12 teachers deprioritized mechanistic content relative to comparatively superficial content (e.g., labels and functional explanations) when introducing areas of science to young school age children. Beyond perceiving mechanistic explanations to be relatively infrequent in elementary school science curricula, adults appear to perceive mechanistic content as excessively challenging for students, reporting that in-depth, mechanistic content is less important for early elementary school children to learn compared to broader, superficial content. The same misperceptions were found among experienced teachers and lay adults, suggesting a general intuition that science learning should start with relatively superficial content before describing causal relations that produce a scientific phenomenon. These findings contradict widely adopted educational standards emphasizing the importance of in-depth content such as mechanistic explanations. Such in-depth, mechanistic content supports children’s scientific engagement, combats potential misconceptions, and bolsters future learning. Despite this, lay adults and experienced teachers support teaching science to young children in ways that do not fit with children’s learning abilities and interests.

E-mail Literacy in Higher Education Academic Settings

The research purpose was to identify (1) the problems encountered by academic and administrative staff in emails received from students, (2) positive and negative qualities of the authentic emails of higher education students, (3) functional explanations of the academic email, (4) the problems encountered by students in emails received from academic and administrative staff, and (5) higher education students’ email writing awareness. An exploratory sequential mixed design was used. The study group consisted of 15 staff and 1064 higher education students. The qualitative data were collected from staff interviews and 80 authentic emails of students. And a survey was prepared based on qualitative data and then quantitative data were collected. The problems encountered by staff are style, carelessness, articulacy problem, spelling and punctuation problem, email incivility. The negative qualities of authentic emails are as follows: not using institutional username, formal language, paragraph structure in the email body, salutation, closing statement, contact information; username without name and surname, blank subject line, spelling and punctuation problems, sloppy wording, lack of self-introduction. Non-descriptive, late, and short answers, not getting answers, sloppy answers, emails with negative feelings disturbed students. Students’ awareness of writing academic emails displayed a more positive picture than the emails they wrote. Items in which students’ awareness is weak are as follows: trying to reflect their feelings to email, using punctuation marks to convey the feeling, writing email for long and complex matter, using paragraph structure, adding contact details, CC - BCC. Research results were discussed with relevant literature.

Genomics of Endometriosis: From Genome Wide Association Studies to Exome Sequencing

This review aims at better understanding the genetics of endometriosis. Endometriosis is a frequent feminine disease, affecting up to 10% of women, and characterized by pain and infertility. In the most accepted hypothesis, endometriosis is caused by the implantation of uterine tissue at ectopic abdominal places, originating from retrograde menses. Despite the obvious genetic complexity of the disease, analysis of sibs has allowed heritability estimation of endometriosis at ~50%. From 2010, large Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), aimed at identifying the genes and loci underlying this genetic determinism. Some of these loci were confirmed in other populations and replication studies, some new loci were also found through meta-analyses using pooled samples. For two loci on chromosomes 1 (near CCD42) and chromosome 9 (near CDKN2A), functional explanations of the SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) effects have been more thoroughly studied. While a handful of chromosome regions and genes have clearly been identified and statistically demonstrated as at-risk for the disease, only a small part of the heritability is explained (missing heritability). Some attempts of exome sequencing started to identify additional genes from families or populations, but are still scarce. The solution may reside inside a combined effort: increasing the size of the GWAS designs, better categorize the clinical forms of the disease before analyzing genome-wide polymorphisms, and generalizing exome sequencing ventures. We try here to provide a vision of what we have and what we should obtain to completely elucidate the genetics of this complex disease.

A Stylo- Pragmatic Appraisal of Lawal's Communicative Model Theory

This paper is essentially an appraisal of Lawal’s Communicative Model Theory within the purview of stylistics and pragmatics. Any investigation of the stylistic and pragmatic factors that motivate language use is inevitably immersed in language users’ supremacy over the normative properties of language. One of the factors that promoted scholarly interest in pragmatics is the possibility that significant functional explanations can be given for linguistic facts. Like any study in pragmatics, research in stylistics investigates contextual factors that inform language use; in this regard, the meaning of an utterance – not its grammaticalness – is the major concern. This paper hinges on The Pragma-crafting Theory as a theoretical framework and concludes that although the Communicative Model Theory is bedeviled by its inability to explain certain dimensions of language use, it captures the contextual underpinnings of language use.

Buoyancy control in ammonoid cephalopods refined by complex internal shell architecture

The internal architecture of chambered ammonoid conchs profoundly increased in complexity through geologic time, but the adaptive value of these structures is disputed. Specifically, these cephalopods developed fractal-like folds along the edges of their internal divider walls (septa). Traditionally, functional explanations for septal complexity have largely focused on biomechanical stress resistance. However, the impact of these structures on buoyancy manipulation deserves fresh scrutiny. We propose increased septal complexity conveyed comparable shifts in fluid retention capacity within each chamber. We test this interpretation by measuring the liquid retained by septa, and within entire chambers, in several 3D-printed cephalopod shell archetypes, treated with (and without) biomimetic hydrophilic coatings. Results show that surface tension regulates water retention capacity in the chambers, which positively scales with septal complexity and membrane capillarity, and negatively scales with size. A greater capacity for liquid retention in ammonoids may have improved buoyancy regulation, or compensated for mass changes during life. Increased liquid retention in our experiments demonstrate an increase in areas of greater surface tension potential, supporting improved chamber refilling. These findings support interpretations that ammonoids with complex sutures may have had more active buoyancy regulation compared to other groups of ectocochleate cephalopods. Overall, the relationship between septal complexity and liquid retention capacity through surface tension presents a robust yet simple functional explanation for the mechanisms driving this global biotic pattern.

Did shell-crushing predators drive the evolution of ammonoid septal shape?

For centuries, paleontologists have sought functional explanations for the uniquely complex internal walls (septa) of ammonoids, extinct shelled cephalopods. Ammonoid septa developed increasingly complex fractal margins, unlike any modern shell morphologies, throughout more than 300 million years of evolution. Some have suggested these morphologies provided increased resistance to shell-crushing predators. We perform the first physical compression experiments on model ammonoid septa using controlled, theoretical morphologies generated by computer-aided design and 3D printing. These biomechanical experiments reveal that increasing complexity of septal margins does not increase compression resistance. Our results raise the question of whether the evolution of septal shape may be tied closely to the placement of the siphuncle foramen (anatomic septal hole). Our tests demonstrate weakness in the centers of uniformly thick septa, supporting work suggesting reinforcement by shell thickening at the center of septa. These experiments highlight the importance of 3D reconstruction using idealized theoretical morphologies that permit the testing of long-held hypotheses of functional evolutionary drivers by recreating extinct morphologies once rendered physically untestable by the fossil record.