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Research summary: Strategic dissent represents divergence in ideas, preferences, and beliefs related to ideal and/or future strategic emphasis. Conventional wisdom in strategic management holds that such differences in managerial cognitions lead to higher-quality strategic decisions, and thus to enhanced firm performance. However, 4 decades of empirical research have not provided consistent findings or clear insights into the effects of strategic dissent. Hence, we analyze the relative validity of predictions about these effects from both social psychological theories of group behavior and information processing perspectives on decision-making. Then, we conduct a meta-analytic path analysis (MASEM) based on current empirical evidence. Synthesizing data from 78 articles, we put to rest the notion that strategic dissent leads to positive outcomes for organizations and estimate how negative its effects actually are. Managerial summary: Top management teams (TMTs) set the tone and direction for their firms in important ways. Top managers, however, often disagree over fundamental issues related to strategy. Such strategic dissent affects how important decisions are made, and thus how the firm performs. In more specific terms and contrary to popular belief, strategic dissent creates not only dysfunctional relationships among top managers, but also disrupts the process by which these managers exchange, discuss, and integrate information and ideas in making strategic decisions. In short, firms have not yet generated value through numerous perspectives, ideas, and opinions among their top managers. We discuss interventions that could prove helpful in efforts to benefit from having diverse cognitions in a TMT.

Is strategic decision comprehensiveness beneficial for firms? Despite significant empirical attention on this research question, inconsistent findings have prevented strong insights from being formed. To help the field move forward, we address long-standing controversies surrounding whether comprehensiveness is beneficial for firms, and whether environmental dynamism enhances or diminishes its effects. We meta-analyze 37 studies and provide the most definitive evidence possible regarding the strategic value of decision comprehensiveness. Our analyses show (1) that strategic decision comprehensiveness and organizational outcomes are positively related to a meaningful degree when subjective outcome measures are used, and (2) that environmental dynamism does not have a moderating impact on this comprehensiveness–outcomes linkage. Our results indicate that measurement strategies and methodological choices may have primarily driven the effects of strategic decision comprehensiveness reported in the literature. They also suggest that long-standing ideas related to moderating effects of dynamism do not hold. We define an agenda for future research and a roadmap for empirical efforts.

Prior research has found that characteristics of the audit committee influence the incidence of financial restatements, as does demographic diversity on boards of directors. We draw upon work team diversity research to examine the impact of relations-oriented and task-oriented diversity in the audit committee on the likelihood of fraud-related and error-related financial restatements, respectively. We argue that these two types of demographic diversity work differently through greater vigilance of the audit committee in reducing the occurrence of financial restatements. Using a matched sample of fraud-restatement, error-restatement and non-restatement U.S. firms between 1996 and 2010, we find that relations-oriented diversity is associated with a lower incidence of fraud-related restatements, while task-oriented diversity is associated with a lower likelihood of error-related restatements. We also find that the involvement of audit committee members on other board committees moderates these relationships. We discuss the important role of work team diversity mechanisms in evaluating the effectiveness of board audit committees.

Firm outcomes of decisions made by senior managers have been the subjects of intense scrutiny from strategy researchers. Three dominant approaches to strategic decision making pervade this literature: rationality, political behavior, and intuition. Although several commentaries have been written on intuition, little is known about its essence, and its use in and impact for organizations. Nevertheless, managers are increasingly adopting this decision tool as an important and effective alternative or addition to more comprehensive and extensive approaches to strategic decision making. Fundamentally, intuitions are nonconscious, holistic and fast associations of information elements that result in affectively charged judgments. While helpful, this definition of intuition is generic, and is thus limited in its function of isolating and substantiating the nature of intuitive decision making. In this work, I define intuition as a multi-construct and multi-level phenomenon and then attempt to answer the following question: \"in making strategic decisions, do senior managers use their intuition when they actually should?\" My dissertation seeks to extend intuition research in the context of strategic decision making. Specifically, I aim to shed light into the intuitive phenomenon, its use in the context of strategic decision making, and its outcomes. This is an important contribution given that managers and researchers may have bought into intuition hastily and treated it too casually given its complexity. In short, I make several theoretical contributions to the literature: (1) conceptual refinement of intuition that delineates and define its major constructs; (2) conceptual development of collective intuition; and (3) theoretical development for factors driving the use and effectiveness of collective intuition. On the empirical aspect of intuition research, measuring this organizational phenomenon has so far been a rather difficult and intimidating task. Definitional issues highlighted in the theoretical work may have played a role in slowing the progress of intuition research. Sound measures stem from strong construct definitions, and further contributions of my dissertation rest on the quality of the measures of intuition I use to test my models. Therefore, I developed and validated four new scales that reflect the multi-construct multi-level nature of intuition. The new measures of collective intuition show good reliability and construct validity. In addition to the multi-phase and multi-sample scale development process, I describe an exploratory study, in which these new scales were used to test a subset of my hypotheses. Finally, post-hoc analyses reveal promising findings concerning the interplay among the three dimensions of the strategic decision making process--collective intuition, rationality, and political behavior. Keywords: Collective intuition; strategic decision making process; sociocognition; emergent strategy; scale development and validation.

The production of phosphoric acid for use in fertilizer generates toxic fluorosilicic acid as by-product, which can have, when disposed in ocean, negative effects on the maritime ecosystem. With the objective of developing a process for the treatment and valorization of this industrial waste, we study a route starting with a reaction between fluorosilicic acid and sodium chloride that produces a hydrochloric acid solution and sodium fluorosilicate powder. In the present work, we focused on the conversion step of sodium fluorosilicate, consisting of a caustification reaction in an aqueous solvent, with the purpose of obtaining valuable products. We identified a reaction scheme based on a preliminary thermodynamic study using the PHREEQC geochemical software. Experimental tests were then carried out in a 2 L stirred batch reactor, with various characterization techniques of the products (ICP-OES, XRD, TGA) allowing to establish mass balances. We propose two new steps in the conversion process, consisting of the aqueous reaction of CaO with Na 2 SiF 6 at 50 °C, with an intermediate filtration for a molar ratio (CaO/Na 2 SiF 6 ) of 2.77. This process generates two solid products: (i) pure CaF 2 , which can be used as an additive in various pyrometallurgical processes and (ii) a mixture of calcium silicate hydrates with low content of CaF 2 , which constitutes a promising resource for construction and building materials. Graphic Abstract

During preparedness activities in Senegal to the 2024 Mpox Public Health Emergency of International Concern, a study was conducted to assess the prevalence of Varicella-Zoster virus among patients suspected of having Mpox. Samples, including skin swabs, serum, and nasopharyngeal swabs, were collected from 103 patients who presented with Mpox-like symptoms. Molecular testing via q PCR revealed that 30.1% of patients tested positive for herpesviruses, whereas no Mpox cases were detected. Common symptoms include fever, skin rash, headache, and myalgia, which closely resemble Mpox symptoms, increasing the risk of misdiagnosis. The most affected group was children under 15 years of age (50% of herpesvirus cases), followed by adults over 30 years of age (30.8%). The male/female sex ratio among herpesvirus-positive patients was 2.1, indicating a higher prevalence in males. Phylogenetic analysis of 14 newly characterized Varicella-Zoster virus genomes from metagenomic sequencing revealed that the strains circulating in Senegal were closely related to those from Guinea-Bissau, suggesting possible regional transmission. In addition, viral and bacterial coinfections were identified in Mpox-negative patients, which may have contributed to some skin lesions initially suspected to be Mpox. Our data highlight the importance of differential diagnostic testing to distinguish between Mpox and other infections, such as Chickenpox. The unexpectedly high prevalence of herpesviruses among suspected Mpox cases underscores the need for improved laboratory diagnostics, enhanced epidemiological surveillance, and targeted public health interventions to prevent misdiagnosis and improve patient management.