Integration or disintegration? Human resource implications of a common corporate language decision in a crossborder merger

The primary purpose of introducing a common corporate language in crossborder mergers is to integrate two previously separate organizations and facilitate communication. However, the present case study of a cross-border merger between two Nordic banks shows that the common corporate language decision may have disintegrating effects, particularly at organizational levels below top management. We identify such effects on performance appraisal, language training and management development, career paths, promotion and key personnel. Our findings show that top management needs to work through the consequences of the language decision upon those who are expected to make such a decision work.

Language Influence in Services: Perceived Importance of Native Language Use in Service Encounters

A defining characteristic of most service encounters is that they are strongly influenced by interactions in which both the consumer and the service personnel are playing integral roles. Such is the importance of this interaction that it has even been argued that for the consumer, these encounters are in fact the service. Given this, it is not surprising that interactions involving communication and customer participation in the service encounters have received considerable attention within the field of services marketing. Much of the research on interactions and communication in services, however, appear to have assumed that the consumer and the service personnel by definition are perfectly able to interact and communicate effortlessly with each other. Such communication would require a common language, and in order to be able to take this for granted the market would need to be fairly homogenous. The homogenous country, however, and with it the homogenous market, would appear to be gone. It is estimated that more than half the consumers in the world are already speaking more than one language. For a company entering a new market, language can be a major barrier that firms may underestimate, and understanding language influence across different markets is important for international companies. The service literature has taken a common language between companies and consumers for granted but this is not matched by the realities on the ground in many markets. Owing to the communicational and interaction-oriented nature of services, the lack of a common language between the consumer and the service provider is a situation that could cause problems. A gap exists in the service theory, consisting of a lack of knowledge concerning how language influences consumers in service encounters. By addressing this gap, the thesis contributes to an increased understanding of service theory and provides a better practical understanding for service companies of the importance of native language use for consumers. The thesis consists of four essays. Essay one is conceptual and addresses how sociolinguistic research can be beneficial for understanding consumer language preferences. Essay two empirically shows how the influence of language varies depending on the nature of the service, essay three shows that there is a significant difference in language preferences between female and male consumers while essay four empirically compares consumer language preferences in Canada and Finland, finding strong similarities but also indications of difference in the motives for preferring native language use. The introduction of the thesis outlines the existence of a research gap within the service literature, a gap consisting of the lack of research into how native language use may influence consumers in service encounters. In addition, it is described why this gap is of importance to services and why its importance is growing. Building on this situation, the purpose of the thesis is to establish the existence of language influence in service encounters and to extend the knowledge of how language influences consumers on multilingual markets.

Cognitive Functioning in Alcohol and Other Substance Use Disorders in Young Adulthood : A Genetic Epidemiological Study

Alcohol and other substance use disorders (SUDs) result in great costs and suffering for individuals and families and constitute a notable public health burden. A multitude of factors, ranging from biological to societal, are associated with elevated risk of SUDs, but at the level of individuals, one of the best predictors is a family history of SUDs. Genetically informative twin and family studies have consistently indicated this familial risk to be mainly genetic. In addition, behavioral and temperamental factors such as early initiation of substance use and aggressiveness are associated with the development of SUDs. These familial, behavioral and temperamental risk factors often co-occur, but their relative importance is not well known. People with SUDs have also been found to differ from healthy controls in various domains of cognitive functioning, with poorer verbal ability being among the most consistent findings. However, representative population-based samples have rarely been used in neuropsychological studies of SUDs. In addition, both SUDs and cognitive abilities are influenced by genetic factors, but whether the co-variation of these traits might be partly explained by overlapping genetic influences has not been studied. Problematic substance use also often co-occurs with low educational level, but it is not known whether these outcomes share part of their underlying genetic influences. In addition, educational level may moderate the genetic etiology of alcohol problems, but gene-environment interactions between these phenomena have also not been widely studied. The incidence of SUDs peaks in young adulthood rendering epidemiological studies in this age group informative. This thesis investigated cognitive functioning and other correlates of SUDs in young adulthood in two representative population-based samples of young Finnish adults, one of which consisted of monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs enabling genetically informative analyses. Using data from the population-based Mental Health in Early Adulthood in Finland (MEAF) study (n=605), the lifetime prevalence of DSM-IV any substance dependence or abuse among persons aged 21—35 years was found to be approximately 14%, with a majority of the diagnoses being alcohol use disorders. Several correlates representing the domains of behavioral and affective factors, parental factors, early initiation of substance use, and educational factors were individually associated with SUDs. The associations between behavioral and affective factors (attention or behavior problems at school, aggression, anxiousness) and SUDs were found to be largely independent of factors from other domains, whereas daily smoking and low education were still associated with SUDs after adjustment for behavioral and affective factors. Using a wide array of neuropsychological tests in the MEAF sample and in a subsample (n=602) of the population-based FinnTwin16 (FT16) study, consistent evidence of poorer verbal cognitive ability related to SUDs was found. In addition, participants with SUDs performed worse than those without disorders in a task assessing psychomotor processing speed in the MEAF sample, whereas no evidence of more specific cognitive deficits was found in either sample. Biometrical structural equation models of the twin data suggested that both alcohol problems and verbal ability had moderate heritabilities (0.54—0.72), and that their covariation could be explained by correlated genetic influences (genetic correlations -0.20 to -0.31). The relationship between educational level and alcohol problems, studied in the full epidemiological FT16 sample (n=4,858), was found to reflect both genetic correlation and gene-environment interaction. The co-occurrence of low education and alcohol problems was influenced by overlapping genetic factors. In addition, higher educational level was associated with increased relative importance of genetic influences on alcohol problems, whereas environmental influences played a more important role in young adults with lower education. In conclusion, SUDs, especially alcohol abuse and dependence, are common among young Finnish adults. Behavioral and affective factors are robustly related to SUDs independently of many other factors, and compared to healthy peers, young adults who have had SUDs during their life exhibit significantly poorer verbal cognitive ability, and possibly less efficient psychomotor processing. Genetic differences between individuals explain a notable proportion of individual differences in risk of alcohol dependence, verbal ability, and educational level, and the co-occurrence of alcohol problems with poorer verbal cognition and low education is influenced by shared genetic backgrounds. Finally, various environmental factors related to educational level in young adulthood moderate the relative importance of genetic factors influencing the risk of alcohol problems, possibly reflecting differences in social control mechanisms related to educational level.

Vitamin D deficiency in children with chronic illnesses: Predisposing and protecting factors

This thesis assesses clinical differences in patients with low and high vitamin D levels. The factors analyzed included the underlying disease, body size, age, ethnic background, use of vitamin D supplements and the season when the blood sample was taken. Fifty patients with the lowest and 50 patients with the highest vitamin D concentrations were selected from a cohort of 1351 chronically ill children and adolescents who had had their vitamin D status assessed at Children's Hospital. Protective factors appeared to be the usage of vitamin D supplements and young age, especially age <2 years. Predisposing factors included non-Finnish ethnic background and older age, especially age 12-18 years. High vitamin D values were more prevalent in the summer and autumn and low values in the winter and spring. Patients with non-Finnish background were overrepresented in the low value group. No differences regarding the underlying diseases could be detected. Conclusions: In the Northern latitudes UVB-radiation is insufficient for vitamin D synthesis. Vitamin D recommendations appear to be inadequate to fulfill the needs of chronically ill patients whose requirements for vitamin D are elevated compared to the general population. New guidelines for vitamin D supplementation are needed particularly for those at risk of developing vitamin D deficiency.

META-NORD: Towards Sharing of Language Resources in Nordic and Baltic Countries

This paper introduces the META-NORD project which develops Nordic and Baltic part of the European open language resource infrastructure. META-NORD works on assembling, linking across languages, and making widely available the basic language resources used by developers, professionals and researchers to build specific products and applications. The goals of the project, overall approach and specific focus lines on wordnets, terminology resources and treebanks are described. Moreover, results achieved in first five months of the project, i.e. language whitepapers, metadata specification and IPR, are presented.