The German business and information technologies project

The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) project strives to reveal new insights into how modern IT impacts organizational structures and business practices using empirical methods. Due to its international scope, it allows for inter-country comparison of empirical results. Germany — represented by the European School of Management and Technologies (ESMT) and the Institute of Information Systems at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin — joined the BIT project in 2006. This report presents the result of the first survey conducted in Germany during November–December 2006. The key results are as follows: • The most widely adopted technologies and systems in Germany are websites, wireless hardware and software, groupware/productivity tools, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The biggest potential for growth exists for collaboration and portal tools, content management systems, business process modelling, and business intelligence applications. A number of technological solutions have not yet been adopted by many organizations but also bear some potential, in particular identity management solutions, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), biometrics, and third-party authentication and verification. • IT security remains on the top of the agenda for most enterprises: budget spending was increasing in the last 3 years. • The workplace and work requirements are changing. IT is used to monitor employees' performance in Germany, but less heavily compared to the United States (Karmarkar and Mangal, 2007).1 The demand for IT skills is increasing at all corporate levels. Executives are asking for more and better structured information and this, in turn, triggers the appearance of new decision-making tools and online technologies on the market. • The internal organization of companies in Germany is underway: organizations are becoming flatter, even though the trend is not as pronounced as in the United States (Karmarkar and Mangal, 2007), and the geographical scope of their operations is increasing. Modern IT plays an important role in enabling this development, e.g. telecommuting, teleconferencing, and other web-based collaboration formats are becoming increasingly popular in the corporate context. • The degree to which outsourcing is being pursued is quite limited with little change expected. IT services, payroll, and market research are the most widely outsourced business functions. This corresponds to the results from other countries. • Up to now, the adoption of e-business technologies has had a rather limited effect on marketing functions. Companies tend to extract synergies from traditional printed media and on-line advertising. • The adoption of e-business has not had a major impact on marketing capabilities and strategy yet. Traditional methods of customer segmentation are still dominating. The corporate identity of most organizations does not change significantly when going online. • Online sales channel are mainly viewed as a complement to the traditional distribution means. • Technology adoption has caused production and organizational costs to decrease. However, the costs of technology acquisition and maintenance as well as consultancy and internal communication costs have increased.

Leader–member exchange (LMX), job autonomy, and creative work involvement

Researchers have claimed that high quality of supervisor–employee relationships (i.e., leader– member exchange; LMX) fosters creativity at work. Moreover, researchers have acknowledged that this relationship is not clear-cut but rather complex. The present study focused on the moderating role of job autonomy in the LMX-creative work involvement relationship. Longitu-dinal field survey data (N = 144) collected in a high-technology firm revealed a positive asso-ciation between LMX and creative work involvement and confirmed our assumptions on the moderating role of job autonomy. The positive relationship between LMX and creative work involvement was stronger when employees experienced greater job autonomy. Our findings point to the importance of considering the interplay of both, the leader–member relationship and job design issues for increasing employees' creative work involvement.

Prevention of vascular dysfunction and arterial hypertension in mice generated by assisted reproductive technologies by addition of melatonin to culture media.

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) induce vascular dysfunction in humans and mice. In mice, ART-induced vascular dysfunction is related to epigenetic alteration of the endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) gene, resulting in decreased vascular eNOS expression and nitrite/nitrate synthesis. Melatonin is involved in epigenetic regulation, and its administration to sterile women improves the success rate of ART. We hypothesized that addition of melatonin to culture media may prevent ART-induced epigenetic and cardiovascular alterations in mice. We, therefore, assessed mesenteric-artery responses to acetylcholine and arterial blood pressure, together with DNA methylation of the eNOS gene promoter in vascular tissue and nitric oxide plasma concentration in 12-wk-old ART mice generated with and without addition of melatonin to culture media and in control mice. As expected, acetylcholine-induced mesenteric-artery dilation was impaired (P = 0.008 vs. control) and mean arterial blood pressure increased (109.5 ± 3.8 vs. 104.0 ± 4.7 mmHg, P = 0.002, ART vs. control) in ART compared with control mice. These alterations were associated with altered DNA methylation of the eNOS gene promoter (P < 0.001 vs. control) and decreased plasma nitric oxide concentration (10.1 ± 11.1 vs. 29.5 ± 8.0 μM) (P < 0.001 ART vs. control). Addition of melatonin (10(-6) M) to culture media prevented eNOS dysmethylation (P = 0.005, vs. ART + vehicle), normalized nitric oxide plasma concentration (23.1 ± 14.6 μM, P = 0.002 vs. ART + vehicle) and mesentery-artery responsiveness to acetylcholine (P < 0.008 vs. ART + vehicle), and prevented arterial hypertension (104.6 ± 3.4 mmHg, P < 0.003 vs. ART + vehicle). These findings provide proof of principle that modification of culture media prevents ART-induced vascular dysfunction. We speculate that this approach will also allow preventing ART-induced premature atherosclerosis in humans.