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Show moreDynamic capabilities and associated shifts in learning make firm’s capabilities hard to imitate, and are critical in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Consequently, strategic management literature has recognized that the presence of causal ambiguity plays a pivotal role in generating inter-firm differences in obtained rents. At the same time, causal ambiguity may hamper internal diffusion of capabilities within the firm negatively affecting its performance (Szulanki, 1996). Overall, the relationship between dynamic capabilities, causal ambiguity and firm performance has remained poorly understood. In this study, we seek to address this gap by developing a causal model that depicts how management perceptions of causal ambiguity mediate the effects of the firm’s competencies on firm performance. Using data from collected from 401 Chilean managers we analyze the managers’ perceptions of causal ambiguity on firms’ performance by controlling for market turbulence and the company size. Our findings confirm the critical role of manager’s perceptions of causal ambiguity as a mediator between organizational competencies and performance. Surprisingly, we found a weak influence of perception’s of causal ambiguity among rivals as a mechanism to protect inter-firm imitation.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreAmbiguity about firm and competitor competencies and resources challenges managerial decision making, especially in developing countries where asymmetric information is higher than in the developed ones. Although a number of scholars have addressed “causal ambiguity” and its relationship with firm resources and competencies, and theorists have suggested a positive relationship between it and organizational performance, these links remain unclear. On one hand, ambiguity may protect a firm because competitors cannot easily imitate it (Alvarez & Antolin, 2005). On the other hand, causal ambiguity may impede imitation of valuable resources within the firm, limiting management´s ability to manage resources and competencies for competitive advantage (Szulanski, 1996). Our research, based on interviews with CEOs and Board Directors of large and medium sized Chilean corporations, illuminates the role of ambiguity and its impact on the performance of firms in developing markets. In contrast to claims about its deleterious effect on performance, our data revealed that CEOs of Chilean companies are quite comfortable with causal ambiguity and appreciate its potential.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThe relentless challenge to innovate is the DNA of high-technology firms, and continues to capture attention of scholars and practitioners alike. High-technology firms grow faster on intellectual capital assets with shorter life expectancy; they must pivot in response to external forces more quickly. The challenge for R&D leaders is to ensure that R&D groups provide new opportunities for growth by effective transfer of technology ideation to commercial products. Leaders in these dynamic environments operate in microfoundations of organizational routines and processes within an organization that motivate the sensing, seizing, and executing dynamic capabilities. R&D leaders within the firm are forced to make individual managerial judgments in the presence of uncertainty generating ambidexterity and creating conflicts in executing rule-based routines. They must continually focus on aligning the organization as an ongoing state and process evolution contextualized under specific external market conditions and internal capabilities, and draw upon individual cognitions, judgments, and routines, which involve new and evolving patterns of behavior and interactions with others. We argue that some leaders are more skillful in managing innovation than others. Most of the academic literature focuses on innovation management at the firm level and corresponding process frameworks. Far less attention is paid to how individual technology leaders use managerial capabilities to successfully deliver innovation through the firm’s dynamic capabilities framework. The research premise for this study is that leadership’s emotional intelligence and the organization’s quality of relationships are micro-level behaviors that predict product innovation outcomes, and consequently organizational performance. We explore this proposition using the ESCI-U emotional intelligence inventory, and the Relational Climate Survey in a 360 multi-rater research design of 105 R&D leaders from different firms, along with their multi-raters, which we analyze using structural equation modeling (PLS). We find that product innovation success is predicted by the perceived quality of relationships within the organization, according to the subordinates, peers,and supervisors of the R&D leader, and that these relationships positively mediate the effects of emotional intelligence on product innovation success, and organizational performance. Ours is the first research is the first academic work that we are aware of that that focuses on how leaders shape the firm’s dynamic capabilities for innovation through micro- level behaviors. We show that the organization’s relational climate significantly influences product innovation and organizational outcomes. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that the effectiveness of the leader to drive innovation is significantly affected by how individuals perceive relationships at work in these shared dimensions of vision, compassion, and energy within the organization. Keywords: dynamic capabilities; microfoundations; innovation; entrepreneurship; positive and negative emotional attractors; strategy; emotional intelligence; relational climate; organizational climate; organizational learning; micro-level dynamic capabilities; managerial capabilities; resilience.
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Show moreTeams must balance internally focused interactions with externally focused processes of embedding in organizations. These inputs and processes influence the team’s ability to manage changing tasks, goals, and priorities as well as build confidence in its capability to achieve its goals which may be predictive of performance. We utilized factor analyses to verify our constructs and structural equation modeling to test direct effects, mediation effects, and moderation to analyze responses to our survey. This study was informed at the individual level by participants on workplace teams from more than 10 industries, the majority in healthcare and education. What emerged was that embedding in the organization rather than remaining internally focused has a strong effect on a team’s adaptability and potency. In particular, aligning with the organization, knowing who to know and effectively collaborating with others outside the team, significantly influence and predict adaptability and potency. Furthermore, internally focused teams adapt and have considerable confidence, but they may not achieve those outputs through valuable and informative external interconnections. Keywords: Embedding in Organizations, Interdependencies, Interconnections, Interactions Adaptability, Systems Thinking, Boundary Spanning
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Show moreTeams must balance internally focused interactions with externally focused processes of embedding in organizations. These inputs and processes influence the team’s ability to manage changing tasks, goals, and priorities as well as build confidence in its capability to achieve its goals which may be predictive of performance. We utilized factor analyses to verify our constructs and structural equation modeling to test direct effects, mediation effects, and moderation to analyze responses to our survey. This study was informed at the individual level by participants on workplace teams from more than 10 industries, the majority in healthcare and education. What emerged was that embedding in the organization rather than remaining internally focused has a strong effect on a team’s adaptability and potency. In particular, aligning with the organization, knowing who to know and effectively collaborating with others outside the team, significantly influence and predict adaptability and potency. Furthermore, internally focused teams adapt and have considerable confidence, but they may not achieve those outputs through valuable and informative external interconnections. Keywords: Embedding in Organizations, Interdependencies, Interconnections, Interactions Adaptability, Systems Thinking, Boundary Spanning
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Show moreTeams must balance internally focused interactions with externally focused processes of embedding in organizations. These inputs and processes influence the team’s ability to manage changing tasks, goals, and priorities as well as build confidence in its capability to achieve its goals which may be predictive of performance. We utilized factor analyses to verify our constructs and structural equation modeling to test direct effects, mediation effects, and moderation to analyze responses to our survey. This study was informed at the individual level by participants on workplace teams from more than 10 industries, the majority in healthcare and education. What emerged was that embedding in the organization rather than remaining internally focused has a strong effect on a team’s adaptability and potency. In particular, aligning with the organization, knowing who to know and effectively collaborating with others outside the team, significantly influence and predict adaptability and potency. Furthermore, internally focused teams adapt and have considerable confidence, but they may not achieve those outputs through valuable and informative external interconnections. Keywords: Embedding in Organizations, Interdependencies, Interconnections, Interactions Adaptability, Systems Thinking, Boundary Spanning
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Show moreThis research project focuses on how ESOPs can accomplish successful acquisitions. Most successful ESOPs implement various types of progressive management strategies including open book management and open door communication policies and procedures. These practices of active employee engagement and participation enhance productivity and profitability because employees are personally empowered to improve company performance. Somewhat of a mystery is the question of why there are not more ESOPs. If their numbers are to increase, it can only occur through two methods: 1) employees purchase the company from an owner, and 2) other companies are acquired by an existing ESOP. This study focuses on the second option and researches the following questions: 1) How does an ESOP company accomplish a successful acquisition? and 2) What, if any, organizational behavior patterns are associated with this process? The investigation uses an open-ended research methodology interviewing thirty ESOP executives, whose companies have completed both successful and unsuccessful acquisitions. The findings of this project revealed that certain organizational behaviors do indeed contribute to successful acquisitions. Keywords: ESOP acquisitions; organizational behaviors; altruistic behavior; emotional connection; shared vision; open book management; open door communication; employee engagement and participation.
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Show moreThe management of organizational knowlegde has become an increasingly important discipline. Knowledge management can be defined as doing what is needed to get the most out of knowledge resources. The origin of a firm's capabilities is enabled through the knowledge in the minds of its employees and integrated business partners. Today organizations rely on key managers and decision makers who individually or collectively possess a profound understanding of specific domains that influence the decision-making process and activities of the organization. This knowledge along with contextual experience allows them to act more quickly, accurately and decisively enabling them to achieve objectives and improve work processes tht enhance organizational effectiveness. Most of these initiatives are organizaed through special project teams who goal is to resolve problems or to introduce new methods of performing work functions which reduce costs or create revenue opportunities for the organization. A special project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to accomplish a unique purpose. A project team is essentially a small organization within an organization and therefore the management of its team member's knowledge is also paramount if the team is going to fully realize its potential and achieve its unique purpose objective. The focus on knowledge management specifically in project teams is relatively new. In the project team environment, this requires a systematic process for acquiring, creating, synthesizing, sharing and using information, insights and experieces to translate knowledge and ideas into measurable organizational value (Marchewka 2003). The exploration and study of the factors that promote knowledge sharing among team members in information technology related projects is the focus of this research.
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Show moreIn the worlds of both practice and scholarship, people are focusing on the importance of leaders’ values and authentic actions to the ethical operations of their organizations. At the same time, enterprises are struggling to attract and retain talented employees. Our qualitative research analyzed the values of leaders in seven different organizations – for profit, nonprofit, and public institutions – and compared their self-proclaimed values with their employees’ perceptions of them and of their values. We focused specifically on leaders’ values concerning their followers, and examined the impact that leaders’ value content and integrity had on employees’ commitment to their establishment, and to their sense of worth and value to the organization. We discovered that the simplest indications of leaders’ regard often spoke most powerfully to employees of their worth, whereas employers’ self-advancement and insensitivity to their workers profoundly increased their dissatisfaction and disengagement. We also learned that although leaders’ value actions deeply influenced their followers, and were instrumental in recruiting and retaining highly qualified individuals to their organizations, most employees made decisions concerning remaining at their jobs based upon their time of life and/or their perceived lack of options.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreIt is believed that symbiotic visions can drive employees and organizations toward a common objective based on the premise that people will attain a higher level of motivation and engagement when they are working toward a personal purpose. The field of organizational development has been aspiring to help organizations and people align their vision for decades without much, if any, empirical support for the assumption that alignment helps. This qualitative study examines the impact of a company’s aspirational vision statement, or higher purpose, on motivating and engaging employees. The presence and lack of congruency between senior managers’ personal callings and their company’s vision was examined. One observation was that most senior managers within organizations with a well-developed and widely known higher purpose vision have personal goals or a personal purpose. When alignment is felt through the sense of the greater purpose, there is a deep, almost spiritual, commitment to making the world a better place and helping the organization be a contributing part of that. When alignment is felt through the organization’s alignment to one’s personal goals or values, there is a great sense of commitment, but a clear delineation between work and life ambitions. One of the key findings is that personal purpose and company vision alignment does appear to drive motivation and engagement, but in different ways, depending on whether a person is primarily purpose driven or goal driven. It was observed that some of these executives had a deep and far reaching sense of purpose which seemed tied to driving the intent of the organization’s higher purpose vision. Others had a goal-oriented way of describing their purpose which appeared more instrumental in helping move the organization toward its overall objectives and purpose. Key words: purpose; higher purpose; calling; meaning; vision; shared vision; motivation; engagement; relationships.
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Show moreIn this qualitative research paper, social/ethnic identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Berry, 1993) and relative deprivation theories (Dion, 2001) and their application to organizational identity are used to look at “self-limiting” behaviors – conscious or unconscious acts of non-cooperation and/or lower work effort (Metayer, 2003). The intent is to identify how management practice can be improved by better understanding the derivation and reasons for these behaviors in one type of non-dominant culture workplace – organizations where African Americans constitute the majority of the employee base. Among the major findings of this segment of the research is that while managers and supervisors of African American managed organizations are aware of self-limiting behaviors, they believe that (a) some, not all, self-limiting behaviors are part of the contextual fabric of their organizations and (b) there are concurrently “self-affirming” aspects embedded in many self-limiting behaviors. Another finding is that some managers and supervisors self-limit – they themselves dis-identify/disassociate with the workplace domain. Taken together, these findings reveal a strong ambivalence among African American managers/supervisors about the motivations for and consequences of self-limiting behaviors. As understood from the perspectives of these executives, this ambivalence has potentially powerful implications for practice. Key words: Ethnic identity, non-dominant culture organizations. organizational identity, production deviance, self-limiting behaviors, self-management failure
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreAmbiguity about firm and competitor competencies and resources challenges managerial decision making ? especially in developing countries where asymmetric information is higher than in the developed ones. Although a number of scholars have addressed “causal ambiguity” and its relationship with firm resources and competencies, and theorists have suggested a positive relationship between it and organizational performance, these links remain unclear. On one hand, ambiguity may protect a firm because competitors cannot easily imitate it (Alvarez & Antolin, 2005). On the other hand, causal ambiguity may impede imitation of valuable resources within the firm, limiting management´s ability to manage resources and competencies for competitive advantage (Szulanski, 1996). Our research, based on interviews with CEOs and Board Directors of large and medium sized Chilean corporations, illuminates the role of ambiguity and its impact on the performance of firms in developing markets. In contrast to claims about its deleterious effect on performance, our data revealed that CEOs of Chilean companies are quite comfortable with causal ambiguity and appreciate its potential.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreResearchers are challenging extant models of nonprofit governance practices. Given an apparent shortfall in effective practice, a deductive study is conducted to determine the impact of a refined management model, relational governance, on outcomes cited in the literature as examples of effective practice. Relational governance emphasizes partnering, advising relationships between board and management and builds on recent nonprofit governance literature while contrasting on several dimensions with the well-known extant model policy governance. A research design is presented for empirically testing the relational governance model by means of a survey instrument made available to the unit of research, current and former nonprofit board members. An early result of the research provides empirical support which demonstrates the value of putting a board’s varying skills to good use, maintaining a board/CEO relationship as one of advising and partnering, and maintaining an open flexible, innovative work environment to better manage a nonprofit organization. Research results may have implications for practitioners and researchers interested in understanding how to optimize the utilization and potential contribution of senior nonprofit volunteers and directors.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreHow board and chief executive officers (CEOs) engage to govern nonprofit organizations is not universally understood nor has such engagement been closely examined. The dialectic suggests that boards are either apathetic in governance (nannies of the CEO), or so operationally focused that they have lost sight of their mission. Likewise, CEOs have been accused of either running the board or as being enslaved to them. Much of the literature tries to separate the roles and responsibilities that the board and CEO have in governance. Other literature attempts to define what the board should do (versus what the CEO should do) to govern effectively. In contrast, this present quantitative study focuses more on engaging roles and responsibilities, rather than uncoupling what boards and CEOs do. The study provides a new understanding of board commitment. For example, this study adapts individual level variables to explore how engaged roles mediate differences and relationships. It can be shown, through multi-source data from 319 board-member/chief-executive pairs, that boards ground their interactions and relationships in practices that conjoin their roles; and that by doing so, board members are highly committed to the organization. Moreover, these findings indicate that relational practices facilitate role engagement in co-operative organizations, providing perspicacity into the complex governance situations faced by boards and CEOs.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreCell phone density in G8 countries ranges between 80 and 90 percent – except in the US where some 35 % of Americans have failed to adopt the technology. The relative reluctance of US consumers to embrace cellular technology is puzzling given that the barriers for use appear to be low and the benefits high. If rejection was the simple inverse of adoption, we would expect people to reject cellular telephony based on negative evaluations of usefulness and ease of use, dominant constructs in technology acceptance models. This research suggests, however, that barriers to cell phone rejection transcend those traditionally tapped in the vast literature that explains adoption. We used qualitative semi-structured interviews and a written survey instrument to probe the attitudes and beliefs of cell phone rejecters and discovered that personality attributes and powerful social/psychological perceptions about consequence of use may better explain rejection. Our findings imply that beliefs about dystopian consequences to self and society as a result of cell phone usage trump perceptions of convenience and efficiency in the formation of attitudes that drive the adoption decision.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreUsing critical realist research, we sought to understand how nonprofit organizations blend deliberate and emergent strategizing to cope with neoinstitutional dilemmas posed by donors’ competing logics. To gain organizational legitimacy and access to resources, international nonprofits must conform to donors’ normative processes and practices which tend to be ineffectual. An international nonprofit operating in the highly complex international development field provided an ideal setting for investigating how routines blend and moderate deliberate and emergent strategies. Consistent with the view that strategic insights come from different organizational levels, we examined key patterns of interactions and routines between middle and top-level managers. Our findings indicate that international nonprofit managers do not just incorporate institutional norms and rules of donors, but also enact, select, and interpret such rules creating polymorphic (rather than isomorphic) routines for more dynamic strategizing.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreOrganizations have for long used strategy as a springboard for actualization of their strategic intent. The body of knowledge around strategy formulation is well established, but there is less clarity as to how organizations implement strategy to close the gap between their intent and reality. This research seeks to understand how organizations engage in strategy execution so as to reduce the “execution gap”. We uncover patterns in strategic practices with a view to conceptualize how gap reduction happens and what mechanisms influence it. We identify a number of dynamic environmental forces and mutually recursive organizational factors that mutually influence organization’s engagement within the apex of strategy formulation and implementation. Many findings support earlier studies on the prominence of individual factors influencing organizational effectiveness in closing the execution gap. In addition, we uncover three key dynamics associated with strategy execution: 1). The dynamics created by the interactions between the organizational shifts and environmental shifts which we call the execution gap dynamic; 2). The dynamics created by the interactions between the strategy focusing and the gap reduction activities of the organization which we call the gap reduction dynamic; 3) The dynamics created by the interactions between the strategy configuration and the execution capability of the organization which we refer to as the execution focusing dynamic. These three forces are inter-connected, multi-dimensional and recursive. Keywords: strategy, strategy execution, strategy implementation, strategy execution gap
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Show moreA qualitative study on team member interactions on projects suggests that successful teams are actively engaging in continuously constructing and maintaining a shared reality with one another through the process of making accounts. As a result of this study we propose extending the management definition of accountability to encompass the process of making accounts in the construction of a shared reality. This study found that the accountability process requires an environment of communication promotion, adequate time to develop a shared reality and a willingness by team members to continuously adapt their shared reality in response to new knowledge. This study also suggests that this accountability practice that maintains their shared reality is instrumental in supporting a team’s ability to create new knowledge together. This new knowledge is created by the team engaging in teaching and learning from one another, actively correcting misconceptions and leveraging shared constructs which leads the team to use their knowledge to create simple solutions. Finally, these successful teams expressed positive emotions about their project experience as they developed a shared reality. In the absence of a shared reality project teams find themselves isolated and disconnected, creating complicated solutions and living in emotional turmoil throughout the project. Keywords: Teams, Shared Reality, Accountability, Emotions, Shared Cognition, Sensemaking, Thinking, Knowledge Creation, Accountability
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Show moreThis paper describes how organizational culture affects individual level decision-making processes in large organizations. This is particularly notable in the effect on the relative communication of qualitative versus quantitative information. Different levels of success in communicating these two kinds of information affect the development of the situated cognition prior to making a particular decision. We present the findings of a qualitative research study of thirteen executive level decision makers representing four Fortune 100 companies from four diverse industries. These executives were involved in strategic decisions in the normal course of business and also had particular experience in decisions involving socially responsible actions. A grounded theory analysis revealed that the different visibility of quantitative and qualitative information affects the strategic decision making process by shaping the situated cognition of the decision maker. Visibility of quantitative information is perceived as consistent at all levels, but the visibility of qualitative information that influences the context of decisions deteriorates as it filters down through an organization. This “downward invisibility” of qualitative information was apparent in the discourse about any strategic decision making, but was most readily apparent in the discussion about values and principles surrounding socially responsible actions. Based on this finding, we introduce a “situated cognition continuum” to depict the range of situated cognition displayed by the decision makers in this study. As an organization empowers decision makers at lower and lower levels, the deterioration of qualitative information exposes that organization to variance in the situated cognition of individuals. This variance can lead to decisions that are misaligned with organizational strategy. In the worst cases, this misalignment becomes embedded through reinforcement of quantitative metrics without understanding the underlying qualitative mechanisms that are misaligned.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreA sample of 89 hospital-based registered nurses with at least one year of experience were surveyed to ascertain their expectations and actual experiences in nursing work and determine if gaps between expectations and experiences exist. The nurses were also asked to specify the frequency of formal and informal training they participated in and what coping strategies they used to deal with these gaps. Lastly, the nurses were asked to assess their perception of job performance compared to peers, their level of job satisfaction, and their intention to turnover. The data collected was cleaned and coded for quality then analyzed using SPS 11.5. Items were factor analyzed to create constructs and resulted in the following constructs: (formal) service training by organizations, (informal) service training by peers, (formal) economic training by organizations, (informal) economic training by peers, service gap, economic gap, coping, perception of service performance, perception of economic performance, individual job satisfaction, organizational job satisfaction, and intent to turnover. Correlations between constructs were measured as well as individual construct item reliability (Cronbach’s alpha.) These constructs were then entered into regression models based on the conceptual model and significant paths between constructs were identified. An important finding of this study is that two distinct types of gaps exist in nursing work. Service gap results as nursing expectations about service work exceed actual service work experiences. Economic gaps, however, occur when actual economic requirements of nursing work exceed expectations about the economic elements of nursing. Service gaps were found to have negative effects on service and economic performance. Service gap was also determined to have a positive influence on individual job satisfaction. Economic gap was not found to have an effect on nursing outcomes. Formal service training was found to positively influence individual job satisfaction, perception of economic performance, coping strategies and negatively influence economic gap. Formal economic training also had a positive affect on individual job satisfaction. Informal service training negatively effected service gap and intent to turnover. It also positively influenced coping strategies and individual job satisfaction. Informal economic training had a negative effect on economic gap and a positive effect on service gap and intent to turnover. Coping strategies had a strong positive effect on perception of service performance and organizational job satisfaction. However, coping also had a positive impact on intent to turnover. Additional analysis was performed to understand this anomaly. Organizational job satisfaction had a negative effect on intent to turnover. Perception of performance did not have an effect on intent to turnover. The implications of these findings on nursing practice are explored. Recommendations to reduce service and economic gaps and the intent to turnover through the use of formal and informal service and economic training and coping strategies are suggested. Professional training programs and organizations are also encouraged to help nurses develop accurate expectations with respect to the service and economic aspects of nursing work.
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