Business Office Research Articles

Resisting the Siren Song: Charting a Course for Justice

Edward Zlotkowski's (1995) concern over 20 years ago was that without institutionalization in the academic structures of colleges and universities, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) might fade away or be co-opted into still another academic specialty (p. 129). Fortunately, many heeded his call, and SLCE has become a central and defining feature of many higher education institutions. SLCE leaders on campuses worked hard to build coalitions of stakeholders in the past decades, but many of these stakeholders were enticed to support SLCE for their own ends: Public relations offices needed human relations stories for the media, business offices needed an easy way to ensure they met the 7% minimum threshold for federal work-study students serving in the community, student life offices wanted volunteer structures in place to make it easier to sentence students to community service for disciplinary violations, advancement offices wanted to lure donors based on the institution's service commitments, admissions offices wanted to tout volunteer opportunities, and so on. As an institutionalized movement, SLCE now must find a way to live and thrive within these neoliberal incentive structures that make its continued existence on campuses possible. SLCE lives within the dominant neoliberal structure of American colleges and universities. Simply put, the neoliberal frameworks that infuse American life today strive to monetize all human interactions, turning institutions of higher education into sites of efficiency, productivity, revenue production, and customer service. More than just restricting the range of possible ends, neoliberalism produces within people a desire to conform and promote neoliberal ends. Some scholars are optimistic that SLCE can turn the tide on neoliberalism (Orphan & O'Meara, 2016), and others see SLCE as too wrapped up in a liberal agenda to be an adequate force for transformation (Simpson, 2014). I fall somewhere in the middle, believing that SLCE can create a powerful and transformative sub-culture through which students, faculty, and community members can create structures for justice within a neoliberal framework. But if we are not aware of the incentives driving our stakeholders, we may succumb to them. As Kliewer (2013) warns, maintaining a civic engagement movement that does not account for neoliberalism, we could potentially be undermining the very democratic sentiments and institutions that the movement attempts to revive (p. 73). The future of the movement will depend on the ability of SLCE leaders to recognize and navigate the neoliberal incentives on our work, using them to further our objectives but resisting the urge to let the work be co-opted. Influence of Incentives on SLCE To see if my impressions of the movement were shared by other SLCE leaders, I spent the better part of my time at the North Carolina Campus Compact Pathways to Achieving Civic Engagement Conference and the Campus Compact 30th Anniversary Conference, both taking place in Spring 2016, soliciting attendees' stories about what incentivized their stakeholders to get behind SLCE. They told stories of campus public relations offices needing a feel story of service to distract from bad press at the university. They told stories about faculty who wanted heart-warming service projects for their students in order to get good course evaluations. They told stories of students wanting to change the world by starting yet another campus mentoring program--without ever consulting any of the myriad of extant campus mentoring programs. And like good improvisational actors, the SLCE professionals and partners I spoke with responded to each of these situations with a, yes, and... They sought to encourage the energy, money, passion, and learning of these stakeholders but, in the process, nudge them away from their more neoliberal impulses and toward more sustainable, justice-oriented projects. …

Navigating the clinical trial pathway: Conception, design, execution, and results dissemination

Dr Sampalis is founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Scientific Officer of JSS Medical Research Inc, founded in 1997. He is a tenured professor of Surgery and Epidemiology & Biostatistics of McGill University, the University of Montreal and University of Laval. Recognized as a leading clinical epidemiologist and one of the top trauma researchers in Canada, he possesses extensive expertise in health services research, clinical trials, and offers services as a Research and Epidemiological Consultant for numerous pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and government organizations and agencies. Mrs. Watson holds a M.Sc. in Pharmacology from Dalhousie University, and a B.Sc. from the University of Western Ontario. Her experience extends to all facets of the CRO business, and multiple therapeutic areas. She co-founded, in 1992, Integrated Research Inc, a full-service contract research organization, and served as its President and Chief Executive Officer, until merging with JSS Medical Research Inc in 2014. Mrs. Watson currently holds the position of Chief Business Officer, and is head of the business development team. Mrs. Boukas has been working with the JSS Medical Research team since its inception in the 1990s. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from McGill University with training in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and is certified by the Society of Clinical Research Associates (SOCRA) as a Certified Clinical Research Professional (CCRP). She has over 25years' of experience in medical research management. Currently Chief Operations Officer, Mrs. Boukas has been essential in structuring and implementing programs at JSS Medical Research Inc to facilitate project management, site recruitment, data capture and study tracking. Mrs. Boukas holds a B.A. from McGill University, a Certificate in Technical Communications from Concordia University and has received compliance training from SNC Lavalin Pharma (SLP) and SOCRA. She has over twenty-five years' experience in research. Joining JSS Medical Research Inc in 1998, she currently holds the position of Executive Director of Quality Assurance (QA) where she developed and maintains the QA Program since 2004. The QA Program supports clinical studies conducted in Canada, Latin America, India and Europe. Mrs. Harvey holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the Université du Québec à Montréal and a M.Sc. in Biology from McGill University. With 20years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry, she has held positions in both Commercial and Medical departments. Mrs. Harvey currently holds the position of Director, Clinical Operations at JSS Medical Research Inc, functionally and operationally overseeing a team of project and data managers in the development and implementation of clinical studies. Dr Machado obtained his medical degree from the University of Pune, India. He has over 20years' experience in multinational pharmaceutical, CRO, Bioequivalence & Phase I and Site Management Organizations, working in several therapeutic areas and phase of studies. As a founder of Venn Life Sciences, Dr Machado served as Chief Operating Officer, until joining JSS Medical Research Inc in 2011, where he is currently Vice-President, Global Operations & Integration. In addition to overseeing global operations, he is responsible for global expansion and integration of JSS Medical Research Inc through acquisitions and mergers. Mr. Bordeleau holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Guelph and an MBA from HEC Montreal. He has over 20years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including laboratory and IT research, healthcare marketing support, and IT team management. As Global Director of information Technology at JSS Medical Research Inc, Mr. Bordeleau leads a team of programmers as well as network, database and system administrators who specialize in developing, maintaining, and most importantly, improving, key software, clinical systems, infrastructure, and business processes. Dr Rampakakis received his Ph.D. from the Department of Biochemistry from McGill University, and obtained post-doctoral training, also at McGill, in Pharmacoepidemiology. With over 15years' experience in scientific research, he has contributed in the conception, design, analysis and interpretation of several large scale, national and international, registration and observational studies. He currently holds the position of Vice President of Scientific Affairs at JSS Medical Research Inc, overseeing a team of biostatisticians, epidemiologists, physicians, medical writers, and health economists.

Message from the Business Office

Right now, I am sitting in my office in the mountains of Colorado and there is NO SNOW. The date is 10 November, and traditionally the slopes are open by now. At this time, opening day is suspended indefinitely. Conversely, I recently learned that the 2016 growing season for champagne and other wines in France will be a vintage year rivaling 1947. Rising temperatures reduced normal damage by frost. The conditions produced an earlier harvest of richer fruit. The result—better wines. These are examples of some opposite results of climate change. By 2100, NASA and EPA both predict that temperatures will increase by 2.5–10°C. Scientists and organizations like ASLO must continue to educate decision makers and create champions for change. Sessions addressing climate change will take place during the ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting in February, and we hope you will be attending. ASLO meetings are where great discussions happen, and we can challenge each other. Recipients of the 2017 ASLO awards will be presenting at this meeting. Also of interest is the recently announced 2016 class of ASLO Fellows. Prior to the ASLO business meeting on Monday evening, 27 February, they will be recognized during the membership reception. Please be sure to attend the meeting in Honolulu, if possible, and stop by the registration desk to say hello. Be sure that your membership is renewed so you can continue to support our society and its many endeavors. Helen Schneider Lemay, ASLO Business Manager, The Schneider Group, Inc.

The Stones I Carry

The Stones I Carry Reg Darling (bio) The stones in my pocket help keep me honest by being stronger and truer than my words. They tether me to places that seem radiant with spirit and resonant with truths that cannot be uttered. [I don’t know what “spirit” fully means, but in the absence of a better word, I accept its ambiguity. The difference between a mossy, water-smoothed and -shaped marble boulder in southwestern Vermont and a paved parking lot anywhere transcends both semantics and philosophy. That difference is what I call spirit, and it keeps me alive. Spirit’s manifestations are many, and I can’t perceive them all, which is why I decline the violent exclusivity of belief. Instead, I try to live in the confluence of my heart’s strange mysteries and the land’s implacable wildness.] In a sense, I carry those places in my pocket, and that helps me to carry them in my heart. Weminuche Wilderness Area Schoodic Peninsula Rio Grande Gorge [End Page 135] Arches National Park Taconic Range Green Mountains [Colorado, Maine, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont.] One morning in the mid-1990s, when I was getting ready for a busy office day and had to teach in the evening, I was suffering from a lingering cold and felt harried and overwhelmed. My weary distress was pretty obvious. As I was leaving, my son Oren, eleven years old then, gave me a white pebble. “Here, carry this with you. It’s from Gifford Woods,” he said. And through that weary stressful day and many days to come, it was a comforting presence. [Gifford Woods State Park, near Killington, Vermont, was a favorite camping place on the summer wanders that gave me lifesaving respite from a stressful career, and rendered Oren’s vision of the world both broader and more intimate.] I carried the stone Oren gave me in my pocket for a dozen years. Its sharp edges were worn smooth by coins, keys, pens, and the smooth, rounded quartz pebble from my ancestral territory that soon joined it in my pocket. [The Tionesta watershed of the Allegheny Plateau.] Once, I left Oren’s stone in a special place in the woods (where the resident ravens knew me and I became acquainted with a large, ghost-like coyote whom I regarded as brethren) for most of a summer. [Nowadays one must hike through an oil field to get there.] When I retrieved it, I imagined it to be somehow infused with the spirit of that place mingled with the spirit of the Green Mountains. [End Page 136] [It became poetry made of stone.] When Oren was fifteen, a floatplane carried us far out into the tundra of northern Quebec, where we hunted caribou with longbows and homemade arrows. Sitting near a well-used caribou trail on a large island in the Pons River, I felt an unexpected wave of deep, childlike homesickness. [We were so incredibly far from everything known and dearly loved in a staggeringly beautiful, but also incredibly harsh, land.] Holding the quartz pebble from the beloved landscape of my ancestry and birth transformed poignancy into comfort and fond nostalgia. The pastoral gentleness of my native Alleghenies seemed alive in that smooth, round piece of white quartz. After I killed a caribou on the island a few days later, I left the pebble there. It seemed intuitively necessary. [We brought home our winter’s meat and through it took the tundra into our blood, muscles, and bones.] The pebble I left on the island was soon replaced by another that was, in turn, left in a faraway place. I began gathering pebbles on my wandering hikes (often retracing routes gleaned from my great-grandfather’s journals) for the purpose of leaving them on my travels beyond my homeland. There are quartz pebbles from the Tionesta watershed in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ontario, Quebec, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, [End Page 137] Virginia, and West Virginia. There are stones from all those places...

Management strategies of Bring Your Own Device

The rapid development of mobile Internet and mobile terminals promote business office system from PC to mobile terminals gradually. Thus Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has become one of the important development trends of enterprise office mode. We analyse the driving factors of implementing Bring Your Own Device, then point out some problems in the process of implementing Bring Your Own Device. Further, we propose the corresponding management strategies of Bring Your Own Device in order to provide references for enterprises to meet the need of mobile office.

Patient, staff, and clinician perspectives on implementing electronic communications in an interdisciplinary rural family health practice.

Increasing demands on healthcare require greater efficiencies in communications and services, particularly in rural areas. E-communications may improve clinic efficiency and delivery of healthcare but raises concerns about patient privacy and data security. We conducted an environmental scan at one family health team clinic, a high-volume interdisciplinary primary care practice in rural southwestern Ontario, Canada, to determine the feasibility of implementing an e-communications system between its patients and staff. A total of 28 qualitative interviews were conducted (with six physicians, four phone nurses, four physicians' nurses, five receptionists, one business office attendant, five patients, and three pharmacists who provide care to the clinic's patients) along with quantitative surveys of 131 clinic patients. Findings Patients reported using the internet regularly for multiple purposes. Patients indicated they would use email to communicate with their family doctor for prescription refills (65% of respondents), appointment booking (63%), obtaining lab results (60%), and education (50%). Clinic staff expressed concerns about patient confidentiality and data security, the timeliness, complexity and responsibility of responses, and increased workload. Clinic staff members are willing to use an e-communications system but clear guidelines are needed for successful adoption and to maintain privacy of patient health data. E-communications might improve access to and quality of care in rural primary care practices.

The Influences of B2B Service Quality on the Relationship Satisfaction, Brand Performance and Relationship Performance - An Application of the IMP Interaction Model

Objectives: This study purpose to identify of B2B (Business to Business) Service Quality on Relationship Satisfaction, Brand Performance and Relationship Performance in B2B environment. Theoretical framework is based on the Interaction Model from IMP Group (1982)1. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Purchasing decision Maker and Influencers, such as IT Staffs and Operators who were provided Hardware devices and Software Solutions for Business Office, were selected as objects of this study. Sample was conducted for 3 months from Oct. 2015, 110 copies from Decision Makers and 225 copies from the IT staffs and Influencers. Exploratory factors analysis, reliability analysis and structural equating model analysis were preceded by SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 19.0. Findings: As result of this study, B2B Service Quality was found positive effect on Brand Performance and Relationship Satisfaction, but not found positive effect on Relationship Performance. On the other hand, Brand Performance was found to have positive effect on Relationship Satisfaction and Relationship Performance. And found positive effect between Relationship Satisfaction and Relationship Performance. In addition, Brand Performance had mediation effect significantly between B2B Service Quality and Relationship-Satisfaction. And also had mediation effect significantly between B2B Service Quality and Relationship-Performance. Finally, Relationship- Satisfaction had significant mediation effect between Brand Performance and Relationship Performance. According to this study results, we found 4 factors of relational exchange are applied in various industry area in B2B and it matches with previous studies by2,3. Improvements/Applications: The limitation of this study were followings, it may be able to utilize future research direction. First, there were no prior concerns about internal decision process in Customer Organization, Second, could not capture for information exchange and adaptation as variables of IMP interaction model. Third, need to study what is process indicator and mediation effect in between B2B Service Quality and Relationship Performance.

Message from the Business Office

Message from the Business Office

From Theory to Practice: Implementing Positive Parenting Strategies in a Busy Office Practice

From Theory to Practice: Implementing Positive Parenting Strategies in a Busy Office Practice

The Challenges and Opportunities of Personalizing Treatment for Autoimmune Diseases

Clinical OMICsVol. 3, No. 8 SNAPSHOTThe Challenges and Opportunities of Personalizing Treatment for Autoimmune DiseasesGeorg LautschamGeorg LautschamDR. GEORG LAUTSCHAM is Chief Business Officer of Protagen, headquartered in Dortmund, Germany, which specializes in the development of novel diagnostic and companion diagnostic tests to provide better and earlier diagnosis of autoimmune diseases. (E-mail Address: georg.lautscham@protagen.com)Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:29 Jul 2016https://doi.org/10.1089/clinomi.03.08.09AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail View articleFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 3Issue 8Aug 2016 InformationCopyright © GEN PublishingTo cite this article:Georg Lautscham.The Challenges and Opportunities of Personalizing Treatment for Autoimmune Diseases.Clinical OMICs.Aug 2016.24-26.http://doi.org/10.1089/clinomi.03.08.09Published in Volume: 3 Issue 8: July 29, 2016PDF download

Post-Brexit, Ineos embraces its Britishness

Ineos, one of the world’s largest petrochemical makers, is rediscovering its Britishness in the wake of the Brexit vote. The firm is moving some of its business offices from Switzerland to the U.K....

Lifelong Information-Driven Exploration to Complete and Refine 4-D Spatio-Temporal Maps

This letter presents an exploration method that allows mobile robots to build and maintain spatio-temporal models of changing environments. The assumption of a perpetually changing world adds a temporal dimension to the exploration problem, making spatio-temporal exploration a never-ending, life-long learning process. We address the problem by application of information-theoretic exploration methods to spatio-temporal models that represent the uncertainty of environment states as probabilistic functions of time. This allows to predict the potential information gain to be obtained by observing a particular area at a given time, and consequently, to decide which locations to visit and the best times to go there. To validate the approach, a mobile robot was deployed continuously over 5 consecutive business days in a busy office environment. The results indicate that the robot’s ability to spot environmental changes improved as it refined its knowledge of the world dynamics.

A Community Comes Together to Help Patients with Cancer

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsPatricia Inama RodaPatricia Inama Roda, MSN, BS, RN, oncology clinical support manager, and Jaime Fritchman, BS, oncology business office manager at the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute, Lancaster, Pa.Jaime FritchmanPatricia Inama Roda, MSN, BS, RN, oncology clinical support manager, and Jaime Fritchman, BS, oncology business office manager at the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute, Lancaster, Pa.

Applications of GNSS-Pro software for processing GNSS short baseline networks in Vietnam

In the framework of a Natural Resources and Environment Ministry level project, chaired by the Vietnam Institute of Geodesy and Cartography, we have established GNSS-Pro software for processing GNSS short baseline networks. The software can process carrier phase measurements from single or dual frequency receivers for the two satellite systems GPS and GLONASS simultaneously. This paper presents the results of treatment an illustrated cadastral GNSS network in Hai Duong province by GNSS-Pro and compared with other commonly used software packages such as Leica Geo Office (LGO) and Trimble Business Center (TBC). Result comparisons showed that although GNSS data collected in the unfavorable conditions, GNSS-Pro still offers fixed solution for all baselines with centimeter level accuracy.

Emission of particulate matter from a desktop three-dimensional (3D) printer

ABSTRACTDesktop three-dimensional (3D) printers are becoming commonplace in business offices, public libraries, university labs and classrooms, and even private homes; however, these settings are generally not designed for exposure control. Prior experience with a variety of office equipment devices such as laser printers that emit ultrafine particles (UFP) suggests the need to characterize 3D printer emissions to enable reliable risk assessment. The aim of this study was to examine factors that influence particulate emissions from 3D printers and characterize their physical properties to inform risk assessment. Emissions were evaluated in a 0.5-m3 chamber and in a small room (32.7 m3) using real-time instrumentation to measure particle number, size distribution, mass, and surface area. Factors evaluated included filament composition and color, as well as the manufacturer-provided printer emissions control technologies while printing an object. Filament type significantly influenced emissions, with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) emitting larger particles than polylactic acid (PLA), which may have been the result of agglomeration. Geometric mean particle sizes and total particle (TP) number and mass emissions differed significantly among colors of a given filament type. Use of a cover on the printer reduced TP emissions by a factor of 2. Lung deposition calculations indicated a threefold higher PLA particle deposition in alveoli compared to ABS. Desktop 3D printers emit high levels of UFP, which are released into indoor environments where adequate ventilation may not be present to control emissions. Emissions in nonindustrial settings need to be reduced through the use of a hierarchy of controls, beginning with device design, followed by engineering controls (ventilation) and administrative controls such as choice of filament composition and color.

From the Business Office

Be sure that you have renewed your membership in ASLO for 2016 in order to keep your benefits and support of our society going. ASLO had 4267 members for the 2015 year and this included many new members joining to attend the meeting in Granada, Spain. We want you to remain a member so please renew. The 2015 membership represented 75 countries and included 1042 students, 935 early career professionals, and 165 emeritus members. Special thanks to our emeritus members for all their years of service! ASLO was one of the three societies sponsoring the 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans. While AGU was the lead, ASLO was well represented with Adina Payton, Susanne Neuer, and Amy Burgess serving on the scientific committee and over 1000 ASLO members attending. Special thanks for all the hard work. At the meeting, ASLO recognized our inaugural class of Fellows with a champagne toasts. A special reception will be held at the summer meeting. This means that the ASLO meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 05–10 June will be our “ASLO only” meeting for 2016. We will get people up and moving following the wonderful southwestern cuisine with yoga and runs early mornings. The meeting will also have some free time built in on Wednesday afternoon. Other special events include the ASLO annual business meeting, a tapas night complete with a live band and closing reception Friday following the last oral sessions. We love seeing everyone at the meetings, but feel free to contact us any time at the ASLO business office. Helen Schneider Lemay, ASLO Business Manager, Waco, TX, USA; business@aslo.org

Invest Like an Endowment

This paper studies the investment returns and asset allocation policies of college and university endowments who share annual performance and asset allocation data with the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) annual endowment study. In this paper, we review the performance data and asset allocation policies by the size of the endowment assets as set forth by NACUBO. Further, we investigate how an individual investor could replicate the high risk-adjusted returns based on the asset allocation policies of reporting institutions, including Yale University.

Time stamps used to measure the patient's clinic experience.

150 Background: In 2013, a patient reported satisfaction survey indicated 19% of patients waited 20-40 minutes, 8% 40-60 minutes and 4% over 1 hour. We initiated a project to objectively quantify the components of wait times to investigate opportunities for improvement. Methods: Utilizing existing technology in the practice management system, clinic staff use the Day List feature to capture time stamps as patients move through the clinic. We focused on provider appointments but these visits could also include business office, labs, infusion and diagnostics. It was important to define where the wait(s) occurred. The Time Stamp durations measured are as follows: Arrival to Depart – duration of each appointment; Arrival to site to Exam Start – duration of activity until ready to be seen by the provider, includes rooming, labs and business office activity. Used to compare to the patient satisfaction survey responses; Exam Start to Depart – the provider portion of the office visit, includes patient wait plus exam time. Three reports are generated: Time Stamp Error Report indicating the completeness of data collection; Average Wait Times Report with appointment counts by physician by site and average durations; Provider Wait Times Report with office visit counts, Wait Time Category counts ( < 10 min, 10-20, 20-40, 40-60, and > 1 hour ) and average durations. Results: There was a correlation calculation to the patient satisfaction survey of .779, with long wait times more likely to be underreported by patients. Site and physician data were available for review at site Quality Committees. The data can be used by the site to improve processes, such as lab and infusion room scheduling. Time stamps are used to communicate patient readiness for next steps in the office visit. The time stamps provide objective data to discuss patient complaints with staff. Conclusions: Patient wait times are a valued measure of patient satisfaction and quality. Full utilization of the Day List and supporting technology allows us to objectively monitor and improve this aspect of patient care. Table 1: Sample Provider Report [Table: see text]

Concordance Rate for the Identification of Distant Entrance Gunshot Wounds of the Back by Experienced Forensic Pathologists Examining Only Images of Autopsies.

The images of 66 gunshot entrance wounds with a defect on the back, a bullet in the body, hemorrhage along the wound track, and logical certainty that it was an entrance wound were collected from the files of a moderately busy medical examiner's office. Participants numbering 22 board-certified forensic pathologists viewed a single digital archival image of each of the 66 entrance wounds randomly mixed with 74 presumptive exit wounds to determine whether they were entrance or exit wounds. The concordance rate for correctly identifying the 66 logically known entrance wounds was 82.8% with a range from 58% to 97%. This pilot study was conducted to provide an evidence-based approach to the interpretation of the direction of gunshot wounds by reviewing pathologists with access only to archival photographs, and it is not a measure of the accuracy to distinguish entrance from exit wounds when given all of the circumstances.

Building Imperial Frontiers. Business, Science and Karakul Sheep Farming in (German) South-West Africa (1903–1939)

Building Imperial Frontiers. Business, Science and Karakul Sheep Farming in (German) South-West Africa (1903–1939) This article examines the development of Karakul farming at the colonial frontier of South-West Africa. It covers both the development of Karakul farming as a project for improving the economic conditions of the colonies, and its consolidation after the First World War. The paper is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses in particular on the network between agricultural scientists, who advocated genetic science, and German fur entrepreneurs, who searched for new suppliers of resources. This network ultimately led to the creation of Karakul farming in German South-West Africa. The article demonstrates that German business and scientists were much more active in colonial projects and German empire-building than existing business histories have shown. Secondly, after the loss of empire, the German fur business and colonial office continued to invest in Namibian Karakul farming, stimulating its recovery and boom in the 1930s. However, the article also argues that the consolidation phase went along with the decline of the (commercial) model of Karakul farming introduced before the war.