In both industrialized and emerging countries, organizations increasingly seek to support employees' efforts to maintain a healthy work-family balance. Research has identified two types of organizational support in this context: formal work-family programs and informal work-family cultures. This study examines the relative effects of work-family programs versus work-family culture on employees' job satisfaction and performance in various cultural environments. Drawing on the individualism-collectivism cultural dimension introduced by Hofstede, it is argued that employees' cultural background may affect family models, which in turn determine employees' need for formal organizational work-family support, but are not related to employees' need for informal support. In line with this notion, the results from comparisons of an industrialized country (the USA) with two emerging countries (China and India) show that work-family culture has positive effects in all three contexts. However, formal work-family programs positively affect job satisfaction and job performance only in India and the USA, whereas they exhibit no significant effect in the more collectivist setting of China.

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B cells and their regulation by B-cell activating factor BAFF are of growing interest in kidney transplantation (KTx). There is evidence that high serum (s) BAFF leads to increased allosensitization and impaired long-term graft function. We prospectively investigated sBAFF, peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL), and donor-specific HLA antibodies (DSA) in patients after ABOi with B-cell depleting rituximab induction treatment and compared them to a group of blood group-compatible (ABOc) living donor kidney recipients. Twelve patients after ABOi and 18 after ABOc were included. After rituximab treatment prior to ABOi, B cells remained significantly lower 1 year after KTx (1.2% (0.0-17.8) compared to ABOc of 8.6% (2.8-35.0), p = 0.0004, and also BAFF-R expression was significantly lower in ABOi (p < 0.006). sBAFF remained elevated 1 year post-Tx compared to ABOc (3615 ± 1800 vs. 1394 ± 493 pg/mL, p < 0.004). Kidney function was not significantly different between both groups after 1, 2, and 3 years. The use of rituximab in ABOi together with maintenance immunosuppression leads to significant elevation of sBAFF and lowering of B-cell numbers for more than 1 year, and this does not correlate with worse 3-year graft outcome.

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