for providing insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank Donald Palmer and the anonymous ASQ reviewers for their constructive feedback and valuable suggestions on the paper, and we thank Piruze Sabuncu for her assistance in data collection.

In studying the antecedents of alliance performance, one stream of research has underscored the alignment between partners' characteristics whereas another has concentrated on relational mechanisms such as mutual trust, relational embeddedness, and relational commitment. We integrate these two perspectives by examining how congruence of the partners' cultures and organizational routines facilitates the emergence of relational mechanisms in non‐equity alliances. Our analysis of 420 non‐equity alliances in the information technology industry demonstrates how differences in partners' internal task routines undermine relational mechanisms that in turn impact alliance performance. Partners who acknowledge their latent differences can overcome some of these negative consequences. We advance alliance research by studying the performance implications of alliance partners' organizational differences and by demonstrating how these effects are mediated by relational mechanisms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article contributes to the social networks literature by examining how corporate governance factors influence CEOs' external advice-seeking behaviors. We incorporate insights from social networks research into an agency theory perspective to predict, and demonstrate empirically, that governance factors recommended by agency theory increase CEOs' tendencies to seek out advice contacts who are likely to offer perspectives on strategic issues that differ from their own; these advice-seeking behaviors ultimately enhance firm performance. Accordingly, this article also contributes to the corporate governance literature by describing how and why CEOs' advice networks mediate the effects of governance factors on firm performance.

Research on human capital as a source of competitive advantage has focused largely on firm employees. In this article, we argue that outside directors' general human capital can also be a source of competitive advantage. Firm performance is likely to benefit from directors' human capital-that is, their prior experience and education-because such human capital is likely to make them more effective at monitoring management and providing advice. Drawing on insights from research on individuals' cognitive limitations, we further argue that the extent to which the firm is able to benefit from this human capital can be severely limited by the demands for information processing that directors face from their other board positions. Consequently, we find that the benefit of directors' human capital is contingent upon the information processing load placed upon them from their other board appointments. We find support for our hypotheses using data on over 5,700 directors from 650 firms sampled from the Fortune 1000. This study extends the nascent literature on board human capital by showing that in addition to specific expertise in relevant areas, directors' general human capital can also help firms create competitive advantage. The theory developed in this article also contributes to the literature on strategic human capital by incorporating the concept of information processing demands, suggesting that not only do such demands leave limited cognitive capacity for directors to focus on the focal firm but also that they can severely diminish the beneficial effects of directors' general human capital.

Background: The associated risk factors, co-morbid conditions and biological differences varying with gender and age might be the cause of higher COVID-19 infection and deaths among males and older persons. The objective of this study was to predict and specify the biological attributes of variation in age and gender-based on COVID-19 status (deceased/recovered). Methods: In this retrospective study, the data was extracted from a recognised web-based portal. A total of 112,860 patients' record was filtered out and an additional 9131 records were separately analysed to examine age and gender relationship with patient's COVID-19 status (recovered/deceased). Chi-square, t-test, binary logistic regression, and longitudinal regression analysis were conducted. Results: The male COVID-19 cases (65.39%) were more than females (34.61%) and mean age of infected and recovered patients was 39.47 ± 17.59 years and 36.85 ± 18.51 years respectively. The odds for infection was significantly higher among females for lower age categories, which declines with age. The age-adjusted odds for recovery were significantly higher among females (O.R. = 1.779) and odds for recovery was highest in 5-17 years age category (O.R. = 88.286) independent of gender. Conclusion:The chances of being COVID-19 infected was higher for females of lower age categories (<35 years) which decreases with age. The odds for recovery among females was significantly higher than males. The chances of recovery declines with increasing age and the variation could be attributed to the biological differences between age categories and gender.