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NAME-DEVANSHI DHINGRA

ENROLLMENT NUMBER-02217703519

SECTION-K

SEMESTER-2nd

NAME OF THE PROJECT-


CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNTIES
OF OB

NAME OF THE SUBJECT-


ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

NAME OF THE TEACHER-MS.DIVYA


SETHI
INTRODUCTION
What Is Organizational Behaviour?
Organizational behaviour (OB) is the academic study of the ways people act within groups.
Its principles are applied primarily in attempts to make businesses operate more effectively.
The study of organizational behaviour includes areas of research dedicated to improving job
performance, increasing job satisfaction, promoting innovation, and encouraging leadership.
Each has its own recommended actions, such as reorganizing groups, modifying
compensation structures, or changing methods of performance evaluation.
Challenges and opportunities of organizational behaviour are massive and rapidly changing
for improving productivity and meeting business goals.Although the problems with
organizations and the solutions over the ages have not really changed, the emphasis and
surrounding environmental context certainly have changed.Although the resulting lean and
mean organizations offered some short-run benefits in terms of lowered costs and improved
productivity, if they continued to do business, as usual, they would not be able to meet
current or future challenges. As a Harvard Business Review article argues, “These are scary
times for managers”.The singular reason given for these frightening times – the increasing
danger of disruptive change.The nature of work is changing so rapidly that rigid job
structures impede the work to be done now, and that may drastically change the following
year, month, or even week.Main challenges and opportunities of organizational behavior are;
1. .Improving Quality and Productivity.
2. Total Quality Management (TQM).
3. Managing Workforce Diversity.
4. Responding to Globalization.
5. Empowering People.
6. Coping with Temporariness.
7. Stimulating Innovation and Change.
8. Emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce.
9. Improving Ethical Behaviour.
10. Improving Customer Service.
11. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts.
12. Flattening World.
13. Responding to economic pressure
14. Improving people skills.
15. Working in networked organisation.
16. Creating a positive workforce environment
17. Responding to labour shortages
18. Empowering people

SUMMARY
The research paper focuses on the challenges and opportunities of organizational behaviour
and how these challenges impact the working of an organization and what steps should be
taken by the managers to ensure that a the employes are satisfied and the organiation is sound
and profitable

There are many challenges that in organization faces while its working be it with external or
internal factors . Some of the challenges and opportunities of organizational behaviour are:-

1. Globilazation
2. Downsizing
3. Contingent Workers
4. Copying with temprorariness
5. Improving Quality and Productivity.
6. Total Quality Management (TQM).
7. Managing Workforce Diversity.
8. Responding to Globalization.
9. Empowering People.
10. Coping with Temporariness.
11. Stimulating Innovation and Change.
12. Emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce.
13. Improving Ethical Behaviour.
14. Improving Customer Service.
15. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts.
16. Flattening World.
17. Responding to economic pressure
18. Improving people skills.
19. Working in networked organisation.
20. Creating a positive workforce environment
21. Responding to labour shortages
22. Empowering people

A manager takes various steps to tackle these challenges to make the working of the
organization healthy and insures that employes are satisfied and motivated. This will help in
earning more profits and attain customer’s satisfication . The HR manager should motivate
train, and select the employes in such a way that it minimizses all the above mentioned
challenges. Managers are in better postion to influence and lead change.

The paper also focuses on how globilazation, accomodiation of different cultures in


organization can be done and help in the sound functioning of the organization . By the
focuses in all these aspects the company can attract the best talent of the market which will
lead to better and fast accomplish of organizations goals and objectives .

Many other ways to solve the challenges and many other challenges also discussed in the
paper with the examples of various companies like Apple etc. It also contain two hypothesis
relating to the same topic and the point for and against a specifically provided with it. In the
some solutions area also provided which can be taken by the managers , departmental heads
and even the employees so that these challenges do not hinder the working of an organization
and the organization can achieve its goals and objectives smoothly.

LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Luthans,
THE FOLLOWING CHALLENGES AND OPPURTUNTIES-1
Improving People’s Skills
Technological changes, structural changes, environmental changes are accelerated at a faster
rate in the business field.Unless employees and executives are equipped to possess the
required skills to adapt to those changes, the targeted goals cannot be achieved in time.These
two different categories of skills – managerial skills and technical skills.Some of the
managerial skills include listening skills, motivating skills, planning and organizing skills,
leading skills, problem-solving skill, decision-making skills.These skills can be enhanced by
organizing a series of training and development programs, career development programs,
induction, and socialization.

Improving Quality and Productivity


Organizational Behaviour Opportunities for Improving Quality and ProductivityQuality is the
extent to which the customers or users believe the product or service surpasses their needs
and expectations.For example, a customer who purchases an automobile has a certain
expectation, one of which is that the automobile engine will start when it is turned on.If the
engine fails to start, the customer’s expectations will not have been met and the customer will
perceive the quality of the car as poor. The key dimensions of quality as follow

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Luthans,ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR(12th edition,Tata Mc Graw Hill,2013)
 Performance: Primary rating characteristics of a product such as signal
coverage, audio quality, display quality, etc.
 Features: Secondary characteristics, added features, such as calculators, and
alarm clock features in headphone
 Conformance: Meeting specifications or industry standards, workmanship of
the degree to which a product’s design or operating characteristics match pre-
established standards.
 Reliability: The probability of a product’s falling within t a specified period of
time
 Durability: It is a measure of a product’s life having both economic and
technical dimension
 Services: Resolution of problem and complaints, ease of repair
 Response: Human to human interfaces, such as the courtesy of the dealer «
Aesthetics: Sensory characteristics such exterior finish
 Reputations: Past performance and other intangibles, such as being ranked
first.
More and more managers are confronting to meet the challenges to fulfill the specific
requirements of customers.In order to improve quality and productivity, they are
implementing programs like total quality management and reengineering programs that
require extensive employee involvement.

Total Quality Management (TQM)


TQM is a philosophy of management that is driven by constant attainment of customer
satisfaction through the continuous improvement of all organizational process.
The components of TQM are;

(a) An intense focus on the customer,


(b) Concern for continual improvement,
(c) Improvement in the quality of everything the organization does,
(d) Accurate measurement and,
(e) Empowerment of employees.

Managing Workforce Diversity


This refers to employing different categories of employees who are heterogeneous in terms of
gender, race, ethnicity, relation, community, physically disadvantaged, elderly people,
etc.The primary reason to employ heterogeneous category of employees is to tap the talents
and potentialities, harnessing the innovativeness, obtaining synergetic effect among the
divorce workforce.In general, employees wanted to retain their individual and cultural
identity, values and lifestyles even though they are working in the same organization with
common rules and regulations.The major challenge for organizations is to become more
accommodating to diverse groups of people by addressing their different lifestyles, family
needs, and work styles.

Responding to Globalization
Today’s business is mostly market-driven; wherever the demands exist irrespective of
distance, locations, climatic conditions, the business operations are expanded to gain their
market share and to remain in the top rank, etc. Business operations are no longer restricted to
a particular locality or region.Company’s products or services are spreading across the
nations using mass communication, the internet, faster transportation, etc.More than 95% of
Nokia (Now Microsoft) headphones are being sold outside of their home country
Finland.Japanese cars are being sold in different parts of the globe. Sri Lankan tea is exported
to many cities around the globe.Garment products of Bangladesh are exporting in USA and
EU countries. Executives of Multinational Corporation are very mobile and move from one
subsidiary to another more frequently.2

Empowering People
The main issue is delegating more power and responsibility to the lower level cadre of
employees and assigning more freedom to make choices about their schedules, operations,
procedures and the method of solving their work-related problems.Encouraging the
employees to participate in the work-related decision will sizable enhance their commitment
to work.Empowerment is defined as putting employees in charge of what they do by eliciting
some sort of ownership in them.Managers are doing considerably further by allowing
employees full control of their work.Movement implies constant change an increasing
number of organizations are using self-managed teams, where workers operate largely
without a boss.Due to the implementation of empowerment concepts across all the levels, the
relationship between managers and the employees is reshaped.Managers will act as coaches,
advisors, sponsors, facilitators and help their subordinates to do their task with minimal
guidance.

Coping with Temporariness


In recent times, the product life cycles are slimming, the methods of operations are
improving, and fashions are changing very fast. In those days, the managers needed to
introduce major change programs once or twice a decade.Today, change is an ongoing
activity for most managers.The concept of continuous improvement implies constant
change.In yesteryears, there used to be a long period of stability and occasionally interrupted
by a short period of change, but at present, the change process is an ongoing activity due to
competitiveness in developing new products and services with better features.Everyone in the
organization faces today is one of permanent temporariness. The actual jobs that workers

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http://www.ukeassays.com./bussiness/challenges
perform are in a permanent state of flux. So, workers need to continually update their
knowledge and skills to perform new job requirements.

Stimulating Innovation and Change


Today’s successful organizations must foster innovation and be proficient in the art of
change; otherwise, they will become candidates for extinction in due course of time and
vanished from their field of business.Victory will go to those organizations that maintain
flexibility, continually improve their quality, and beat the competition to the market place
with a constant stream of innovative products and services.For example, Compaq succeeded
by creating more powerful personal computers for the same or less money than EBNM or
Apple, and by putting their products to market quicker than the bigger
competitors.Amazon.com’s Kindle, Audible, and bookstore services putting a lot of
independent bookstores and publishers out of business as it proves you can successfully sell
books from an Internet website.

Emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce


It refers to the business operations involving the electronic mode of transactions. It
encompasses presenting products on websites and filling the order.The vast majority of
articles and media attention given to using the Internet in business are directed at online
shopping.In this process, the marketing and selling of goods and services are being carried
out over the Internet.In e-commerce, the following activities are being taken place quite
often– the tremendous numbers of people who are shopping on the Internet, business houses
are setting up websites where they can sell goods, conducting the following transactions such
as getting paid and fulfilling orders.It is a dramatic change in the way a company relates to its
customers. At present e-commerce is exploding. Globally, e-commerce spending was
increasing at a tremendous rate.

Improving Ethical Behavior


The complexity in business operations is forcing the workforce to face ethical dilemmas,
where they are required to define right and wrong conduct in order to complete their assigned
activities.For example,Should the employees of a chemical company blow the whistle if they
uncover the discharging its untreated effluents into the river are polluting its water resources?
Do managers give an inflated performance evaluation to an employee they like, knowing that
such an evaluation could save that employee’s job?The ground rules governing the
constituents of good ethical behavior has not been clearly defined, Differentiating right things
from wrong behavior has become more blurred.Following unethical practices have become a
common practice such as successful executives who use insider information for personal
financial gain, employees in competitor business participating in massive cover-ups of
defective products, etc.
Improving Customer Service
OB can contribute to improving organizational performance by showing drat how employees’
attitude and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.In that case, service should be
the first production-oriented by using technological opportunities like a computer, the
internet, etc.To improve the customer service need to provide sales service and also the after-
sales service.

Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts


The typical employee in the 1960s or 1970s showed up at the workplace Monday through
Friday and did his or her job 8 or 9-hour chunk of time.The workplace and hours were clearly
specified. That’s no longer true for a large segment of today’s workforce.Employees are
increasingly complaining that the line between work and non-work time has become blurred,
creating personal conflict and stress.3A number of forces have contributed to blurring the
lines between employees’ work life and personal life.First, the creation of global
organizations means their world never sleeps. At any time and on any day, for instance,
thousands of General Electric employees are working somewhere.Second, communication
technology allows employees to do their work at home, in their cars, or on the beach in Cox’s
Bazar.This lets many people in technical and professional jobs do their work anytime and
from any place.Third, organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours.
Finally, fewer families have only a single breadwinner. Today’s married employee is
typically part of a dual-career couple. This makes it increasingly difficult for married
employees to find the time to fulfill commitments to home, spouse, children, parents, and
friends.Today’s married employee is typically part of a dual-career couple.This makes it
increasingly difficult for married employees to find the time to fulfill commitments to home,
spouse, children, parents, and friends.Employees are increasingly recognizing that work is
squeezing out personal lives and they’re not happy about it.For example, recent studies
suggest that employees want jobs that give them flexibility in their work schedules so they
can better manage work/life conflicts.In addition, the next generation of employees is likely
to show similar concerns.A majority of college and university students say that attaining a
balance between personal life and work is a primary career goal. They want a life as well as a
job.

Flattening World
Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
makes the point that the Internet has “flattened” the world and created an environment in
which there is a more level playing field in terms of access to information.This access to
information has led to an increase in innovation, as knowledge can be shared instantly across

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www.researchgate.net
time zones and cultures.It has also created intense competition, as the speed of business is
growing faster and faster all the time.In his book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott notes that mass
collaboration has changed the way work gets done, how products are created, and the ability
of people to work together without ever meeting.

High stress for the employees:

Lack of management qualities will lead to the inefficient planning and so they have to split
the work among the people in inappropriate manner leading to the problems in the
employees. The employee would have received more workload in that kind of situations.
Lack of planning will lead to these kinds of situation. Some of the persons would have
received wrong works from the manager. So the employee will become more stress and they
cannot use their natural potential to do the allocated works. So the people become more
stressed and it will affect the total process of the product life cycle.

Some of the companies are not looking into the stress level that an employee can manage.
They simply keep on feeding person with stress. Those kinds of policies of the company
should be left out. The company should follow the necessary stress management policies to
keep the employee healthy and fully potential all the time. It will provide the firm very high
response it terms of the productivity.

Policies and code of conduct:

Some of the policies of the companies will be against some of the religious beliefs. It cannot
be avoided. The firms should try to make the policies without conflicting with any other
religious policies of the persons. Else they have to suffer from internal problems.
HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
HYPOTHESIS1:Work life balance helps increase
employee’s productivity.
It wasn’t until the mid-60s that the subject of work-life balance became the subject of interest
among scholars.For instance, Kahn et al. (1964) concluded that for employees, work-family
conflicts are a substantial stress source. Relevantly, the notion of equilibrium between family
and professional life (work-family balance) is recently employed when referring to the
successful development of both domains. At present time, in order to fine-tune the
organizational structures to the needs of the employees or to respond to government
regulations with respect to gender equality, integration, and protection of families, a lot of
organizations dedicate their resources to the initiatives of work-life. As has been emphasized
by a number of scholars, at present time, it is likely to have employees that demand the
initiatives of work-life balance from the organization. Such demand has been closely linked
to the increasing commonness of dual-career couples, family or dependent accountabilities,
or the wish to devote more time to friends or enjoy leisure undertakings.4
Effective Work-Life Balance is underpinned by two applicable primary concepts namely the
day-to-day accomplishment and enjoyment. Achievement is the successful completion of
something particularly after a series of diligent attempts or being given what is desired. With
respect to the notion of enjoyment, it does not denote happiness. Rather, it denotes pride,
satisfaction, celebration, joys of living as well as a sense of wellbeing.
In life, achievement and enjoyment have close linkage in terms of value. In other words, a
person has to have both. This is the reason why those who are deemed successful do not feel
happy or are not as happy as they are supposed to be.

HYPOTHESIS 2:Globalisation leads to increased


competition.
Globalization leads to increased competition. This competition can be related to product and
service cost and price, target market, technological adaptation, quick response, quick
production by companies etc. When a company produces with less cost and sells cheaper, it is
able to increase its market share.

Customers have a large multitude of choices in the market and this affects their behaviors:
they want to acquire goods and services quickly and in a more efficient way than before.
They also expect high quality and low prices. All these expectations need a response from the
company, otherwise sales of company will decrease and they will lose profit and market
share. A company must always be ready for price, product and service and customer
preferences because all of these are global market requirements. Globalization has created a
market dynamic that fosters new competition, demands higher levels of efficiency and
requires true expertise in supply chain optimization.

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Judge Robbins and Vohra,organisational behaviour(15 th edition,Pearson education,India,New Delhi.,2013)
For the first time, new competitors from regions around the world with flexible supply chains
are effectively competing against established market leaders that have formidable brands,
customer loyalty and deep resources. If that is not enough, many of these aggressive new
competitors are government-backed companies with access to lower-cost capital — a real
business advantage.As global commerce equalizes the business landscape, speed becomes
even more critical and supply chains become the new competitive weapon.
CONCLUSION

Understanding organizational behaviour has never been more important for managers. Take a
quick look at dramatic changes in organizations. The typical employee is getting older; more
women and people of color are in the workplace; corporate downsizing and the heavy use of
temporary workers are severing the bonds of loyalty that tied many employers to their
employers; global competition requires employees to become more flexible and cope with
rapid change. The global recession has brought to the forefront the challenges of working
with and managing people during uncertain times.
When the U.S. economy plunged into a deep and prolonged recession in 2008, virtually all
other large economics around the world followed suit. Layoffs and job losses were
widespread, and those who survived were often asked to accept pay cuts.
During difficult economic times, effective management is often at a premium. Anybody can
run a company when business is booming, because the difference between good and bad
management reflects the difference between making a lot of money and making a lot more
money. When times are bad, though, managers are on the front lines with employees who
must be fired, who are asked to make do with less, and who worry about their futures. The
difference between good and bad management can be difference between profit and loss or
ultimately, between survival and failure. In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy
and retain employees is at a premium. In bad times, issues like stress, decision making and
coping come to the fore.
Organizational behavior plays a critical role in ensuring that the workforce maintains a level
of professionalism and be able to achieve business aims and objectives within the required
timeframe. The philosophical approach to this, organizational behavioral concepts, provides
the framework for managers to utilize different strategies and comprehend what it takes to
achieve a high-quality workforce. The present paper has presented sufficient information
regarding the challenges and opportunities that managers face when incorporating
organizational behavior.
The paper hopes that the data can be used in any corporate setting by managers to improve on
their administration strategies as well as in the research domains to improve on investigative
research on organizational behavior. Organisational behaviour can help the organisations in
facing and coping up with these challenges because these cannot be eliminated. There is no
perfect situation to organisational problems, but if handled with care and diligence, these
challenges can be converted into profitable opportunities. TQM, Reengineering, leadership,
organisational culture, group norms etc. are some of the concepts which can help in facing
various challenges.
SUGGESTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Organizational Behavior (OB) is a framework for understanding how people behave in the
work environment. Some positive things that OB studies are diversity, creativity, motivation,
job satisfaction, and feelings of belonging. The negative situations that OB might encompass
include workplace aggression, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or injustice.

Managers can minimize discrimination and maximize the benefits of diversity by creating an
environment where the positive parts of OB can thrive. For example, companies that
purposefully seek out and hire many types of people from many backgrounds (i.e., diverse
people) may boost the feeling of inclusion, belonging, and teamwork amongst their
employees. However, simply hiring many types of people is not enough; managers must also
create opportunities for these teams of diverse people to feel that their voices are heard, their
ideas are valued, and there is space for creativity.

Managers should listen to the multiple perspectives and opinions of their employees and use
these inputs to make better-informeddecisions for the company. In turn, if employees believe
the management team values their ideas, they will feel more job satisfaction and may produce
more for the company.

The most important thing managers can do is build an environment of dignity and respect.
Rather than focusing on the neative aspects of OB, managers can focus on these two positive
traits by encouraging and rewarding.
Most of the theories in the olden days were imposing their ideas only in the way to increase
the productivity of the firm. Later the organizations find the importance of people and their
part in the growth of the firm. Later the motivation techniques and performance analysis
techniques everything has its workload in the process of finding the potential of the people.
With this plans the firm was able to find out the true potential of the people and provide them
necessary benefits to keep them fit for their positions and to keep them in the company.

Human resource is later discovered to be the most important part of the firm. And strategies
and importance have been given to it in the modernized plans. The top down approach of the
decision making powers is useful in some of the firm and decision making from the low level
positioned people is also useful in some of the firm. There cannot be any of the general
policies for all the organizations as the whole to define the organizations behaviour.

The HR manager should motivate, train and select the employees in such a way that it
minimizses all the challenges and opportunities they should properly communicate with
employees , supervisiors, departmentl heads, customers, shareholders etc, should take steps to
resolves conflicts, administer policies fairly and consistently. The Manager should be open-
minded to the solutions, different approaches of new prespective. Managers are in a better
postion to influence and lead change.

Well, we all encounter multiple challenges at work every day, and while some of us look for
an excuse to avoid such challenges, some people actually take the opportunity to get one step
closer to their career success.We all want success in our lives, but sadly only a few of us get
to taste it, simply because most of us don’t know how to transform everyday challenges into
opportunities.As you may realize, our career depends a lot on the choices we make, and
avoiding the challenges is not a very clever choice in this case.
Here are some useful tips that will not only help you handle the workplace challenges with
ease but will also help you pave the way towards success.

1. Keep yourself calm under stressful situations


It is okay to let your frustrations out every once in a while, but you wouldn’t want that
to happen inside the office. When you are working with a bunch of people, you need
to maintain a cordial relationship with everyone.Whether you realize it or not, people
like to help those who are cheerful and kind. If you are angry and irritated all the time,
none of your colleagues may come to help you if you find yourself in a tricky
situation.If you deal with stressful work regularly, it may not be easy to keep your
cool all the time. However, you can try meditation which not only keeps you calm but
also improves your focus.

2. Seek advice from people with experience

You may face challenges that you have never faced before. How can you solve
something that you haven’t encountered before? You either have to improvise or seek
advice from a person who has faced such problems in the past.As mentioned earlier, it
is crucial to maintain a cordial relationship with everyone, especially with the ones
who are knowledgeable and experienced. They can not only give useful advice on
your problem but may also offer a few crucial career-boosting tips along the way.

3. Work on your strategies

Challenges are parts and parcels of our life, and to overcome those challenges, we do
require some strategies. You cannot just rely on your instincts and improvise all the
time, whenever a problem arises. While creating a strategy for a particular problem,
you need to observe and analyze the situation. A lot of strategies seem good on
papers, but they are not practically effective. So you need to be realistic all the time.

Take some significant amount of time to strategize the plan. No matter what the
situation demands, you wouldn’t want to rush on this one.
4. Don’t be afraid to take risks

No one has ever done anything great by playing safe, neither will you. Yes, it may
sound intimidating, but in order to overcome all the challenges and achieve success in
your career, you must take risks more often than you anticipate. Well, nobody will ask
you to fight a jaguar or jump from the 50th floor, but you need to prepare yourself to
face your fears at some point. You should not waste an opportunity just because you
are too afraid to risk job security.

Face each of those challenges and take proper actions to overcome them. Remember,
not taking a risk is the biggest risk of all time.

5. Believe in yourself
No matter which industry you are employed at, you can achieve more than you can
imagine if you feel confident about your work all the time. If you don’t have faith in
yourself, how can you expect others to believe in you?There are times when some
challenges get the better of us and leave us feeling depressed for the rest of the time.
Remind yourself why you started doing this work in the first place. That may help
boost your morale.Also, when start believing in your potential, it reflects in your
performance, and no matter what challenge is thrown at you, you handle it confidently
all the time.

6. Give yourself a break every once in a while

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Put yourself in Jack’s position, and the
result is the same. Working relentlessly without any break, not only makes you miss
out on the little pleasures of life, but also take a toll on your mental health. We are not
zombies. To function properly and to overcome the regular challenges, we do need
our brains to stay in its peak condition. And that’s not possible if we exert ourselves
every day. Take your colleagues out for lunch or happy hour to release the stress once
in a while.

While that may help you freshen up your mind, you may also create a better bond
with your colleagues. Also, when you have a discussion about a certain challenge
among the colleague, they may come up with a better solution and help you overcome
that problem like a team.It’s not wrong if you do not share the same point of view
with everyone else. You can overcome your workplace challenge in your own unique
way and still achieve success. In fact, people often get appreciated for trying
something new.
FOR EX:-Firm like the apple which is having a huge part in the day to day life of a human.
Their products are in the hands of the most of the adults nowadays. So such an organization
should very high organizational behaviour and theories.

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