San Ramón highway project
would be a concession


Government officials are setting the stage for issuing a concession for the San José-San Ramón highway.

The 57.8-kilometer (36-mile) stretch was estimated to cost $197 million eight years ago and will now cost $400 million due to inflation and the rising cost of materials, said the Consejo Nacional de Concesiones in a press release.

The Consejo estimated that the toll for the entire route would be about 2,000 colons or about $4.

The San José-Caldera highway was built by a firm that has a concession.

The San Ramón job is being designed to solve many of the government's headaches. For example, the concession holder would be obligated to build a four-lane bridge over the Río Virilla adjacent to the troubled bridge that is causing so many problems with deteriorating concrete and an expansion joint that cannot be fixed. That highway would be alongside the Autopista General Cañas.

The concession holder also will be obligated to build a third lane on each side of the Juan Pablo Segundo bridge in La Uruca.

The first stretch, between La Sabana and Juan Santamaría airport is estimated to cost $200 million, said the Consejo. However, the agency also said that Costa Ricans would save $30 million a year in reduced fuel costs, vehicle costs and a reduction in air pollution. The trip is estimated to take 45 minutes.

There are three stages. The La Sabana-airport link is the first. The second is from the airport to San Ramón, and the third is to link Río Segundo de Alajuela with San Rafael de Alajuela.

The Consejo was motivated to issue the release because of negative publicity in the Spanish-language press. One story said there would be eight toll stations. The Consejo said two. The news story also estimated that the toll would be about 3,000 colons or about $6.


Biculturalism touted as key
to creativity and good jobs


Travel broadens the mind goes the old adage, and potential employers often agree, valuing the open-mindedness and creativity fostered by such worldliness. But according to new Tel Aviv University research, not all international experiences are created equal.

"Although living abroad does help to hone creative abilities, not all individuals who have lived abroad derive an equal benefit from such experiences," explains Carmit Tadmor of Tel Aviv’s Recanati School of Business, who conducted the study with Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and William Maddux of the international graduate business school and research institution INSEAD.

The researchers discovered that the simple act of living abroad was not enough to bolster creative and professional success. The potential benefits of extended international travel depend on the ability to simultaneously identify with both home and host cultures, which the researchers call biculturalism. Identifying with two cultures simultaneously fosters a more complex thinking style that views things from multiple perspectives and forges conceptual links among them.

“Unlike patterns of cultural identification in which individuals endorse only one of the two cultures, bicultural identification requires individuals to take into account and combine the perspectives of both old and new cultures," explained Tadmor. "Over time, this information processing capability, or integrative complexity, becomes a tool for making sense of the world and will help individuals perform better in both creative and professional domains."

This study was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers conducted three experiments to determine the impact of biculturalism when living abroad. In the first, 78 business students comprising 26 different nationalities at a European business school were asked to complete a series of tasks, including a standard creativity task that asked for as many uses for a brick as possible within a two-minute time limit. In the second experiment, a group of 54 similar students comprising 18 nationalities at an American business school were asked to describe the new businesses, products, and processes they had invented during their careers. All of the study participants had lived abroad for a period of time.

The studies found that those who identified with both their host culture and their home culture consistently demonstrated more fluency, flexibility, novelty and innovation.

Finally, the third experiment extended the idea, exploring whether the biculturals’ advantages also gave them an advantage in the workplace. In this study, 100 Israelis living and working mainly in California's Silicon Valley were interviewed. The researchers found that Israelis who identified with both their home and host cultures enjoyed higher promotion rates and more positive reputations among their colleagues. Across all three studies, the researchers found that bicultural individuals ranked higher on integrative complexity tests than the other participants, and this drove their success.

The road to biculturalism is fraught with internal conflicts, noted Tadmor, in which two cultural identities struggle to coexist.

Ultimately, “it is clear that becoming a true bicultural is not easy, but it holds the key to translating foreign experiences abroad into a tangible toolbox that bolsters one’s creative ability and professional skill to the highest level," say the researchers.