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Simulated virtual realities offer a promising but currently underutilized source of data in studying cultural and demographic aspects of dynamic decision-making (DDM) in small groups. This study focuses on one simulated reality, a clock-driven business simulation game, which is used to teach operations management. The purpose of our study is to analyze the characteristics of the decision-making groups, such as cultural orientation, education, gender and group size, and their relationship to group performance in a real-time processed simulation game. Our study examines decision-making in small groups of two or three employees from a global manufacturing and service operations company. We aim at shedding new light on how such groups with diverse background profiles perform as decision-making units. Our results reveal that the profile of the decision-making group influences the outcome of decision-making, the final business result of the simulation game. In particular, the cultural and gender diversity, as well as group size seem to have intertwined effects on team performance.

Robots might not act according to human expectations if they cannot anticipate how people make sense of a situation and what behavior they consider appropriate in some given circumstances. In many cases, understanding, expectations and behavior are constrained, if not driven, by culture, and a robot that knows about human culture could improve the quality level of human–robot interaction. Can we share human culture with a robot? Can we provide robots with formal representations of different cultures? In this paper, we discuss the (elusive) notion of culture and propose an approach based on the notion of trait which, we argue, permits us to build formal modules suitable to represent culture (broadly understood) in a robot architecture. We distinguish the types of traits that such modules should contain, namely behavior, knowledge, rule and interpretation traits, and how they could be organized. We identify the interpretation process that maps situations to specific knowledge traits, called scenarios, as a key component of the trait-based culture module. Finally, we describe how culture modules can be integrated in an existing architecture, and discuss three use cases to exemplify the advantages of having a culture module in the robot architecture highlighting surprising potentialities.

In the process of studying contemporary animation art in mainland China, we used historical, economic and cultural backgrounds as a reference to discuss the evolution of Chinese contemporary animation films, trying to infer the regularity and inevitability of it. Especially in the 21st century, accompanying the economic, science and technology development rapidly, a cultural diversity has made Chinese animation films open and inclusive. The outstanding works have cut a stringing figure. The traditional rational color, a humanistic concept and an enlightenment mode in the film are gradually becoming a type of consumerism model with a contemporary style. Affected by the wave of the consumerism, the style of film convergence is obvious. From the perspective of consumer culture, the theme, creative mode and visual style of works have undergone a series of changes with shallow thinking and monotonous cultural reflection. By studying the characteristics of animation film, we also puts forward the hope and expectation of animation creation.

As times pass by, new technologies have been invented, and new approaches have been applied to the spread of information in this age of globalization—and they are obvious specifically in music. While the transformation of how musicians produce music and make themselves heard differ from the early days, the process of the transformation is often overlooked and viewed as inevitable. In fact, the users of these new, modern tools need time for adaption. The most noticeable change in musical production is how it shifts from analog to digital. This includes change of ways to create, quickly, and almost simultaneously the musical works in terms of content, length, how they are marketed and presented, and so on. Thus, the change actually goes deep—technology has changed the ways artists create, and the artists who adapt to these new approaches have changed music. In this paper, I will choose hip hop as the musical genre to elaborate on how it grows and develops in Taiwan in relation to the external factors.

This chapter examines abstract concepts of innovators' competences and innovation culture. For people to be innovative, both concepts need to be considered. Ontologies provide a way to specify these abstract concepts into such a format that practical applications can be applied in organizations. Self-evaluation of innovation competence and innovation culture in organizations can be conducted by utilizing a fuzzy logic application platform called Evolute. The approach described in this chapter has management implications. The abstract concepts of innovation culture and innovation competence become manageable, which suggests that organizations should be able to get better innovation results.

Cultural variations across countries are considered a major factor affecting customers' readiness to adopt, use, and evaluate technology. Relevant contributions from marketing studies, computer science, and international business are integrated into the literature of cross-cultural management and technology acceptance, and a conceptual model is developed. Drawing on a broader research project on radio frequency identification (RFID) aimed at supporting intelligent business networking and innovative customer services, the development of the framework is informed by the authors' work in the preparation of an RFID-based application at several established grocery retailers for short-life products in Ireland and in Greece. From the findings of our exploratory study, it emerges that low uncertainty avoidance, low institutional collectivism, high in-group collectivism, high gender egalitarianism, and low humane orientation are conducive to greater customers' acceptance of new service technologies. Managerial implications and directions for future research are discussed.

There is a number of variables considered as fostering knowledge management. This set of variables includes organizational culture, leadership of the owner manager, relational assets, and structural assets. This article presents a comparison of the variables considered as fostering knowledge management using classical theory vs. Uncertainty theory, using the linguistic label approach.