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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.

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.

Using modified versions of the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale, we conducted surveys among German and Chinese university students. Our tests confirm previous findings that risk taking is indeed domain-specific. More importantly, our results show that differences in risk behavior are attributable more to perceived risk than to expected benefits. Risk behavior is almost entirely predictable by differences in the attitude towards perceived risk, but less so by differences in the subjective evaluation of expected benefits. Additionally, our study measures risk attitude through two distinct methodologies: on an individual-subject level and on a group-level. We find that the individual-subject risk attitude can lead to inadequate conclusions. Furthermore, our research highlights the relevance of national culture as an important factor for explaining risk-taking propensity. Our findings yield substantial support for the ‘cushion hypothesis’ and highlight the usefulness of the cultural dimension of individualism versus collectivism in order to explain risk behavior.

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.