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The internationalization of education introduces notable cross-cultural challenges and benefits for consideration by scholars of comparative and international education. When teachers move overseas to work, they become sojourners, “between-society culture travelers” (Ward et al., 2005, p. 6). Living and working between cultures offers a substantial set of both challenges and opportunities. Acculturation theory (Sam & Berry, 2006) was initially understood as culture shock (Oberg, 1960), an occupational malady. Acculturation theory seeks to explain adaptation processes and has mostly examined sojourners whose intent is to permanently adapt to a new culture. Educators who are sojourners require temporary states of adaptation. This chapter narrates a subset of a qualitative study examining educator acculturation from an asset orientation to explore what benefits acculturation offers to sojourning educators who work in international schools overseas. Findings include that even highly stressful episodes of culture shock can manifest in long-term benefits, such as the development of personal and professional resilience and self-leadership strategies, as well as the reflective curating of one’s personal and professional identity, which may include the development of an interstitial identity. These benefits serve to increase educators’ cultural competencies, to prepare educators for supporting sojourning students who are acculturating, and to prepare educators for smoother acculturation experiences afterwards.

This paper proposes an anthropology‐based theoretical model describing the impact of top management culture clash on the commitment of the acquired team to the new organization and on its cooperation with the acquiring team. It suggests that three factors are influential, namely the degree of cultural differences, the nature of the contact between the teams, and the intended level of integration between the companies. The paper generates numerous propositions for predicting the impact of the culture clash. It also offers suggestions for further theoretical and empirical study, and presents some of the model's practical implications.

Statistics of migration are gross indicators of the extent to which governments have persistently initiated and enabled (or prevented) in‐ and out‐migration (Castles, 1984; International Labour Office, 1969; 1989; Lucassen, 1987). In the sociological literature, people who move are summarily described as ‘strangers,’ ‘sojourners,’ ‘marginal persons,’ ‘guest workers,’ ‘asylum‐seekers,’ ‘resettlers,’ or ‘refugees’ (Emminghaus, 1989; Siu, 1952; Wolff, 1950). Alienation is attributed to all of these. Government programs are often planned with a view to easing alienation. Yet, few of the programs have been derived from a comprehensive theoretical perspective or based on valid research. In order to determine what kinds of policies and programs can and should be effected, it will be useful to look at diverse meanings of alienation, the types of research that are implied by these meanings, and the likely effects of alienation on human lives.

Size fit and economic efficiency are two crucial aspects that need to be considered in designing a sizing system. However, there could exist a trade-off between those aspects in order to establish a practical sizing system. The purpose of this paper is to develop a sequential hybrid method of grid and optimization to generate a practical sizing system using anthropometric data.

The proposed sequential hybrid method consisted of two sequential steps, which employs grid method and optimization method. In the initial step, the grid method creates primary grids that accommodate a designated percentage (e.g. 90%) of users with best size fit. In the subsequent step, the optimization method generated additional grids to provide acceptable fit, with minimum fit penalty scores for users unaccommodated by the primary grids. Our method was applied to the development of a sizing system for men's military jackets. The proposed method performances were evaluated in terms of accommodation percentage, size fit and number of sizing categories.

Our proposed method resulted in 26 primary grids during the initial step, which cover 90% of users. Next, we generated six additional grids during the subsequent step that provide minimum fit penalty scores for the rest (10%) users.

The main contributions of this paper are as follows: consider accommodation percentage, size fit and number of sizing categories in the design of sizing system; combine the grid and optimization methods and evaluate a sizing system for men's military jackets. The proposed method is applicable to develop optimal sizing systems for multiple-size products.

The purpose of this paper is to bring to light the double edges faced by individuals who have international and multicultural experiences. The implication is that these individuals encounter acculturation challenges, and also gain from their multiculturality. The authors adopt Berry’s (2011) integration and multiculturalism framework to analyze the experiences and challenges that multi-culturals face. This paper suggests ways to glean the silver lining within organizations to help manage and master multicultural experiences in the workplace to benefit both individuals and organizations.

The authors used empirical materials from expatriates who have worked across multiple cultural contexts. Based on these the authors present three examples to illustrate how expatriates and multicultural individuals place themselves in situations where they experience contact and challenges associated with adopting multiple cultures. The authors then analyze these examples to show how the experiences involve psychological-level integration challenges for Multi- and n-culturals.

The three multicultural expatriate examples suggest that individuals with international and multicultural experiences who are successful at managing their experiences develop cognitive and behavioral complexity. However, these individuals also face continuous acculturation including cognitive and ethno-cultural identity conflicts such as, rejection from multiple cultural perspectives because they continually cross-multiple cultural microcosms. Suggestions are presented to help maintain one’s sense of self-worth and minimizing ethno-cultural conflicts.

Notwithstanding the value of analyzing the examples of expatriate acculturation experiences, the limitation to the examples is that it is limited to the experience of three individuals. However, the examples were effective in raising points to discuss relevant challenges and/or the double-edged reality faced by boundary spanners, multi-, and n-culturals.

The paper presents possible ways multi- and n-culturals navigate through their multiculturalism, including suggestions to help individuals who struggle with their multiculturalism through mentoring.

The paper highlights the challenges of acculturation and suggests ways that individuals can overcome these challenges. It further suggests how organizations can take advantage of such individuals by utilizing existing personnel within the organization.

The paper is one of the few that acknowledge multiculturalism is highly challenging even for successful multi-culturals and n-culturals. Currently the literature is scant concerning how individuals can manage and master multicultural experiences in the workplace. The paper suggests a number of useful strategies for individuals and organizations to manage the challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to extend current conceptualizations of multicultural individuals by mapping the underlying elements of knowledge, identification, commitment and internalization as components of multicultural identity. It aims to extend discussions of how multicultural individuals manage their multiculturality.

The paper draws primarily on extant works on multicultural individuals and identity. The paper reviews a number of concepts relevant to multicultural identity to introduce the existence of a population called n-Culturals who represent a complex type that exists on one extreme of a continuum of multicultural identity. The paper derives a theory of n-Culturalism which represents a more nuanced theory of the multicultural identity.

n-Culturals recognizes that elements of multicultural identity exist within individuals to a greater or lesser extent and that their combination results in a comprehensive understanding of the entire range of multicultural identities. n-Culturalism extends current views that multicultural individuals maintain multiple saliences of their identities rather than switching modes to manage their multiculturality.

The conceptual nature of the paper implies that there are no existing empirical data apart from anecdotal examples; at the same time this fact provides ample opportunities to test the theory.

First, the findings provides an understanding of multiple cultural influences on acculturative stress and on performance across a range of domains as well as measuring multicultural identity. Second, by understanding the way in which n-Culturals develop the authors may gain valuable insights in modeling this process.

The paper develops a new theory of approaching the challenges faced by multicultural individuals, that is, how to manage their multiculturality. The theory goes beyond current views of switching modes or suppression, and suggests maintaining and balancing multiple identities.

The Chinese government hopes to achieve the goal of benefiting citizens by building a National Integrated Online Government Service Platform (NIOGSP). However, citizens' low adoption of the platform makes it difficult for the government to achieve its goal. Research on the influencing factors of citizen adoption of NIOGSP can help the government fully understand the concerns and needs of its citizens and take targeted measures to increase citizen adoption.

First, this research builds a model of the citizen adoption process, including attention, retention and motivation, based on an observational learning model. Next, research variables are determined based on social cognitive theory, literature review and real-world needs. Finally, based on the questionnaire survey and structural equation model, the influencing factors of each stage of the citizen adoption process model are studied and the relationship between the three stages of the model is verified.

Results show that perceived usefulness (PU) and self-efficacy (SE) positively affect attention. SE positively affects retention, while perceived privacy (PP) negatively affects retention. PU, social influence, PP and anxiety positively affect motivation.

The conclusion of this study can provide reference for governments in various countries to establish and improve online one-stop government. In addition, this study verifies the citizen adoption process model and finds that there is no obvious causal relationship between attention and retention, but both have positive effects on motivation.

Islam began in western Arabia with the preaching of Prophet Muhammad (ca. 570–632 CE) and has since spread through expansion, economic trade, missionaries, and migration. CE is an abbreviation of Common Era and is the system used in this book. In this system for recording dates, 2009 CE represents 1430 after Hegira (abbreviated as AH). During his life, Mohammad was able to unite virtually the whole of the Arabian Peninsula under Islam. After his death, Islam expanded north into Syria (636 CE), east into Persia and beyond (636 CE), and west into Egypt (640 CE), and then into Spain (711 CE). Dissention about the procedure for choice of the Muslim leader (caliph) led to the proclamation of a rival caliph in Damascus in 661 and the establishment of the Shia faith (Donner 2004). Islam arrived in the area known today as Pakistan in 711 when the Umayyad dynasty sent a Muslim Arab army that conquered the northwestern part of Indus Valley from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea (Esposito and Donner 1999). Today, the majority of Muslims worldwide are Sunni but Shia Muslims constitute the majority of the population in Iran as well as are significant minorities in Pakistan, India, Iraq, and Afghanistan.