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For about four decades, Iran and the USA have continued to be two most stubborn enemies and this has drawn much research on this subject. Yet, only a very small fraction of this body of research has been allocated to studying the perceptions that the people of the two countries have of each other. Using a mixed method survey, the purpose of this paper is to explore cross-cultural schemata US American people have of Iranians.

By way of an e-mail survey, the authors collected 1,752 responses from American citizens across 50 American states. The open ended responses were codified and categorized. Three out of six categories were further sub-categorized.

The outcomes showed that about 40 percent of Americans had negative cross-cultural schemata of Iranians with the media being the main source of negative cross-cultural schemata. Conversely, personal contact and communication with Iranians proved to be the source of positive cross-cultural schemata toward Iranians. Other results showed that US American exceptionalism and negative attitudes toward Iranians had a direct and positive relationship with having negative cross-cultural schemata of Iranians.

As the authors have explained in this paper, very few scholars have taken up the issue of cross-cultural schemata Iranian and American people have of each other. By doing this and several other works, the authors have tried to create a new research interest in academic circles.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a conceptual framework for studying the intercultural aspect of dyadic business relationship interaction from an individual perspective.

The paper is conceptual in nature. Perspectives on culture and cultural concepts are discussed and critically reviewed for the question of applicability in the study of business relationship interaction from an individual perspective.

By focusing on the application of culture in individual sensemaking of interaction events in a business relationship context, a suitable perspective on culture is chosen. A conceptual framework consisting of the concepts related to the chosen perspective is developed. Moreover, propositions concerning the study of culture in individual sensemaking of interaction events are suggested.

The paper suggests several opportunities for further research, particularly concerning the application of the reviewed concepts to the empirical study of culture in sensemaking of business relationship interaction.

The paper advocates for a more interpretive and constructive perspective on culture in business relationship interaction studies. Second, it improves understanding of the cultural concepts application in the research on individual sensemaking within a business relationship context. Third, it particularly contributes to the current conceptual underpinning of the International Marketing and Purchasing group studies by reintroducing the concept of culture from an individual perspective.

Multicultural individuals are those who identify with two or more cultures, such as Chinese-Canadians, Turkish-Germans, or Arab-Americans. They are more likely to see multiple sides of an ethical dilemma than monocultural individuals, who identify with one culture. This tendency toward ethical relativism – where ethics are seen to be relative to the context – could help multicultural individuals excel as ethical global leaders. Global leaders must manage the ethical tensions inherent in their multinational operations by understanding multiple ethical perspectives. Multiculturals’ inclination toward relativism may be driven by the structure or content of their cultural identities. The identity structure argument is based on the patterns in which individuals mentally organize their cultural identities, while the identity content argument is based on the degree to which individuals endorse relativism as a result of having internalized cultural schemas with relativist norms. We offer an exploratory test of these dual hypotheses, and find evidence to support the identity structure, but not the identity content argument. Specifically, multicultural individuals who separate their cultures are more likely to exhibit relativism in decision-making than those who integrate them. This indicates that identity patterns can drive relativism. In contrast, individuals who identify with high relativism cultures are not more likely to endorse relativism than those who identify with low relativism cultures, indicating a lack of evidence for identity content driving relativism. These findings have implications for hiring or placement managers who seek global leaders who are likely to see more than one side of an ethical issue.

This chapter presents a theory of socialization that explains cultural transmission while balancing both biological aspects of development and the child’s agency and creativity.

This chapter presents a synthesis of research in sociological theory, developmental psychology, and neuroscience. It is roughly divided into two complementary sections based around the metaphor of ivy growing upon a trellis. The discussion centered around the “ivy” utilizes psychological and neuroscience research to explain how early learning is guided by significant others. The “trellis” section synthesizes literature in developmental psychology and social theory to explain how the child’s experience is enframed both cognitively and emotionally in ways that guide the child into appropriate forms of action and feeling. Finally, I discuss how this model can explain other forms of socialization.

I propose that the child’s innate capacities and motivations are enframed through significant relationships in order to direct the child’s emergent behavior into sequences of competent action. Isolated competencies are guided into simple and delimited domains of social activity like games and, later, more complex and interpretive structures like paradigms and ideologies.

This chapter synthesizes research in several literatures in order to develop a new theory that addresses some old questions regarding cultural transmission. Additionally, it represents another step in showing how sociology can integrate research from biological fields without deferring to them.

In the absence of a working model for describing, managing and archiving the human library resources, this study aims to attempt a practical approach that will provide all the necessary information to the library users, library professionals and researchers.

Initially, different metadata standards, archival projects and attributes of the human books were reviewed to identify appropriate metadata standards that accurately describe the resources of the human library. A free and open-source software; DSpace was considered for implementing newly defined metadata schema in this study. Thereafter, a set of new subject entries was incorporated to standardize the contents of the human library.

This study finds that the widely used metadata schema – Dublin Core (DC) is not appropriate to describe the contents of the human book. It shows that selected metadata elements from the types – person and event of schema.org can be used for describing, organizing and archiving the resources of the human library. It further highlights that existing subject entries are not sufficient to standardize the contents of these types of resources.

Two metadata fields in DSpace are strongly recommended by the DSpace community to consider in the input-forms.xml file, that is why the study could not completely omit DC metadata elements in describing human books.

The study provides a roadmap to the library professionals on the inclusion of new metadata schemas in describing the uniquely featured resources of the library.

In recent years, the concept of cultural intelligence has attracted increased interest among scholars and practitioners in global leadership research. This chapter aims to contribute to the understanding of the impact of Experiential Learning Theory on the development of cultural intelligence in global leaders. It proposes a model that addresses the relationship between four modes of experiential learning and four facets of cultural intelligence; and hypothesizes that learning styles exercise a moderating effect on the relationship between international experience and cultural intelligence. Managerial implications for global talent selection and leadership development are also proposed based on the model.

Purpose: This chapter aims to illuminate the cultural perceptions of illicit alcohol and to examine the role of cognitive polyphasia in changing the perceptions and legitimacy of market practices.

Methodology/Approach: An ethnographic study of the Kenyan illicit alcohol market, which combined digital news media data analysis, with observation and interview data.

Findings: Cognitive polyphasia serves to delegitimize illicit alcohol by portraying it as incongruent with existing cultural beliefs, values, and assumptions. Illicit alcohol is portrayed as a contaminated product, a cursed business, a practice that causes cultural breech, and a scheme of witchcraft/sorcery used to enslave consumers. Findings also show that cognitive polyphasia involves drawing on traditional knowledge to explain misfortune and difficult social phenomena such as addiction. The delegitimation of illicit alcohol induces behavior and perception change. Consumers play an important role in this change process.

Research Implications: This research proposes the incorporation of cultural language into alcohol policy and education.

Social Implications: By illuminating social representations in the cultural-cognitive arena, a theory for applying these factors to change markets/behavior is proposed.

Originality/Value of Paper: The chapter highlights the delegitimation of market practices, unlike previous research that focuses on legitimation processes. This chapter also demonstrates how cognitive polyphasia, a scarcely researched concept in consumer research, can induce behavior change. This chapter also contributes to the literature on market/behavior change by revealing potential cultural-cognitive barriers to change.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the difficulties encountered by researchers who are looking to operationalise theoretical memetics and provide a methodological avenue for studies that can test meme theory.

The application of evolutionary theory to organisations is reviewed by critically reflecting on the validity of its truth claims. To focus the discussion a number of applications of meme theory are reviewed to raise specific issues which ought to be the subject of empirical investigation. Subsequently, the empirical studies conducted to date are assessed in terms of the progress made and conclusions for further work are drawn.

The paper finds that the key questions posed by memetic theory have yet to be addressed empirically and that a recurring weakness is the practice of assuming the existence of a replicating unit of culture which has, however, yet to be demonstrated as a valid concept. Therefore, an “extra‐memetic” methodology is deemed to be necessary for the development of memetics as a scientific endeavour. Narrative analysis is abducted as an appropriate avenue for the operationalisation of extra‐memetic empirical research.

The paper highlights inconsistencies, embedded in much of the memetic literature, which have not previously been recognised and the colloquial nature of the discipline is challenged from a positive but critical perspective. Consequently, the paper develops a rationale for the adoption of a widely recognised social science methodology for memetics which has been absent to date. In proposing narrative orientated research, knowledge concerning memes' validity can be facilitated whilst avoiding the current circularity in memetic truth claims.

Interest in developing institutional explanations of political and economic behavior has blossomed among social scientists since the early 1980s. Three intellectual perspectives are now prevalent: rational choice theory, historical institutionalism and a new school of organizational analysis. This paper summarizes, compares and contrasts these views and suggests ways in which cross‐fertilization may be achieved. Particular attention is paid to how the insights of organizational analysis and historical institutionalism can be blended to provide fruitful avenues of research and theorizing, especially with regard to the production, adoption, and mobilization of ideas by decision makers.