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Special software in a CAD system can help a designer evaluate an assembly and redesign it for automation.

Empirical studies show that years of schooling are positively correlated with good health. The implication may go from education to health, from health to education, or from factors that influence both variables. We formalize a model that determines an individual’s demand for knowledge and health based on the causal effects, and study the impacts on the individual’s decisions of policy instruments such as subsidies on medical care, subsidizing schooling, income tax reduction, lump-sum transfers, and improving health at young age. Our results indicate that income redistribution policies may be the best instrument to improve welfare, while a medical care subsidy is the best instrument for longevity. Subsidies to medical care or education would require large imperfections in these markets to be more welfare improving than distributional policies.

Relatively few comparative studies have examined how perceptions across cultures might converge or diverge regarding careers in general and new venture careers in particular. Our research addresses this gap by providing a comparative study of career perceptions among undergraduate business students in three countries with different levels of experience with capitalism: Ukraine, South Korea, and the United States. Results suggest both surprising differences and interesting similarities between undergraduate students in the three countries with regard to how they perceive characteristics associated with entrepreneurial careers. Findings are discussed in the context of distinct differences and commonalities across cultures and implications for future research provided.

With globalization and knowledge‐based production, firms may cooperate on a global scale, outsource parts of their administrative or productive units and negate location altogether. The extremely low transaction costs of data, information and knowledge seem to invalidate the theory of agglomeration and the spatial clustering of firms, going back to the classical work by Alfred Weber and Alfred Marshall, who emphasized the microeconomic benefits of industrial collocation. This paper aims to argue against this view and show why the growth of knowledge societies will rather increase than decrease the relevance of location by creating knowledge clusters and knowledge hubs, due to sharing of tacit knowledge and research and development outputs. Designing epistemic landscapes of knowledge clusters and hubs is, therefore, proposed as a viable development policy.

Secondary data from cluster research as well as the authors' own survey data, mainly on Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, are used to show and measure clustering of knowledge‐producing organizations.

The paper shows that sharing of tacit knowledge is a crucial variable to explain why clustering of knowledge‐intensive industries takes place despite the development of information technology. The importance of knowledge management for development is highlighted.

Designing epistemic landscapes of knowledge clusters and hubs is, therefore, proposed as a viable development policy.

The paper argues against the mainstream of industrial clustering theory and proposes a KM‐based research strategy. The discussion of the difference between knowledge clusters and knowledge hubs enables the use of a new and consistent evaluation of a K4D (knowledge for development) strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how to successfully blend an e‐learning module into a knowledge management (KM) course aimed at getting KM students interested in the respective subject matter (= KM) in a web‐based learning environment.

Based on data obtained from 138 undergraduate business management students at a university in Singapore, practical aspects of effectively implementing an e‐learning system with a focus on KM are analyzed and the importance determined of three conceptual variables in the context of successful blended learning approaches: online faculty to student interaction, social presence and personal e‐learning experiences.

The study shows some positive correlations between online faculty to student interaction, the degree of presence in a web‐based learning environment, as well as personal e‐learning experiences as potential drivers of students' desire to learn more about the subject matter KM.

There has been reliance on self‐reported data in both the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats study and the student survey. The causal effects of students' perceptions on actual learning need to be explored in a future study with a larger sample size.

To increase students' acceptance of a web‐based KM course, instructors must ensure quality interaction between them and their students, strong social presence via intrinsically rewarding group interactions and enriching, personal e‐learning experiences on the basis of real‐life KM problems. Games, systematic performance monitoring and graded knowledge tests are critical, too.

This study highlights several good design features of an effective student interface vis‐à‐vis the development of an effective online learning environment from the perspective of KM student learners. Implications for e‐learning designers and instructors, as well as issues for further research, are outlined.

The aim of this study is to focus on consumers’ responses towards visual fashion ideal in hybrid magazine advertisements from a cross-cultural and generational perspective.

This exploratory qualitative focus group study showed a set of validated advertisements to 64 female participants. Half of the sample was from the USA, the other half was from China. To examine generational differences, the interviewees were split by age in each group: half of the participants were between 18 and 34, and half were between the age of 45 and 65 years.

Both Chinese and American target audiences viewed the trendy advertisements with an aspirational eye in which the advertisement was interpreted as representing an ideal self to which they aspired, one that they wanted to achieve but, for some reason(s), were not capable of achieving at the time. However, the degree of aspiration varied for Chinese and American audiences.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, future research may use survey and experimental research approaches.

International marketers may need to design advertisements with more “realistic” imagery, while keeping the idealized Western style in Chinese advertising. Advertisers should also be cognizant of intergenerational influences in the Chinese market; many young Chinese women still rely on their mothers regarding fashion purchase decisions.

This paper fills a need to understand both the similarities and the differences in marketing communications across cultures.

Using data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this chapter investigates the impact of individual drug use on robbery, burglary, theft, and damaging property for juveniles. Using a variety of fixed-effects models that exploit variations over time and between siblings and twins, the results indicate that drug use has a significant impact on the propensity to commit crime. We find that the median impact of cocaine use on the propensity to commit various types of crimes is 11 percentage points. The impact of using inhalants or other drugs is an increase in the propensity to commit crime by 7 percentage points, respectively.

Although there are some studies about knowledge management at national level, no integrated attempts have been reported in the direction of introducing knowledge management pattern at national level based on real experiences. Numerous researches have been conducted in the domain of knowledge management at micro level. But at macro/national level, some concepts and components have been investigated briefly. The purpose of this paper is to deal with this gap.

This research uses the hybrid method. The technique of qualitative case study of grounded theory method has been selected in this research for gathering and analyzing data. Data have been categorized and analyzed from case studies (at countries level) using the steps of this method. The degree of correlation and causality and the importance of each concept existing in the pattern have been computed by applying decision-making trial and evaluation (dematel) technique. The obtained concepts and pattern could be applied as a guide for accepting and implementing knowledge management at national level.

Total positive findings have been obtained from case studies, and the authors attained 14 concepts and one pattern. These findings provide the steps of designing and are useful in implementing projects and programs of knowledge management at national level. The degree of correlation between the components of the pattern is the other finding of this study.

The obtained concepts and patterns can be used as a guide in countries and governments which decide to implement knowledge management at national level. These can be a basis for countries which are in the process of implementing the projects of knowledge management at national level.

This research is the first study that aims to provide the pattern of knowledge management at national level and can provide useful information for countries and governments and can be used as a reference to guide them for the implementation. So these countries will be able to design and implement their programs of knowledge management purposefully.

In pursuit of an alternative competitive strategy for tourism's underperformers and particularly for niche markets such as tourist destination islands, this paper aims to introduce a framework that caters to the post‐modern tourist.

Through a pilot study, the framework was introduced to senior hotel managers on the island of Crete. The framework explores how hotel managers can best use their employees’ knowledge in order to increase their market adaptability and develop unique capabilities.

The results demonstrated that managers scored highly in their ability to leverage knowledge gained from the market, whereas they gave less importance to their employees’ valuable, internal knowledge. In the majority of cases tested, senior managers lacked an overall knowledge strategy. Although the pilot study's findings cannot be generalized, they can help us anticipate the maturity levels of hotel managers towards knowledge management and contribute towards building a future research agenda for developing the framework further.

The paper introduces a framework that caters to the post‐modern tourist. It is three dimensional, as it combines the disciplines of knowledge management, business strategy and marketing.

The purpose of this study is to explore mathematics teachers' collaboration within their professional learning communities (PLCs), and to gain insight into how the teachers developed their collective efficacy through it to focus on improving student learning.

Using a qualitative approach, data were collected from three high-performing secondary schools, mainly through semi-structured in-depth interviews with the Heads of Mathematics Unit. For explication and triangulation purposes, focus group interviews with the mathematics teachers and students and document analysis were also conducted.

The findings indicate that PLCs were the vessel through which a culture of disciplined teacher collaboration was fostered. More importantly, this culture encouraged teachers to participate in reflective dialogues that became a driver for their learning, and eventually led to their changed professional practice for improved student learning. The collaborative setting within the PLCs allowed teachers to pool their resources, knowledge and individual expertise to identify their student learning focus, and administer and measure their student intervention strategies. This collaborative professional learning reduced professional isolation, and as a result, improved teachers' collective pursuit of professional growth to impact student outcomes.

The aim of this qualitative study was to provide a detailed description of the teachers' collaboration within their PLCs based on the researchers' interpretation of how the participants make sense of their PLC practices and experiences. Hence, findings are indicative, and not definitive. In addition, the Heads of the Mathematics Unit, and the mathematics teacher participants in this study illustrated salient aspects of subject subcultures, where their beliefs, norms and practices were non-generic, or specific only to their subject context. Therefore, the implications to practice were built from commonalities shared only among the mathematics units.

This is a study in a Malaysian context that provides empirical evidences that are concerned primarily with the process of teachers developing their collective efficacy through disciplined collaboration within their PLCs.