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Iran has significant potential for an international tourism industry based on culture and heritage. However, the rich fusion of Persian and Islamic cultures that distinguishes Iran from the rest of the Middle East is not easily promoted for tourism internationally, mainly as a result of successive American and European attempts at forcing Iran's isolation since 1979. Given that Japan was a significant inbound and outbound market for Iranian tourism in the 1980s and is a close trading partner of the group of countries aligned against Iran at present, this chapter focuses on the recent development of the Iranian inbound tourism industry with the history and current status of the Japan–Iran tourism connection.

Iranian history, with roots in the oldest civilizations in western Asia, has provided significant heritage, both tangible and intangible, allowing the country to be considered as a major cultural tourism destination for both nationals and foreigners. The focus on Iranian history and heritage aims to confirm the country’s potential for attracting international tourists, while a negative image prevails abroad of a radical theocratic regime with a hostile internal political environment, alongside the instable geopolitical situation of the region. However, the changing political situation, now more secure and safe, allows an attempt to remove these prejudices, which may be achieved through the promotion of heritage and cultural tourism.

The study's main objective is to evaluate the morphological developments in the characteristics of the spatial configurations of the residential layouts in Kerman, Iran, in examining the impact on the level of visual privacy through the spectrum of permeability and wayfinding in space syntax analysis.

In this paper, plan graph analysis is used to measure the syntactic properties of seven topological residential architecture plans in Kerman, Iran, built from the 1970s to 2010s. The methodology involves the development of mathematical measurements to signify permeability and simulation of visibility graph analysis (VGA) to indicate wayfinding.

The findings reveal the residential layouts of Iranian houses tend to be less integrated over decades of design development from the 1970s to 2010s. Reduction in spatial integration corresponds to increase segregation allowing for enhanced visual privacy. The study underpins that, even with the constraints in the scale of the house and reduction in the number of nodes, as evident in the design of the modern residential layout, the efficient level of visual privacy is still achievable with regards to the standards demanded by the local culture.

The study examines the development in residential spatial configuration and building scale on visual privacy through a proposed methodology based on the level of permeability and wayfinding measured as a combined effect using the space syntax analysis and visual accessibility.

Institutional changes, in a historical context, through simultaneous evolutionary and metamorphic processes either deform or reform long-enduring institutions. The chapter delves into the Persian history from the early days of the reign of Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh-e Qājār in 1848 to the recent years and traces Persian institutions' historical transformations, which culminated to the Persian women entrepreneurship. Thus, the chapter first sets the historical context in each period and then sheds light on the pivotal issues of each period's women. The undergirding base of the discussions is the assumption of the change in institutions as natural metamorphosis in the animate. Finally, the discussions contribute to the conceptualization of the Institutional Triangulation and in the case of Persia, a cultural-driven triangulation, which has paved the way to the formation of a stupendously hegemonic patriarchal and masculine sociopolitical economy in Persia, that has historically affected women's institutionalization, subjugation, subordination, marginalization, socialization, emancipation, and most recently Islamization phases.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a general review and historical context for digitization and interdisciplinary research involving digital surrogates of historical Persian manuscripts in the National Library and Archives of Iran and similarly engaged institutions.

The paper explores interdisciplinary aspects of Persian art, poetry, science, and philosophy, as revealed in the scrutiny of digitized manuscripts. It explores the enhancement of Persian, Iranian and Islamic cultural heritage research. It discusses benefits and concerns in conceptual contexts of library and information science literature. It references some manuscript digitization projects involving Islamic heritage, including the HARAM online manuscript service of the National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI). It addresses issues of availability and access in global contexts.

Manuscript digitization, placed in the context of interdisciplinary research, reveals modern correlations to the interdisciplinary nature of ancient Persian arts and sciences — and to the purpose of digitization — as appropriate to an historical continuum of Persian written literacy and traditional Islamic cultural heritage.

For future contexts of digital global research, research involving many interrelated fields will benefit from use of digital manuscript surrogates. Institutional cooperation will be necessary. The physical conservation of fragile materials also benefits. Historical contexts should be observed, and preserved with the materials.

This paper shows that interdisciplinary research in international universities, libraries, museums, archives, government agencies, and other public institutions uniquely benefits from access to digitized manuscripts. It provides contexts for solving problems of physical manuscript decay and destruction.

Hospitality has been an evident characteristic of Iranian society since ancient times. This chapter discusses the meaning of hospitality from the perspective of the cultural and traditional beliefs present in Iranian literature, religious beliefs, and food customs and deliveries. Reviewing the history of hospitality in Iran yields considerable evidence that this tradition dates to ancient times. This chapter shows that Iranian hospitality has been overlooked in research and suggests that exploring diverse aspects of it can aid tourism practitioners identify areas with potential and improve quality of service in its delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on key features of Iranian managerial culture by discussing underlying social and organizational consequences.

The paper has been organized in two major parts: conceptualization and discussion. First, the notions of culture and cultural orientations are treated and then, based on the framework proposed by Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, cultural orientations of Iranian managers are investigated.

The findings suggest that Iranian managerial culture is characterized by traditional values such as collectivism, past orientation, high hierarchical distance and evil orientation expressed in terms of mistrust and conspiracy.

The findings of this research are limited in terms of scope, cultural orientations and sample size. Further studies may incorporate more cultures and take into account the effects of existing sub‐cultures to present a more enlightening picture.

The findings of this study might be useful for MNEs, NGOs, international negotiators, businessmen/women, expatriate managers and those who are concerned directly or indirectly with this part of the world.

While most cultural research in the area of organizational science has been based on severely narrow, ahistorical and linguistically naïve concepts, this study takes into account not only explicit manifestations of culture, but also implicit and semiotic ones which need to be comprehended. Therefore, the paper is of potential significance at both the theoretical and the practical level.

Islamic science was originally viewed as mere translator and transmitter of Greek, Indian and pre‐Islamic Persian science. Recent research has shifted our understanding of Islam's contribution to what is now called “the exact sciences.” We now know that Islamic science “was even richer and more profound than we had previously thought.” A substantial amount of genuine science was done in Islam, it predated similar discoveries in the West, and it also impacted upon the Renaissance. For example, in the late 1950apos;s, E. S. Kennedy and his students at the American University of Beirut discovered an important work of a fourteenth century Muslim astronomer by the name of Ibn al‐Shatir. This discovery showed that Ibn al‐Shatir's astronomical inventions were the same type of mechanism used by Copernicus a few centuries later,” and may have played a key role in the Copernican revolution. Consequently, an unprecedented acceleration of research into Islamic science started from the 1950s onwards. Recently, historian of Islamic science George Saliba was able to show that one of Copernicus's Muslim contemporaries — Kliafri — was a “brilliant astronomer, whose ability to work with the mathematics of his time is unsurpassed, including that of Copernicus,” and that he could use mathematics much more fluently, and much more competently, than Copernicus could do.