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The purpose of this paper is to present a modified firefly algorithm (FA) considering the population diversity to avoid local optimum and improve the algorithm’s precision.

When the population diversity is below the given threshold value, the fireflies’ positions update according to the modified equation which can dynamically adjust the fireflies’ exploring and exploiting ability.

A novel metaheuristic algorithm called FA has emerged. It is inspired by the flashing behavior of fireflies. In basic FA, randomly generated solutions will be considered as fireflies, and brightness is associated with the objective function to be optimized. However, during the optimization process, the fireflies become more and more similar and gather into the neighborhood of the best firefly in the population, which may make the algorithm prematurely converged around the local solution.

Due to different dimensions and different ranges, the population diversity is different undoubtedly. And how to determine the diversity threshold value is still required to be further researched.

This paper presents a modified FA which uses a diversity threshold value to guide the algorithm to alternate between exploring and exploiting behavior. Experiments on 17 benchmark functions show that the proposed algorithm can improve the performance of the basic FA.

This paper seeks to investigate how seriously diversity issues are considered by municipal governments in North Carolina and to identify specific diversity management practices (DMPs) that are adopted more often by municipalities. It also aims to examine whether the adoption levels of DMPs are influenced by demographic and economic factors and the various backgrounds of city managers.

Data about adopted DMPs and city managers' backgrounds were collected by surveying all municipalities in North Carolina with populations of at least 5,000 (response rate: 50 percent). An index was constructed to determine the adoption level of DMPs, and the cities were divided into four groups, based on their index scores (i.e. DMP scores). Analysis of variance and correlations were used to test the relationship between a number of factors and the index score.

A number of DMPs were identified as being more popular among municipalities that took diversity and its related issues more seriously, and other DMPs as being less popular among cities that did not pay particular attention to diversity. It was also found that the adoption level of DMPs was significantly affected by population size, the heterogeneity of population, urbanization level, and city manager's age.

The DMPs that were found suitable for each one of the four groups of cities can be used as a guide when cities in a particular group want to adopt more DMPs to support and encourage diversity at work. According to the findings, cities need to be more proactive in managing diversity by introducing appropriate DMPs when their demographics are changing substantially.

This is one of the first studies to identify the more popular DMPs among municipalities with different attention levels toward diversity and its related issues. The study also contributes to the construction of a comprehensive diversity management model that explains how cities respond to changing demographics.

This chapter examines the types of institutions successful at replicating the diversity of the full-time undergraduate population in the diversity of the STEM-discipline degrees awarded. The sample is limited to full-time undergraduate students enrolled at or who are graduates from nonprofit private and public institutions. Relative to their share of the full-time undergraduate population and U.S. population, Asians and whites are overrepresented and blacks and Hispanics were underrepresented in the STEM – discipline bachelor's degree population. Private doctorate and public bachelor's and public master's comprehensive degrees–granting institutions were more successful than their counterparts at replicating the diversity of the full-time undergraduate population in the diversity of the STEM-discipline degrees awarded. Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) were the most successful at replicating this diversity. These findings were consistent over the time period analyzed.

Cultural competency is essential for all library and information science (LIS) professionals, including students and instructors within LIS educational programs. This chapter demonstrates that students and student groups that focus on diversity and inclusion issues can play an important role in advancing their own—and their instructors’—cultural knowledge, attitude, and skills.

A review of existing literature together with examination of a case study from the author’s own experience.

Diversity and inclusion is rarely adequately integrated into LIS education. Through service learning, students have provided rich and varied opportunities for learning through events, projects, and presentations. LIS professionals within information organizations of all kinds can benefit from starting their own groups dedicated to diversity and inclusion.

Little literature exists on the role of students in increasing cultural competency with the LIS professions.

Diversity is becoming the context through which researchers can account for different aspects of increasingly complexifying conditions of both entrepreneurship and migration. Taking a superdiversity perspective, this chapter uncovers and conceptualises what is diversifying particularly in migrant entrepreneurship. The authors identify four different dimensions of diversity and diversification affecting the activities of migrant entrepreneurs. First, with diversifying flows of migration, the characteristics of the entrepreneurs themselves as individual (usually transnational) migrants are diversifying. Second, with changing migration contexts, resources deriving from migration experiences are diversifying, exemplified by the different forms of transnational capitals used in entrepreneurship. Third, through migrant-led processes of diversification in the larger society, the main markets are diversifying, providing further opportunities to migrant entrepreneurs. Last but not least, the entrepreneurial strategies of migrant entrepreneurs are accordingly also diversifying, whereby finding different breaking-out strategies beyond the classical notion of only serving ethnic niche markets arise.

These diversities are embedded in the context of the overall superdiversifying society in which migrant entrepreneurs emerge and struggle to establish. By disentangling the different dimensions of diversity, this chapter contextualises debates on entrepreneurship and migration, including those in the present edited book, into the larger debate on the societal turn to superdiversity. It further discusses the notions and practices of differences embodied in migrant entrepreneurship, beyond the notion of the ethnic niche and the disadvantaged striving for market integration.

Contrasts prospecting research with in‐depth qualitative research and statistical survey research. Presents a simple model – in mathematical terms, and as a numerical table – to relate the size of a sample to its power in terms of exploring the diversity of possibilities in a market. One implication of this model is that effective prospecting samples tend to be larger than those that are often taken for qualitative research: smaller samples may be surprisingly likely to exclude important possibilities and underestimate the degree of diversity in a population. By implication, qualitative researchers will often benefit from an initial prospecting survey of the market in which they are conducting in‐depth research.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of diversity management research published in hospitality and tourism-specific and business discipline-based journals. The study objectives include attempting to assess the progress of diversity management research in hospitality and tourism, identifying gaps between the general business diversity management literature and the hospitality and tourism literature and providing hospitality and tourism scholars with suggestions to advance knowledge in diversity management.

The study is a critical review of the existing diversity management literature in the general business and hospitality and tourism disciplines in an attempt to identify gaps and make suggestions for expanding this knowledge in the hospitality and tourism fields.

There are significant gaps between the diversity management scholarship conducted in hospitality and tourism disciplines and the general business field. Diversity management research in general business is far more in-depth and uses sociological and social psychological theoretical frameworks.

There are lessons to be learned from the general business literature that uses strong theoretical foundations deeply grounded in sociological, psychological, social-psychological and management theories. The general management literature also explores the conditions under which diversity management adds value or creates challenges for organizations.

The hospitality and tourism industry has employed large numbers of ethnic minorities, women and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community for decades. As such, it is critical that scholars explore the implications of such a diverse workforce not only on organizational outcomes, but also on individual and group performance. The general business diversity management research suggests that workgroup composition can influence individual and group performance, as well as the quality of co-worker relationships. Given the team-oriented, interdependent nature of work in the hospitality and tourism industry, it is imperative that researchers conduct studies that help practitioners understand the most effective perspectives and approaches to diversity management.

The critical literature review demonstrated that there is extremely scarce research on diversity management focusing on employees with disabilities. It is imperative to shed more light on best diversity management practices, workplace etiquette of this under-represented group of employees and their interaction with their co-workers.

This study’s results provide insight into areas of exploration that can significantly enhance the scholarship on diversity management in the hospitality and tourism literature.

The purpose of this paper is to show, on a widely used benchmark problem, that adaptive mutation factors and attractive/repulsive phases guided by population diversity can improve the search ability of differential evolution (DE) algorithms.

An adaptive mutation factor and attractive/repulsive phases guided by population diversity are used within the framework of DE algorithms.

The paper shows that the combined use of adaptive mutation factors and population diversity in order to guide the attractive/repulsive behavior of DE algorithms can provide high‐quality solutions with small standard deviation on the selected benchmark problem.

Although the chosen benchmark is considered to be representative of typical electromagnetic problems, different test cases may give less satisfactory results.

The proposed approach appears to be an efficient general purpose stochastic optimizer for electromagnetic design problems.

This paper introduces the use of population diversity in order to guide the attractive/repulsive behavior of DE algorithms.