Fostering Inclusive Recruitment Interviews with Intelligent Digital Humans: A Diversity and Inclusion Training Initiative

This article is about an intelligent digital human model enhanced by artificial intelligence, designed to meet the requirements from a multinational company in need of training for their human resources personnel on bias-free recruitment interviews. We have been creating a new generation of avatars with social intelligence, who are capable not only of presenting a wide variety of topics in a dynamic and engaging manner, but also of interacting with the audience and communicating emotions and moods. We have been customizing avatars for role plays, building them as real interlocutors who facilitate training in how to handle difficult conversations by including aspects such as non-verbal communication, different communication styles, and diversity and inclusion. Practicing conversations with avatars accelerates learning from experience without the risks associated with learning in the field. At the end of each interview, timely feedback is provided so learners can determine how to improve their performance. These digital humans are able to perform like realistic human beings, challenging the interviewer both at a verbal and para-verbal level, as well on the cognitive and the emotional levels – making it easy for the interviewer to get trapped into biases and false assumptions. The key message is this: diversity and inclusion best practices are first of all about mindset

Enhancing Communication Between Sonographers and Patients in Diverse Cultural Settings via Digital Human Role-Playing

Effective communication skills are essential for sonographers to build trust, to explain examination procedures to the patient in non-technical terms, to alleviate anxiety and gain patient consent and collaboration, and to provide information at a pace suitable for the patient. In order to communicate effectively, the sonographer needs to be able to communicate empathetically, adjusting their communication style to meet the needs of different audiences. This is particularly challenging when working with a diverse and multicultural group of patients where the risk of misinterpretation is higher. Students are provided with the opportunity to practice dialogues with virtual patients that are able to interact as real human beings, communicating concerns, emotions, and moods both at a verbal and non-verbal level. Coaching through digital humans accelerates learning from experience without the risks associated with learning in the field

Fostering Diversity and Inclusion in Medicine: Collaborating with Extended Reality and Medical Simulation in the Metaverse

Metaverse is a term used to describe a hypothetical shared virtual space where people can interact with a computer-generated environment and each other, and there are multiple metaverses currently being developed by various companies and organizations. Cooperation in the metaverse is at the core of the ongoing digital revolution that impacts the way we design and deliver overall education and training. Medical simulation is a powerful way to deliver education and training, based on the use of technology and other techniques to recreate clinical scenarios for the purpose of teaching and training healthcare professionals and students. This article is about how to involve learners in a metaverse within the medical simulation field. The key questions that we address are as follows: What is the metaverse today? What will it look like in a few years? How do we enhance medical simulation based on cooperation in the metaverse? How do we engage learners with diversity and inclusion

Unleashing Cerberus:don’t let your MBOs turn on themselves

Management buyouts can be difficult to manage and do not lead to guaranteed riches. In the face of what appears to be an increasingly difficult market, we examine why MBOs may fail. During the summer of 1997, we collected the opinions of senior directors of lending banks, top venture capitalists and managing directors of MBOs. From their accounts of the MBO process, we conclude that MBOs may not achieve their promise as the process itself can be unstable. We observe that, without significant strategic renewal, three key stakeholders in the MBO arena will pull apart. An analogy might be unleashing Cerberus: three powerful heads working together can indeed represent a formidable force, but should there be a struggle for supremacy between them, the common purpose is subverted

The management buy-out arena:differential slip in a tripartite alliance

The traditional focus on Management Buy-Outs (MBOs) has been upon concluding deals. However, substantial numbers of MBOs fail to exit and this paper suggests that the time is ripe for attention to be redirected towards post-deal evolution. Three phases in the MBO post-deal process are identified. These are depicted as The Spirit of Optimism, The Zone of Indifference and The Spiral of Mistrust, reflecting, respectively, the moment of contractual agreement, subsequent stagnation and downward slide in performance. As the MBO evolves through these phases of decline, this study focuses upon the interactions of three main parties: The Management Team, The Venture Capitalists and The Investment Bankers. The key objective is to capture the difficulties accruing to these parties as the MBO declines. The failures of the three main parties lie in identities, increasing problems of interaction and lack of communication. By linking micro, meso and macro levels of analysis a novel way of looking at MBOs is suggested which helps to avoid the trap of focusing only upon the moment the deal is done

Enacting competitive wars: Competitive activity, language games, and market consequences

This paper has benefited from the comments of David Allen, Avi Fiegenbaum, Luis Martins, Antoaneta Petkova, Rhonda Reger, Kamenna Rindova, and Ken Smith. We also thank Sameer Wadhwa for help with the research on the “cola war ” in the 1980s