How Troublesome are Stereotypes in International Business?

Substantial concern has been raised in international business writing that national stereotypes bias perception of employees, customers, and others. That concern is certainly supported by findings in person perception research. But some constraints of that research, such as the provision of incomplete information and uninteresting stimuli may well have caused an overestimation of the impact of stereotypes in business situations. This research shows that the impact of stereotypes is likely less than previously thought. When current diagnostic information is available, that information is used, leading to unbiased assessments. Only when information is limited are stereotype-biased judgments generated. A second experiment further shows that people feel more confident in assessments based on current information than in those where information is limited. These relatively optimistic findings suggest methods that managers can use to overcome national stereotype bias in international business situations

Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction

The paper reviews product data technology initiatives in the construction sector and provides a synthesis of related ICT industry needs. A comparison between (a) the data centric characteristics of Product Data Technology (PDT) and (b) ontology with a focus on semantics, is given, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. The paper advocates the migration from data-centric application integration to ontology-based business process support, and proposes inter-enterprise collaboration architectures and frameworks based on semantic services, underpinned by ontology-based knowledge structures. The paper discusses the main reasons behind the low industry take up of product data technology, and proposes a preliminary roadmap for the wide industry diffusion of the proposed approach. In this respect, the paper stresses the value of adopting alliance-based modes of operation

Changing building user attitude and organisational policy towards sustainable resource use in healthcare

Health care provision is significantly impacted by the ability of the health providers to engineer a viable healthcare space to support care stakeholders needs. In this paper we discuss and propose use of organisational semiotics as a set of methods to link stakeholders to systems, which allows us to capture clinician activity, information transfer, and building use; which in tern allows us to define the value of specific systems in the care environment to specific stakeholders and the dependence between systems in a care space. We suggest use of a semantically enhanced building information model (BIM) to support the linking of clinician activity to the physical resource objects and space; and facilitate the capture of quantifiable data, over time, concerning resource use by key stakeholders. Finally we argue for the inclusion of appropriate stakeholder feedback and persuasive mechanism, to incentivise building user behaviour to support organisational level sustainability policy

D2.4 Report on the ITFLOWS Regulatory Model

This document is devoted to the Regulatory Model specifically designed for ITFLOWS. Section 1 explains what a regulatory model is and what it entails as well as the purpose it serves. Section 2 defines the ITFLOWS Regulatory Model and provides the three steps that it consists of, which are addressed in detail in the subsequent sections. Section 3 refers to the first step of the ITFLOWS Regulatory Model, which is the 'Framework for Compliance' and lists the sources that shape such framework. Section 4 addresses the second step of the ITFLOWS Regulatory Framework ('Compliance through design technology') and includes the ethical, legal, societal and gender-related mitigation measures that have been recommended to ensure compliance of the EUMigraTool. Section 5 describes the last step of the ITFLOWS Regulatory Model, which is the 'Monitoring and enforcement strategy' and includes the measures that have been adopted at this stage of the project given the nature of the Regulatory Model, i.e., an ongoing process. Lastly, conclusions are provided and next steps that will be taken to effectively implement the ITFLOWS Regulatory Model according to the development of the research activities foreseen in the project are presented