A Cross-National Investigation of First-Generation, Second-Generation, and Third-Generation Family Businesses: A Four Country Anova Comparison

This study compared first, second, and third-generation family businesses in the United States, Croatia, France, and India - countries with significant differences in cultures, economies, levels of entrepreneurial activity, and family business demographics. Contrary to much of the existing literature, the results indicate that owner-managers of all three generational categories of family businesses, in all four countries, generally shared the same managerial characteristics and practices. Implications for theory development and further research are presented

Handwashing Action Detection System for an Autonomous Social Robot

Young children are at an increased risk of contracting contagious diseases such as COVID-19 due to improper hand hygiene. An autonomous social agent that observes children while handwashing and encourages good hand washing practices could provide an opportunity for handwashing behavior to become a habit. In this article, we present a human action recognition system, which is part of the vision system of a social robot platform, to assist children in developing a correct handwashing technique. A modified convolution neural network (CNN) architecture with Channel Spatial Attention Bilinear Pooling (CSAB) frame, with a VGG-16 architecture as the backbone is trained and validated on an augmented dataset. The modified architecture generalizes well with an accuracy of 90% for the WHO-prescribed handwashing steps even in an unseen environment. Our findings indicate that the approach can recognize even subtle hand movements in the video and can be used for gesture detection and classification in social robotics

Designing Empathy Game: Case on Participatory Design Session with children within the Indian context

Empathy games are a promising yet new research avenue that explores how to design empathic game experiences that would help children to understand and address the emotions of other people. Research in this field was primarily done in the USA and there is a research gap in understanding how empathy game design can apply and differ from the contexts of other countries. Our study replicated a study earlier conducted in the USA, aiming to explore the dynamic of the PD process, and identify specifics and challenges for PD methodology related to empathy and game design in the Indian context. We conducted a series of participatory design (PD) sessions with 18 Indian children between 7 and 11 years old. This paper reports our preliminary findings, including the following: (1) it might be challenging for Indian children to discuss and design for empathy and emotions-related topics, (2) using the English language can be a barrier while working with Indian children of 8 years old and younger, (3) cultural context affects roles children play in the design process. This paper contributes insights on identifying areas for further methodological work in PD for the Indian context.Comment: 5 pages, IDC 202

A cross-cultural comparison of student learning patterns in higher education

Marambe, K. N., Vermunt, J. D., & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (2012). A cross-cultural comparison of student learning patterns in higher education. Higher Education, 64(3), 299-316. doi:10.1007/s10734-011-9494-zThe aim of this study was to compare student learning patterns in higher education across different cultures. A meta-analysis was performed on three large-scale studies that had used the same research instrument: the Inventory of learning Styles (ILS). The studies were conducted in the two Asian countries Sri Lanka and Indonesia and the European country The Netherlands. Students reported use of learning strategies, metacognitive strategies, conceptions of learning and learning orientations were compared in two ways: by analyses of variance of students' mean scale scores on ILS scales, as well as by comparing the factor structures of the ILS-scales between the three studies. Results showed most differences in student learning patterns between Asian and European students. However, many differences were identified between students from the two Asian countries as well. The Asian learner turned out to be a myth. Moreover, Sri Lankan students made the least use of memorising strategies of all groups. That Asian learners would have a propensity for rote learning turned out to be a myth as well. Some patterns of learning turned out to be universal and occurred in all groups, other patterns were found only among the Asian or the European students. The findings are discussed in terms of learning environment and culture as explanatory factors. Practical implications for student mobility in an international context are derived

Can 'functionlaity' save the community management model of rural water supply?

As attention increasingly turns to the sustainability of rural water supplies - and not simply overall levels of coverage or access - water point functionality has become a core concern for development practitioners and national governments, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Within the long-enduring Community-Based Management (CBM) model this has resulted in increased scrutiny of the “functionality” of the local water point committee (WPC) or similar community management organisation. This paper reviews the literature written from both practice-focused and critical-academic perspectives and identifies three areas that pose challenges to our understanding of water point functionality as it relates to CBM. These concern the relative neglect of (i) the local institutional and socio-economic landscape, (ii) broader governance processes and power dynamics, and (iii) the socio-technical interface. By examining these three areas, the paper engages with the specific issue of WPC functionality, whilst also considering broader issues relating to the framing of problems in development and the methodological and disciplinary ways that these are addressed. Furthermore, by focusing on community management of rural water points, the paper lays the ground for a more substantial critique of the continuing persistence of the CBM model as a central development strategy