Quality in its contemporary incarnation is commonly referred to as organizational excellence, enterprise excellence, business excellence, or performance excellence. While technology may serve as a key enabler of enterprise excellence, enterprise excellence itself is in large enabled by the human dimension both in terms of ideation and effort. The human dimension manifests in many ways, with peo...

The target article argues that whole groups can act as interactors in an evolutionary process. We believe that Smaldino's discussion would be advanced by a more thorough analysis of the appropriate replicators and lineages for this model. We show that cultural evolution is necessarily a separate process from cultural group selection, and we also illustrate that the two processes may influence e...

Cross-cultural factors are important in functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs). In the setting of FGIDs, the aims of this review were to: 1) engender interest in global aspects; 2) gain a clearer understanding of culture, race and ethnicity and their effect on patient care and research; 3) facilitate cross-cultural clinical and research competency; and 4) improve and foster the quality a...

BACKGROUND Globally, India contributes the largest share in sheer numbers to the burden of maternal and infant under-nutrition, morbidity and mortality. A major gap in our knowledge is how socio-cultural practices and beliefs influence the perinatal period and thus perinatal outcomes, particularly in the rapidly growing urban setting. METHODS AND FINDINGS Using data from a qualitative study i...

Due to increasing national diversity, programs addressing cultural competence have multiplied in U.S. medical training institutions. Although these programs share common goals for improving clinical care for patients and reducing health disparities, there is little standardization across programs. Furthermore, little progress has been made to translate cultural competency training from the clin...

The emergency room (ER) psychiatrist confronts an increasingly diverse patient population that presents complex challenges to diagnosis and treatment in this acute setting. Such challenges include difficulties involving language barriers, interpretations of behaviors, prayer and fasting rituals, gender roles, attitudes about mental health, family issues, and other cultural issues. The Muslim pa...

This paper examines the role of creative milieu and cultural heritages in the development of Chinese cultural industry. Through case study of Beijing’s Nanluoguxiang, where several arts institutions and theaters concentrate, it depicts the birth and growth of a creative place for free artists in the institutional changing of Chinese cultural setting. Based on field survey data from artists, man...

Memory and mystery 2 Abstract We hypothesize that cultural narratives such as myths and folktales are more likely to achieve cultural stability if they correspond to a minimally counterintuitive cognitive template that includes mostly intuitive concepts combined with a minority of counterintuitive ones. Two studies tested this hypothesis, examining whether this template produces a memory advant...

Happiness drops when individuals become unemployed. The negative impact of the unemployment shock, however, may differ by cultural background. To test the hypothesis of a ‘Teutonic work ethic’, this paper takes advantage of Switzerland in its cultural diversity. By comparing different cultural groups in the same institutional setting, I empirically test whether such deep psychological traits ha...

We hypothesize that cultural narratives such as myths and folktales are more likely to achieve cultural stability if they correspond to a minimally counterintuitive (MCI) cognitive template that includes mostly intuitive concepts combined with a minority of counterintuitive ones. Two studies tested this hypothesis, examining whether this template produces a memory advantage, and whether this me...