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The purpose of this paper was to develop a new interactive guiding system allowing people to use their own smart mobile devices, such as smart phones or tablet PCs, to activate the guiding services at the art gallery. The system provided interactions between visitors and exhibit items. It focused on the highly interactive functions between visitors and artworks authors as well as among visitors at both exhibition sites and social network sites (SNSs).

The system used quick response (QR) codes as the context aware elements, Facebook as the platform of SNSs, and smart mobile devices as the human-machine interfaces. Visitors carrying their own smart phones or tablet PCs can activate the guiding services by scanning the QR codes of the interested exhibit items. A system usability scale (SUS) survey was conducted to understand the visitors' perceptions on system usability. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect the visitors' and authors' attitudes on releasing messages through Facebook.

The system was implemented at an art centre where lacquer artworks were on display. The SUS survey showed that 94 per cent of the participated visitors have satisfactorily rated this new guiding system, indicating rather high usability of the system. Most participated visitors agreed on Facebook as an ideal channel to release messages and they would pay more attention to the highly-recommended exhibit items. All the artworks authors consented to this new guiding system with potential power to disseminate their works over the cyberspace.

This new system possesses some important features in blending real world and cyberspace activities. Visitors at exhibit sites can become more informed and captivated because the interactive guiding system enables them to share knowledge and commentary opinions with others who were, are or will be at the same exhibition. It also allows people to share with their cyberspace friends who may have no times or opportunities to visit the exhibition. Most importantly, the new system may immensely expand the number of potential visitors in ways to make the authors and their artworks rapidly recognized.

This study aims to develop a highly interactive exhibition guiding system which enables both authors and visitors to interact with one another on an exhibition site.

The guiding system was designed with a “pull‐type” concept in a way that a handheld device must be close to a specific work to “pull” the information out of that work. The highly interactive functions between visitors and authors or among visitors were enabled by the Web 2.0. Verification and validation of the system's functions were tested in an art gallery with PDAs utilizing passive RFID readers and tags. A questionnaire survey was conducted to learn of the opinions from authors and visitors after they used the system.

The verification and validation test showed that all the functions have met the predefined requirements. The results of the questionnaire survey also revealed that the majority were satisfied with the interactive guiding system.

Not only can the system perform the guide tasks well, but it also allows the users to select interested modules so as to avoid overloading the irrelevant information. Additionally, the visitors can chat with unacquainted visitors who are onsite and have the same taste on a specific artwork, and the authors can visualize the visitors' comments, recommendations, and suggestions on their works in a real‐time manner.

The paper shows that the proposed system has some innovative features. It enables the authors to interact with the visitors, to understand the visitors' thoughts and opinions on their works, and to share the ideas of their creativity with the interested visitors onsite. On the other hand, it also enables the visitors to interact with the authors and other visitors. The visitors can recommend appreciated works to others, provide their comments and suggestions, visualize others' comments and suggestions, and exchange their views with those who are onsite and even recommend the same works.

The purpose of this article is to present a guiding system with enhanced functionality based upon radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to promote a user friendly experience.

Based on a user survey, the paper provides a guiding system using RFID with blog platform for further interaction. An example of this technology was built into a gallery at a college in Taiwan.

This guiding system is defined as pull type because users actively pull the relevant information using RFID readers. With such functionalities, users have the opportunity to acquire information, using a mobile device, about a specific object in a context‐aware manner. In addition, users can share ideas and comments related to the object on blogs with others who had visited or will visit the object or site. The user survey results showed that visitors seldom met the artists at an exhibition of their works, but desired to discuss and shares comments with them and other visitors. The proposed system addressees this need with a blog, and the user satisfaction survey confirmed that the proposed system met the requirements.

The paper provides a guiding system to enhancing user experience by RFID and blog. The system also builds a channel between the creators of the artworks and others.

The purpose of the present study is to understand the diversity management concept in Taiwan setting by providing a closer look into local companies’ practices. Rational and focus for this research exploration is based on three areas related to diversity management in organizations: external and internal pressures for diversity in Taiwanese companies; companies’ approaches and senior leadership attitude toward diversity; companies’ diversity management practices.

The authors have collected secondary and primary data, including 15 interviews with management, at three large Taiwan semiconductor companies and build a case study of diversity management in Taiwan.

Taiwan companies’ diversity management is motivated mainly by business case and social responsibility goals. They experience a need for diversity management and proactively introduce diversity management policies.

Further studies should look into diversity management practices of smaller private/family-owned companies in Taiwan to get a deeper understanding of the concept in the country using quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Taiwan is historically culturally homogeneous society, which undergoes massive demographic changes under the influence of low birth rate and high rate of immigration. Taiwan situation creates specific economic, cultural, and political context for diversity management that differs from other Asian, European or Western societies.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the research presented in this edited volume.

This report is based on 17 chapters, which vary in terms of research approach, design, and method, yet aims to present different country perspectives on diversity within diversity management.

The chapters present new insights on how the national and macro-social environment impacts the institutional approaches to diversity management across the world. Findings indicate the need for organizations to focus on deep-level diversity, rather than choosing a tick-box policy on surface-level diversity. Empirical studies reveal that every institution can adopt a diversity-friendly approach in a way that best fits their structure, culture and the mentality of their top management team.

The report summarizes and integrates novel insights on country perspectives and approaches on diversity management.

This research examines how macroeconomic variables can precisely predict bull/bear stock markets in China and Taiwan.

This paper adopts a two-state Markov switching model to characterize the bull and bear markets spanning from 1994 to 2019 and then conduct a bear stock market predictability test by running regressions between the filtered probabilities of bear markets and a series of macroeconomic variables in turn at different horizons of 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 months.

This paper shows that inflation rates, changes in real exchange rates, and foreign currency reserve growth are key predictors of bear markets in China, while term spreads, unemployment rates and foreign reserve growth are major factors that can predict bear markets in Taiwan. Remarkably, industrial production growth does not have predictive power for bear markets, which may suggest emerging markets are driven by fund flows rather than real economic activities. Besides, the impact directions of foreign currency reserve growth are opposite, which may be due to different proportions of the financial accounts in their balance of payments.

In practical respect, this paper provides market participants the usefulness, impact direction and implications of bear market predictors when building their market-timing strategies in China and Taiwan stock markets. The government institutions may also thereby make appropriate policies to prevent huge stock market downturns and serious drawbacks.

It highlights the “fund-driven market hypothesis” and “foreign currency reserve effects” that commonly dominate Taiwan and China stock markets since both are highly affected by international funds.

Research in tourism and hospitality industry marketing has identified many highly effective applications of social media. However, studies in the existing literature do not enable a comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon because they lack a theoretical foundation. Therefore, this study systematically reviewed the literature from the perspective of the task-technology fit (TTF) theory. The purpose of this paper is to map out what is known about social media use in tourism and hospitality marketing and what areas need further exploration.

A descriptive cumulative review of the literature obtained 99 articles published in tourism and hospitality journals from 2010 to 2019.

The analysis suggests that to understand social media use in tourism marketing, researchers and practitioners in the industry must clarify the following four issues: the control variables, longitudinal analyzes and TTF concepts that should be used in future studies; the fitness of social media platforms for tourism marketing; how various social media platforms differ in terms of performance outcome; and the digital divide in the use of social media for tourism.

An integrated framework was developed to identify constructs and to understand their relationships. Recent studies in this domain are discussed; theoretical and practical suggestions and implications for future research are given.

This paper purports to analyze the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and technological innovation in the Malaysian manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the interrelationships between the KM dimensions will also be investigated.

Survey data from 162 manufacturing firms were obtained. Multiple linear regression and neural network analysis were performed in this study to examine the relationships between KM and technological innovation; as well as the interrelationships between KM practices themselves.

This research study provides empirical evidence and confirms the results of past researchers that KM practices (i.e. knowledge sharing, knowledge application and knowledge storage) are positively and significantly related to technological innovation (i.e. product and process innovation). Moreover, it is also discovered that the interrelationships between the KM dimensions are positive and significant.

This research implies that when firms understand the significance of KM dimensions, there is a great possibility that the firm will succeed in harvesting the full value of technological innovation. Meanwhile, the result may also serve as a guide to the manufacturing managers to understand the importance of KM in their managerial actions, so that the level of technological innovation in their firms can be greatly enhanced.

Extensive research has not been done in the past to examine the relationship between the KM and technological innovation. Meanwhile, the investigation on the interrelationships between the KM dimensions has also been scarce. Hence, such a research is to be called for. This paper provides the manufacturing practitioners with useful guidelines on the appropriate KM practices to be implemented to ensure the improvement in technological innovation.