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This chapter introduces the development of sport sociology in Japan especially focusing on the activities of the Japanese Society of Sport Sociology (JSSS) and research by members of the society. Following a brief history, we discuss some notable and influential research in Japanese sport sociology. Then we pick up the two areas of Olympic Studies and Sport for Development and Peace to show the current situation of sport sociology in Japan. In Japan, the development of sport sociology and sport itself are tightly linked with the development of the society as a whole, especially influenced by economic factors. In regards to the future of sport sociology as well as sport, we believe that this will depend on the economic situation, although sport-related persons (except for sociologists) tend to expect much of the governmental body. Because the volume of Olympic Studies and Sport for Development and Peace research is increasing, sport sociology will achieve a certain amount of success by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics/Paralympics. However, we need to seek a way to maintain the momentum of sport sociology in Japan after the year 2020.

Introduction: The rapid growth of high technology has urged many organisations to dynamically look for innovative ways, ideas, testing, and ingenious solution in improving their current product, process, system, and technology. For contemporary business, artificial intelligence (AI)-based people analytics is an instrument currently employed to develop a better prosperous future.

Purpose: The study aims to investigate the usage of AI in human resource management (HRM) practices. It also examines the benefits and challenges of using AI in implementing people analytics in organisations.

Methodology: This chapter contains a systemic review of articles and papers on analytics. The presented qualitative study did a literature review based on the articles published in the last five years and extracted from the Scopus database.

Findings: This chapter indicated that AI-based people analytics is on the verge of changing various aspects of HRM practices better to furnish it for a vibrant, ever-changing workplace. It concludes different usage of AI in people analytics for better managing human resources (HR) at the workplace. Also explored the benefits and challenges of implementing AI in the people analytics domain.

Implications: This chapter will help understand ongoing practices of AI-enabled process benefits and challenges. This insight will help develop a better AI-enabled function for a better decision-making system. The future scope of the study is how to overcome the challenges.

The aim of this chapter is to examine and problematize the taken-for-granted conceptual understanding of risk practices in sport cultures. By inspecting the mainstay, and one might argue relatively stagnant, constructions of risk in the sociological study of sport, a case for attending to a wider range of risk-based ideologies and cultural practices is presented. The chapter ventures away from viewing risk as predominantly physical in sport settings and constructing athletes as oppressed agents who naively acquiesce to practices of self-injury and self-alienation in sport cultures. Emphasis is given to a broad spectrum of risks undertaken in the practice of sport, and the reflexive, personal nature by which risk may be understood by sports and physical culture participants.

In the first part of the chapter, the relatively simplistic or unidimensional construction of risk in sociological research in sport is reviewed. In the second part, the complexity of the concept of risk is then discussed alongside case examples that push the analytical boundaries of how risk is a multidimensional construct of athletes’ minds, bodies, selves, beliefs, values, and identities in a host of relational contexts.

Risk is best understood as a set of practices and belief that exists on a continuum in sport and physical cultures. Risk-taking in sport, however, can be personally injurious and detrimental along a number of lines but is also often calculated, personally/group satisfying and existentially rewarding at times. If the concept of risk is to be applied and interrogated in sport and physical cultures, it should be done so, therefore, in radically contextual manners.

This chapter illustrates the need for new and exploratory theoretical understandings of what risk means to athletes and other participants in sport and physical culture. New substantive topics are proposed, as are methodological suggestions for representations of the unfolding risk in the process of “doing” sport.

This chapter presents an empirical effort for the theoretical applicability of sport diplomacy to sport for development (SFD) research by examining how sport played a role in pursuing South Korea's development at given four historical stages: (1) A prelude to Korean SFD before 1945, (2) sport for a new Korea between 1945 and 1960, (3) sport for developmental state between 1961 and 1979, and (4) sport for coming-out parties of the 1980s. This chapter supports current scholarly attempts to situate the 21st century sport for development (SFD) within the history of sport for social good, as well as approaches integrating the role of sport in the 19th century colonization and/or in the modern version of development during the post-war era. By adding an Asian case (South Korea), this chapter contributes to existing SFD literature mostly focusing on Western countries and their former colonies in Africa and South/Central America. It also contributes to the understanding of soft power's dualistic characteristics that direct domestic and international audiences with a new insight into the sport-development nexus in the history of South Korea.

Introduction: The application of artificial intelligence (AI) can substantially enhance both short- and long-term decision-making in human resource management (HRM) practices. However, academic research fails to address the dark side of AI in confluence with HRM and primarily paints a bright picture of the advantages of AI.

Purpose: The current research emphasises the challenges faced in the HRM domain in applying AI in HRM practices and further discusses the future path to maximise the effect of AI on HRM.

Methodology: The study rigorously surveyed secondary sources like the journal papers, consultant reports and other databases to critically examine the challenges encountered in applying AI in HRM practices.

Findings: Analysis of the above-mentioned sources shows that AI algorithm might bring routinisation of work. HRM ethics, data safety and integrity, biased algorithm from the programmer, fewer data to train the AI model, lack of technical skills of HR executive, neglecting values, and ignoring the creative thinking by employees are a few aspects that might cause difficulty in the adaptation of AI in the HRM domain. As a consequence, there could be unnecessary extra monitoring of employee behaviour, which in turn could lead to loss of workplace well-being and trimming of the human element in HRM.

Practical Implications: This study adds value by focusing on the challenges and suggests the path for robust HRM practices; because, the biased decision-making by AI could potentially lead to improper decision-making by the top management, and in turn, the sustainability of a firm could be at stake.

The purpose of this paper is to extract lessons learned from the Fukushima‐Daiichi accident, caused by a big earthquake and a huge tsunami, which occurred on 11 March 2011.

Lessons learned are extracted after summarizing emergency response by robots to the Fukushima‐Daiichi accident.

Many lessons had been learned from the experiences on robots' emergency response to the accident; organization and operation scheme, and systemization were major lessons learned.

Unmanned constructive heavy machines and robots donated from the USA or imported from Sweden did reconnaissance work and cleaning up of rubble outside of buildings. Quince and JAEA‐3 were deployed for reconnaissance inside buildings.

The Japanese nuclear disaster response robotics developed after Japan Conversion Corporation's critical accident occurred in 1999, could not work when the Fukushima‐Daiichi accident occurred on 11 March 2011.

The paper emphasizes the importance of establishing emergency response schemes when a nuclear disaster occurs.

Japan has had four periods of public sector reform since World War II. This chapter discusses the leadership for reform during the occupation period, the high economic growth period, the low economic growth period and the search for a ‘new’ Japan under various present difficulties. Reforms reflect the priorities of the time and interests of prime ministers, whose style of functioning also affects how public sector reforms are advanced. During the occupation period, the Administrative Management Agency was established in the Prime Minister’s Office and was responsible for the overall management of national government organizations. It was staffed by civil servants who were experts in their areas. Since the 1980s, furthering privatization, deregulation and reorganization, advisory councils for the prime minister were also used, involving influential business leaders and scholars.

This chapter shows that political leadership, especially that of the prime minister and minister in charge of administrative reform, is important in deciding on highly political issues, to persuade or direct politicians and administrators to follow the leadership, to inspire and get the support of the general public and to ensure the support or acceptance of those concerned. Where prime ministers are not directly involved, leadership is provided by professional administrators under the general support of the prime minister and the minister responsible for administrative reforms. It is also pointed out that reform sustainability occurs through institutionalization, incentives, management and producing meaningful results.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the computational progress in the development of hydrogen-fired gas turbines. This review aims to identify suitable combustion models, appropriate NO_x chemistry mechanisms and NO_x emission levels for effective utilization of hydrogen as an alternative fuel in gas turbines.

Hydrogen is recognized as a potential alternative fuel for achieving exceptionally low emissions in gas turbines. The developments in conventional, trapped vortex combustor and micromix combustors are discussed, along with various computational models aimed at accurately predicting combustion and emission characteristics. The results of numerical simulations were then discussed with emphasis on their role in optimizing the combustor geometry.

Computational studies that were used to optimize the combustor geometry to reduce NO_x emissions and the flashback phenomenon are discussed. To retrofit existing gas turbines for hydrogen fuel, minor modifications that are required were discussed by analyzing extensive literature. The influence of key design and geometrical parameters on NO_x emissions and the appropriate selection of combustion models for numerical simulations in optimizing various combustion systems are elaborated.

The review emphasizes the computational studies in the progress of hydrogen-fired gas turbine developments. The previous reviews were primarily focused on the combustion technologies for hydrogen-fired gas turbines. This comprehensive review focuses on the key design parameters, flame structure, selection of combustion models, combustion efficiency improvement and impact of parametric studies on NO_x formation of various combustion systems, in particular hydrogen combustion for gas turbine applications.

The purpose of this paper is to present an algorithm for performing collision avoidance with robotic manipulators.

The method does not require any a priori knowledge of the motion of other objects in its environment. Moreover, it is computationally efficient enough to be implemented in real time. This is achieved by constructing limitations on the motion of a manipulator in terms of its allowable instantaneous velocity. Potential collisions and joint limits are formulated as linear inequality constraints. Selection of the optimal velocity is formulated as a convex optimization and is solved using an interior point method.

Experimental results with two industrial arms verify the effectiveness of the method and illustrate its ability to easily handle many simultaneous potential collisions.

The resulting algorithm allows arbitrary motions commanded to the robot to be modified on‐line in order to guarantee optimal real‐time collision avoidance behaviors.