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The purpose of this paper is to provide a novel training-responding controlling approach for human–robot interaction. The approach is inspired by the processes of muscle memory and conditioned reflex. The approach is significant for dealing with the problems of robot’s redundant movements and operator’s fatigue in human–robot interaction system.

This paper presented a directional double clustering algorithm (DDCA) to achieve the training process. The DDCA ensured that the initial clustering centers uniformly distributed in every desired cluster. A minimal resource allocation network was used to construct a memory responding algorithm (MRA). When the human–robot interaction system needed to carry out a task for more than one time, the desired movements of the robot were given by the MRA without repeated training. Experimentally demonstrated results showed the proposed training-responding controlling approach could successfully accomplish human–robot interaction tasks.

The training-responding controlling approach improved the robustness and reliability of the human–robot interaction system, which presented a novel controlling method for the operator.

This approach has significant commercial applications, as a means of controlling for human–robot interaction could serve to point to the desired target and arrive at the appointed positions in industrial and household environment.

This work presented a novel training-responding human-robot controlling method. The human-robot controlling method dealt with the problems of robot’s redundant movements and operator’s fatigue. To the authors’ knowledge, the working processes of muscle memory and conditioned reflex have not been reported to apply to human-robot controlling.

Fairy tales were first transmitted orally to teach the community to adapt and engage with their surroundings (Zipes, 1987, p. 1). Nonetheless, they have also contributed to reproduce traditional gender roles and stereotypes (Meland, 2020, p. 912). Indeed, they encourage ‘females to become passive self-denying, obedient, and self-sacrificial’, and males to ‘be competitive, authoritarian, and power-hungry as well as rational, abstract, and principled’ (Zipes, 1987, p. 3). Likewise, Western fairy tales are characterised by a racial dichotomy manifested through the uses of colour: purity is usually associated with white, while black is related to death. This binary opposition suggests that ‘[w]hiteness is often the invisible, privileged state, whereas any other skin colour is marked and laden with ideological judgments’ (Jorgensen, 2013, p. 56).

Carnival Row (2019–2023) is a neo-Victorian TV series created for Amazon Studios that rewrites Western fairy tales through the lens of postcolonial and gender studies. It is set in a fantastically reimagined Victorian England, where mythological creatures – e.g. fairies or centaurs – are allegorical representations of the ethnic Other. The male protagonist of this series, Philo, is a ‘half-breed’ – half human, half fairy – who passes as human to avoid racial discrimination. However, he evolves from being a male character who rejects his ethnic identity to a heroic figure who eventually embraces his racial origins at the end of Season 1. As I demonstrate in this chapter, Philo's nuanced development arguably subverts traditional depictions of white male heroes in fairy-tale narratives, where they tend to be portrayed as strong, principled and non-complex characters.

Drawing upon the theory of organizational commitment and relative standing, this study aimed to develop an integrative model to examine how organizational cultural differences impact on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) performance.

The study used regression analysis and moderated path analysis to test the hypothesis with a sample of 103 executives from 49 firms acquired by Chinese state-owned enterprises.

The paper arrives at the conclusion that the executives’ organizational commitment mediated the association between organizational cultural differences and M&A performance. Besides, the authors also confirmed the moderator role of relative standing.

The paper suggests ways that can help practitioners better eliminate cultural differences obstacles during the M&A by presenting an integrative framework and showed an actual Chinese case.

This study contributes to the M&A literature by developing an integrative model to explain the complexity between organizational cultural differences and M&A performance with a Chinese executive sample.

Red Riding Hood is said to have been assembled from folktales that pre-date the collector Charles Perrault's 1697 re-telling and initial publishing (Dundes, 1989; Zipes, 1993). Since then, it is a story that has been re-told and re-imagined many times in various media contexts, with Beckett suggesting that it is one of the most familiar icons of Western culture, and a ‘highly effective intertextual referent’ (Beckett, 2002, p. XVI). Even though this story has been generally regarded as a children's tale, adult themes of sexuality and transgression have been explored in modern re-conceptions. In this chapter, we examine the representation of gender and masculinity in commercial media output: the 2011 American film Red Riding Hood (Hardwicke, 2011) and the pilot episode of the NBC series Grimm (2011). In Red Riding Hood, a romantic horror film, the male characters may be regarded as satellites that cluster around the female protagonist, whereas in Grimm, through its generic fusion of police procedural and horror genres, the text plays upon strong established examples of traditional male roles alongside more nuanced and contemporary representations of masculinity. Our analysis explores themes of transformation and heteronormativity and the extent to which the texts challenge or conform to traditional tellings.

Dark (Netflix, 2017–2020) is a German-produced science fiction television series, created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. Set in the geographically ambiguous small town of Winden, Dark is an intricate time-travel saga primarily across different epochs. With its emphasis on uncanny natural settings and fairy tale tropes (such as lost children, mysterious travelers, magical devices, etc.), Dark can easily be interpreted as fairy tale. Central is young Jonas Kahnwald who loses his father and witnesses the mysterious disappearance of a local boy. These traumas lead to shocking truths about his heritage. Jonas is the hero (both victim and seeker, after Propp's definition) though his twisting quest brings him face-to-face with two older versions of himself: The middle-aged Jonas fulfils a mentor/donor role for the younger but is conflicted in his desires to both perpetuate and unpick ‘the knot’. Later, Jonas encounters cataclysmic extremist ‘Adam’, a mature version of himself who acts as antagonist. Thusly, Dark centres White male trauma, agency, and ego to reflect responses to historic cultural trauma (such as the notion of the ‘anti-Heimat’) whilst also critiquing traditional conceptions of masculinity through young Jonas's actions. This chapter maps the interplay and representation of ego and trauma. Through textual analysis and with reference to relevant cultural, psychological, and philosophical scholarship, my exploration follows the threads of what Dark communicates about contemporary German masculinity in the face of trauma and how it reflects Western, White cultural thinking about the self.

The pretty girl with raven hair sings as she works and dreams of wonderful days ahead. The girl's dream is deferred by the wickedly jealous stepmother who sends a trusted guard to commit murder. The man, overwhelmed by the girl's inherent goodness is unable to complete his deed, and warns her to run away and never return. She travels deep into the woods and is helped by friendly forest creatures with big eyes. They take her to a small cottage and she falls asleep, to be awakened by several small men who find it in their hearts to allow her to remain. The miniature men leave for work the next day, warning the girl of the stepmother and her trickery. The nasty woman disguises herself and easily convinces the girl to take a bite of the religiously symbolic apple, after which the girl is induced into a coma. The small men return, chase after the horrible stepmother and cause her to fall to her death, after which they do not bury the beauty-girl, but instead leave her ensconced in a glass tomb for all to see. The gallant prince finally arrives and kisses her, true love breaking the apple's spell and allowing the girl to ride away on the horse with the true hero, leaving behind the woodland creatures and small men forever. Sunlight beaming, girl beaming, small men and creatures beaming. All is right with the world.

Some fairy tale characters have transcended their original fairy tale genre and their influence can be perceived in other fictional genres. One illustration of this is the character of Blue Beard. This story, written by Charles Perrault, was first published in 1697 (Hermansson, 2010, p. 2). It moved through several themes or topics from anxiety to money to the right of the husband and wives (Warner, 2014, p. 82). In Perrault's story, Blue Beard is conceived as a serial killer and a jealous husband. ‘Whatever the medium, whatever the date: in opera, cartoon, X-rated film or graphic novel, he is an archetypal serial murderer, terrifying and yet alluring’ (2015, p. 76).

The influence of this character and examples that carry, at the very least, remnants of Blue Beard can be clearly identified in several contemporary narratives. In the BBC television series The Fall (Cubitt, 2013), Jamie Dornan portrays a serial killer named Paul Spector. Alternatively known as the Belfast Strangler, Spector, like Blue Beard, has a wife and children who are unaware of his murderous spree. Another example of the attempted enforcement of extreme patriarchy can be seen in Cult, the seventh season of Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story anthology series. The season is dedicated to the 2016 US election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (Raddish, 2017). In this fictional narrative Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) symbolises toxic masculinity and models patriarchal archetypes to create a cult and become a senator.

Through a contextual post-structuralist analysis of the aforementioned characters, this chapter intends to examine the representation and evolution of male character under the umbrella of the fairy tale ‘man’.

Using a dialogic approach to narrative analysis through the lens of fairytale, this paper explores the shared construction of corporate environmental stories. The analysis provided aims to reveal the narrative messaging which is implicit in corporate reporting, to contrast corporate and stakeholder narratives and to bring attention to the ubiquity of storytelling in corporate communications.

This paper examines a series of events in which a single case company plays the central role. The environmental section of the case company's sustainability report is examined through the lens of fairytale analysis. Next, two counter accounts are constructed which foreground multiple stakeholder accounts and retold as fairytales.

The dialogic nature of accounts plays a critical role in how stakeholders understand the environmental impacts of a company. Storytelling mechanisms have been used to shape the perspective and sympathies of the report reader in favour of the company. We use these same mechanisms to create two collective counter accounts which display different sympathies.

This research reveals how the narrative nature of corporate reports may be used to fabricate a particular perspective through storytelling. By doing so, it challenges the authority of the version of events provided by the company and gives voice to collective counter accounts which are shared by and can be disseminated to other stakeholders.

This paper provides a unique perspective to understanding corporate environmental reporting and the stories shared by and with external stakeholders by drawing from a novel link between fairytale, storytelling and counter accounting.

The breadth of research and study on the topic of fairy tales is rich and abundant. However, there exists a gap in the research of the genre where it pertains to the meticulous study of male fairy tale.

The character Hook has enjoyed some status in film including the notable portrayal by Dustin Hoffman in the 1991 film (Spielberg, 1991), this character relied heavily on traditional fairy tale tropes and depicted little in the way of character evolution or progression. Nevertheless, a more progressive and complex version of Hook was depicted in the Once Upon A Time series (2011–2018). This version of the character enjoys not only an extended and complex narrative journey but comprises several layers of nuanced character construction that implores a contemporary exploration thereof.

While Vladimir Propp's dramatis personae stands as, likely, the most prominent model for the study of fairy tales, its comprehensiveness can be called into question when applied to contemporary fairy tale characters. For example, whereas previously the female fairy tale character was confined to the role of damsel in distress, contemporary versions display substantial development in this area. And as illustrated through the complexity of Once Upon A Time's Captain Hook this is not, in contemporary times, confined only to the female character. Consequently, this chapter adapts the Looking Glass paradigm and utilises what the author has termed the Looking Glass Masculinity Matrix as an evaluative tool to unpack the contemporary representation, in line with current societal ideals and/or values.

In recent years, there has been no shortage of research on the enormous pressure women face to have children. Similarly, the pressures put on mothers and the impossibility for women to live up to the ideal standards of motherhood are increasingly the subject of scrutiny. However, a shadowy figure lurks in the cultural imagination: the woman who refuses to have a child, or worse, hates the children she has. If narratives of maternal distress, anxiety and regret represent ‘the last taboo’, then narratives of willful rejection exist even outside of those boundaries.

This chapter explores narratives of women who are villainised for their negative relationships to motherhood and mothering, in canonical texts of the Western Anglosphere culture. Drawing examples from the Bible, from Charles Dickens, and from the Disney corporation, Çakmak and Rumson demonstrate the variations and ongoing poignancy of the narrative that women who reject or fail to have children are evil.