Cultural factors, in both the narrow sense of different national, racial, and ethnic groups, and in the broader sense of different groups of any type, play major roles in individual and group decisions. Written by an international, interdisciplinary group of experts, Cultural Factors in Systems Design: Decision Making and Action explores innovations in the understanding of how cultural differences influence decision making and action. Reflecting the diverse interests and viewpoints that characterize the current state of decision making and cultural research, the chapter authors represent a variety of disciplines and specialize in areas ranging from basic decision processes of individuals, to decisions made in teams and large organizations, to cultural influences on behavior. Balancing theoretical and practical perspectives, the book explores why the best laid plans go awry, examining conditions that can yield unanticipated behaviors from complex, adaptive sociotechnical systems. It highlights the different ways in which East Asians and Westerners make decisions and explores how to model and investigate cultural influences in interpersonal interactions, social judgment, and decision making. The book also reviews decision field theory and examines its implications for cross cultural decision making. With increasing globalization of organizations and interactions among people from various cultures, a better understanding of how cultural factors influence decision making and action is a necessity. Much is known about decision processes, culture and cognition, design of products and interfaces for human interaction with machines and organizational processes, however this knowledge is dispersed across several disciplines and research areas. Presenting a range of current research and new ideas, this volume brings together previously scattered research and explores how to apply it when designing systems that will be used by individuals of varied backgrounds.

With rapidly rising healthcare costs directly impacting the economy and quality of life, resolving improvement challenges in areas such as safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, and equity has become paramount. Using a system engineering perspective, Handbook of Healthcare Delivery Systems offers theoretical foundations, methodologies, and case studies in each main sector of the system. It explores how system engineering methodologies and their applications in designing, evaluating, and optimizing the operations of the healthcare system could improve patient outcomes and cost effectiveness. The book presents an overview of current challenges in the healthcare system and the potential impact of system engineering. It describes an integrated framework for the delivery system and the tools and methodologies used for performance assessment and process improvement with examples of lean concept, evidence-based practice and risk assessment. The book then reviews system engineering methodologies and technologies and their applications in healthcare. Moving on to coverage of the design, planning, control and management of healthcare systems, the book contains chapters on 12 services sectors: preventive care, telemedicine, transplant, pharmacy, ED/ICU, OR, decontamination, laboratory, emergency response, mental health, food and supplies, and information technology. It presents the state-of-the-art operations and examines the challenges in each service unit. While system engineering concepts have been broadly applied in healthcare systems, most improvements have focused on a specific segment or unit of the delivery system. Each unit has strong interactions with others and any significant improvement is more likely to be sustained over time by integrating the process and re-evaluating the system design from a holistic viewpoint. By providing an overview of individual operational sectors in the extremely complex healthcare system and introducing a wide array of engineering methods and tools, this handbook establishes the foundation to facilitate integrated system thinking to redesign the next generation healthcare system.

This book provides practical guidance and awareness for a growing body of knowledge developing across a variety of disciplines and many countries. This book is a celebration of the Gavriel Salvendy International Symposium (GSIS) and provides a survey of topics and emerging areas of interest in human-automation interaction. This book for the GSIS emphasizes main thematic areas: manufacturing, services and user experience. Main areas of coverage include Section A: Advanced Production Management and Production Control; Section B: Healthcare Automation; Section C: Measuring and Modeling Human Performance; Section D: Usability and User Experience; Section E: Safety Management and Occupational Ergonomics; Section F: Manufacturing and Services; Section G: Data and Probabilistic Information; Section H: Training and Collaboration Technologies. Contributions from especially early career researchers were featured as part of this (virtual) symposium and celebration. Gavriel Salvendy initiated the conferences that run annually as Human-Computer Interaction International and Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics International (AHFE), both within the Lecture Notes in Springer. The book is inclusive of human-computer interaction and human factors and ergonomics principles, yet it is intended to serve a much wider audience that has interest in automation and human modeling. The emerging need for human-automation interaction expertise has developed from an ever-growing availability and presence of automation in our everyday lives.