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In 2014, Japan ratified the CRPD, which spurred to the development of domestic laws; however, the education section of the Convention does not clarify how to educate children with disabilities in inclusive education. Thus, while the global inclusive education goal advocated by UNESCO and other bodies concerns education for all, inclusive education in Japan is seen as education for children with disabilities, and the philosophies and practices are very different. Therefore, this chapter introduces the policies and current practices of inclusive education in Japan and discusses the possibilities for school education reform from the perspective of real inclusive education.

The purpose of this paper is to: consider the extent to which recent research in industrial and organizational (I&O) psychology has examined the symbiotic relations between organizations and society; review the societal changes affecting organizations and individuals; and offer directions for future research.

Two researchers reviewed and categorized topics published in the key journals in the field during the period 2008‐2010 including: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP), Personnel Psychology (PPsy), Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (OBHDP), and the Journal of Managerial Psychology (JMP). There was considerable agreement on the categorization of topics in the journals.

The results of the review revealed that the majority of topics published in these journals focused on enhancing organizational effectiveness, and relatively few studies concentrated on social issues. In particular, 21 percent of articles in JAP and PPsy, 12 percent of articles in OBHDP, and 56 percent of articles in JMP emphasized social issues.

Only four journals in the field were reviewed, and a more thorough review of research in all journals is needed.

The review has implications for understanding the impact of societal changes on organizations and individuals, and for developing new human resource policies and practices.

The review indicated that more research is needed on social issues.

The paper adds unique value to the literature because it stresses the symbiotic relation between organizations, and society, highlights the importance of social issues, and offers directions for future research.

In this paper, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between organization and society. They argue that the proliferation of organization in modernity has not yet been properly understood in light of the absence of organization in premodern times. The authors therefore ask: Why do organizations proliferate? Why do they proliferate in such manifold organizational forms? And how can these heterogeneous forms nevertheless be related to a common problem to which organizations provide a solution? A comparative historical analysis based on the theory of social systems reveals that organizations fill a gap which the decline of morality as an integrative success medium created.

The paper develops a conceptual framework focusing on the theory of media within Luhmann’s theory of social systems as a point of departure. The authors discuss the concept of “interpenetration” to assess the relation between morality and organization. They raise several follow-up questions for future empirical research, most prominently pertaining to the relationship between organization and digitalization.

The main finding is that morality can be conceptualized as a specific success medium (alongside religion and symbolically generalized communication media) which used to structure premodern societies by means of social and interhuman interpenetration at once. Modern society instead employs two differentiated forms of interpenetration: Social interpretation through organizations and interhuman interpenetration through love relationships. These centripetal counterforces help to mediate the centrifugal forces unleashed by the full development of modern success media. Modern society critically depends on the proliferation of organizations.

This paper examines the relationship between morality and organization not from the perspective of interaction or organization, but from the perspective of society. This approach provides novel insights in that it opens up promising avenues of comparison between organization and other social forms. Understanding the distinctively modern “success story” of organization as a social form makes it possible to ask about corresponding potentials and limitations, but also alternative possibilities. In doing so, the authors depart from most studies of organizations grounded in social systems theory as the authors primarily focus on Luhmann’s theory of media (as opposed to the theory of differentiation).

As comparativists of education are well aware, over the second half of the 20th century there was a dramatic increase in the pace of educational expansion around the world. This revolution has made the world a schooled place both in terms of enrollment rates and increased average total years in schooling. What has been particularly noticeable is the degree to which governments in all types of nations have come to see that education plays a central role in the future development of the nation's human capital, and in turn governments have become the main providers of schooling. This alone is a significant shift from anything ever seen before the 20th century. Further this remarkable expansion of education has fostered notable homogeneity of goals, aims, and basic organizational forms of elementary and secondary schooling and, more recently, higher education.

Taking an organizational perspective, this paper aims to understand how organizations respond to such strong and concurrent societal effects, and to answer the question, “How should researchers conceptualize the symbiotic relationship between society and business during a catastrophic societal event?”

The authors highlight through numerous examples, the impact of COVID-19 on society is well-evidenced in the research. They also draw on such evidence of the effects of catastrophic societal events like COVID-19 to support the appropriateness of this conceptualization.

The authors found that organizations that use both short- and long-term activities concurrently are better able to tackle the concurrent short- and long-term effects of catastrophic events like COVID-19.

The authors use ambidexterity theory, supported by evidence derived from organizational responses to COVID-19, to offer a new and more comprehensive conceptualization that frames the concurrent and interrelated short-term and long-term organizational response to a catastrophic societal event. Further, they highlight the importance of studying such organizational responses in the context of the organization’s referent groups.

The Government of India dramatically altered the dynamic between business and society when it introduced the Companies Act 2013, which mandated firms to expend at least 2 per cent of average net profits on corporate responsibility (CR) programmes. This reconfiguration of social value creation may serve as a template for a closer and participatory relationship between the private sector and government in emerging economies and beyond. This paper aims to analyse how CR expectations have taken shape in the print media in India. Specifically, the authors ask the following: What are the dimensions of CR expectations in mainstream Indian newspapers?, and Why, according to the newspaper narratives, do corporations have these responsibilities?

In this qualitative study, the authors randomly selected and analysed 50 per cent (n = 442) of the newspaper articles that dealt explicitly with CR. The articles appeared in the top five Indian English-language newspapers and the top two Hindi-language newspapers between 1 January and 31 December 2015. Using Content Configuration Analysis (CCA), the authors developed a typology of CR expectations and analysed their associated justifications. Finally, they used CCA to analyse how this typology and its justifications connect to the two main stakeholders: the business sector and government.

The analyses reveal how the introduction of the Companies Act 2013 had a major impact on CR expectations by explicitly and legally casting the business sector as the engine of social development. The authors were able to describe how contextual and cultural dimensions frame evolving interests and societal demands towards corporations, and how difficult it may be for corporations to fulfil CR expectations that are well beyond their core business and that reach domains usually pertaining to government.

This study contributes an empirical exploration of media discourse on contemporary CR expectations in India and its associated notions of social value creation, and how these are shaped by various cultural and contextual influences. The authors discuss how this novel approach to CR modifies the relations between business and society, and they reflect on the opportunities and limits of this model for other emerging economies, which struggle to formulate a symbiotic relationship between business and society.

Achieving natural interactions by means of vision and speech between humans and robots is one of the major goals that many researchers are working on. This paper aims to describe a gesture‐based human‐robot interaction (HRI) system using a knowledge‐based software platform.

A frame‐based knowledge model is defined for the gesture interpretation and HRI. In this knowledge model, necessary frames are defined for the known users, robots, poses, gestures and robot behaviors. First, the system identifies the user using the eigenface method. Then, face and hand poses are segmented from the camera frame buffer using the person's specific skin color information and classified by the subspace method.

The system is capable of recognizing static gestures comprised of the face and hand poses, and dynamic gestures of face in motion. The system combines computer vision and knowledge‐based approaches in order to improve the adaptability to different people.

Provides information on an experimental HRI system that has been implemented in the frame‐based software platform for agent and knowledge management using the AIBO entertainment robot, and this has been demonstrated to be useful and efficient within a limited situation.

The phenomenon of globalization is a popular and controversial issue that has many facets. According to Lee and Vivarelli 2006), most conversations around globalization tend to describe it in terms of increase in trade and liberalization policies and reduction in transportation costs and technology transfer. Heine and Thakur (2011) opine on globalization as follows:

Many regard globalization as both a desirable and an irreversible engine of commerce that will underpin growing prosperity and a higher standard of living throughout the world. Others recoil from it as the soft underbelly of corporate imperialism that plunders and profiteers on the basis of unrestrained consumerism. (p. 2)

Many regard globalization as both a desirable and an irreversible engine of commerce that will underpin growing prosperity and a higher standard of living throughout the world. Others recoil from it as the soft underbelly of corporate imperialism that plunders and profiteers on the basis of unrestrained consumerism. (p. 2)

The Brundtland Report (1987) was put together in response to agitations over such loses/discontents. This report gave birth to what unarguably is the most popular concept in sustainable development. The Report features the integration of the concerns about strands of development as experienced and as projected across divides, as well as concerns about their interrelationship, and effects on people and the environment. It seeks to reconcile the future with current developments. The recommendations of the report in the end materialized into the millennium development goals (MDGs) in January 2000, which in turn metamorphosed into the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in January 2016. The bulk of the SDGs are to be achieved in the global-south as countries within this categorization including Nigeria have more to do within their territories in order to ensure its actualization. One of the major challenges facing the SDGs in Nigeria is institutionalizing mobilization for the actualization of the goals. Against this backdrop, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) was launched to bring on board academic institutions, civil societies, non-governmental organizations, and businesses, and mobilize their activities into fewer but more efficient units.

This chapter contextually explores the purpose and roles of the SDSN in Nigeria, and conceptualizes how it will play out for both sustainable development and qualitative participation in globalization. It identified and explored the interface between the three variables of universities: cooperativism, cooperatives, cooperation, and solidarity economics; communities as integral to the actualization of the SDGs; and proportionate participation in globalization. Deficiencies were identified, and remedial actions proffered.