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The number of companies using remote learning solutions to develop talent and skills has witnessed an upsurge in recent years. Thanks to Web 2.0 and other types of technology, classroom learning or “traditional distance learning” offers have undergone a major transformation. E‐learning has become an indispensable tool, especially for globally dispersed companies wishing to respond to modern day management and leadership challenges. The aim of this paper is to explore e‐learning within the context of global talent management.

The paper uses the experiences of Lafarge, an international industrial company specialising in four major products (cement, concrete, aggregates, and gypsum), as a case study.

Lafarge's initial experience with e‐learning solutions from provider CrossKnowledge has proved to be particularly efficient and effective. After the successful launch of 140 CrossKnowledge modules in four languages (Chinese, Spanish, English and French), which are currently used by 40,000 employees within the framework of a corporate university, Lafarge plans to develop Arabic and is currently working on a pilot of around ten modules with a view to developing more in the near future. Polish modules are available too. Additionally, the company is continuing to develop tailor‐made modules in‐house. For Lafarge, e‐learning is an ongoing project and the company intends to migrate towards its own “knowledge communities” offer, thereby departing from the formal learning offer in order to be able to manage and operate a more “informal learning” programme.

This ambitious venture has enabled Lafarge to create an equal skills base for managers in over 80 different countries all across the globe and ensure that the people responsible for running the operation abroad understand corporate strategy and managerial requirements in order to develop staff locally. This is a useful case study for leadership and management training and HR professionals operating within a global organisation.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The myth that some American colleges of higher education offer a degree in making hamburgers results probably from a failure to understand the difference between a “real” university and the corporate variety.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

Recent experiments show that feedback transmission can mitigate opportunistic behavior in repeated social dilemmas. Two nonexcludable explanations have been investigated: strategic signaling and nonmonetary sanctioning. This literature builds on the intuition that under both partner matching (where the same groups of players interact many times) and stranger matching (where groups change continuously), feedback may work as a nonmonetary sanctioning device, but only the former also allows for strategic signaling. Empirical evidence on the two explanations is mixed. Moreover, the usual design may give rise to confounding matching protocol effects.

My experiment provides a novel empirical testbed for different channels by which feedback – costless disapproval points – may affect behavior in a repeated public goods game. In particular, it is based on a random matching scheme that neutralizes the confounding effects of different matching protocols on behavior.

The transmission of feedback is found to foster prosocial behavior. The data favor the nonmonetary sanctioning explanation rather than the signaling hypothesis.

This study provides a novel set of evidence that (i) communication may mitigate selfishness in social dilemmas and (ii) the source of this phenomenon may be linked to the emotional reaction that communication evokes in humans.

This paper aims to improve the radial basis fuction mesh morphing method. During a shape optimization based on computational fluid dynamic (CFD) solvers, the mesh has to be changed. Two possible strategies are re-meshing or morphing. The morphing one is advantageous because it preserves the mesh connectivity, but it must be constrained.

RBF mesh deformation is one of the most robust and accurate morphing method. Using a greedy algorithm, the computational cost of the method is reduced. To evaluate the morphing performances, a rib shape optimization is performed using the NSGA-II algorithm coupled to kriging metamodels based on CFD. The morphing method is then compared to a re-meshing strategy.

The authors propose a method, based on Schur complement, to speed-up the greedy process. By using the information of the previous iteration, smaller linear systems are solved and time is saved. The optimization results highlight the interest of using a morphing-based metamodel regarding the resolution time and the accuracy of the interpolated solutions.

A new method based on Schur complement is addressed to speed-up the greedy algorithm and successfully applied to a shape optimization.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford: the names of these universities instantly conjure up images of the highest attainments of higher education. Of course, great universities also operate great university presses. So any reference book with the name of Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard in the title possesses immediate credibility and saleability. But it was not always so. Prior to the latter half of the nineteenth century the Oxford and the Cambridge University Presses were known to the public primarily as publishers of the Bible. Oxford broke into reference publishing, and along with it widespread public recognition, by means of its famous dictionaries, of which the pinnacle was the massive Oxford English Dictionary. The Cambridge University Press [hereafter referred to as CUP] took a different approach to publishing scholarly reference works by producing authoritative and encyclopedic histories. According to S.C. Roberts, a long‐time secretary to the Syndics of the CUP, “apart from the Bible, the first book that made the Press well known to the general public was the Cambridge Modern History.”

Multiphysical models are often useful for the design of electrical devices such as electrical machines. In this way, the modeling of thermal, magnetic and electrical phenomena by using an equivalent circuit approach is often used in sizing problems. The coupling of such models with other models is difficult to take into account, partly because it adds complexity to the process. The paper proposes an automatic modelling of thermal and magnetic aspects from an equivalent circuit approach, with its computation of gradients, using selectivity on the variables. Then, it discusses the coupling of various physical models, for the sizing by optimization algorithms. Sensibility analyses are discussed and the multiphysical approach is applied on a permanent magnet synchronous machine.

The paper allows one to describe thermal and magnetic models by equivalent circuits. Magnetic aspects are represented by reluctance networks and thermal aspects by thermal equivalent circuits. From circuit modelling and analytical equations, models are generated, coupled and translated into computational codes (Java, C), including the computation of their jacobians. To do so, model generators are used: CADES, Reluctool, Thermotool. The paper illustrates the modelling and automatic programming aspects with Thermotool. The generated codes are directly available for optimization algorithms. Then, the formulation of the coupling with other models is studied in the case of a multiphysical sizing by optimization of the Toyota PRIUS electrical motor.

A main specificity of the approach is the ability to easily deal with the selectivity of the inputs and outputs of the generated model according to the problem specifications, thus reducing drastically the size of the jacobian matrix and the computational complexity. Another specificity is the coupling of the models using analytical equations, possibly implicit equations.

At the present time, the multiphysical modeling is considered only for static phenomena. However, this limit is not important for numerous sizing applications.

The analytical approach with the selectivity gives fast models, well-adapted for optimization. The use of model generators allows robust programming of the models and their jacobians. The automatic calculation of the gradients allows the use of determinist algorithms, such as SQP, well adapted to deal with numerous constraints.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a problematic phenomenon that can occur when managing multi electrical sources systems by optimization.

The energy management problem is formulated as a linear optimisation problem. Two approaches are developed and applied to detect the possible existence of equivalents solutions. The first is based on Dulmage‐Mendelsohn (DM) decomposition. With this method the structure of the optimisation problem is analysed. The second approach is a numeric approach; the detection of equivalents solutions is made by the formulation of new optimisation problem and the objective function of this problem is to maximise the distance between two equivalents solutions.

The numeric approach is more efficient than the structural approach. In some cases, applying DM decomposition may not be sufficient to detect the risk of W effect. This is because DM decomposition does not take the value of variable's coefficient into consideration, which is important to determine the degrees of freedom in the set of variables.

Multi sources systems are widely used, especially in buildings where renewable energies have good potential application. The linear formulation of the management problem may induce an existence of equivalent command strategies. The detection approach presented in this paper shows that some solutions are better than others from an applicabability point of view. They will not exhaust rapidly the storage system. This approach can be implemented in virtual sources plant to avoid solutions with this so‐called W effect.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.