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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature of blended learning by practically implementing best practices in employee training.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, an organization had modified its training procedures over the course of three years to improve employee and organizational outcomes. Employee candidates who were onboarded into sales positions during the years 2019–2021 were given the opportunity to learn the content in an online format and subsequently evaluated prior to their in-person training and final evaluation to provide them with a self-paced blended learning experience. Both evaluation scores, along with the length it took to complete the trainings, were used to determine the trainings effectiveness and efficiency respectively.

The findings for the study showed that the organization was successfully able to improve upon the efficiency of the training by reducing training length and the effectiveness by improving employee outcomes.

The study’s design was limited to the probation process, which resulted in issues drawing conclusions for employee outcomes that were relevant to their long-term organizational success. This emphasizes the importance of comprehensive investigations for future practical studies.

The findings allow for the improvement of blended learning models within real-world organizational contexts that provide organizations with the opportunity to improve employee outcomes while reducing time costs.

This study provides data from applied blended learning procedures that were validated using empirical findings, which contributes to the practicality of blended learning in workplace training.

This study aims to examine how incorporating gamification elements into an offline training program influences learner engagement and learning outcomes in a non-academic, organizational setting.

A randomized pretest–posttest control group experiment was designed to investigate participants’ levels of affective, behavioral and cognitive engagement (learner engagement), as well as their scores on a knowledge and skills assessment (learning outcomes) under two training conditions – traditional instructional strategy (TI) and gamification instructional strategy (GL). Training content, which was the same in both groups, included disease-related information, diagnostic expertise and product operational assistance. Participants (N = 98) were medical sales representatives from a multinational company.

Participants in the treatment group had higher levels of learner engagement in comparison to those in the control group. Additionally, participants in the GL group had outperformed their counterparts in the control group on the knowledge and skills assessment.

This is one of the first studies demonstrating how incorporating gamification elements into corporate training can improve medical sales representatives' learner engagement and learning outcomes.

Domain integrals, known as volume potentials in 3D elasticity problems, exist in many boundary-type methods, such as the boundary element method (BEM) for inhomogeneous partial differential equations. The purpose of this paper is to develop an accurate and reliable technique to effectively evaluate the volume potentials in 3D elasticity problems.

An adaptive background cell-based domain integration method is proposed for treatment of volume potentials in 3D elasticity problems. The background cells are constructed from the information of the boundary elements based on an oct-tree structure, and the domain integrals are evaluated over the cells rather than volume elements. The cells that contain the boundary elements can be subdivided into smaller sub-cells adaptively according to the sizes and levels of the boundary elements. The fast multipole method (FMM) is further applied in the proposed method to reduce the time complexity of large-scale computation.

The method is a boundary-only discretization method, and it can be applied in the BEM easily. Much computational time is saved by coupling with the FMM. Numerical examples demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method..

Boundary elements are used to create adaptive background cells, and domain integrals are evaluated over the cells rather than volume elements. Large-scale computation is made possible by coupling with the FMM.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the temporary disbandment of a gang unit on collecting gang intelligence and arresting gang members in one of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Policing Areas.

An interrupted time series methodology (ARIMA) is utilised to examine 1,429 field interview cards and 1,174 arrests of gang members that occurred from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2011 within one police division.

Results indicated that the dismantling of the gang unit negatively impacted the collection of intelligence on gang members by officers, regardless of whether the officers were officially serving in the gang unit. Suppression efforts by gang unit officers also resulted in a sustained decline.

Given that many urban centres have specialised gang units, this study demonstrates how organisational turnover or disbandment of a gang unit negatively impacts a department’s ability to deal with local gang issues. Furthermore, these finding suggest that police organisations should consider such ramifications on intelligence-based policing activities.

The purpose of this paper is to discretely model rockfill materials considering the irregular shape of the particles and their crushability. The scientific goal was to investigate the influence of particle crushability and shape on the mechanical behavior of rockfill materials.

The method of generating irregular-shaped particles was based on the observation that most rockfill grains can be approximately circumscribed by an ellipsoid. Two shape descriptors were used to make the virtual particles closely replicate the geometric features of natural rockfill grains. The combined finite-discrete element method (FDEM) was used to numerically simulate a drained, tri-axial compression test. The particle assemblies were subjected to tri-axial compression under strain controlled conditions while a constant confining pressure was maintained.

The non-breakable particles showed a remarkable ability to dilate as a result of a higher inter-particle locking effect. Dilation forces the particles to move from a lower potential energy state to a higher potential energy state, which causes the micro-structure to become less stable, resulting in a dramatic decline in the angle of friction from the peak state to the residual state. In addition, the elongated particles enhance the interlocking effect, but breakage is also more likely to occur. The net effect of those two mechanisms controls the overall shearing resistance of rockfill materials.

After calibration using a few micro-parameters, the combined FDEM was able to reproduce the typical behavior of rockfill materials without requiring a description of the complex relationship that exists between constituents; this relationship must be described in continuum mechanics. The simulation results showed that this approach is predictive. The combined FDEM also provides an opportunity for a quantitative study of the micro-structure of granular materials, and this study will help us to better understand the mechanical characteristics of rockfill materials.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel combined finite-discrete element method (FDEM), based on the cohesive zone model, for simulating rockslide problems at the laboratory scale.

The combined FDEM is realized using ABAQUS/Explicit. The rock mass is represented as a collection of elastic bulk elements glued by cohesive elements with zero thickness. To reproduce the tensile and shear micro-fractures in rock material, the Mohr-Coulomb model with tension cut-off is employed as the damage initiation criterion of cohesive elements. Three simulated laboratory tests are considered to verify the capability of combined FDEM in reproducing the mechanical behavior of rock masses. Three slope models with different joint inclinations are taken to illustrate the application of the combined FDEM to rockslide simulation.

The results show that the joint inclination is an important factor for inducing the progressive failure behavior. With a low joint inclination, the slope failure process is observed to be a collapse mode. As the joint inclination becomes higher, the failure mode changes to sliding and the steady time of rock blocks is shortened. Moreover, the runout distance and post-failure slope angle decrease as the joint inclination increases.

These studies indicate that the combined FDEM performed within ABAQUS can simulate slope stability problems for research purposes and is useful for studying the slope failure mechanism comprehensively.

Rare earths are essential materials for many high-tech industries critical to both economic development and national defense. China, the world's dominant supplier of rare earths, has recently been imposing stricter controls over its production and export. The purpose of this paper is to examine the domestic roots of the changes in China's rare earth industry production and exports in its three-decade rise to the current global monopoly.

This paper adopts the historical institutionalism approach to analyze the trajectory of industry and trade development. The author analyzes data collected from government whitepapers and reputed scholarly and news sources.

This paper argues that the Chinese rare earth industry has gone through three periods of development, in which the state attempted to control the market and industry through reformulating rules and institutions to achieve state goals. Domestic state institutions, combined with macroeconomic environment and state governance strategy shaped the three-decade experience of rare earth industry and trade development in China.

This paper builds on existing findings about Chinese state regulations to provide a novel analytical framework to analyze the role of the state in industry and trade development in the rare earth industry. The focus on a single strategic industry seldom studied in the current literature also provides ample empirical value to further scholarly understanding about this industry.

The wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is a promising technology, but the parts are mostly manufactured on the plane and along the vertical direction. The purpose of this paper is to propose a cylindrical slicing and manufacturing method.

For revolved parts, e.g. blades of a propeller, instead of planes, a series of cylindrical surfaces intersect with the STL model of the part. The generated slicing layers lie on the cylindrical surface, and then these spatial contours are unfolded onto the plane by the use of the cylindrical coordinate system. A deposition system based on an NC machine is established to examine deposition paths. The temperature and stress of part of two deposition orders are analyzed using the finite element method.

The scan parallel path and contour offset path are not suitable to fabricate blades directly. The hybrid of two types of paths and the hybrid of skeleton and contour offset paths are capable of forming blades without gaps. Deposition symmetrically can decrease the deformation of the propeller.

The slicing algorithm is simply implemented and practicable for any parts. The recognition of gaps and supplementary skeleton path can guarantee the full deposition of contour offset paths.

The authors combine options logic with transaction cost economics to explain why firms maintain, divest or buy out their international joint ventures (IJVs). It is suggested that a decline in environmental risk and higher partner-related risk makes a firm more likely to acquire an IJV but less likely to divest an IJV. The study also investigates how IJV age moderates the effects of a decline in environmental risk and higher partner-related risk.

The study employs competing risks analyses to examine the drivers of different termination outcomes using a dataset consisting of 459 IJVs in the People's Republic of China, of which 110 were either acquired or divested by their foreign parent.

The study finds that changes in environmental risk and partner-related risk affect how firms terminate their IJVs in the People's Republic of China. Specifically, the authors find that the effect of exogenous and endogenous risk are more pronounced for the acquisition of IJVs than for the divestment of IJVs.

The study contributes to international marketing research by complementing options logic with transaction cost economics to provide a theoretical explanation of the different ways in which IJVs in the People's Republic of China are terminated.

IJVs continue to be an important yet often unstable method to serve international markets. Our findings increase managers' awareness of the effect that two important sources of risk may have on the termination of IJVs in the People's Republic of China.

The study provides novel insights into the effect that changes in exogenous and endogenous risk have on a firm's choice of termination mode drawing on novel data on the different ways in which foreign firms have terminated their IJVs in the Peoples' Republic of China.