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With the development of the modern economy, vehicles are no longer a luxury for people, which greatly facilitate people’s daily life, but at the same time bring traffic congestion. How to relieve traffic congestion and improve its capacity is a hot research area. This paper aims to propose a new simulation framework for crowd transportations to ease traffic congestion.

This paper establishes related simulation models such as vehicles, traffic lights and advisers. Then the paper describes their relationships, gives their interaction mechanism and solidifies the above into a software implementation framework.

This paper proposes a simulation framework for crowd transportations.

In this framework, traffic lights are used as a control method to control the road network and road conditions are used as an Affecter to influence individual behavior. The vehicle passing rate is defined by the correlation between endowment and the start time of the traffic lights. In this framework, members are related, dynamically adjusted according to road conditions and dynamically optimized member decisions. The optimal path is dynamic and real-time adjustments are made for each step forward. It is different from the traditional optimal path in which there is only one fixed one and it is different from the macroscopic optimal path that does not exist.

Higher education should bring up the multifaceted development of human resources by promoting the knowledge-enabled population that will bring socio-economic mobility, peace and progress in society. Thus, the educational providers must undertake the duty to impart need-based higher education that makes people educated with a progressive, rational, analytical, and skilful mind. Hence, there is an urgent need to address some basic challenges of higher education such as required educational avenues or institutional set up against the demand of the population, achievements in global learning, providing room for equal access to learning, research on cost benefit analysis, educational innovations and partnership, use of educational technology, quality assurance mechanism, need for adequate funds for the expansion of higher education, and so on. Once these challenges are addressed, transformation of the society can be a reality, and Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system is one of the most viable ways for transforming a country like India. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

For this study, descriptive research methodology has been used, and analysis has been done based on the data extracted from the secondary sources of information such as Census of India 2011; India Human Development Report 2011; Human Development Report 2014, 2015; Economic Survey 2015-2016; NFHS-I, II, III and IV; Report of 11th Five Years Plan; 12th FYP; Annual Report 2015-16, MHRD; Annual Report of NSS, 2016, etc.

ODL can be raised as an alternative way for making education accessible and for providing scope for skill-based education at a minimum cost. In fact, ODL, in particular, can play a significant role in transforming and empowering the vibrant adult population of a country like India into productive human resources by providing need-based training and equipping them with need-based skills, which are necessary for maintaining a decent standard of living.

Through this paper, it could be realised how ODL provides the opportunity of education to a large section of people in the society irrespective of sex and age, and how ODL has made the people capable with basic and essential kills which are necessary for maintaining a decent standard of living.

ODL could be a most viable option to mobilise the higher education system in India. This paper helps to contextualise ODL in empowering and transforming society, and the finding, and discussions have been made with reference to the various initiatives taken in the field of skill-based education through ODL in a country like India.

The purpose of this paper is to present the use of a free code computational tool, Patent2net, in the search of patents for the implementation of distance learning aimed at Continuing Medical Education.

This technical report is based on the extraction, organization and availability, in the format of graphs and dynamic tables, and also based on information in other patents on the subject, made available in the Espacenet database.

As a result, it was possible to identify a Chinese patent, free for reproduction in Brazil, which describes an e-learning system that simulates 3D scenarios for training nursing teams.

The paper has used one unique patent database, but containing more than 100m documents.

The selected patent can contribute to the improvement of care and behavioral techniques of the health professionals.

The training of health professionals can improve the public and supplementary health systems.

This is the first paper in that de technometric analisys of patents was used to solve a problem regarding the training of health professionals.

COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be enacted in the future of the sustainable workplace. The objective of the study is to examine the patterns of management control change in the Big 4 accounting firms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design, the authors draw on 42 interviews with directors and associates in the Big 4 professional services firms.

The findings reveal two pathways of management control change including alignment and displacement. The authors found that relatively minor adaptions to action and result controls were relied upon to respond to substantial cultural and personnel control changes.

The contributions are threefold: the authors take a temporal perspective to (1) unpack the changes to management control arrangements; (2) theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways encompassing pace, scope and longevity of management control change and (3) contextualise management control arrangements in a hybrid work setting.

1. COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.

2. Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.

3. The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.

4. Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.

5. The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.

COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.

Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.

The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.

Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.

The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.

The aim of our research is to give empirical and theoretical solutions to some criticalities of the original International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRF). Indeed, it takes as value creation only the increase of the capitals triggered by business activities, overlooking the fulfilment of the institutional mission that is the actual value creation lever.

The present paper introduces a case study aimed at implementing the IIRF in an Italian non-profit healthcare organisation. The research is based on theory building from cases, action research and interventionist approach. IIRF was adopted because of its claimed ability to support the communication process to stakeholders and the control of value creation. However, IIRF shows several weaknesses.

An adjusted version of IIRF is suggested, highlighting the role played by IC in the organisational business model and in the value creation process. The adjusted seems able to foster awareness of the role IC in value creation in healthcare organisations.

In this paper no one of the singles pieces of the adjusted framework is innovative by itself, but jointly they give raise to an innovative solution, able to address the disclosing and managerial needs of the examined organisation. The single case study permits to us to test the weaknesses of the IIRF claimed in the literature, to suggest some adjustments to the original framework and to validate their effectiveness. Thanks to the single case study we then built theoretical constructs developing theory inductively; now the suggested framework can be further tested and validated in other organisations.

The paper introduces an innovative approach to IC reporting and disclosure in healthcare organisations. This is relevant not only for external communication but also for internal aims supporting managers in decision and actions.

Under the dual pressure of resources and environment, many countries have focused on the role of railways in promoting low-carbon development of integrated transportation and of even the whole society. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive study on methods to improve railway energy efficiency in other national railways and achievements made by China’s railways in the past practice, and then to propose ways in which in the future China’s railways could rationally select the path of improving energy efficiency regarding the needs of the nation's ever-shifting development and carry out the re-engineering for mechanism innovation in energy conservation and emission reduction process.

This paper first studies other national railways that have tried to promote the improvement of railway energy efficiency by the ways of technology, management and structural reconstruction to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Among them, the effect of structural energy conservation and emission reduction has become more prominent. It has become the main energy conservation and emission reduction measure adopted by foreign railway sectors. The practice of energy conservation and emission reduction of railways in various countries has tended to shift from a technical level to a structural one.

Key aspects in improving energy efficiency include re-optimization of energy structure, re-innovation of energy-saving technologies and optimization of transportation organization. Path selection includes continuing to promote electrified railway construction, increasing the use of new and renewable energy sources, and promoting the reform of railway transportation organizations.

This paper provides further challenges and research directions in the proposed area and has referential value for the methodologies, approaches for practice in a Chinese context. To achieve the expected goals, relevant supporting policies and measures need to be formulated, including actively guiding integrated transportation toward railway-oriented development, promoting innovation in energy-saving and emission reduction mechanisms and strengthening policy incentives, focusing on improving the energy efficiency of railways through market behavior. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to new phenomena in the railway industry for track and analysis.

The authors seek to understand the process of digital servitization as a shift of manufacturing companies from the provision of standard products and services to smart solutions. Specifically, the authors focus on changes in the business model (i.e. the value proposition, the value delivery system and the value capture mechanism) for digital servitization.

The authors examine a Chinese air conditioner manufacturer, Gree, who became the global leader with their smart solutions. These solutions included performance-based contracts underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI)-powered air conditioners that automatically adjust to environmental changes and are capable of remote monitoring and servicing thanks to its Internet of things (IoT) technology.

To successfully offer smart solution value propositions, a manufacturer needs an ecosystem value delivery system composed of suppliers, distributors, partners and customers. Once the ecosystem relationships are well aligned, the manufacturer gains value with multiple value capture mechanisms (i.e. efficiency, accountability, shared customer value and novelty). To arrive at this point, a manufacturer has to pass through different stages that are characterized by both discontinuous and continuous interplay between business models and digital technologies. At the beginning of each stage, new value propositions and value delivery systems are first discontinuously created and then enabled with digital technology. As a result, new value capture mechanisms are activated. Meanwhile, the elements of the existing business model are continuously improved.

By combining process-perspective and business-model lenses, the authors offer nuanced insights into how digital servitization unfolds.

Executives can obtain insights into the business model elements, they need to change over the course of digital servitization and how to manage the process.

A longitudinal case study of a traditional manufacturer that has achieved stellar success through digital servitization business models development.