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Given the evolution that knowledge management (KM) has undergone since the advent of the digital transition, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate how KM processes have changed as a result of agile organisations’ adoption of digital technologies.

Years have passed since the onset of the fourth industrial revolution, and the technologies unique to this revolution have permeated every organisation to varying degrees. Whether organisations have been at the forefront of technological innovation or have had to adapt to much more advanced digitised processes, they have had to change how they manage operations internally and with the remainder of the supply chain they serve. These changes have been much more significant for agile organisations, which rely heavily on digital systems and have strong supplier and customer interactions. Due to the large amount of data generated, these organisations are referred to as knowledge-intensive businesses, and as a result, their KM processes are of the utmost importance. For this reason, a multiple case study with a grounded theory approach has been implemented to carry out a field analysis.

The results show that Industry 4.0 technological advances can be included in the scientific debate on KM and agile innovation, given the effects that such technologies have on organisations.

In today’s increasingly connected world, these findings have the potential to generate significant economic value by improving coordination and collaboration in KM processes.

In the last few decades, tourism has become one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world, with an increasing economic, social and environmental role. It has been recognised as a strategic driver, able not only to heighten economic growth, employment and enhancement of cultural values, diversity and heritage, but also to help countries transition towards more inclusive and resilient economies. In this framework, slow tourism has been playing an important role, compliant with the universal 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Its different forms – such as eco-tourism, rural and village tourism, as well as religious routes – can improve social inclusiveness, poverty reduction and environmental protection while empowering host communities, generating trade opportunities and fostering peace and intercultural understanding.

The pilgrimage on religious routes in particular has been showing a renewed potential. This ancient practice, largely rooted in many confessions as an expression of a mainly religious experience has been gaining new values for both people and territories hosting destinations: its target groups of travellers have enlarged to those looking for spiritual holidays (individuals and groups) as well as well-being and integrated experiences combining religious sites, cultural heritage, landscape and nature, traditions and crafts, food, wine and local events (shared with local people to feel part of the local community). This form of tourism responds to the sustainability challenge as an opportunity for local development in depopulated areas, but still rich in history, nature, art and traditions.

On this basis, this chapter deals with eco-sustainable and religious tourist routes in Sicily (South Italy), focusing on: (1) their relevance in relation to emerging strategies and policies (i.e. cultural ecclesial parks, regional development plans, etc.) (2) and their aptitude to generate sustainable and innovative local development. In particular, it addresses the recent experiences in progress on the Itinerarium Rosaliae in Sicily as opportunities for sustainable and local development.

In recent decades there has been a tendency towards a “standardization” in the consumer habits of people living in countries with advanced economic development. This has been caused both by the change in the products available and in lifestyles and by the “power” acquired by modern distribution channels (large retail distribution). Apart from this development, however, there has been increasing interest, particularly in the last ten years, in dietary, health and hygiene products characterized by high quality production and content, which may or may not be closely connected with the history and/or culture of the territory. In order, therefore, to understand the mechanisms that regulate the consumer market of organic produce better, a survey was carried out to define the use, purchase and sensitivity to the price of these products in relation to the preferences expressed by consumers as regards the benefits associated with the consumption.

This paper's aim is to study North African refugees admitted to Sicilian hospitals from Lampedusa by helicopter emergency service 118, from 1 January to 22 September 2011 when due to a violent uprising in the Refugee Centre, Lampedusa is no longer accepting refugees by order of the Ministry of Interior.

Those migrants who were in need of hospitalization were transferred to the Sicilian hospitals exclusively by the emergency helicopter service 118. All 203 patients were classified according to the admission diagnosis reported on medical records of 118 and data were aggregated according to: disease, sex and department in which hospitalization was required.

Women were admitted to hospital almost exclusively for obstetrics and gynecological problems, while men for trauma, severe dehydration, attempted suicide, infectious diseases (TB, airways distress, and scabies), seizures and metabolic diseases. Hospitalization rate was 20 times lower in African migrants than Italian population compared per age and sex, confirming “the healthy immigrant effect”.

The paper shows that identification of health problems requires a careful monitoring that has implications for diseases dissemination (i.e. TB, HIV) both for ill patients who arrive, either for prophylaxis of healthy migrants, pursuing a valid vaccination policy. Maximum use must be made of the moment of the arrival of migrants to get and disseminate health information.

This work is concerned with the use of binary decomposable lattice codes over the QAM Gaussian channel. First, we investigate the structure of such class of lattices: we derive consistency conditions for the binary codes appearing in their decomposition and express their nominal coding gain and some bounds for their error coefficient in terms of the parameters of the component codes. Then we describe a general multistage bounded‐distance decoding algorithm with low complexity and we evaluate its performance. Finally, we develop a design example and report the corresponding simulation results; as a reference some comparisons with standard TCM codes are also presented.

Higher efficiency and effectiveness of Research & Development phases can be attained using advanced statistical methodologies. In this work statistical methodologies are combined with a deterministic approach to engineering design. In order to show the potentiality of such integration, a simple but effective example is presented. It concerns the problem of optimising the performance of a paper helicopter. The desgin of this simple device is not new in quality engineering literature and has been mainly used for educational purposes. Taking full advantage of fundamental engineering knowledge, an aerodynamic model is originally formulated in order to describe the fligh of the helicopter. Screening experiments were necessary to get first estimates of model parameters. Subsquently, deterministic evaluations based on this model were necessary to set up further experimental phases needed to search for a better design. Thanks to this integration of statistical and deterministic phases, a significant performance improvement is obtained. Moreover, the engineering knowledge turns out to be developed since an explanation of the “why” of better performances, although approximate, is achieved. The final design solution is robust in a broader sense, being both validated by experimental evidence and closely examined by engineering knoweldge.

In the traditional use of conjoint analysis, in order to evaluate the relative importance of several elements composing a service, interviewed customers are asked to express their judgement about different scenarios (specific combinations of elements). In order to reduce the number of possible scenarios, design of experiments methodology is usually exploited. Previous experiences show that, even a limited number of proposed scenarios cause difficulty in answering for the interviewed customer if the scenarios differ for elements of very low interest to him/her. Consequently, a high rate of abandon of the interview has been observed. In this study it is assumed that a service can be decomposed in several improvable elements and/or enriched with new “optionals”. In both cases, what under study is assumed to be a set of dichotomous attributes. For each of these attributes, its marginal contribution to customer satisfaction has to be modelled and estimated. To obtain the required information, an opportune questionnaire is proposed to a sample of interviewed customers. An interviewing procedure consisting in a customer driven design of scenarios is followed, starting from the full‐optional scenario and eliminating one by one the less satisfying elements. for each interviewed customer, a ranking of attributes is so obtained. Then, by asking the interviewed customer to evaluate on a metric scale the scenarios he previously selected, a rating of attributes can also be obtained. A case study conducted in collaboration with a public transportation company is presented. Contrarily to previous experiences, the abandon rate proved extremely reduced.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether different patterns of workplace attachment exist and to explore the relations between adult attachment styles and the level of workplace attachment.

Participants were 351 Italian employees who completed a questionnaire composed of the Workplace Attachment Scale and the Relationship Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using correspondence analysis.

The results showed that high scores on workplace attachment correlated significantly with secure attachment style, while low scores correlated with insecure attachment styles. These results shed light on different workplace attachment styles.

The limitation in this study mostly concern the use of self-reporting instruments to measure the participants’ attachment style, since they may be susceptible to distortions. However, the distribution of attachment styles in this sample is similar to the worldwide distribution, which supports the authors’ choice.

To the extent that it is possible to identify a specific workplace attachment style, it should also be possible to change some of the human resource management practices inducing employees to develop a workplace secure attachment style.

Researchers tended to ignore the extension of the adult attachment behavioral system to examine core environmental relationships. The present study, applying attachment theory to workplace attachment, provides theoretical support that the bonds that an individual forms with workplace can be classified as attachment bonds.

This paper aims to describe an integrated hardware/software system based on evolutionary robotics and its application in an edutainment context.

The system is based on a wide variety of artificial life techniques (artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, user‐guided evolutionary design and evolutionary robotics). A user without any computer programming skill can determine the robot's behavior in two different ways: artificial breeding or artificial evolution. Breedbot has been used as a didactic tool in teaching evolutionary biology and as a “futuristic” toy by several science centers. The digital side of Breedbot can be downloaded on the web site: www.isl.unina.it/breedbot Findings – The results in this pilot study suggest that using Breedbot in an educational context can be useful to improve learning in biology.

As this is a pilot study, one limitation is the small sample considered. The issue will be investigated further with a wider population and subject‐matter, which will also improve the Breedbot system.

These results suggest that tools like Breedbot could be introduced into biology curricula at schools.

The paper describes an original application in digital content and shows the importance of using such a tool in an Edutainment context. It is therefore interesting for teachers, vocational trainers and anyone involved in educational activities.