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Due to the global labor market challenges, international companies react and adjust fast to these circumstances by implementing digital solutions into all business processes. Organizational ambidexterity is seen as the response of digital transformation and it can be divided into structural, contextual, and sequential dimensions. In this context, organizations representing the smart industry will need employees with specific competencies which let them meet technological challenges.

This chapter aims to clarify the state of opinion on expectations towards, and preparedness for, the impact of Industry 4.0 on human resources management and the implementation of various types of ambidexterity in these companies. We have conducted interviews with key HR informants from manufacturing companies operating in Germany and Poland. We have found that Industry 4.0 has a significant impact on HR practices. In both international companies, various digital solutions in employee recruitment, development, and performance, have been implemented. There have also been mature examples in both companies of structural, contextual, and sequential ambidexterity.

Many factors may influence the training and development of middle-skill, low-skill, and disadvantaged workers. Within the United States and worldwide there are many middle-skilled, low-skilled, and disadvantaged workers whom training and development professionals must consider as organizations seek to expand their workforce and increase productivity using technology. Temporary agencies employ many middle-skilled, low-skilled, and disadvantaged workers; however, there is very little information regarding how effective these agencies are in developing these workers beyond the skill level with which they enter the agency.

This chapter discussed the implementation of the digital twin (DT) idea into construction. Through the adoption of DTs into construction practices, construction professionals have been able to project an identical virtual concept of sections of the project execution right from the onset. In the introduction and discussing of its origin, the DT was further assessed about its applications in construction beneficial in enhancing project delivery. Other sections like barriers, drivers and benefits of the DT in construction summarised what this chapter represents in terms of discussing the new involvement of digital tools in construction execution, management and sustainability.

A growing number of individuals with autism are graduating from high school and university to find a lack of reliable resources dedicated to assisting the transition from education to the world of work. This Generation A, with a population of 1.5 million people, will age into the workforce over the next decade. Despite federal-state programs, dedicated nonprofits, and highly publicized corporate hiring initiatives, the unemployment rate for individuals with autism remains above the national average. Corporations have started to recognize the untapped potential of the neurodivergent worker but struggled with sourcing talent and failed to develop practicable pipeline models across various industries that are open-sourced, easily replicated, scalable, and financially sustainable. A review of methods, programs, and paradigms that exist amid current statistics reveals the imperative for innovative ideas that can be executed by multiple stakeholders to affect both the work seekers and the job creators. A systems approach to developing talent pipelines is investigated as one possible solution as well as other new expeditions and collaborative, open-sourced concepts that hold promising statistics and anecdotal data about what could be the next iteration of workforce development in an increasingly neurodivergent world.

Spatial ability is essential for engineers’ professional performance. Several studies describe it as a skill that can be enhanced using new technologies. Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is proving very useful for training different skills and improving spatial perception. In this chapter, the authors firstly present some previous works that use VR to train students, mainly in the area of engineering studies, and which demonstrate that VR can improve some aspects of the spatial perception. This study took a group of engineering students who used VR technologies to carry out learning activities designed to improve their spatial perception, which was measured with a widely used spatial ability test. The results obtained confirm that the use of VR technologies can improve students’ spatial perception. This proposal is easily transferable to other educational contexts. On the one hand, it could be implemented to improve spatial ability in other engineering studies, and on the other hand, with simple adaptation, it could be used to enhance other skills.

Ruth V. Aguilera is an associate professor and a Fellow at the Center for Professional Responsibility for Business and Society at the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also holds courtesy appointments at the School of Labor and Employment Relations, the College of Law and the Department of Sociology at Illinois. She received MA and PhD degrees in Sociology from Harvard University. Her research interests fall at the intersection of economic sociology and international business, specifically in the fields of comparative corporate governance, foreign location choices and corporate social responsibility. She has published in the leading journals in International Business and Management. Dr. Aguilera currently serves as a member of an associate editor of Corporate Governance: International Review and is a member of the Editorial Boards of the following peer reviewed top tier journals: Academy of Management Perspectives, Global Strategy Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Management International Review, Organization Studies and Strategic Management Journal. She also serves in the board of IMDEA Social Sciences (Madrid) and CSR IMPACT Project (Brussels).

Over the past years, across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states, major investments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in schools have been made, and a shift towards a more technology-oriented curriculum is observable. However, evidence exists that literacy levels and mathematical skills of students who have computers and other ICT equipment/devices in their classrooms dropped. This highlights a challenge that the education systems worldwide have to address today, that is, how to use ICT in a classroom in a way that boosts the skills’ acquisition process rather than undermining it. The objective of this chapter is to explore this issue. The argument is structured as follows. First, existing technologies in the education system and their effects on society are addressed. Then research is presented concerning investments in technology by OECD countries and their implementations. Following the digital divide and other obstacles which surfaced due to technological advancements are discussed; lastly a pilot study of 62 students in OECD countries was conducted exploring any correlation between technology in classrooms, higher training and academic standing of students.

A growing body of literature exists on virtual (i.e., geographically dispersed) teams; however, few summaries of this knowledge are available. The purpose of this paper is to help fill this gap by reviewing empirical research that addresses the effectiveness of virtual versus traditional (i.e., co-located) teams. Based on the typical input-process-output model of team effectiveness, we classify almost 200 empirical studies on virtual teams according to key dimensions of the model, including tasks and group characteristics, contextual factors, and supervisory behaviors. We develop propositions to address neglected research areas regarding the differences between virtual and traditional teams. There is still much to learn about virtual teams and how the physical dispersion of team members affects team effectiveness. It is our hope that our review and propositions will guide future research efforts and will help human resource professionals realize the potential for distributed teams in their organizations.