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In the last few decades, inclusion has captured the attention of corporate leaders and prominent researchers. Business organizations, as non-spontaneous social systems, are particularly prone to be non-inclusive venues due to diversity among organizational populations which consist of groups of coworkers who are usually not entitled to choose their colleagues. This paper aims to enrich the understanding of inclusion within organizations, investigating its social dimension (the extent to which individuals feel woven into the social fabric of their organization) and the occupational dimension (the extent to which organizational members are involved in critical organizational processes). Building on the different bodies of literature on diversity and inclusion, leadership, human resource management, and organizational culture, the present study develops a conceptual framework on the dynamics of inclusion at the individual-organization level, emphasizing the roles of leadership and human resource management practices in establishing an inclusive culture and the subsequent synergistic inclusion of diversity within the workplace.

In May 2021, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Gaza, killing 245 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 63 children. Several international actors energetically condemned Israel’s actions. The Union issued tepid statements in response to the crisis, ignoring the violence perpetrated by Israeli authorities. This article suggests that the EU’s silence does not sit well with its alleged ‘values’ but is consistent with the positions of the Member States and its established policy.

This article focuses on the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) case law about religious symbols (N=27) from 2001 to 2018, exploring the following questions: What discourses does the ECtHR employ in cases about religious symbols? How do ECtHR’s discourses about religious symbols evolve in time? The data is innovatively analyzed through critical discourse analysis and leads to two findings: first, the ECtHR tends to endorse ‘Christian secularism,’ considering Christian symbols as compatible with secularism but not Muslim symbols; second, ECtHR discourses occasionally become more favorable to Muslim applicants over time, but the evolution of case law is not linear.

Clinical deterioration of COVID-19 patients is still a challenging event to predict in the emergency department (ED). The present study developed an artificial neural network using textual and tabular data from ED electronic medical reports. Predicted outcomes were 30-day mortality and ICU admission. Consecutive patients between February 20 and May 5, 2020, from Humanitas Research Hospital and San Raffaele Hospital, in the Milan area, were included. COVID-19 patients were 1296. Textual predictors were patient history, physical exam, and radiological reports. Tabular predictors were age, creatinine, C-reactive protein, hemoglobin, and platelet count. Tabular-textual model performance indices were compared to a model implementing only tabular data. For 30-day mortality, the combined model yielded slightly better performances than the tabular model, with AUC 0.84 ± 0.02, F-1 score 0.56 ± 0.04 and an MCC 0.44 ± 0.04. Tabular model performance was: AUC 0.84 ± 0.02, F-1 score 0.55 ± 0.03 and MCC 0.43 ± 0.04. As for ICU admission, the combined model was not superior to the tabular one. The present data points to the effectiveness of a textual and tabular model for COVID-19 prognosis prediction. Also, it may support the ED physician in their decision-making process.

We develop various AI models to predict hospitalization on a large (over 110k) cohort of COVID-19 positive-tested US patients, sourced from March 2020 to February 2021. Models range from Random Forest to Neural Network (NN) and Time Convolutional NN, where combination of the data modalities (tabular and time dependent) are performed at different stages (early vs. model fusion). Despite high data unbalance, the models reach average precision 0.96-0.98 (0.75-0.85), recall 0.96-0.98 (0.74-0.85), and F1-score 0.97-0.98 (0.79-0.83) on the non-hospitalized (or hospitalized) class. Performances do not significantly drop even when selected lists of features are removed to study model adaptability to different scenarios. However, a systematic study of the SHAP feature importance values for the developed models in the different scenarios shows a large variability across models and use cases. This calls for even more complete studies on several explainability methods before their adoption in high-stakes scenarios.

The UK government envisaged a clean break from the Union but, under the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK’s legal position as a “third state” is ambiguous. Throughout the transition period, the UK is in many respects hardly distinguishable from an EU member state. After the transition period, the UK remains outside Union institutions, but applies core EU rules in respect of specific persons (EU citizens settled in the UK) or areas (Northern Ireland). Furthermore, UK authorities must apply these EU rules in light of EU principles and are, by and large, subject to the control of EU institutions, particularly the Court of Justice. Several aspects of the new legal status of the UK are a déjà vu, since the Withdrawal Agreement is relatively similar to “integration-oriented agreements”, such as Association Agreements. To be sure, this similitude is imperfect, as the degree of integration of the United Kingdom varies considerably, depending on the subject matter, the persons and regions concerned, and/or the moment when the law is applied. The UK’s legal position, therefore, remains complex and contradictory: as it was the least integrated member of the Union, it is now a very integrated third state.

Il recesso del Regno unito dall’Unione europea ha sollevato numerose questioni di diritto costituzionale dell’UE. Il fondamento giuridico dell’Accordo di recesso, in particolare, è stato ampiamente dibattuto in dottrina. Minore attenzione sembra essere stata dedicata al fondamento giuridico del successivo Accordo sugli scambi commerciali e la cooperazione (Trade and Cooperation Agreement, TCA), che regola commercio e cooperazione in materia penale tra UE e Regno unito dopo la Brexit. La scelta di concludere il TCA come accordo EU-only fondato sull’art. 217 TFUE solleva due questioni, che sono oggetto del presente contributo. Da un lato, la delimitazione delle competenze dell’Unione: ci si può chiedere se l’Unione disponesse delle competenze necessarie a concludere il TCA e se, disponendone in astratto, potesse esercitarle in concreto. Dall’altro lato, il conflitto fra diverse basi giuridiche: utilizzando il solo art. 217 TFUE come base giuridica del TCA, il Consiglio potrebbe aver compromesso l’applicazione delle procedure previste dal diritto primario per quanto riguarda gli opt out di Irlanda e Danimarca.

Questo capitolo mira a valutare se, e fino a che punto, la solidarietà abbia trovato concretizzazione nella risposta dell’Unione europea e dei suoi Stati membri durante l’emergenza da COVID-19, concentrandosi particolarmente sulla risposta all’emergenza in Italia (in quanto Stato membro maggiormente colpito, almeno in una fase iniziale). Lo studio si sviluppa in due parti. Nella prima ci si concentra sulla cooperazione tra Stati membri nel contesto della risposta europea all’epidemia. Si presenta dapprima la richiesta di assistenza inoltrata dall’Italia attraverso il Meccanismo unionale di protezione civile e si analizzano poi le risposte date dagli altri Stati membri. Questi, da un lato, si sono rifiutati di fornire assistenza per quasi un mese, in modo lecito ma poco solidale. E, dall’altro, hanno vietato per alcune settimane l’esportazione di materiale medico verso l’Italia, con azioni certamente non solidali e probabilmente illecite. La seconda parte dello studio affronta il contributo dato direttamente dalla Commissione alla gestione dell’emergenza, cioè la dimensione collettiva della solidarietà europea. La Commissione ha contribuito al coordinamento degli appalti per contromisure mediche, alla costituzione di scorte europee e, soprattutto, alla negoziazione con le società farmaceutiche dell’acquisto di vaccini contro il COVID-19. Nella conclusione si traggono le conseguenze della (scarsa) solidarietà dimostrata dagli Stati membri e degli interventi della Commissione.

Brexit may impact on the cooperation between the diplomatic missions of the Member States: as the UK has numerous diplomatic missions, its withdrawal reduces the size of the EU diplomatic and influences, albeit limitedly, the coordination of EU diplomacy. The reduced size of the EU diplomatic network might complicate consular protection of EU citizens in third countries, though this problem might be solved through the empowerment of EU delegations. In fact, Brexit impacts the second facet of EU diplomacy (the diplomacy of the Union), too. The EU delegation in the UK will perform a key role in ensuring the implementation of the UK’s Withdrawal Agreement and, consequently, might have unprecedented responsibilities concerning the protection of EU nationals in the UK. The EU delegation in the UK might thus come close to full functional ‘equality with states’. It is concluded that Brexit constitutes a challenge for EU diplomacy but might also constitute an opportunity for the Union external representation.

Southern Mediterranean countries are among the principal partners of the European Union in the field of migration. The EU is seeking to ‘externalize’ migration control to its neighbours by inducing them to stop the flow of migrants and asylum seekers before they reach its borders. This chapter analyses the tools the Union uses to implement this externalization: negotiating readmission agreements, supporting projects on irregular migration in partner countries, and seeking cooperation in border-management operations. The analysis shows that the EU has succeeded in eliciting cooperation from Libya, but not from other states. It also suggests that existing and potential cooperation initiatives may have a severe impact on human rights. The Union, it is argued, should re-evaluate its strategy by making a pragmatic assessment of costs and benefits and giving greater weight to human rights concerns, as well as to its partners’ priorities.

The "convergence ethic” that dominates the understandings of the EU’s external action finds a specific manifestation in the area of international investment law. This chapter suggests that, while international investment agreements (IIAs) may function as instruments of convergence, the nature of this convergence is problematic – and so is the EU’s relationship with IIAs.

L’objectif de gestion efficace des flux migratoires, dans un contexte où la question migratoire imprègne la coopération interétatique, a conduit l’Union à externaliser sa propre politique en affichant clairement la volonté de s’affirmer comme acteur de la gouvernance mondiale des migrations. A travers le nouveau cadre de partenariat avec les pays tiers dans le cadre de l’Agenda européen en matière de migration l’Union s’oriente vers une action internationale qui n’est pas seulement la conséquence nécessaire de l’adoption de règles communes et l’instrument nécessaire à la réalisation de l’ELSJ. L’action de l’Union vise spécifiquement la coopération internationale, l’objectif de gestion des migrations devient, de facto, un objectif d’action extérieure. L’Union peut ainsi s’affirmer comme acteur international de gestion des migrations, de manière pas forcément aussi optimale que si l’externalisation de la politique migratoire résultait des Traités (I). Une telle évolution de son identité soulève de questions liées à l’essence de celle-ci : l’action guidée par l’objectif d’efficacité n’est pas toujours conforme aux valeurs de l’Union (II).

Nalla sentenza Wightman la Corte di giustizia ha affermato il diritto di uno Stato recedente a terminare unilateralmente la procedura di recesso dall’Unione (art. 50 TUE). Sebbene la sentenza confermi l’autonomia del diritto dell’Unione in linea teorica, pare in realtà contraddirla, fondandosi quasi esclusivamente su regole e principi internazionalistici, come la sovranità. Wightman sembra così suggerire che i Trattati dell’Unione non siano altro che trattati “ordinari”. In the Wightman judgment, the Court of Justice acknowledges the right of a Member State unilaterally to terminate the procedure for withdrawal from the Union (Art. 50 TEU). Although the judgment confirms EU law autonomy in principle, it arguably contradicts it in practice, by relying almost exclusively on international rules and principles, such as sovereignty. Wightman thus suggests that EU Treaties are nothing but “ordinary” treaties.

Firms jointly conduct business model innovation (BMI) through business model innovation alliances (BMIAs). However, the understanding of how BMIA partnerships evolve and how different partners contribute to the inter-organisational BMI process remains vague. Building on process theory, our study addresses this gap by adopting a processual stance towards the evolution of a successful BMIA. Three main propositions emerge from our findings. First, BMIA evolution follows the progression of an alliance-level BMI process that can entail nested firm-level BMI processes aimed at making the partners’ BMs more functional within the overarching inter-organisational BMI. Second, relatively small changes in BMs at the member level can lead to significant and novel changes in the BM at the alliance level. Third, BMIA evolution builds on leveraging complementarities amongst firms of different sizes and at different stages of development, and on resolving conflictual attitudes amongst similar partners.

Background Shortage of human resources, increasing educational costs, and the need to keep social distances in response to the COVID-19 worldwide outbreak have prompted the necessity of clinical training methods designed for distance learning. Virtual patient simulators (VPSs) may partially meet these needs. Natural language processing (NLP) and intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) may further enhance the educational impact of these simulators. Objective The goal of this study was to develop a VPS for clinical diagnostic reasoning that integrates interaction in natural language and an ITS. We also aimed to provide preliminary results of a short-term learning test administered on undergraduate students after use of the simulator. Methods We trained a Siamese long short-term memory network for anamnesis and NLP algorithms combined with Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) ontology for diagnostic hypothesis generation. The ITS was structured on the concepts of knowledge, assessment, and learner models. To assess short-term learning changes, 15 undergraduate medical students underwent two identical tests, composed of multiple-choice questions, before and after performing a simulation by the virtual simulator. The test was made up of 22 questions; 11 of these were core questions that were specifically designed to evaluate clinical knowledge related to the simulated case. Results We developed a VPS called Hepius that allows students to gather clinical information from the patient’s medical history, physical exam, and investigations and allows them to formulate a differential diagnosis by using natural language. Hepius is also an ITS that provides real-time step-by-step feedback to the student and suggests specific topics the student has to review to fill in potential knowledge gaps. Results from the short-term learning test showed an increase in both mean test score (P Conclusions By combining ITS and NLP technologies, Hepius may provide medical undergraduate students with a learning tool for training them in diagnostic reasoning. This may be particularly useful in a setting where students have restricted access to clinical wards, as is happening during the COVID-19 pandemic in many countries worldwide.

In recent years, machine learning (ML) has been promisingly applied in many fields of clinical medicine, both for diagnosis and prognosis prediction. Aims of this narrative review were to summarize the basic concepts of ML applied to clinical medicine and explore its main applications in the emergency department (ED) setting, with a particular focus on syncope management. Through an extensive literature search in PubMed and Embase, we found increasing evidence suggesting that the use of ML algorithms can improve ED triage, diagnosis, and risk stratification of many diseases. However, the lacks of external validation and reliable diagnostic standards currently limit their implementation in clinical practice. Syncope represents a challenging problem for the emergency physician both because its diagnosis is not supported by specific tests and the available prognostic tools proved to be inefficient. ML algorithms have the potential to overcome these limitations and, in the future, they could support the clinician in managing syncope patients more efficiently. However, at present only few studies have addressed this issue, albeit with encouraging results.

This paper describes an Enterprise Social Analytics Dashboard (ESAD) to support human capital management, competence valorization, diversity management, and early detection of potential problems within large, networked organizations. The system can be used by managers for career promotion, team building, and diversity management, as well as by company’s social analysts, to monitor social behaviors and information flow in the workplace. Toward this end, we defined a measure of informal leadership which draws on organization theory and on a computational model based on multiplex networks. This model, along with a social network analysis toolkit developed in the context of the present study, enabled the systematic empirical analysis of social behaviors in a three-year dataset of message threads exchanged within a large multinational enterprise, as a function of gender, time, roles, and discussed topics. The results of our empirical analysis demonstrate the power of social analytics in organizations as a tool for human capital management, competence valorization, and early detection of potential problems. Our study clearly shows that Enterprise Social Networks are a favorable environment to highlight women’s leadership qualities and intermediary abilities. The ESAD offers innovative features, such as a sociologically motivated leadership model based on multiplex networks, text mining, and text classification techniques, to extract relevant discussion topics.

There is no doubt that the digitalization of the labour activity, along with its positive influence has a negative impact on employees. Nevertheless, the issues of assessing the impact of these processes on employees’ well-being have not yet received sufficient attention in HRM research and practice. The relationship between the digital transformation of the labour, as well as HRM practices and employees’ well-being is examined in the paper. The research methodology involves the analysis of data obtained by means of literature review, sociological surveys, narrative and descriptive analysis. The results of our study identify the problematic issues resulting from expanding the practice of applying digital technologies in HRM system, proving the negative impact of digitalization processes on employee well-being (along with positive effects), and, therefore, the need to develop management solutions aimed at preserving well-being in the workplace.

Background Virtual patient simulators (VPSs) log all users’ actions, thereby enabling the creation of a multidimensional representation of students’ medical knowledge. This representation can be used to create metrics providing teachers with valuable learning information. Objective The aim of this study is to describe the metrics we developed to analyze the clinical diagnostic reasoning of medical students, provide examples of their application, and preliminarily validate these metrics on a class of undergraduate medical students. The metrics are computed from the data obtained through a novel VPS embedding natural language processing techniques. Methods A total of 2 clinical case simulations (tests) were created to test our metrics. During each simulation, the students’ step-by-step actions were logged into the program database for offline analysis. The students’ performance was divided into seven dimensions: the identification of relevant information in the given clinical scenario, history taking, physical examination, medical test ordering, diagnostic hypothesis setting, binary analysis fulfillment, and final diagnosis setting. Sensitivity (percentage of relevant information found) and precision (percentage of correct actions performed) metrics were computed for each issue and combined into a harmonic mean (F1), thereby obtaining a single score evaluating the students’ performance. The 7 metrics were further grouped to reflect the students’ capability to collect and to analyze information to obtain an overall performance score. A methodological score was computed based on the discordance between the diagnostic pathway followed by students and the reference one previously defined by the teacher. In total, 25 students attending the fifth year of the School of Medicine at Humanitas University underwent test 1, which simulated a patient with dyspnea. Test 2 dealt with abdominal pain and was attended by 36 students on a different day. For validation, we assessed the Spearman rank correlation between the performance on these scores and the score obtained by each student in the hematology curricular examination. Results The mean overall scores were consistent between test 1 (mean 0.59, SD 0.05) and test 2 (mean 0.54, SD 0.12). For each student, the overall performance was achieved through a different contribution in collecting and analyzing information. Methodological scores highlighted discordances between the reference diagnostic pattern previously set by the teacher and the one pursued by the student. No significant correlation was found between the VPS scores and hematology examination scores. Conclusions Different components of the students’ diagnostic process may be disentangled and quantified by appropriate metrics applied to students’ actions recorded while addressing a virtual case. Such an approach may help teachers provide students with individualized feedback aimed at filling competence drawbacks and methodological inconsistencies. There was no correlation between the hematology curricular examination score and any of the proposed scores as these scores address different aspects of students’ medical knowledge.

The EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016 (Statement) is by now a famous but controversial instrument that aims to tackle the influx of migrants and asylum-seekers into the EU. The Statement has also resulted in extensive debate in practice and academe about its authorship, legal nature under international law and especially its legality in light of EU law. Given the uncertainties that surround the Statement’s nature, the investigation adopts a pluralistic approach, and envisages three alternative scenarios: the Statement as an (binding or non-binding) instrument entered into by the Member States (scenario 1, part 2), as a non-binding arrangement entered into by the Union (scenario 2, part 3), and as a binding agreement concluded by the Union (scenario 3, part 4). The analysis suggests that scenario 1 (the Statement as an instrument entered into by the Member States) is unrealistic, despite being supported by the GC. At the same time, reasonable arguments can be formulated in favour of both scenarios 2 and 3 (a binding or non-binding Statement entered into by the Union). After having discussed the legal nature of the Statement, under each scenario, the chapter analyses its compatibility with EU institutional law. The argument is made that legal problems might potentially arise in every case, especially under scenario 3.

After Brexit, the UK will have to negotiate numerous international treaties to replace the agreements previously concluded by the Union. Unless the UK obtains a significant extension of withdrawal negotiations, probably it will not be able to conclude agreements with its main trade partners before its exit from the Union. Even if the UK managed to conclude new trade agreements with third countries, they would be unlikely to ameliorate its position in international relations.

L’interdiction de l’arbitraire du pouvoir exécutif est l’une des composantes essentielles de l’Etat de droit. Pourtant, à la suite de la soi-disant « crise migratoire » des années 2014-2015, les initiatives principales de l’Union ont été adoptées par le pouvoir exécutif. Le Parlement européen n’a pas résisté à sa propre marginalisation, ce qui pourrait laisser au pouvoir exécutif des marges de manœuvre telles qu’elles pourraient ouvrir la voie à l’arbitraire.

In this essay the authors—an international and interdisciplinary research team of scholars and practitioners—present the main challenges they faced, the solutions they developed, and their reflections and recommendations based on their research for the annual report of the European Parliament Intergroup on Freedom of Religion or Belief & Religious Tolerance. The research team elucidated international law standards on FoRB and then assessed whether the laws and practices of third countries are consistent with their international legal obligations. This grounding in international law is a distinctive contribution of the research.

In the first place, the chapter investigates the interaction between the delimitation of the EU’s external competence in the area of trade and investment and the requirement to preserve the essential characteristics of the EU legal order. It follows from the joint reading of Achmea and of Opinion 2/15 that the competence to approve dispute settlement provisions in free trade agreements (FTAs) finds its limits in the preservation of the systemic dimension of the autonomy. On the other hand, the specific balance between competences and objectives reinforces the substantive autonomy of the EU legal order through a dynamic interpretation of external competences. Secondly, the chapter focuses on the EU’s capacity to exercise independently its competences, which is challenged by the recent FTAs. Despite the insertion of clauses on the right to regulate, there is no guarantee of the interpretation of investment protection standards in view of the preservation of the regulatory autonomy of the Union

BACKGROUND Virtual patient simulators (VPSs) log all users’ actions, thereby enabling the creation of a multidimensional representation of students’ medical knowledge. This representation can be used to create metrics providing teachers with valuable learning information. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to describe the metrics we developed to analyze the clinical diagnostic reasoning of medical students, provide examples of their application, and preliminarily validate these metrics on a class of undergraduate medical students. The metrics are computed from the data obtained through a novel VPS embedding natural language processing techniques. METHODS A total of 2 clinical case simulations (tests) were created to test our metrics. During each simulation, the students’ step-by-step actions were logged into the program database for offline analysis. The students’ performance was divided into seven dimensions: the identification of relevant information in the given clinical scenario, history taking, physical examination, medical test ordering, diagnostic hypothesis setting, binary analysis fulfillment, and final diagnosis setting. Sensitivity (percentage of relevant information found) and precision (percentage of correct actions performed) metrics were computed for each issue and combined into a harmonic mean (F1), thereby obtaining a single score evaluating the students’ performance. The 7 metrics were further grouped to reflect the students’ capability to collect and to analyze information to obtain an overall performance score. A methodological score was computed based on the discordance between the diagnostic pathway followed by students and the reference one previously defined by the teacher. In total, 25 students attending the fifth year of the School of Medicine at Humanitas University underwent test 1, which simulated a patient with dyspnea. Test 2 dealt with abdominal pain and was attended by 36 students on a different day. For validation, we assessed the Spearman rank correlation between the performance on these scores and the score obtained by each student in the hematology curricular examination. RESULTS The mean overall scores were consistent between test 1 (mean 0.59, SD 0.05) and test 2 (mean 0.54, SD 0.12). For each student, the overall performance was achieved through a different contribution in collecting and analyzing information. Methodological scores highlighted discordances between the reference diagnostic pattern previously set by the teacher and the one pursued by the student. No significant correlation was found between the VPS scores and hematology examination scores. CONCLUSIONS Different components of the students’ diagnostic process may be disentangled and quantified by appropriate metrics applied to students’ actions recorded while addressing a virtual case. Such an approach may help teachers provide students with individualized feedback aimed at filling competence drawbacks and methodological inconsistencies. There was no correlation between the hematology curricular examination score and any of the proposed scores as these scores address different aspects of students’ medical knowledge. CLINICALTRIAL

BACKGROUND Shortage of human resources, increasing educational costs, and the need to keep social distances in response to the COVID-19 worldwide outbreak have prompted the necessity of clinical training methods designed for distance learning. Virtual patient simulators (VPSs) may partially meet these needs. Natural language processing (NLP) and intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) may further enhance the educational impact of these simulators. OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to develop a VPS for clinical diagnostic reasoning that integrates interaction in natural language and an ITS. We also aimed to provide preliminary results of a short-term learning test administered on undergraduate students after use of the simulator. METHODS We trained a Siamese long short-term memory network for anamnesis and NLP algorithms combined with Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) ontology for diagnostic hypothesis generation. The ITS was structured on the concepts of knowledge, assessment, and learner models. To assess short-term learning changes, 15 undergraduate medical students underwent two identical tests, composed of multiple-choice questions, before and after performing a simulation by the virtual simulator. The test was made up of 22 questions; 11 of these were core questions that were specifically designed to evaluate clinical knowledge related to the simulated case. RESULTS We developed a VPS called Hepius that allows students to gather clinical information from the patient’s medical history, physical exam, and investigations and allows them to formulate a differential diagnosis by using natural language. Hepius is also an ITS that provides real-time step-by-step feedback to the student and suggests specific topics the student has to review to fill in potential knowledge gaps. Results from the short-term learning test showed an increase in both mean test score (PP CONCLUSIONS By combining ITS and NLP technologies, Hepius may provide medical undergraduate students with a learning tool for training them in diagnostic reasoning. This may be particularly useful in a setting where students have restricted access to clinical wards, as is happening during the COVID-19 pandemic in many countries worldwide.

The increasingly pervasive use of social online services has contributed to raising interest in studying the active participation of individuals to business development processes. Starting from a validated framework for intellectual capital analysis, the aim of this research project is to refine and implement a multi-step approach of intellectual capital management and assessment. Intellectual capital (IC) can be seen as a set of intangible assets commonly grouped into three dimensions: (1) human capital (HC), as a set of individual knowledge; (2) structural capital (SC), as the knowledge and capabilities stored in the organizational structure; and (3) relational capital (RC), as the internal and external relationships with stakeholders. The unit of analysis upon which the integrated step-by-step methodology is based is an online community of practice, operating within one of the most important Italian telecommunication company. The basic assumption underlying this study is that communities of practice (CoPs) play a fundamental role in innovation dynamics because of their ability to shape the organizational knowledge base. An integrated approach will provide both academics and practitioners an effective tool for assessing intellectual capital and its related dimensions, its creation and the effectiveness of implementation plans conceived as a result of its application.

Introduction: This paper examines, through a biographical approach, the practical activities and overall theoretical corpus of Pacces, an Italian technician and pre-cursor of managerial economy and culture, focusing on his formula for governing the 1970s ‘macro-enterprises', a complex organization's emblem. The article then, through a long period of empirical research, investigates the applicability of this ‘recipe' to large modern companies. Aims of the work: This Article has three objectives: a) to fill a cognitive gap within the existing literature; b) to show, putting on an organizational lens, how some of Pacces' ideas were not only exceptional for his time but still current - confirming his extraordinary vision - and harbingers of important implications for the mana-gerial world; and c) to be a starting point for subsequent studies, stimulating intel-lectual debate and research proliferation. Methodological approach: Consists of two techniques: 1) analysis and critical ex-amination of the Pacces' opera omnia, with a focus on organizational theory; 2) empirical analysis, over a decade, on the applicability of the conceptual system to homogeneous companies (to those studied by the Author), conducted with quali-tative techniques, mainly participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Senior Management. Main findings: The study adds a unique contribution to the knowledge of the Au-thor's organizational thinking. The empirical research shows, moreover, how his intuitions are extraordinary and highly topical but remain rarely applied by the Ital-ian Companies. Originality: Originality therefore lies in the organizational focus, never used before in the Professor's study, and in the long managerial applicability test of the theo-retical-practical corpus. Tools, not only conceptual, indicated by the Theorist to improve organizational practices could be used by management in a continuous improvement perspective

In this paper, we harness server-side data—540,000 messages generated by 2085 users on TamTamy, an Enterprise Social Media (ESM) platform—to examine how gender and rank shaped “homophily” (the tendency to connect with similar others) and centrality in an ESM network. Drawing on the logic of “distinctiveness theory,” which argues that the numeric rarity of a category in a given setting promotes the use of that category as a basis for connecting with others, we hypothesized and found: (a) the tendency to connect with same-gender others was stronger among women than among men; (b) the tendency to connect with same-rank others was stronger among high-ranking employees than among low-ranking employees; (c) for high-ranking men, rank was more important than gender as a basis for connecting with others; and (d) for low-ranking women, gender was more important than rank as a basis for connecting with others. We also found that whereas higher ranking individuals were more likely to be in central (bridging) positions in the overall network, gender was unrelated to network centrality. Our study suggests that the affordances of ESM for open and distributed communications notwithstanding, the social networks that emerge on ESM platforms may reinforce social stratification on some dimensions while diminishing it on others.

The concept of smart-working is increasingly attracting the interest of both practitioners in the field of human resource management and the research community. Despite this, the use of “smart-working” is not just related to efficiency, but implies a change in mentality and working methods, and improving work processes. This research uses the narrative analysis methodology to study the experience of employees directly involved in the experimental introduction of smart-working at one of the largest Italian telecommunications companies. Due to the narrative collected the authors analyze the current status of changes occurred at the company due to the implementation of smart-working, the need for changes in work processes and the employees’ willingness to take an active part in transforming the labor organization, as well as different employee attitudes towards changing work processes.

This paper deals with the interview of Mauro Gatti to Sergio Galbiati, President and Co-CEO of LFoundry Italia.

Under the principle of conferral, the EU can act only within the limits of the competences conferred upon it to attain the objectives set out in the Treaties. Each Union measure must consequently be founded on a Treaty provision – the “legal basis” – that enables the Union to act in order to pursue a specific objective. EU Treaties provide for numerous legal bases, which relate to different policies and provide for different decision-making procedures. To determine the correct legal basis of a measure, one should apply the so-called “centre of gravity” doctrine, whereby the choice of the legal basis act must rest on objective factors amenable to judicial review, which include the aim and content of that measure. Yet, given the functional overlap between EU policies, it is sometimes difficult to identify the correct legal basis of a Union act. The selection of either an AFSJ or CFSP legal basis, in particular, may raise constitutional issues, in terms of the principles of conferral of competences and institutional balance. This paper analyses the ECJ case law on AFSJ/CFSP delimitation, distilling the elements that, according to the Court, may allow EU institutions to properly identify the legal bases of security-related acts. The analysis also elucidates the pitfalls in the reasoning of the Court, and suggests alternative solutions that might increase legal clarity.

La migration fait l’objet d’un débat intense en Europe. Les instruments les plus connus sont peut-être les soi-disant « Déclarations UE-Turquie », une série de déclarations conjointes adoptées entre 2015 et 2016 par le gouvernement turc et les chefs d’Etat et de gouvernement de l’Union, voire par l’Union elle-même. Access Info Europe a essayé d’obtenir davantage d’informations sur les Déclarations UE-Turquie, en demandant l’accès à tous les documents de la Commission contenant des « avis juridiques et/ou analyses de la légalité des actions entreprises » par l’Union et ses États membres dans le cadre de la mise en œuvre des actions décrites dans les Déclarations UE-Turquie. La Commission a identifié les documents, mais a refusé l’accès à la plupart d’entre eux, par le biais de deux décisions. Access Info Europe a formé un recours en annulation contre les décisions de la Commission. Le Tribunal, pourtant, a été très attentif à la protection des intérêts de l’exécutif, en acceptant la plupart des exceptions à la transparence invoquées par la Commission. Par ailleurs, le Tribunal ne semble pas avoir, dans son analyse, pris suffisamment en compte l’intérêt supérieur pour la transparence dans le cas d’espèce.

Background: Enrollment of large cohorts of syncope patients from administrative data is crucial for proper risk stratification but is limited by the enormous amount of time required for manual revision of medical records. Aim: To develop a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm to automatically identify syncope from Emergency Department (ED) electronic medical records (EMRs). Methods: De-identified EMRs of all consecutive patients evaluated at Humanitas Research Hospital ED from 1 December 2013 to 31 March 2014 and from 1 December 2015 to 31 March 2016 were manually annotated to identify syncope. Records were combined in a single dataset and classified. The performance of combined multiple NLP feature selectors and classifiers was tested. Primary Outcomes: NLP algorithms&rsquo, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and F3 score. Results: 15,098 and 15,222 records from 2013 and 2015 datasets were analyzed. Syncope was present in 571 records. Normalized Gini Index feature selector combined with Support Vector Machines classifier obtained the best F3 value (84.0%), with 92.2% sensitivity and 47.4% positive predictive value. A 96% analysis time reduction was computed, compared with EMRs manual review. Conclusions: This artificial intelligence algorithm enabled the automatic identification of a large population of syncope patients using EMRs.