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With the technological progress, high-performance materials are emerging in the market of additive manufacturing to comply with the advanced requirements demanded for technical applications. In selective laser sintering (SLS), innovative powder materials integrating conductive reinforcements are attracting much interest within academic and industrial communities as promising alternatives to common engineering thermoplastics. However, the practical implementation of functional materials is limited by the extensive list of conditions required for a successful laser-sintering process, related to the morphology, powder size and shape, heat resistance, melt viscosity and others. The purpose of this study is to explore composite materials of polyamide 12 (PA12) incorporating multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNP), aiming to understand their suitability for advanced SLS applications.

PA12-MWCNT and PA12-GNP materials were blended through a pre-optimized process of mechanical mixing with various percentages of reinforcement between 0.50 wt.% and 3.00 wt.% and processed by SLS with appropriate volume energy density. Several test specimens were produced and characterized with regard to processability, thermal, mechanical, electrical and morphological properties. Finally, a comparative analysis of the performance of both carbon-based materials was performed.

The results of this research demonstrated easier processability and higher tensile strength and impact resistance for composites incorporating MWCNT but higher tensile elastic modulus, compressive strength and microstructural homogeneity for GNP-based materials. Despite the decrease in mechanical properties, valuable results of electrical conductivity were obtained with both carbon solutions until 10^–6 S/cm.

The carbon-based composites developed in this research allow for the expansion of the applicability of laser-sintered parts to advanced fields, including electronics-related industries that require functional materials capable of protecting sensitive devices against electrostatic discharge.

The survival of companies today hinges on their adaptability and flexibility, with digital transformation (DT) and organizational slack (OS) playing crucial roles. Despite their recognized importance, these factors are often studied separately. This study aims to explore how OS facilitates DT and evaluate their synergies and trade-offs to improve performance.

Using data from the European Manufacturing Survey, structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we investigate causal relationships and possible combinations between different dimensions of OS and DT that contribute to business performance.

We confirmed the positive effect of OS and DT on business performance, highlighting the importance of organizational over technological factors. While not definitively establishing OS as a precursor to DT, our findings underscore the need for human and operational slack to improve performance, especially in less technology-intensive contexts.

Our findings evidence that decision-makers should integrate OS with DT initiatives to improve the firm’s competitiveness. However, it is worth noting that while OS seems essential in low-tech shopfloors, its importance is lower in high-tech environments. Furthermore, within the possible combinations, managers should promote operational slack and digitalization, as it seems fundamental to improve business performance.

This article contributes to the management field in three ways. First, it clarifies controversies by providing evidence of the positive roles of DT and OS as drivers of competitiveness for manufacturing firms. Second, we verify that OS is not directly linked to DT, challenging existing assumptions. Third, it investigates the combinations of OS and DT that drive business performance improvement, emphasizing their synergies and trade-offs.

This study aims to analyze the mediating role that green practices (GPs) and green technologies (GTs) play in the relationship between lean manufacturing (LM) and industrial performance (IP). It is suggested that GPs and GTs are crucial for transforming lean routines into enhanced performance that simultaneously meet current environmental requirements.

The hypotheses are tested using a mixed methodology, which includes a partial least squares structural equation modeling approach and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) applied to a multisectoral sample from three European countries (Spain, Sweden and Croatia).

The results confirm that GPs mediate the relationship between LM and IP; however, in the case of GTs, this mediation does not appear to occur, although GTs emerge as a peripheral condition in the subsequent fsQCA. These findings highlight the need to avoid an exclusively technocentric approach and underscore the importance of implementing green organizational practices alongside technology investments to achieve successful lean initiatives.

It seems clear that managers should apply GPs, combined with LM, to improve sustainability and efficiency and should apply GTs once a more mature lean-green culture has been established.

In recent years, the scientific community has increasingly focused on the impact of implementing GPs and GTs on IP within LM plants. However, to the authors’ knowledge, no study has yet analyzed the combined effect of both initiatives. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining, in aggregate, the moderating effect of GPs and GTs on IP in LM plants.

This work aims to examine the communication on Twitter of the most responsible companies in Spain to identify the topics covered on corporate social responsibility (CSR) from the perspective of happiness and social marketing. In addition, the profiles of the messages that show an association with the impact of the messages have been identified.

An empirical analysis of the Twitter posts of Spain's ten most responsible companies has been carried out. The methodology of this work combines data mining techniques, sentiment analysis and content analysis, both from a quantitative and qualitative approach.

The results show that most brand tweets do not deal with CSR-related topics. The topics they address the most are those related to sports and the weather. From the perspective of social marketing, conversational-type tweets are the most published and have achieved the most significant reaction from the public. In addition, four messages' profiles have been identified based on the company and the emotional connotation associated with the impact, giving rise to more outstanding promotion of social causes.

Our main contribution to this work has been to value positive communication and social marketing to promote better CSR on Twitter. In this sense, it has been verified that there is a relationship between the public's reaction, the affective connotation and the company that issues the messages.

This study aims to identify necessary conditions for innovative entrepreneurship in cities and determine similarities in entrepreneurial configurations among them.

The authors assessed the necessary conditions for various levels of entrepreneurial output and categorized cities based on similar patterns by applying necessary condition analysis (NCA) and cluster analysis in a sample comprised of 101 cities from the entrepreneurial cities index, representing a diverse range of urban environments in Brazil. A comprehensive data set, including both traditional indicators from official Bureau of statistics and nontraditional indicators from new platforms of science, technology and innovation intelligence, was compiled for analysis.

Bureaucratic complexity, urban conditions, transport infrastructure, economic development, access to financial capital, secondary education, entrepreneurial intention, support organizations and innovation inputs were identified as necessary for innovative entrepreneurship. Varying levels of these conditions were found to be required for different entrepreneurial outputs.

The static nature of the data limits understanding of dynamic interactions among dimensions and their impact on entrepreneurial city performance.

Policymakers can use the findings to craft tailored support policies, leveraging the relationship between city-level taxonomy and direct outputs of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs).

The taxonomy and nontraditional indicators sheds light on the broader societal benefits of vibrant EEs, emphasizing their role in driving socioeconomic development.

The cluster analysis combined with NCA’s bottleneck analysis is an original endeavor which made it possible to identify performance benchmarks for Brazilian cities, according to common characteristics, as well as the required levels of each condition by each city group to achieve innovative entrepreneurial outputs.

This paper aims to highlight the role of the CEO’s background in the stock market reaction to a product recall. Based on the upper echelons theory and the crisis management literature, we argue that the CEO’s background influences the expected response in a product harm crisis and the updating of investors’ expectations following a product recall announcement. We test if the CEO’s background influences the abnormal stock market returns around product recalls and how it affects the way investors interpret the recall strategy and severity.

We use an event study, for a sample of 2,576 product recalls in the US automobile industry, between January 2010 and June 2021.

We observe that the stock market’s reaction is less negative if the firm’s CEO presents a core specialist background and for firms led by insider CEOs. This result is in line with our argument that in the presence of a crisis that requires operational and firm-specific knowledge, such as product recalls, the best alignment in terms of the CEO’s background occurs when the CEO was recruited inside and is a core specialist. Finally, we also find that the CEO’s background has a moderating effect on the impact of the recall strategy and severity on the stock market reaction to a recall announcement. In particular, a recall with high severity has a more negative stock market reaction when the CEO is a core specialist as such an event is not expected by the market.

These results have important implications for practitioners and scholars working in the areas of product quality and corporate governance. Given the high frequency and high costs for firms to carry out these operations in the automobile industry, we recommend a careful analysis of the CEO’s background before their appointment as well as careful planning to prevent and to adequately react appropriately to product quality problems. While there is a common tendency among executives to cut discretionary expenditures such as spending on product safety, our results regarding the stock market reaction to product recall announcements suggest that investors expect firms led by insider and core specialist CEOs to be more likely to ensure product quality and to respond to product quality crisis.

We extend knowledge of product recalls by studying the role of the CEO’s background on the stock market reaction to product recall announcements.

This paper aims to review the history of Roldós y Compañía, one of the oldest advertising agencies in the world and the oldest currently operating. This research aims to highlight the importance of this agency and its founder, Rafael Roldós Viñolas – the first documented advertising agent in Spain to this day – in shaping the emerging Spanish advertising industry at the end of the 19th century.

The methodology used in this paper is based on a review of period and contemporary literature, as well as on newspaper sources and documents from the private archive of Roldós, S.A.

In its early years, the agency’s participation in two of the most significant events for the modernization of the city of Barcelona, the Universal Exhibition of 1888 and the International Exhibition of 1929; as well as the ideation and implementation of several urban projects with the aim of finding new formulas and advertising media are factors that make it one of the most important in the country. In 1929, the alliance Roldós-Tiroleses, S.A. de Publicidad, the first great merger of advertising agencies in Spain, which lasted three years, was led. The outbreak of the Civil War and the subsequent post-war period marked a few years of business irregularities and advertising silences that gave instability to its activity. During the last third of the 20th century, the agency was immersed in the generalized advertising euphoria around the world. With the arrival of North American agencies in Barcelona and the consequent business movements, Roldós, S.A. specializes in the processing of advertisements and media planning. The 21st century began with important changes in the media planning sector, and the agency was forced to restructure its services and organizational structure. In 2022, it celebrates 150 years of uninterrupted activity, recognized by the country’s business sector.

This research aims to internationalize the history of the Roldós y Compañía agency, so that it can be studied together with other names of Anglo-Saxon advertising pioneers who were contemporaries of Rafael Roldós.

Scientific research on the history of advertising agencies, especially in Spain, is scarce, so this paper aims to help fill this gap.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

In the evolving landscape of Industry 5.0 (I5.0), which emphasises sustainability, human-centricity and resilience, mapping the current interrelationship and future research directions, the role of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology remains underexplored. Our study addresses this gap by examining the potential of LSS to support I5.0 while identifying areas for further investigation.

This study's multifaceted approach, which includes systematic literature review (SLR), bibliographic network analysis (BNA) and expert validation (EV), provides a holistic exploration of the interaction between LSS and I5.0 as the basis for well-founded conclusions.

The analysis yields several valuable insights. Firstly, it demonstrates the absence of a direct link between LSS and I5.0. Secondly, the substantial body of literature analysed establishes connections between LSS and its pillars. Thirdly, the analysis identifies points of intersection, difference and similarity between LSS and I5.0, highlighting the potential of LSS to facilitate implementation of I5.0 through its proven methodologies, continuous improvement culture, risk management, error learning, human–machine collaboration and training and skill development.

This study pioneers the effort to realise the latent potential of LSS in the context of I5.0. Its systematic identification of the synergies between these paradigms fills a critical gap in the literature and gives policymakers, managers and researchers a guide for informed decision-making to maximise the benefits of I5.0 for individuals, companies, society and the planet.

This paper aims to deepen the current knowledge of seasonality by investigating visitors’ intentional and behavioural patterns during peak and off-peak seasons. It compares the variation in several key behavioural factors, namely, duration of stay, party size, revisit intention, spending and breakdown of spending in different sectors in hospitality and tourism including entertainment, restaurant, accommodation and transportation. Moreover, this research expands the understanding by examining the effectiveness of two innovative strategies of offering a digital app and organising a unique event to tackle seasonal imbalances through stimulating visitors’ intention to change their timing of visit from peak to off-peak periods.

The author initially used a Delphi approach to gather experts’ opinion on the two scenario settings: event organisation and a trip planner app. The scenarios aimed to potentially encourage visitors to change their visit time to off-peak seasons. Then, using a quantitative survey, the travel habits and spending behaviours of 310 participants were captured. Furthermore, the survey assessed their intention to travel during off-peak seasons in response to the implementation of the two innovative strategies.

The results revealed that although the number of visitors who travel in off-peak seasons may be lower, their daily spending is higher than peak season visitors. In addition to total spending per day, the duration of stay, part size, quality of accommodation and re-visit intention of visitors indicated significant variation between peak and off-peak seasons. According to the statistical analysis’ results, organising events (including festivals) proves more effective in encouraging visitors to travel during off-peak seasons compared to digital innovation (i.e. a trip planner app). This finding is in line with the tenets of the Jobs-to-be-Done Theory of innovation.

This study contributes by conceptualising the mechanism of seasonality and its impacts on subsectors of tourism and hospitality. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the few empirical research that compares the behavioural patterns of visitors including their average spending per day between peak and off-peak seasons. Previous studies focused on specific regions or sectors, whereas this research investigates visitors’ behaviour on a broader scale to provide more comprehensive view. Furthermore, this study is novel due to practising an outside-in approach through investigating the effectiveness of the two innovative strategies aimed at addressing seasonality in the hospitality and tourism industry from visitors’ point of view.