Carla Susana Marques, Gina Santos, Vanessa Ratten and Ana B. Barros
Rural entrepreneurship is an emergent field of study, with these start-ups becoming one of the most noticeable ways to promote rural development, but the few studies concerning…
Abstract
Purpose
Rural entrepreneurship is an emergent field of study, with these start-ups becoming one of the most noticeable ways to promote rural development, but the few studies concerning innovation among artisans have thus far only been exploratory. The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial artisan initiatives of young innovators in a peripheral northern area of Portugal where black pottery is produced.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative data analysis was carried out on in-depth semi-structured interviews with three young artisan innovators and entrepreneurs and one individual who functions as a cultural booster. The content analysis was done using QSR International’s NVivo Version 11 software.
Findings
These young entrepreneurs have developed commercial activities and introduced innovations (i.e. design and process) into black pottery production, while taking advantage of endogenous materials, local culture and traditional knowledge. These individuals have sought not only to generate their own innovations but also to keep their culture and local traditions alive, thereby contributing to rural development by establishing networks with local young artisans.
Research limitations/implications
Some limitations are linked to the sample’s size and basis in a specific geographic reality.
Practical implications
The findings provide a fuller understanding of why some rural artisan firms grow, suggesting that artisans’ networks and innovative and entrepreneurial behaviours play a key role.
Originality/value
This research’s results contribute to the literature on the role that innovation can play as a booster of rural artisanship through networks and entrepreneurship. This paper is among the first to discuss black pottery as a form of artisan entrepreneurship. The results underline the value of innovations and networks, which were found to be the core ingredients in rural artisan entrepreneurship.
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Dario Messina, Ana Cristina Barros, António Lucas Soares and Aristides Matopoulos
To study how supply chain decision makers gather, process and use the available internal and external information when facing supply chain disruptions.
Abstract
Purpose
To study how supply chain decision makers gather, process and use the available internal and external information when facing supply chain disruptions.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews relevant supply chain literature to build an information management model for disruption management. Afterwards, three case studies in the vehicle assembly sector, namely cars, trucks and aircraft wings, bring the empirical insights to the information management model.
Findings
This research characterises the phases of disruption management and identifies the information companies use to recover from a variety of disruptive events. It presents an information management model to enhance supply chain visibility and support disruption management at the operational level. Moreover, it arrives at two design propositions to help companies in the redesign of their disruption discovery and recovery processes.
Originality/value
This research studies how companies manage operational disruptions. The proposed information management model allows to provide visibility to support the disruption management process. Also, based on the analysis of the disruptions occurring at the operational level we propose a conceptual model to support decision makers in the recovery from daily disruptive events.
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Diana Oliveira Marques, Bruno Barbosa Sousa and Ana Teresa Pedreiro
Increased competition and the constant need for companies to differentiate make markets more competitive and consumers more demanding when making purchasing decisions…
Abstract
Increased competition and the constant need for companies to differentiate make markets more competitive and consumers more demanding when making purchasing decisions. Consequently, companies recognized the importance of marketing and economics, which has gradually replaced its transactional practices, focused essentially on a single transaction, with relational practices, in which the customer is considered an integral part of the process. Creating long and profitable relationships has become a business priority and the use of tools such as customer relationship marketing (CRM) has become crucial. With the increasing importance of health and wellness tourism, thermalism has become a very competitive product wanted by tourists who need treatments that are not available in their country due to lack of availability or because they are quite expensive. Since tourism is integrated in the services sector, a set of relational marketing strategies can be applied to establish and maintain relationships with tourists. Therefore, it is important to understand how relational marketing can improve health and wellness tourism. Based on a combination of theoretical and practical research, this chapter explores the dynamic system and mechanism of innovation and development of relational marketing strategies in specific contexts of tourism (i.e. health and wellness tourism) considering cross-border (i.e. Northern Euroregion of Portugal and Galicia). From an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapter presents insights for marketing and tourism (health and well-being) and for the economic development of territories (i.e. cross-border regions).
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Rúben Silva Barros and Ana Maria Dias Simões da Costa Ferreira
Building on the growing body of research that has addressed management control systems and innovation, the purpose of this study is to assess the extent and nature of the use of…
Abstract
Purpose
Building on the growing body of research that has addressed management control systems and innovation, the purpose of this study is to assess the extent and nature of the use of controls in an innovative setting and how they work together unveiling the relationships and tensions amongst the Simons’ levers.
Design/methodology/approach
This study resorts to an in-depth and single case study in a company that has both a strong orientation to innovation and stable control practices in place. Evidence was collected from 32 interviews, visits to the company and internal documentation.
Findings
At the case company, it was possible to find the presence of controls according to all the levers of control. Likewise, joint effects of controls used according to interactive and beliefs approaches and diagnostic and boundary controls showed a consistent reinforcement that push the organization in a single direction. Signs of some countervailing reinforcement between these pairs were also detected, creating tensions. This in general shows that innovation can be weighed against the necessity of goal achievement taking place within fields in which the company can exploit the effort developed.
Originality/value
This study documents the collective use of controls in a context in which innovation is needed and how the combination of the levers of control with their inner workings and tensions allow the company to have a corporate environment of innovation that is friendly.
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Ricardo Zimmermann, Luis Miguel D.F. Ferreira, Antonio Carrizo Moreira, Ana Cristina Barros and Henrique Luiz Correa
This paper investigates the effect of the fit between supply and demand uncertainty (SDU) and supply chain responsiveness (SCR) (SC fit) on business and innovation performance in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper investigates the effect of the fit between supply and demand uncertainty (SDU) and supply chain responsiveness (SCR) (SC fit) on business and innovation performance in Brazilian companies.
Design/methodology/approach
The study presented an analysis carried out on an empirical study based on a sample of 150 manufacturing companies. Business and innovation performance of companies with different types of SC fit ( high–high and low–low fits) and misfit (positive and negative) are compared and discussed.
Findings
The results indicated that SC fit had a positive effect on both business and innovation performance. Further analyses suggested that companies with SC fit present similar business performance, independent of the level of SDU that characterizes the environment where they compete, while companies in environments with higher levels of uncertainty tend to present superior innovation performance. Companies with positive and negative misfit present similar performance.
Originality/value
An analysis of the literature showed that there is no consensus when it comes to the definitions and measurements of SC fit. The paper investigates the effects of SC fit on business and innovation performance, while previous empirical studies have mainly addressed its impact on financial performance. Moreover, this study compares the effects of two types of fit and two types of misfit and assesses SC fit in Brazilian manufacturing companies, analyzing the context of an under-researched reality.
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This chapter provides a survey of alternative methodologies for measuring and comparing productivity and efficiency of airlines, and reviews representative empirical studies. The…
Abstract
This chapter provides a survey of alternative methodologies for measuring and comparing productivity and efficiency of airlines, and reviews representative empirical studies. The survey shows the apparent shift from index procedures and traditional OLS estimation of production and cost functions to stochastic frontier methods and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods over the past three decades. Most of the airline productivity and efficiency studies over the last decade adopt some variant of DEA methods. Researchers in the 1980s and 1990s were mostly interested in the effects of deregulation and liberalization on airline productivity and efficiency as well as the effects of ownership and governance structure. Since the 2000s, however, studies tend to focus on how business models and management strategies affect the performance of airlines. Environmental efficiency now becomes an important area of airline productivity and efficiency studies, focusing on CO2 emission as a negative or undesirable output. Despite the fact that quality of service is an important aspect of airline business, limited attempts have been made to incorporate quality of service in productivity and efficiency analysis.
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Ana Luisa Santos, Filipa Barros and António Azevedo
Beyond traditional brand endorsement, many celebrities have in recent years decided to launch their own product lines, which may be used to promote their own celebrity brand…
Abstract
Purpose
Beyond traditional brand endorsement, many celebrities have in recent years decided to launch their own product lines, which may be used to promote their own celebrity brand. Which product categories or social causes match a celebrity’s brand personality? This study aims to investigate the antecedents of celebrity–product degree of fit and willingness to pay (WTP)/make a donation in different scenarios. The manipulation of the scenarios aims to capture the role of celebrity attributes, perceived personality profiles, product involvement and acceptance of social causes.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 335 respondents answered an online questionnaire with a factorial plan corresponding to 20 different matching scenarios: five celebrities/perceived personalities (Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Natalie Portman and Scarlet Johansson) × four types of branding scenarios (a lipstick for low involvement; a watch for high involvement; an eco-foundation for “high social acceptance” and vodka for “low social acceptance/controversial”).
Findings
Scarlett Johansson obtained the highest degree of fit, both for launching her own brand of lipstick or a watch. Kim Kardashian had the best degree of fit for launching her own vodka brand, while Emma Watson’s attributes confirmed that she would be seen as the ideal founder of an eco-foundation. Significant predictors of WTP/make a donation were assessed by multiple linear regression for each type of product.
Practical implications
The paper provides recommendations that may help guide celebrity brand managers through the celebrity–product matching process.
Social implications
Celebrity branding in relation to social causes is also discussed in this paper.
Originality/value
This study explores a gap found in the literature as it explores the product match-up hypotheses within a celebrity branding context and moreover extends this investigation to social causes and products with different degrees of involvement and social acceptance.
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Rúben Silva Barros and Ana Maria Dias Simões da Costa Ferreira
By designing a pilot time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) model, this study aims to examine in depth the suitability and the complexity of TDABC in a manufacturing company.
Abstract
Purpose
By designing a pilot time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) model, this study aims to examine in depth the suitability and the complexity of TDABC in a manufacturing company.
Design/methodology/approach
To obtain a deeper understanding on the matters to analyse, this research adopts an interventionist approach. The host organisation is GP, a Portuguese company in the frozen food sector.
Findings
The authors’ experience allows them to assert that TDABC is suitable for a manufacturing company and it is able to deal with the variability of the industrial processes. Nonetheless, through a comparison with the models presented in the literature, TDABC appears to be more complex for manufacturing. The authors argue that this happens for two reasons. First, the two types of resources (human labour and machinery) used in production areas create a need to split tasks and to create two equations for each process, something that does not happen in service companies. Second, times are difficult to individualise for certain highly automated procedures, which could also give rise to some errors.
Research limitations/implications
The designed model is compared to other models presented in the literature.
Practical implications
This study shows a real example of TDABC in manufacturing and the procedural innovation of the time equations.
Originality/value
As the TDABC literature has been mostly focused on examples of service companies, the authors examine the technical suitability and the complexity of TDABC in manufacturing companies.
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Ana Cristina Barros, Ana Paula Barbosa‐Póvoa and Edgar E. Blanco
The purpose of this paper is to investigate what hinders businesses to achieve superior supply chain performance and how this knowledge may be used in the process of selection of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate what hinders businesses to achieve superior supply chain performance and how this knowledge may be used in the process of selection of tailored practices for supply chain management (SCM).
Design/methodology/approach
Literature review and secondary case studies were used to identify hinders of superior supply chain performance. A method for the selection of tailored practices for SCM is developed. Case study research is used to validate the value of the developed method for practice and research.
Findings
This research identifies detrimental phenomena that are observed in the management of supply chains: waste, uncertainty, vulnerability, congestion, bullwhip, diseconomies of scale and self‐interest. It develops and illustrates a method for the selection of tailored SCM practices.
Research limitations/implications
This research did not verify the completeness of the list of phenomena identified. The implementation of the selected practices was not in the scope of the case studies.
Practical implications
Researchers may use the phenomena to study the impact of different practices in the overall supply chain performance, as well as to study the interactions between the different phenomena. Practitioners may use the proposed method as a diagnosis and continuous improvement tool for their supply chain.
Originality/value
Although the supply chain phenomena have been explored individually in the literature, a holistic approach of the phenomena had not yet been developed to the best of our knowledge. The method developed identifies a set of tailored practices that are in alignment with the context and strategy of the business and decrease the overall effects of the detrimental phenomena.
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Mariana Crivelari Da Cunha, Patrícia da Silva Machado, Ana Beatriz Silva Araújo, Elisângela Elena Nunes Carvalho and Eduardo Valério de Barros Vilas Boas
The potential of the Cerrado fruit could be explored by development of new products, such as jellies that can be used to add value to the fruit, as well as to preserve this biome…
Abstract
Purpose
The potential of the Cerrado fruit could be explored by development of new products, such as jellies that can be used to add value to the fruit, as well as to preserve this biome. This paper aims to evaluate the effect of processing, the glass packaging type and storage time on the quality of jelly, prepared from reconstituted murici pulp, over 12 months of storage.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a completely randomized design (CRD) in factorial 2 × 5, with two types of glass packaging (transparent and amber) and five storage periods (0, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months), with four replications and the experimental parcel consisting of 80 g of jelly (two bottles of 40 g). The quality of jelly was monitored through 12 months using physicochemical (proximal composition, color, soluble solids, titratable acidity and pH), microbiological (coliforms at 35 °C and 45 °C, filamentous fungi and Salmonella sp) and sensory analyses (sensory acceptance and purchase intent).
Findings
The pulp processing effectively affected the physicochemical and nutritional composition (proximal composition, soluble solids and color). It was found that only the storage time significantly influenced (p < 0.05) jelly quality, considering the variables analyzed, except the soluble solids, ash, dietary fiber and sensory texture attributes. However, the glass packaging factor (transparent and amber) did not result in significant changes in those variables. Moreover, the pulp processing allows a seasonal fruit with a short harvest period and short post-harvest life to be available to consumers as a new product throughout the year.
Originality/value
Based on the present study, the native Cerrado fruit such as murici [Byrsonima crassifolia (L.) Rich] is appreciated for its pleasant peculiarities such as color, aroma and taste; however, it is underutilized as food for lack of information and studies. Although the fruit does not have widespread use as food, it is necessary to make the population aware about its importance, not only as a source of nutrients, but also for its functional and sensory potential. Therefore, the production of murici jelly can increase consumption of the fruit, besides being a way to add value and extend the shelf life and sensory acceptance of the product prepared.