Search results

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which knowledge management (KM), customer satisfaction (CS) and organizational image (OI) discriminate quality-certified municipalities from non-certified ones (ISO 9001).

An empirical study was carried out involving 81 Portuguese municipalities (40 certified, 41 non-certified), paired in a random sampling procedure. The Knowledge Management Questionnaire (n=1,372 municipality employees), the Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire and the Organizational Image Questionnaire (n=3,096 residents) were applied. Multiple discriminant analysis was performed.

The results indicate that certified and non-certified municipalities are distinct based on a function that considers KM (competitive orientation and formal KM practices), CS (intangible and tangible factors) and OI (favorable image).

The findings need further validation in other countries. However, the results highlight the importance of quality certification for both employees and residents.

The results encourage local public administration organizations to introduce and maintain quality certification.

This research is the only one, to the authors’ knowledge, that simultaneously explores organizational processes of KM, CS and OI in local public administration. The sampling procedure and the information from diverse data sources are unique contributions. The conclusions may aid practitioners and scholars in understanding these organizational phenomena in the context of quality-certified and quality non-certified municipalities.

This paper aims to identify the kind of work environment that should be offered by hospital leaders to their nursing staff in Brazil to generate job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour within their field of expertise.

A survey was applied to 171 nurses and 274 nursing technicians who work at five private hospitals in Brazil. Both factor analysis and regression analysis were used to analyse the study model.

The results indicate that to stimulate positive behaviours and attitudes among nursing staff, managers should mainly be concerned about establishing a clear and effective communication with their professionals to ensure role clarity, promote a good working environment and encourage relationships based on trust.

The limitations of the study are absence of the researcher while the questionnaires were filled out and the fact that the sample comprised respondents who made themselves available to participate in the research.

This study contributes to elucidate the factors that can promote a good internal climate for nursing staff, assisting hospital leaders to face the huge managerial challenges of managing, retaining and advancing these professionals.

The findings contribute to the body of knowledge in leadership among nursing professionals in developing countries. Hospital leaders in Brazil should encourage trusting relationships with nursing professionals through clear, effective and respectful communications, besides investing in team development and promoting a good working environment.

This paper aims to identify the kind of internal climate leaders should offer health-care professionals to promote a patient safety culture in public hospitals managed by social health organizations in Brazil.

Two surveys were applied to health-care professionals working at three Brazilian public hospitals. The internal climate survey reached 1,013 respondents, and the patient safety culture survey reached 1,302 participants. Both factor and regression analyses were used to analyze the study model and determine how internal climate influences patient safety culture.

Results indicate that to promote a patient safety culture among health-care professionals, leaders should generate an internal climate based on trust to foster pride in working in the hospital. Possibly, the trust dimension is the most important one and must be developed to achieve job satisfaction and provide better services to patients.

All the hospitals studied were managed by the same Organização Social de Saúde. Due to the limited responses concerning the respondents’ profiles, demographic variables were not analyzed.

This research reveals that the trust and pride dimensions can most strongly influence a positive patient safety culture, helping hospital leaders face this huge managerial challenge of consistently delivering high standards of patient safety.

This research studies the promotion of a patient safety culture in public hospitals managed by social health organizations, characterized by greater flexibility and autonomy in health-care management and by a greater need for accountability.

This research is about the evaluation of organizational risks in the hospitality sector, using the experience of a guest with visual impairments. The objectives of this research are to (1) identify if the previous expectations of a guest with visual impairments trip will be exceeded in the final; (2) classify organizational risks in the hotel sector; (3) verify if there are direct impacts on the travellers' future behaviour, such as destination recommendation and intention to return to the destination. Despite of the fact that organizational risks are composed by transport, hospitality and tourism attractions (tourism players can jeopardize the success of a travel experience), this research will only focus on the hospitality sector. To assure the achievement of the referred objectives, a case study will be used based on the analysis of the experience of a Portuguese guest with disabilities, who traveled alone, around Europe, with a guide dog. His expectations, constraints and risks will be analysed through a deep-depth interview, in which questions are organized from the literature review. Finally, it is expected that this exploratory research helps to find new avenues for the study of organizational risks, more precisely, hospitality risks for disabled people.

The repercussions of Portugal's colonialism are not widely discussed. The marks of colonialism in the public space are still present in the urban landscape of Portuguese cities. Despite the growing activity of the Black movement's in the country, they are still not being systematically considered in the design of public policies. Moreover, the Portuguese census does not include any data collection on ethnic belonging. Therefore, it is difficult to deepen the knowledge of the Black communities. The Black community has been growing in Porto, the second-largest city in Portugal and it remains highly invisible. Starting from a collaborative project between Portuguese and American professionals, acting in the fields of sociology and socially engaged curatorial and contemporary art practices, an experimental approach was developed to map and cocreate with the Black community in Porto. By using digital tools while collecting, analyzing, and sharing data, and by applying an ethnographic approach and techniques of exploration from documentary photography, the team developed a collaborative project side by side with the community. An exchange between disciplinary knowledge and “various subject positions,” with all participants engaging in an exploration of how to begin decolonizing the city through those tools took place at the project TRAVESSIA. This chapter explores how the Black nonelite is expressing and questioning race and ethnic inequalities in Porto by discussing the results of this collaborative project.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on technology capability and develops a model for measuring it applied agrifood industry companies.

Using a combination of literature review, observation research (expert interviews), AHP multicriteria analysis method and case study research, the paper develops an index model. The proposed model was applied to the case of dairy agribusiness complex in Brazil (180 rural units, five fluid milk processing companies and six cheese factories).

The index model developed includes five macroindexes: resources; technology upgrading; processes and routines; learning mechanisms; and coordination and accessibility. Results show that the model was able to identify the different technology capabilities of the companies studied and generated important information to identify bottlenecks and improvement opportunities for these companies.

The study contributes to understanding of a technological capability in the agribusiness system companies and how it can measure this capability in an integrated and synthetic model. Literature shows any models but no record of an integrated measurement system composed of a multi-attribute applied to assess the agribusiness system companies.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to managers’ understanding of the internationalization of born global (BG) firms from developed countries in emerging markets. Adapting the new institutional sociology approach, the authors provide insights into how BGs might strive to bridge the institutional distance.

An explorative, multiple case study is used focusing on two Swiss BG firms in Brazil.

The study shows that these two firms faced similar institutional challenges. However, they approached them in different ways and achieved different outcomes. The comparison of these two cases highlights key factors that may influence successful internationalization, namely, niche strategies, high commitment modes of entry and the liability of outsidership.

The main research implication is that the market mode of entry and high commitment entry modes are conductive to local market knowledge acquisition. Future research should investigate how western BGs might overcome the disadvantages of foreignness and effectively gain acceptance in emerging markets such as in Brazil, China or India. This could be done by looking at micro-processes, e.g. multiple identities in which BGs might strive to simultaneously fit in and stand out in the host market.

The findings, which uncover key factors that influence internationalization, shall contribute to managers’ understanding of how BG firms from developed economies enter emerging markets and overcome challenges.

Comparing these two cases highlights key factors that may shed light on the successful internationalization of BGs from developed countries in emerging markets. The authors first describe the institutional isomorphic pressures on the two Swiss BGs in Brazil. Second, the authors reveal how they engaged in isomorphic processes to bridge the institutional distance.

Sustainable development challenges have been gaining increased attention from scholars across a wide range of disciplines and governments and business leaders of developed and developing countries. In this chapter, we present selected Latin American socioeconomic indicators, and we note that much progress is needed to achieve the region's many sustainable development goals. We bring forth contributions from different streams of innovation studies for addressing grand challenges, and we discourse on how they push the sustainable development mandate forward. Innovation scholars have highlighted the need to elaborate novel transformational approaches to innovation for addressing such pressing grand challenges. Some scholars have also proposed that while the innovation systems framework is well-suited for addressing sustainable development challenges, it must first be profoundly and radically transformed to account for the novel ways of innovating and integrating a diversity of systemic economic actors and social stakeholders who have conflicting visions, interests, norms, and expectations. We present the different foundational strengths and weaknesses of the innovation systems framework and we discuss the pertinence for its profound and radical transformation. We conclude by organizing these different, yet complementary views of innovation in a conceptual framework while discussing the implications for Latin America and future research.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.