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The purpose of the this paper is to discover the quantitative impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on financial reporting of European countries and evaluate if this impact is connected with the traditional accounting system in which each country is classified, either the Anglo‐Saxon or the continental‐European accounting system.

First, the authors quantify the IFRS impact on each country and make a comparative analysis of that impact among countries. Then, the authors apply a cluster analysis in order to group European countries on the basis of the different effects of IFRS application.

The results obtained show that the first application of IFRS has had different effects on the financial reporting among countries. The cluster analysis identifies four groups which show that the impact of IFRS on financial statements of European firms is not related to traditional accounting systems.

The main contribution of the paper is that it studies the impact of mandatory IFRS application for several European countries and shows a comparative analysis, grouping the countries on the basis of that impact. Previous literature mainly gathers research related to specific countries, individually considered, or to different IFRS effects that do not reflect quantitative impacts.

Governance is becoming an increasingly important concept in European theoretical debates and in political practice as a new way to manage public policies, since the public sector reforms in the 1980s. However, the debate in Latin America has different characteristics than in Europe, so it is necessary to provide a critical review of the proposed agenda for the transformation of the state in the region, and of the transfer of the concept of governance by multilateral agencies. To understand these changes, this chapter examines three key areas of reforms in Latin America and the privatization of public services, new social policy proposals, and the decentralization process. This will help us understand the tension between normative models and specific patterns of governance that prevail in Latin America.

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 paper aims to explore the evolutionary dynamics of innovation ecosystems in the food industry by adopting both open innovation and convergence approaches to derive practical policy implications to develop impactful innovation ecosystems to promote food production sustainably.

Starting from the cutting-edge case of Foodvalley in the Netherlands, the study adopts a backcasting approach to reach a future vision of food ecosystems from a sustainable food production perspective. The authors set the backcasting analysis in four steps: (1) description of the present and trends analysis, (2) selection of trustworthy criteria and goals, (3) development of future images and (4) analysis of how to reach the images.

The trends analysis has identified three existing innovation fields – protein shift, circular agrifood and food and health – and two strategic directions – convergence and localness decrease. The study reports how a long-term commitment may lead the valley toward a best future scenario.

The study suggests that policymakers and stakeholders can promote innovation strategies in sustainable food production ecosystems by encouraging collaboration between different sectors, reducing regulatory barriers, attracting innovative actors, and investing in education and training programs. To achieve measurable environmental and social impact outcomes, policies should promote entrepreneurship and create an enabling environment that encourages innovation and risk-taking.

The originality of this paper concerns the backcasting perspective applied to the analysis of the food ecosystem. This approach facilitates the identification of a path direction for successfully managing open innovation and industry convergence toward a desirable future of sustainable food production.

The objective of this chapter is to analyze diabetes onset in Mexico in terms of work relations and family. The authors examined the impacts of diabetes on inequalities, practices of violence among the Mexican population, analyzing gender relations in the context of having diabetes. Our research is based on mixed method approach. First, the authors conducted a survey among 110 diabetic persons in Chiapas and Nuevo León, two Mexican states from the North and the South. Results show that gender violence has impacts in both Mexican states despite of socioeconomical differences. Overall, diabetes is a complex social process that need to be analyzed on different social and socioeconomical levels. Gender violence is a particularly strong factor that has an impact on diabetes. The contribution of this research is based on understanding of diabetes onset as a social construction where gender violence, social cohesion and subjective wellbeing play a significant role in diabetes in the Mexican context. The outcomes of this research might have an impact on transformation of public health policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, from a medical approach to a sociocultural one in terms of diabetes as a chronic illness. Moreover, our results suggest that quality of life depends on the level of interacting within social groups, as diabetes is no longer a disease that affects an individual, but it is more a social phenomenon.

This study investigates the stability of the “hospital effect” on performance over time by administrative health data as a source of evidence. Using 78,907 heart failure adult records from 117 hospitals in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) over three years (2010–2012), we analyzed hospital performance in terms of 30-day mortality and 30-day unplanned readmissions to gather evidence about the stability of the “hospital effect.” Best/worst performers were identified through multi-level models that combine both patient and hospital covariates. Our results confirm that managerial choices affect hospital performance, and that the “hospital effect” is not, contrary to expectations, stable over the short term. Performance improvement/worsening over the three years has been also analyzed.

The purpose of this study is to examine the existence of greenwashing and sustainable development goal (SDG)-washing processes by comparing ex ante (SDG Compass) and ex post (SDG Compliance) indicators and investigating whether the limitations associated with these indicators encourage companies to engage in washing processes.

The authors use a sample of 1,154 companies included in the S&P Sustainability Yearbook (formerly the RobecoSAM Yearbook). The authors test for the presence of greenwashing by comparing ex ante and ex post indicators for each SDG, whereas to test for SDG-washing, the authors compare the two ex ante and ex post approaches considering the full set of SDGs.

The results show that there is no consistency between the two types of indicators to measure the level of SDG implementation in organisations. This lack of consistency may facilitate both greenwashing and SDG-washing processes, which is due to the design and limitations of these measurement tools.

Companies may choose those indicators that paint their commitment to the SDGs in the best light, but they may also select indicators based on the SDGs they want to report on. These two options would combine greenwashing and SDG-washing.

The shift towards improved standards and regulations for measuring SDG achievement is the result of several social factors such as investor scrutiny, regulatory reform, consumer awareness and increased corporate accountability.

Few previous studies have analysed in detail the interaction between greenwashing and SDG-washing. They focus on the use of ex ante or ex post indicators separately, with samples composed of local companies, and without considering the whole set of SDGs.

This paper aims to explore lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) applicability and usefulness in the evaluation of quality indicators in a hospital emergency department (ED) and to determine the degree of compliance with quality standards according to this sampling method.

Descriptive observational research in the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón (HGUGM) emergency department (ED). Patients older than 15 years, diagnosed with dyspnoea, chest pain, urinary tract colic or bronchial asthma attending the HGUGM ED from December 2005 to May 2006, and patients admitted during 2005 with exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or acute meningitis were included in the study. Sample sizes were calculated using LQAS. Different quality indicators, one for each process, were selected. The upper (acceptable quality level (AQL)) and lower thresholds (rejectable quality level (RQL)) were established considering risk α=5 per cent and β=20 per cent, and the minimum number of observations required was calculated.

It was impossible to reach the necessary sample size for bronchial asthma and urinary tract colic patients. For chest pain, acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and acute meningitis, quality problems were detected. The lot was accepted only for the dyspnoea indicator.

The usefulness of LQAS to detect quality problems in the management of health processes in one hospital's ED. The LQAS could complement traditional sampling methods.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a set of techniques, in the domain of texture analysis, dedicated to the classification of industrial textures. One of the main purposes was to deal with a high diversity of textures, including structural and highly random patterns.

The global system includes a texture segmentation phase and a classification phase. The approach for image texture segmentation is based on features extracted from wavelets transform, fuzzy spectrum and interaction maps. The classification architecture uses a fuzzy grammar inference system.

The classifier uses the aggregation of features from the several segmentation techniques, resulting in high flexibility concerning the diversity of industrial textures. The resulted system allows on‐line learning of new textures. This approach avoids the need for a global re‐learning of the all textures each time a new texture is presented to the system.

These achievements demonstrate the practical value of the system, as it can be applied to different industrial sectors for quality control operations.

The global approach was integrated in a cork vision system, leading to an industrial prototype that has already been tested. Similarly, it was tested in a textile machine, for a specific fabric inspection, and gave results that corroborate the diversity of possible applications. The segmentation procedure reveals good performance that is indicated by high classification rates, revealing good perspectives for full industrialization.