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The purpose of this paper is to solve both eigenvalue and boundary value problems coming from the field of quantum mechanics through the application of meshless methods, particularly the one known as meshless local Petrov‐Galerkin (MLPG).

Regarding eigenvalue problems, the authors show how to apply MLPG to the time‐independent Schrödinger equation stated in three dimensions. Through a special procedure, the numerical integration of weak forms is carried out only for internal nodes. The boundary conditions are enforced through a collocation method. The final result is a generalized eigenvalue problem, which is readily solved for the energy levels. An example of boundary value problem is described by the time‐dependent nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The weak forms are again stated only for internal nodes, whereas the same collocation scheme is employed to enforce the boundary conditions. The nonlinearity is dealt with by a predictor‐corrector scheme.

Results show that the combination of MLPG and a collocation scheme works very well. The numerical results are compared to those provided by analytical solutions, exhibiting good agreement.

The flexibility of MLPG is made explicit. There are different ways to obtain the weak forms, and the boundary conditions can be enforced through a number of ways, the collocation scheme being just one of them. The shape functions used to approximate the solution can incorporate modifications that reflect some feature of the problem, like periodic boundary conditions. The value of this work resides in the fact that problems from other areas of electromagnetism can be attacked by the very same ideas herein described.

The purpose of this paper is to solve the electromagnetic scattering problem through a new integral‐based approach that uses the moving least squares (MLS) meshless method to generate its shape functions.

The electric field integral equation and its magnetic counterpart (MFIE) are discretized via special shape functions built numerically through the MLS procedure. This approach is applied to the particular problem concerning the scattering of a TM plane wave by an infinite conductor cylinder. An error norm is established in order to verify the quality of the obtained results.

Results show that the discretization process which employs MLS shape functions presents very good precision and fast convergence to the solution, when compared to results provided by another numerical method, the method of moments.

MLS shape functions occur in meshless methods intended to solve problems based on differential formulation. This paper shows that these shape functions can also be applied successfully to problems coming from an integral formulation.

The paper describes the purpose of and strategies for conducting post‐occupancy evaluations (POEs) as a method for assessing school building performance. Set within the larger context of global efforts to develop and apply common indicators of school building quality, the authors describe research conducted within the newest generation of São Paulo's schools.

The various methods of POE, including expert walkthroughs, physical measurements, observations, behavioral mapping, user interviews, focus groups, and survey questionnaires were applied within a purposefully selected case study school.

The POE carried out at Fernando Gasparian High School revealed limitations in the building's design, particularly in light of the neighborhood context, thus raising significant concerns about safety and security. Users gave the construction quality of the building, a generally positive evaluation, however, there were some important aspects of the building design judged as deficient. In particular, researchers observed a significant mismatch between the building design and the realities of the surrounding community. This sort of incongruity introduced important challenges to principals, teachers, and staff, as they worked to ensure the safety of students who attend the school.

The research explores the effectiveness of POE methods in capturing user and expert assessments of overall building quality, as well as the degree to which building designs assist educators and community members in realizing Brazil's larger educational reform goals.

This systematic literature review integrates the findings of existing studies regarding technical efficiency (TE) in dairy farms. The purpose of this paper is to offer a research framework that assembles TE descriptors, a classification of previous literature that provides the basis for the synthesis and research agenda.

This paper systematically reviews 86 survey research studies using rigorous and reproducible procedures. The review is applied to published survey research.

The framework relates context, inputs, outputs and metrics of TE. There is no agreement among the authors on the context and determinants of TE. The main determinants of TE are geographical location, farm size, investments in veterinary care, feeding and milking practice, TE model estimation techniques, public policy, and management-related variables. This paper offers ten propositions for future research on the controversial results on the determinants of TE. The authors also explore the reasons for the discrepant results based on the Debreu-Farrell’s definition of TE, the contingency theory and the resource-based view of the firm, elucidating the literature and serving as a basis for future investigation. Implications for dairy farmers and researchers close the review.

Meta-analysis and meta-regression studies were long at the forefront of reviews in the TE of dairy farms. This paper offers a novel qualitative research synthesis with frameworks and the classification of previous literature and a research agenda, which provides a new and different perspective for analysis, by innovating over the available quantitative procedures to combine statistical results.

Purpose: Risk is a multifaceted concept, and its identification requires complex approaches that are often misunderstood. The consequence is that decisions are based on limited perception rather than the full value and meaning of what risk is, as a result, the way it is being tackled is incorrect. The individuals are often limited in their perceptions and ideas and do not embrace the full multifaceted nature of risk. Regulators and individuals want to follow norms and checklists or overuse models, simulations, and templates, thereby reducing responsibility for decision-making. At the same time, the wider use of technology and rules reduces the critical thinking of individuals. We advance the automation process by building robots that follow protocols and forget about the part of risk assessment that cannot be programed. Therefore, with this study, the objective of this study was to discover how people define risk, the influencing factors of risk perception and how they behave toward this perception. The authors also determine how the perception differed with age, gender, marital status, education level and region. The novelty of the research is related to individual risk perception during COVID-19, as this is a new and unknown phenomenon. Methodology: The research is based on the analysis of the self-administered purposely designed questionnaires we distributed across different social media platforms between February and June 2020 in Europe and in some cases was carried out as a interview over communication platforms such as “Skype,” “Zoom” and “Microsoft Teams.” The questionnaire was divided into four parts: Section 1 was designed to collect demographic information from the participants; Section 2 included risk definition statements obtained from literature and a preliminary discussion with peers; Section 3 included risk behavior statements; and Section 4 included statements on risk perception experiences. A five-point Likert Scale was provided, and participants were required to answer along a scale of “1” for “Strongly Agree” to “5” for “Strongly Disagree.” Participants also had the option to elaborate further and provide additional comments in an open-ended box provided at the end of the section. 466 valid responses were received. Thematic analysis was carried out to analyze the interviews and the open-ended questions, while the questionnaire responses were analyzed using various quantitative methods on IBM SPSS (version 23). Findings: The results of the analysis indicate that individuals evaluate the risk before making a decision and view risk as both a loss and opportunity. The study identifies nine factors influencing risk perception. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that we can continue to develop models and rules, but as long as the risk is not understood, we will never achieve anything.

Some scholars argue that corruption hinders economies and investment because it generates extra costs, while others suggest that it can act as a stimulus. Their mixed empirical findings have prompted the analysis of whether investors' attitude towards corruption changes depending on its degree of prevalence.

The authors examined 4,518 public–private partnerships (PPPs) located in 46 developing countries for the period 1997–2017. The data were collected from the World Bank PPP database. The authors investigated the relationship between the amount of investment in PPP projects and the level of corruption using regression with multilevel mixed effects.

Corruption and the amount of investment in PPP projects are inversely related at the low and high end of the spectrum of corruption, but the relationship is positive towards the middle. Further analysis revealed that this was spurred by high investment PPP projects in less developed countries.

The findings allow the authors to reconcile the opposing positions in the literature through a “sand–grease–sand the wheels” effect between the volume of investment and corruption, which can be configured as a reverse S-shape consisting of three stages.

The purpose of this paper is to complement and extend previous literature reviews on Technical Efficiency (TE) in dairy farms, analysing the effects of different methodologies and study-specific characteristics on Mean TE (MTE).

The researchers independently conducted a systematic review of more than 400 abstracts and 85 full-text papers. Original keywords were applied to seven key electronic databases. Results from a meta-regression analysis of 85 published papers totalling 443 TE distributions in dairy farms worldwide are discussed.

The variation in the MTE indexes reported in the literature can be explained by the methodology of estimations (method of estimation, functional form of frontier models, model dimensionality), the farms geographical location and farm size. Additionally, the results suggest that, given the state of technology prevailing in each country at the time that the studies on TE were conducted, dairy farmers in the sample could increase milk output by 20.9 per cent (level of inefficiency), on average, if they produce on their frontiers.

This study makes two important contributions: first, it updates and compares previous works on frontier estimation of TE in dairy farms; and second, it adds two dimensions of dairy farms, size (herd and land area) and economic development, to the known differentials of TE measurement.

The main purpose of this study is to see the effects of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on a firm's innovation performance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The objective of this study is twofold: First, it aims to analyze the impact of ICT applications on firms' innovative behavior and whether firms using ICT applications more intensively are also more innovative. Second, and more essentially, it assesses empirically the impact of ICT applications on firms' innovative performance in sub-Saharan African countries by using instrumental variable probit model. Therefore, we used data from the 2013 enterprise survey (Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS)). According to our results, the most important ICT tools are emails and using the internet for online sales. Firms who have IT Teams are not creating any difference; however, if a firm purchase or develop in-house any software then they are more likely to produce innovation than the other firms.

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.

This qualitative study, which is based on multiple cases, aims to analyze the pattern of acquisitions by Brazilian multinationals, such as Gerdau in the steel industry, Petrobrás in the oil and gas industry and Vale in the mining industry, to infer the likely knowledge motivations underlying the acquisitions of these firms.

The analyses of the three cases, with secondary data collected for the period from 2003 to 2007, classify the acquisitions according to the extent of the exploration or exploitation of resources and in two dimensions: business knowledge and location knowledge, in accordance with Ferreira’s (2005) model based on March (1991) and Chandler (1962).

The findings showed that the acquisitions by Gerdau, Petrobrás and Vale favored the exploitation of their resources and capabilities developed in the home market more than the exploration of new resources and capabilities. Regarding the ownership acquired, this study failed to observe the likely expected pattern of acquiring a majority stake for sustaining an exploitation strategy or a minority stake for sustaining an exploration strategy.

This study makes three contributions. First, the need to analyze the potential gains of new knowledge acquisition in domestic and cross-border expansion. Second, considering the opportunity to explore new resources and knowledge even for firms in commodity industries. Third, considering how the equity held is a structural solution that needs to be adjusted to the knowledge strategy.