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Increased competition and access to information are forcing companies to provide quality to their products and services, aligned with a growing society pressure for less harmful environmental practices. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the adoption of reverse logistics (RL) may contribute to the generation of competitive advantage and improved quality in a part substitution process of a household appliance company.

This paper carried out a single case study in a household appliance company. The study collected data through semi-structured interviews in addition to document analysis and observation.

The implemented practices enhanced service maintenance and customer services and provided a more effective monitoring of defective parts. Moreover, such practices reduced unnecessary part substitutions, consumer dissatisfaction and undesired disposal in the environment. RL in the studied company has offered a potential contribution to the company quality strategies by providing more part returns, assuring cost savings, and reducing time to solve field problems.

The study was limited to a single case study. Thus, the study findings are not subject to generalization for other similar organizations.

This paper is one of the few studies on RL in a household company in the context of an emerging economy. Such feature denotes in a singular scenario in RL investigations about recovering defective parts.

Recently, several areas are successfully applying the Lean Six Sigma methodology, specifically in healthcare, public services, higher education institutions and manufacturing industries. This study aims to present an extensive literature review involving Lean Six Sigma practical applications in the last five years, described in a case studies format.

A systematic literature review was conducted, and 39 articles were selected and analyzed.

An increase in Lean Six Sigma applications in healthcare and higher education institutions was identified. Furthermore, Lean Six Sigma is effectively applied in several areas and is continuously used in traditional industries. The main critical success factor identified was leadership and management involvement, project management and organizational infrastructure, as well as training and education. Also, the main difficulties found are related to the organization's culture and developing communication with leaders and managers.

The main difficulties found in this research are related to the lack of data presented in some articles analyzed, where only information about how the Lean Six Sigma application was conducted is shown, not mentioning difficulties or success factors identified.

Case studies are fundamental to help popularize Lean Six Sigma applications, showing a real-life scenario of how the methodology is implemented, the main difficulties encountered and critical success factors found. Thus, the value of this study is promoting and developing research involving Lean Six Sigma case study applications to guide new researchers and practitioners on the subject.

This work investigates how digital technologies and artistic resources interact in order to bring different Creative and Cultural Industry (CCI) actors together in networks. As the stage of this work, the authors investigate the musical collective Postmodern Jukebox (PMJ), a digital-based enterprise which is intensive in the use of social media platforms.

The study adopts a qualitative approach, based on a case study and netnography.

The findings demonstrate how the technology available to CCI enterprises can be used to leverage business through the engagement of its audience in collaborative processes. The analysis also evidences collaborative dynamics resulting from the integration of three key operant resources in CCI: artistic, technological and co-creative resources. Finally, the case shows the role of a CCI enterprise as an engagement platform that capture people’s emotions trough artistic content.

From a managerial perspective, the study demonstrates how a digital CCI enterprise manages the flow of resources and knowledge drawn from several networks in order to engage actors in co-creating value. Our analysis also suggests that emotions are not only drivers in bringing actors closer to the value cocreation process but also collectively created outputs within these interactions. In this process, the artistic resources of CCI's enterprises play a fundamental role in capturing and transforming these emotions by putting actors from different networks in contact.