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1 – 10 of 53Belén Gesto, Guillermo Gómez and Julián Salas
While the illegal occupation of land by families lacking the means to acquire housing on the market is hardly front page news in Latin America, it may not merit the silence to…
Abstract
While the illegal occupation of land by families lacking the means to acquire housing on the market is hardly front page news in Latin America, it may not merit the silence to which it has been relegated of late. The authors, who formed part of a research team on the subject, conclude that urban squatting is still very common today. The team found that most Latin American countries are amending their municipal, provincial and national legislation in this regard and backing programmes for consolidation and improvement. In a nutshell, they are adopting a more tolerant attitude toward squatting. The authors believe that the Guided Occupancy Programme successfully implemented by the city of Trujillo, Peru, for over a decade, constitutes an exemplary approach to the problem. While not necessarily constituting a universal solution, it can be viewed as a viable and reproducible alternative in situations of widespread poverty.
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Lorena Carrete, Raquel Castaño, Reto Felix, Edgar Centeno and Eva González
The purpose of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of deeper motivations and inhibitors of green consumer behavior in the context of emerging economies. Based…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of deeper motivations and inhibitors of green consumer behavior in the context of emerging economies. Based on the findings, it aims to provide implications for marketers and policy making.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on an ethnographic approach, in‐depth interviews and observational data were used to study 15 Mexican families from four urban regions of Mexico with different incomes. Thematic analysis was used to develop and validate themes and codes.
Findings
The findings highlight three dominant themes related to uncertainty in the adoption of environmentally‐friendly behaviors: consumer confusion, trust and credibility, and compatibility. Overall, green behaviors seem to be ingrained in the traditional heritage of savings and frugality rather than based on strong environmental values. It is suggested that the factors that drive consumers from positive attitudes and intentions to the actual adoption of green behaviors are a combination of perceived personal benefits, decreased perceived risk and uncertainty, a sense of control over costs, and a decomposition and reconstruction of deeply embedded cultural values and practices.
Practical implications
Policy makers and marketers are advised to build on collaborative efforts in order to facilitate comprehension and adoption of environmentally‐friendly behaviors and green products. In order to construct modernity alongside environmental responsibility, it seems indispensable to provide affordable lower‐priced alternatives for the low‐income segments of the market which constitute the vast majority of the population in emerging economies.
Originality/value
Being one of very few available qualitative studies on green consumer behavior, this study delves into the tension between modernity and traditional heritage in the context of emerging economies.
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Commodity racism, as conceived by Anne McClintock (1995), describes a novel cultural formation, binding difference, power, and consumption to one another, a creation at the…
Abstract
Commodity racism, as conceived by Anne McClintock (1995), describes a novel cultural formation, binding difference, power, and consumption to one another, a creation at the interface of imperialism and industrialism in the late 19th century that offered an emergent language to simultaneously make sense of difference, fashion identity, cultivate desire, and sell stuff. Importantly, as it remapped the world, placing peoples and cultures in ranked social locations, it also reconfigured gender, the body, and taste as it rerouted the flows between public and private spheres. At its core, as expressed quite clearly in the soap advertisements McClintock analyzes, commodity racism stated the (then) accepted facts of white supremacy, underscoring the propriety of imperial expansion and settling, in many ways, for consumers hailed through it the racial question of the day.
This paper aims to examine the transformation of the concept of cultural tourism within the sociopolitical empowerments, changes of visual realms and normative contexts, which is…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the transformation of the concept of cultural tourism within the sociopolitical empowerments, changes of visual realms and normative contexts, which is embedded within museums as institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
These discussions will be conceptualized through investigating the shifts in the metamorphosis of the architectural vocabulary of Egypt's museums between nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This analysis will be highlighted through connecting both the notion of the “tourist reflexivity” of John Urry and Jonas Larsen in The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (2011) and the notion of the “interstitial spaces” and “new internationalism” of Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture (1994). The analysis expands to interrogate these two notions as prelude for reflecting on representations of colonial and postcolonial museums in Egypt, starting from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo (c. 1863) to the most recent, the Egyptian Grand Museum, Cairo (c. 2002).
Findings
The analysis revealed that while colonial museums endeavored to stage external cultural authority and postcolonial ones staged traditions' liminality through “New internationalism”, they created spatiotemporal interstices. This finding, while is a timely example with the rising global cultural encounters that emerged during this transformative age, it challenges the collective imaginations of architects to liberate from traditional nationalism.
Originality/value
The paper offers novel theoretical and architectural analysis of Egypt's museums through the exigency of nationalism and “new internationalism”. The encounter between both notions is a timely example given the recent involvements by the “Modern State” and the recent pandemic upheaval that revealed the inevitability of globalism and the discursivity of such notions.
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Javier Santiago Cortes Lopez, Guillermo Rodriguez Abitia, Juan Gomez Reynoso and Angel Eduardo Muñoz Zavala
This qualitative study aims to fill gaps in a widely studied and relevant organizational feature: the alignment between information technologies and business strategies.
Abstract
Purpose
This qualitative study aims to fill gaps in a widely studied and relevant organizational feature: the alignment between information technologies and business strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is a qualitative study. The authors used focus groups, content analysis and semantic networks as research approaches to identify the main factors that prevent or foster such alignment.
Findings
Results reveal a leading role of innovation, organizational culture, access to information and financial factors that could promote or inhibit alignment and competitiveness.
Originality/value
This research was conducted only in small and medium organizations in Mexico, which represents about 52% of the Mexican Gross Domestic Product (for Mexico as one of the leading trade partners of the USA).
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Giovanni Gómez-Gras, Marco A. Pérez, Jorge Fábregas-Moreno and Guillermo Reyes-Pozo
This paper aims to investigate the quality of printed surfaces and manufacturing tolerances by comparing the cylindrical cavities machined in parts obtained by fused deposition…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the quality of printed surfaces and manufacturing tolerances by comparing the cylindrical cavities machined in parts obtained by fused deposition modeling (FDM) with the holes manufactured during the printing process itself. The comparison focuses on the results of roughness and tolerances, intending to obtain practical references when making assemblies.
Design/methodology/approach
The experimental approach focuses on the comparison of the results of roughness and tolerances of two manufacturing strategies: geometric volumes with a through-hole and the through-hole machined in volumes that were initially printed without the hole. Throughout the study, both alternates are explained to make appropriate recommendations.
Findings
The study shows the best combinations of technological parameters, both machining and three-dimensional printing, which have been decisive for obtaining successful results. These conclusive results allow enunciating recommendations for use in the industrial environment.
Originality/value
This paper fulfills an identified need to study the dimensional accuracy of the geometries obtained by additive manufacturing, as no experimental evidence has been found of studies that directly address the problem of the FDM-printed part with geometric and dimensional tolerances and desirable surface quality for assembly.
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Guillermo Guerrero-Vacas, Jaime Gómez-Castillo and Oscar Rodríguez-Alabanda
Polyurethane (PUR) foam parts are traditionally manufactured using metallic molds, an unsuitable approach for prototyping purposes. Thus, rapid tooling of disposable molds using…
Abstract
Purpose
Polyurethane (PUR) foam parts are traditionally manufactured using metallic molds, an unsuitable approach for prototyping purposes. Thus, rapid tooling of disposable molds using fused filament fabrication (FFF) with polylactic acid (PLA) and glycol-modified polyethylene terephthalate (PETG) is proposed as an economical, simpler and faster solution compared to traditional metallic molds or three-dimensional (3D) printing with other difficult-to-print thermoplastics, which are prone to shrinkage and delamination (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polypropilene-PP) or high-cost due to both material and printing equipment expenses (PEEK, polyamides or polycarbonate-PC). The purpose of this study has been to evaluate the ease of release of PUR foam on these materials in combination with release agents to facilitate the mulding/demoulding process.
Design/methodology/approach
PETG, PLA and hardenable polylactic acid (PLA 3D870) have been evaluated as mold materials in combination with aqueous and solvent-based release agents within a full design of experiments by three consecutive molding/demolding cycles.
Findings
PLA 3D870 has shown the best demoldability. A mold expressly designed to manufacture a foam cushion has been printed and the prototyping has been successfully achieved. The demolding of the part has been easier using a solvent-based release agent, meanwhile the quality has been better when using a water-based one.
Originality/value
The combination of PLA 3D870 and FFF, along with solvent-free water-based release agents, presents a compelling low-cost and eco-friendly alternative to traditional metallic molds and other 3D printing thermoplastics. This innovative approach serves as a viable option for rapid tooling in PUR foam molding.
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Simone Didonet and Guillermo Diaz-Villavicencio
This study aims to investigate the role of market orientation (MO) in improving learning for innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the facilitation of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the role of market orientation (MO) in improving learning for innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the facilitation of the organisational structure and links to innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for this research were collected through a survey that was applied to a sample of 169 SMEs in Ecuador. Existing scales were used to measure all the studied variables, i.e. MO, organisational structure for innovation, linkages and learning for innovation. The last three variables correspond to the characteristics of the innovation management process. Partial least square path modelling was used to analyse the data using the SmartPLS 2.0 software.
Findings
The results showed that MO enhances the learning for innovation in firms both directly and indirectly through improving organisational structure and linkages towards innovation. The research finding also showed that organisational structure for innovation is more important to enhance learning than linkages. Specifically, the mediation between MO and learning through linkages is smaller than the mediation through the organisational structure.
Practical implications
The study informs executives of the relevance of developing MO as a way of improving learning for innovation, which in turn, is favoured by an organisational structure that supports creativity and technological changes and by the internal and external linkages for innovation in market-oriented firms.
Originality/value
The findings of this study provide new insights regarding how MO can work together in an innovative context and highlight the importance of MO as an enabler of innovation characteristics in SMEs. This study also contributes to the existent innovation literature by shedding light on strategic questions regarding the development of innovation process in market-oriented SMEs. Specifically, it provides some evidence regarding the nature of innovation process in SMEs, which can orient future studies focused on the understanding of how successful innovation occurs.
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Fernando García‐Hernandez, Luis Hernández‐Sandoval, Carlos Regalado‐González, José Mojica‐Gómez, Yunny Meas‐Vong, Guillermo Espinosa‐Acosta, Miriam Estévez and Victor Castaño
The purpose of this paper is to study the corrosion of carbon steel without coating and when protected using three different hybrid coatings, i.e. a bi‐component polyurethane with…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the corrosion of carbon steel without coating and when protected using three different hybrid coatings, i.e. a bi‐component polyurethane with nano‐particles of SiO2 with and without sacrificial anode particles, and a mono‐component polyurethane with SiO2 particles.
Design/methodology/approach
In this investigation three different nano‐structured coatings are developed and applied to steel substrates and then tested for their corrosion resistance (defined as “Rn”), under a very aggressive medium (pH=1.5) in a dynamic system (loop reactor). Their performance is evaluated using an electrochemical noise (EN) resistance technique. The electrodes are connected to a potentiostat and measurements are recorded as per the EN technique over a 2,048 s duration at 0, 24, and 48 h intervals. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are obtained before and after the corrosion trials to characterize the control and the different coating systems.
Findings
The results show that a bicomponent coating, made up of alkyd resin and silica nanoparticles demonstrated the best performance, whereas the coating formed by SiO2 nanoparticles and polyurethane resin showed relatively low corrosion resistance. The inclusion of zinc nanoparticles in a third coating as sacrificial nano‐anodes led to segregation and resulted in moderate corrosion resistance. These results are confirmed by SEM observations.
Originality/value
The results obtained in this paper provide an insight to the understanding of the anticorrosion properties of three different hybrid coatings in a dynamic system (loop reactor).
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Andres Biehl, Andrea Canales, Viviana Salinas and Guillermo Wormald
This study compares retirement in Chile and Uruguay, and focuses on current individuals legally entitled to retire, particularly women. The article analyses how labour market and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study compares retirement in Chile and Uruguay, and focuses on current individuals legally entitled to retire, particularly women. The article analyses how labour market and family resources shape the access of women and men to social insurance by investigating the likelihood of retirement after reaching the legal age of retirement.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses the Longitudinal Social Protection Survey (LSPS), a biannual or triennial longitudinal survey carried out in six Latin American countries. To study gender differences in the chance of being retired, the study conducts a series of logit regression models to model retirement as a function of labour market and life course conditions as well as providing descriptive and contextual information.
Findings
Main findings support labour market explanations of gender differences in retirement. Work experience, human capital and contribution densities largely explain the chances of retirement and economic autonomy among elderly women. Further analysis reveal that they are both less likely than men to retire but also to work in old age, limiting their economic autonomy.
Research limitations/implications
Data for Uruguay are recent. To maximize comparison between countries, the paper selects the more recent waves with complete administrative information. As a result, the article uses cross-sectional data that might not capture the accumulation of family resources and could fail to provide a complete gendered life course explanation of current disadvantages faced by women.
Originality/value
The article uses novel data in order to place two Latin American countries within mainstream sociological theories of retirement, thus complementing literature that mainly focuses on European and North-American societies. The paper also documents gender gaps in retirement in two different Latin American societies, one with a traditionally generous public pension system (Uruguay) and one with a largely privately-run contributory system (Chile).
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