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This study intends to understand if managerial coaching, a sustainable competitive strategy, has an impact on sales performance, through customer and results orientation of the salesforce. It also aims to investigate whether pressure for results, one of the predominant demands in organizations today, and the centralisation of decisions, a traditional management demand still present in several organizations, undermine the effect of coaching on performance.

The 167 responses collected, through the distribution of questionnaires among workers in the commercial area, were analysed through a structural equation model using the partial least square (PLS) technique.

The results of this study confirm that managerial coaching has a positive impact on sales force performance through customer and results orientation, with customer orientation having a greater impact on performance. It was also found that centralised decision-making and pressure for results do not undermine the relationship between managerial coaching and performance, and they even reinforce the positive impact of results orientation on performance.

Managerial coaching practices can impact sales, especially when associated with customer orientation, freeing employees from the pressure for results and the centralisation demands. This scenario favours a more sustainable and emancipatory sales force management.

This study is the first to integrate organizational demands, namely pressure for results and centralisation, to better understand the effect of managerial coaching on sales performance, through customer and results orientation, thereby extending previous research on this topic.

This article aims to explore the gendered dimensions of the heterogeneous path of non‐native graduates in nursing and medicine in the Portuguese National Health Service, including institutional factors like the process of credential recognition, the professional integration and internal labour market segmentation.

Biographical interviews with nurses and physicians (23 males and 35 females) from Spain and from some Eastern European countries who migrated to work in Portugal were conducted, and additionally semi‐structured interviews with 12 institutional participants to contextualise the experiential data.

The research highlights complex intersections between gender and the resources for action. Institutional conditions, like legal frameworks and the self‐regulatory mechanisms of the professions, and individual characteristics shape successful translation of foreign credentials into a new social and cultural context. The specific configurations may create gender traps that push women into low status professional segments and also new forms of inequality in the professions.

The development of successful professional action and agency in a socio‐culturally different health care labour market can be differentiated by gender, place of graduation and citizenship status. The factors identified in this small‐scale qualitative study would need further investigation.

The findings highlight new demands for integration policies for foreign‐trained professionals, such as policies to promote equal opportunities for women and men in the workplace.

The article reinforces women as professional participants in the international migration process and examines the opportunities for successful integration.

Through the application of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study aims to explore the main determinants of higher education students’ pro-environmental behavior.

An online survey was conducted among the students of a public higher education institution (HEI) in Portugal, from March to May of 2020. The data were analyzed with the structural equation modeling technique, considering environmental attitude, knowledge, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control as exogenous latent variables, and pro-environmental intention and behavior as endogenous latent variables.

The results show that the students’ environmental attitude and knowledge have no significant impact on their pro-environmental intention, while the students’ subjective norm and perceived behavioral control have a positive impact on their pro-environmental intention. The results also reveal that the students’ perceived behavioral control and pro-environmental intention have a strong and positive impact on their pro-environmental behavior.

This study focuses on the students from a single public HEI, in accounting and administration area, and deepens environmental behavior in relation to resources’ consumption.

This study provides findings that can be useful for HEIs to be more effective in their policies, strategies and practices to improve students’ environmental behavior.

The paper contributes to the literature by exploring the main determinants of higher education students’ pro-environmental behavior in a Portuguese HEI and extending the TPB considering the additional variable environmental knowledge.

This paper aims to better understand if speculative activity is a factor or even the main factor in the run-up of oil prices in the spot market, particularly in the recent price bubble that occurred in the period from mid-2003 to 2008.

The methodology used is based on an existing vector autoregressive model proposed by Kilian and Murphy (2014), which is a structural model of the global market for crude oil that accounts for flow demand and flow supply shocks and speculative demand oil shocks.

From the output of the authors’ structural model, the authors ruled out speculation as a factor of rising oil prices. The authors have found instead that the rapid oil demand caused by an unexpected increase in the global business cycle is the most accurate culprit. Despite the change of perspective in the speculative component, the authors’ conclusions concur with the findings of Kilian and Murphy (2014) and others.

As far as the authors are aware, this is the first time that a study has used as a spread oil variable, a speculative component of the real price, replacing the oil inventories considered by Kilian and Murphy (2014). Another contribution is that the model used allows estimating traditional oil demand elasticity in production and oil supply elasticity in spread movements, casting doubt on existing models with perfect price-inelastic output for crude oil.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the association between socioeconomic status and child overweight/obesity in Portugal and to evaluate income-related inequalities in its distribution.

Data come from the last Portuguese National Health Survey (2005/2006) – sample of 6,903 observations. To define child overweight/obesity, the International Obesity Task Force cut-offs for body mass index (BMI) were used; the logistic regression analysis was adopted to explain the risk of overweight/obesity and inequality was measured by means of concentration curve and index.

The evidence obtained points to income-related inequalities in child overweight/obesity favourable to the better-off. The probability of child overweight/obesity was lower for higher income households, but up to a certain point a positive association between income and caloric food intake was found. The concentration index obtained was −0.072 (p-value<0.001).

Some data limitations, no information on: physical exercise; sleeping habits; parents’ education and BMI; age is coded in groups. Although the data are from 2005/2006, the current analysis is useful to future works aiming to discuss the impact of the economic and financial crisis which occurred after these data were collected.

It is important to tailor policies targeting child obesity/overweight in order to tackle not only the prevalence of this disease but also its distribution.

Drawing attention on inequalities in child obesity/overweight in Portugal as the vast majority of studies have focussed on prevalence. The middle income effect is an issue raised in this work which deserves further investigation.

A World Heritage Site (WHS) since 2013, Coimbra, in the centre of Portugal, is already struggling with excess of tourists and with difficult management challenges. A possible solution for this overtourism problem can be the creation of alternative differentiated tourism products in neighbouring, peripheral small towns capable of diverting tourists and visitors from the sites in overload. Cultural routes inspired by landscapes and historical places and personalities can contribute to the affirmation of a collective memory, combining natural and cultural heritage and adding value to existent heritage resources while providing intercultural dialogues and interaction with the visited community and its distinctive values. This research in cultural tourism and education is about a proposal of a walking route for cultural interpretation intended for young visitors. The theoretical framework draws on the importance of designing tourism products that will engage families in quality time and that heritage interpretation products for young visitors can also create an awareness of the importance of cultural heritage and its conservation. Literature review regarding issues of interpretation in tourism as well as on family and educational tourism preceded an inventory which covers natural and cultural resources used as materials in the route manual and activity guide. An important piece of information was collected through a survey aimed at understanding the socio-economical, cultural and attitudinal impacts that were caused by the UNESCO listing of the University of Coimbra, Alta and Sofia as a WHS. The route project demonstrates how cultural tourism can be a driver of local development through adequately designed non-formal educational tourist programmes to foster an in-depth knowledge of destinations. The results point to the importance of destination managers and marketers to focus on providing informal educational activities which can increase the tourist offer and satisfaction of young and family tourism and thereby strengthen a destination competitiveness and value creation. The tourist route challenges young visitors and their families to know the most relevant cultural aspects of the region, allowing them to effectively contribute to local development, as it invites visitors' interaction with the local community.

Providing higher education institutions (HEIs) with a tool for self-assessing their social responsibility (SR) that generates the information and knowledge necessary to a strategic approach to adopting the Green Paper recommendations about the SR of HEIs. Setting out the collaborative policy development process to construct the tool “Indicators of SR of HEIs” (ISRHEI).

After a literature review, including self-assessment (SA) tools and leading guidelines, a working group of 24 Portuguese HEIs was created to co-construct the ISRHEI tool, which was then subject to validation in a pilot study.

There are 34 indicators in the ISRHEI tool, structured by sequential levels according to the HEI alignment with SR (policies, procedures, practices and monitoring along a strategic continuum) hoping to achieve impacts on the organisational, educational, cognitive and social level.

This is an innovative and national policy development process for SR in Portugal. It gives insights into guiding documents, SA indicators for SR and the process of developing consensus on this topic amongst 24 HEIs in Portugal. The ISRHEI tool is tailored to the specific characteristics and level of development of HEIs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the voluntary implementation of an internal audit department (IAD) by municipalities has any influence on external auditors' opinions.

This study population comprises the 308 Portuguese municipalities, from which the authors extracted a sample of 179. Financial and audit reports were collected from the period under analysis (2014–2017). The sample was then divided into two groups: municipalities that had voluntarily implemented an IAD and those that had not. Internal audit departments were characterized according to their robustness – whether they were more or less robust. First, a descriptive statistical analysis of the dataset was performed to analyze the representativeness of the sample and to extract insights. To address the research questions, ordinal random effect regression models were considered.

Contrary to the authors' expectations, the voluntary implementation of an IAD had no influence on the audit report type. However, when the authors refined the approach to include the robustness of the IAD, it became clear that this variable does influence the report issued by the external auditor.

This paper contributes to the current literature by determining the effects of the robustness of IADs on municipality audit reports. As far as the authors know, this paper is novel. Since auditing plays an important role in the transparency of public financial statements and in promoting equity, this study shows that a robust IAD is an advantage in the pursuit of these goals.

This study explores how excellence models can leverage digital transformation on the path to sustainable development in organisations.

A survey was used to study the different facets of digital capabilities and their impact on sustainable development success of organisations holding an external recognition from the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). Partial Least Squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) combined with Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) were used to analyse data.

Internalising excellence practices is decisive in mediating effective digital capabilities to achieve sustainable development. To achieve high levels of sustainable development success, organisations must achieve high levels of excellence practices internalisation, which are much more important than the excellence model external recognition.

This study addresses essential issues with theoretical and practical value but is limited to a sample of organisations with EFQM recognition in two countries. Future studies should address different organisations and cultural environments.

The findings are relevant for organisations facing digital transformation and sustainable development challenges. They are essential for managers leveraging digital capabilities to capitalise on practices and processes and achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Organisations can benefit from a multidimensional approach to digital capabilities when struggling against external challenges.

This study closes a research gap regarding the impact of digital capabilities on sustainable development success. It is the first empirical study to combine sufficiency and necessity conditions analyses to explore the mediating role of excellence practices internalisation and one of the first to address digital capabilities from a multidimensional perspective.