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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 study aims to assess whether similar user populations in the Internet produce similar geographical traffic destination patterns on a per‐country basis.

The authors collected a country‐wide NetFlow trace, which encompasses the whole Spanish academic network. Such a trace comprises several similar campus networks in terms of population size and structure. To compare their behaviors, the authors propose a mixture model, which is primarily based on the Zipf‐Mandelbrot power law to capture the heavy‐tailed nature of the per‐country traffic distribution. Then, factor analysis is performed to understand the relation between the response variable, number of bytes or packets per day, with dependent variables such as the source IP network, traffic direction, and country.

Surprisingly, the results show that the geographical distribution is strongly dependent on the source IP network. Furthermore, even though there are thousands of users in a typical campus network, it turns out that the aggregation level which is required to observe a stable geographical pattern is even larger.

Based on these findings, conclusions drawn for one network cannot be directly extrapolated to different ones. Therefore, ISPs' traffic measurement campaigns should include an extensive set of networks to cope with the space diversity, and also encompass a significant period of time due to the large transient time.

Current state of the art includes some analysis of geographical patterns, but not comparisons between networks with similar populations. Such comparison can be useful for the design of content distribution networks and the cost‐optimization of peering agreements.

Human resource management (HRM) is considered an important issue in operations strategy (OS). Furthermore, OS effectiveness depends on performance in competitive priorities (CP). However, little empirical evidence exists about the relationship between them. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of HRM on performance in CP.

The research was conducted by surveying a sample of medium and large manufacturing companies in the Colombian coffee region. Three groups of variables were studied: performance in CP, HRM practices and factors related to employees. A regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses.

No significant relationship was found between HRM practices and performance in CP. Regarding the factors related to employees, two findings were relevant: first, when the companies involve features about the individuals in OS decision making (motivations, personal goals, abilities, etc.) better performance can be observed in CP; second, when employees reach a higher level of satisfaction and job performance, the performance in CP improves as well.

Considering the importance of HRM practices, appropriate adjustment and application should be sought to improve company performance. Furthermore, factors related to employees (features about the individuals, job satisfaction and employee performance), must be properly aligned with the OS.

The paper addresses an issue supported by little empirical evidence. Because few studies have considered the total set of CP identified in the literature review, the authors applied an indicator to establish the global performance of the production system according to the market requirements. Traditionally, HRM has been studied from the perspective of management practices, giving little attention to employees. In this research, the authors consider not only this perspective but also the effects of factors related to employees on performance in CP when they are aligned with the OS.

This chapter's objective is to analyze, with a long-term perspective, the formation of an entrepreneurial culture in Mexico's Midwest, specifically in the state of Jalisco, in terms of the geographical environment, the culture in general, and the local economic institutions that, when viewed interconnectedly, will globally impact the practices, representations, and imaginaries of persons who at a given time have made the decision to undertake profitable economic activities – individual and collective entrepreneurs, in other words. To this end, we have divided the text into two sections. In the first, we conceptually review what we understand as entrepreneurial culture; in principle, we deconstruct its terms and then conjugate them from a social science perspective. We also emphasize the importance of studying the milieu as a scenario of action with different arenas, where a variety of agents have been involved. In the second part, without sidelining conceptual analysis, we present concrete empirical evidence of the role played by culture and local economic institutions that shape entrepreneurial culture in Midwestern Mexico over time, specifically in Jalisco. The text ends with some final considerations.

This study aims to evaluates a public policy program that finances projects for the development of innovative technological solutions. This paper analyzed the influence of human and social capital on the development of the projects, under the perspective of the policy’s effectiveness and efficiency. This specific policy adopted the funding model of economic subsidy by means of grants, which shows the significant engagement of the public sector in applying nonrefundable resources more directly through loans, assuming the role of an entrepreneurial state, according to Mazzucato (2011, 2018) and Tavani and Zamparelli (2020).

This is a quantitative-descriptive study, according to Marconi and Lakatos (2017). This study is descriptive, for presenting information on innovation projects funded by FUNCAP (Ceará Foundation for Support to Scientific and Technological Development). In addition, this study is quantitative, by establishing multivariate relationships among the variables that relate to human capital and social capital, which are relevant to technological and innovative development, and by introducing variables on technological evolution, proposed as measures of the program’s effectiveness (DTRL, MkTRL) and efficiency (ETRL).

This paper sought to contribute on public policies for innovation, more specifically on analyzing variables that may affect the development of technological and innovative projects in knowledge-intensive companies. The authors studied capitals potentially important for these companies in the development of innovative projects. Specifically, the authors sought to understand the importance of human capital and how it reflects in technical and scientific knowledge of the project team and of social capital and how it reflects the connection and social relationship among different team members. The results presented that the degree of efficiency of the public funding program depends on how much the teams of the benefited projects have accumulated knowledge, skills and technical capacities – the so-called teams’ human capital.

It is important to address the research sample as a research limitation, which had 72 responses obtained, from a submission rate of 284. Another study limitation is on the qualitative analysis of the topics addressed from the companies and policymakers perspectives, considering that the quantitative nature of the study does not allow for a deeper understanding of the qualitative perspective of the actors involved in the phenomenon studied. As recommendations for future studies, it is suggested to conduct qualitative studies on the aspects studied here. In this sense, it is possible to conduct case studies for specific companies, or policymakers, to clarify and deepen the relationships between the themes addressed here.

As for the practical implications of the research, both for managers of public funding programs and for company managers, the benefits of human capital, related to innovative project development teams, are important in programs that deal with technological development projects. In practice, this means that the greater the human capital of academic background of the members of the supported project teams, the more efficient the projects are in the process of developing their technologies by using the resources provided (Ashford, 2000; Chen et al., 2008; Lerro et al., 2014).

Hence, the authors conclude that the evaluated innovation-funding program through grants achieved acceptable results in terms of promoting the technological evolution of the benefited projects and bringing the technologies closer to the market. Its efficiency was the least favorable result, showing that the program needs to focus on improving this specific aspect. Within the investigated program, the issue that needs enhancement (efficiency – ETRL) was the one that presented significant relationships with the human and social capital of the benefited projects’ teams. Thus, it is possible that, by selecting more projects that have teams with high capital, the efficiency of the public policy, in this case the development of projects with high technological and innovative potential, will be possibly reached.

The findings strengthen the need for innovation public policies designed and implemented in a systemic way in the science, technology and innovation ecosystem, to provide a technological infrastructure and human capital necessary for developing projects with high technological and innovative potential (Ergas, 1987; Audretsch and Link, 2012; Caloghirou et al., 2015; Edler and Fagerberg, 2017; Silvio et al., 2019).

Assessment of manufacturing systems provides a baseline for manufacturing strategy (MS) formulation. The purpose of this paper is to develop and propose a maturity assessment model for manufacturing systems (MAMMS). The MAMMS provides a maturity index, in order to establish manufacturing system performance on five possible levels: preinfantile, infantile, industry average, adult, and world class manufacturing.

Three main steps were taken: MAMMS design; maturity-level assessment in two companies; and MAMMS validation. Based on an action-research process, several research tools, such as surveys, expert panels, and immersion in two manufacturing companies, were used.

By integrating 79 variables into a maturity index, the maturity level for two manufacturing companies was obtained. Considering three main components (competitive priorities, manufacturing levers, and manufacturing’s strategic role), the analyzed companies showed a performance at the average industry level. According to participants, the MAMMS is a valuable tool to support decision making in MS.

Empirical evidence supports the relevance of the proposed MAMMS and its practical usefulness. In particular, the maturity index identifies strengths and weaknesses in the manufacturing system, providing a baseline from which to deploy MS.

The literature review shows a lack of contributions regarding maturity models, particularly, the non-existence of maturity assessment models for manufacturing systems. The proposed MAMMS is a valuable tool to support decision making in MS. Also, this paper contributes to understanding the action-research paradigm, for further research in operations management.

Firm innovative performance in emerging markets must take into account the peculiarities of their competitive environment. Research on the effect of innovation on firm performance focuses mainly on high-tech firms in developed countries. This study proposes a model that empirically examines how technological and non-technological innovation influence Peruvian manufacturing firms' performance.

Using the resource-based view, a model is proposed that allows the mediation effects of technological innovation and non-technological innovation on firm performance among low and medium-low technological intensity manufacturing firms to be analyzed. The study uses structural equation modeling and mediation analysis with data from 503 Peruvian firms researched in the 2012 National Survey of Innovation.

The model's validation shows that the integrated perspective is relevant for emerging markets like Peru. Moreover, the results confirm that technological and non-technological innovation and their interrelationship are important for understanding the performance dimensions of Peruvian manufacturing firms.

This paper contributes to the literature on innovation in Latin American economies, proposing and validating a model that combines the mediation effects of technological and non-technological innovation to explain the relevant dimensions of firm performance in emerging markets.

In almost 100 years of Colombian cinema, very few productions have had action-oriented narratives at the core of the film, as this cinema has chiefly developed around mainstream genres of melodrama and popular comedy. Rather than a cinematic end, ‘action’ has worked more as a specific means, mainly through thrillers, for directors to represent, question, and denounce the Colombian armed conflict – a central national issue for over 70 years. Whilst such films have tended to showcase male heroes, some recent productions subvert this tradition, and echo aspects of contemporary action cinema in Hollywood, where female representations problematise the perpetuated male image of the action hero.

This chapter examines contemporary Colombian films that offer hybrid images of female warriors who are (anti)heroic or disruptive, within the conventions of the action genre and within the dominant patriarchal discourse of Colombian narrative cinema, concentrating on Rosario Tijeras (Maillé, 2005) and La Sargento Matacho (González, 2017). Following research on Colombian cinema, context and conflict, this chapter highlights how female characters subsist in the public sphere, taking an active part in illegal armed organisations. It also questions how these representations may promote typologies of female emancipations (victimisers, anti-heroines, hybrid tomboys and war fighters), articulating key notions of emancipation. Ultimately, this chapter reiterates how postmodern representations of the female body subvert classic features of the Hollywood action cinema, by offering inaugural images of tough women within the Colombian/Hispanic popular culture and contexts, by examining particular sequences through Creed's multiple views on the female multi-faceted representations in cinema and Tasker's ample theory on action women and bodies.

What challenges do we envisage when considering the Internet as a platform to deliver training for librarians, editors and Webmasters working in the development of a collaborative virtual library? After some considerations concerning technology‐based distance training developments for librarians, the experience of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences is described where the Internet is used to deliver training to librarians, editors and Webmasters of their member institutes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Choosing a virtual campus platform, building multinational teams for teaching and learning, working on the design of course content and preparing full‐text bibliography, managing the course and evaluating its results have been the main challenges for this experience, which is described to help library networks in developing regions think about the Internet as a possible platform for training staff located in institutions with access to the Internet.