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The purpose of this paper is to identify the importance assigned to the various criteria used by the Portuguese venture capitalists (VCs) to evaluate and select early stage venture capital (VC) projects.

The data were collected through a questionnaire answered by 20 Portuguese VCs. The authors use descriptive statistics techniques and non-parametric tests to identify the most valued criteria and test differences in the importance assigned to the criteria of several types of VCs and investments.

The study reveals that personality and experience of the entrepreneur and of the management team are the most valued groups of criteria. VCs with a majority of private share capital value more the personality of the entrepreneur and management team than the companies with a majority of public share capital. Additionally, the VCs that did not yet internationalize consider the personality of the entrepreneur and management team and the financial aspects, to be more important than the VCs that have already expanded abroad.

It provides evidence on the VCs behavior in a small VC market. Since most of the existing literature on this area refer to large VC markets, the present study is important to investigate whether the conclusions reached by the previous studies can be extended to a small VC market. Also, this study is a contribution to the literature on the internationalization of VCs and it is the first study that explores the impact of the VCs being internationalized on the value given to the various selection criteria of early stage VC projects.

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.

The aim of this study is to analyse the importance of bottle design in relation to other purchasing criteria, and also to understand which design elements are most attractive to consumers.

A survey of a sample of 437 wine drinkers was carried out in Portugal using non-probabilistic sampling. The technique used was conjoint analysis based on the SPSS conjoint module.

One of the key findings was the low importance of bottle design in shaping consumer preferences compared to other attributes (origin, price and category of wine). In terms of design elements, the label had the biggest influence on consumer choice, followed by the type of bottle, bottle seal and brand name, in that order. Differences in consumer choice were evident according to the level of knowledge of wine and frequency of consumption.

The findings of this study provide guidance for Portuguese wineries as regards the marketing and design decisions of their products and packaging.

This study sheds new light on the importance of wine bottle design on consumer preferences. Previous studies in the area have proved to be minimal and heterogeneous.

This chapter seeks to describe the successive stages in the training and recruitment of economists at the service of the political regime that ruled over Portugal between 1926 and 1974. This chapter presents the main institutional settings for the education and practices of those who served the government in economic functions throughout this period. Its main aim is to show the changes that occurred in the understanding of the problems related with the development of the Portuguese economy, seeking to elucidate the processes of legitimation of an authoritarian regime, but also to show the signs of a critical break with a model of economic and social organization and a political regime that had reached the point of exhaustion.

The aim of this study is to increase the understanding of collaborative relationships and assess according to the project size, the influence of the contributory factors in shaping collaboration network structure in projects developed in global supply chains (GSC).

The paper used a case study methodology applied to eight global projects developed by an Austrian company leader in global market intra-logistics solutions and warehouse automation. The cases were studied by two approaches in network analysis. First, visual and descriptive analysis to describe structural aspects of the network. Second, stochastic network analysis to evaluate the influence of contributory factors in the structure of the collaboration network.

The results evidence that independently of the project size and project manager influence, project team roles (PTR) who have a reciprocal communication among other PTR tend to have a higher collaboration intensity (CI). Additionally, the results highlight the influence of the project manager in shaping the collaboration network in standard projects (STP) and small projects (SMP). According to the project size, the results show that the PTR that form complete triangles or cluster or who communicate frequently among each other tend to have a high CI, being more evident these tendencies in large-scale projects than STP and SMP.

This research provides a framework to identify the key actors and contributory factors in shaping collaborative relationships in GSC. The findings could be used to support the decision-making process and formulation strategies for effective collaborative relationship management in GSC.

According to the theory of push and pull factors, the current work aims to present two objectives: (1) to detect what attributes drive senior tourists to travel to the Azores islands, the role played by lecturing activities (LA) as push factors and their influence on the island's offer (pull factors) are analysed; and (2) to understand the personal and contextual barriers of tourists to provide information to the agents who form part of the tourism supply process on the island.

The data has been processed using the statistical package SmartPLS version 26. Using an exploratory methodology based on structural equation modeling (SEM) structural equations applied to small sample sizes, a tentative model has been generated to define the drivers of tourism for elderly people who visit the islands.

The research study reveals that LA are the key factor in completing the offering of tourist destinations in the Azores. Educational packages should be made available to senior tourists. Likewise, several tourism barriers, such as flight times, cost of the trip, concern about the safety of destinations, type of accommodation, language difficulties and medical and health care should also be revised by tourism authorities and flight stakeholders with regard to the Azores Islands.

The reduced sample has made the results impossible to show greater predictive power.

The role played by push factors, such as lecturing or educational activities, and pull factors, such as the tourism offering by the island, allows us to envisage educational packages based on the preferences of senior tourists, such as attending lectures on the history of the Azores, gastronomy (traditional food), active ageing flora, and interesting facts and legends of the islands.

As a push factor, social interaction has become the main motivation among senior tourists. Such tourists have conveyed not only their desire to meet other tourists but also their interest in socialising in tourist activities, relaxing and visiting other new places.

Even though LA are relatively common among university students and those with bachelor's degrees, educational packages for senior tourism are now gaining in popularity. Better socio-economic conditions worldwide and easier access to education for mature people have allowed them to expand their knowledge by travelling to exotic destinations such as the Azores. This paper links that interest with barriers to travel as well as to the Azores' rich touristic offering.

Construction industry (CI) has great prominence for the world economy, and it is expected that, with the use of the innovative technologies and approaches of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), the new industrial paradigm, construction can reach higher levels of productivity. This study aims to develop a model (readiness model) to assess the level of use of I4.0 technologies by the construction sector in Brazil and its most relevant applications.

The methodology used was bibliographic research, design-science research and a survey to validate the model, carried out with 162 companies, considered among the main ones in the sector in Brazil. The literature review revealed 13 technologies of I4.0 applied to construction; hence, the views of industry experts were based on these technologies.

The Digital Advancement Within CoNstruction (DAWN) readiness model was proposed, showing that among the 13 evaluated technologies of I4.0 and their applications, the Brazilian construction companies had a low level of utilization; both high and middle-income companies presented this low level of use; some technologies with a greater number of scientific publications were less used in practice in the Brazilian construction.

The originality and theoretical contribution are to present a readiness model to assess the level of use of I4.0 technologies and their most relevant applications in the CI in countries with an economy similar to Brazil’s, making it possible to measure the level of adoption of these technologies.

The objective of this chapter is to analyze diabetes onset in Mexico in terms of work relations and family. The authors examined the impacts of diabetes on inequalities, practices of violence among the Mexican population, analyzing gender relations in the context of having diabetes. Our research is based on mixed method approach. First, the authors conducted a survey among 110 diabetic persons in Chiapas and Nuevo León, two Mexican states from the North and the South. Results show that gender violence has impacts in both Mexican states despite of socioeconomical differences. Overall, diabetes is a complex social process that need to be analyzed on different social and socioeconomical levels. Gender violence is a particularly strong factor that has an impact on diabetes. The contribution of this research is based on understanding of diabetes onset as a social construction where gender violence, social cohesion and subjective wellbeing play a significant role in diabetes in the Mexican context. The outcomes of this research might have an impact on transformation of public health policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, from a medical approach to a sociocultural one in terms of diabetes as a chronic illness. Moreover, our results suggest that quality of life depends on the level of interacting within social groups, as diabetes is no longer a disease that affects an individual, but it is more a social phenomenon.

This chapter explores how scholars have conceptualized the relationship between Latin American populism and democracy. It analyzes different approaches to populism such as modernization and dependency theory, and current approaches that focus on discourse analysis and/or political strategies. The chapter focuses on the current wave of radical populism to explore the continuities and differences between “classical” populism of leaders such as Juan Perón, the “neopopulism” of Alberto Fujimori, and the radical populism of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa.

Technology and knowledge have become the buzzwords of the new millennium. Technological changes and demanding customers are creating a more knowledge intensive, turbulent, complex and uncertain environment. Organizations, which are able to continually build faster and cheaper new strategic assets than their competitors, create long-term competitive advantages. Thus, the growth of companies is directly associated with innovativeness and technological development, especially for small organizations that are more vulnerable to dynamic changes in market place. Organizations need a strategic framework that can help them to achieve the goal of technology development and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to develop such strategic framework for small organizations for their technology development and, hence, survival in marketplace.

Options field methodology, options profile methodology, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy set theory are utilized to generate various options and profiles to propose a conceptual framework for technology development.

The results from the study showed that “mixed approach,” “strategic simulation approach” and the “regulatory environment approach,” in this order, emerged as the top three important options for the strategic technological development of small manufacturing enterprises.

This result can provide an original and more accurate implementation pathway toward technological innovative development in emerging economies. The proposed framework can provide valuable guidelines and recommendations to practicing managers and analysts for policy development to promote innovative and technological developments.