Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore employment perception of students as a relevant indicator of higher education quality, using blended multi-criteria decision-making methods.

The differential impact of these variables was analyzed in this paper taking a sample of 641 students and six higher education lecturers identified as experts on young vocational careers. The traditional study of student behavior and perceptions of employability does not incorporate the uncertainty associated with multi-criteria decision processes and is therefore less adapted to the human reasoning process. This research applies traditional techniques together with fuzzy techniques capable of managing more effectively the uncertainty associated with student actions and behaviors.

This research shows that it is important to consider previous work experience, academic achievement and soft skills developed during education experiences. In this way, this research shows the lecturers how to adapt their pedagogical practices according to students' perceptions of employability and assess their students' perceptions of employability. In addition, lecturers will be able to incorporate the uncertainty associated with decision-making processes to optimize employability perception.

Higher education-related research on uncertainty environments as multi-criteria decision problems is still in early stages. The incorporation of the uncertainty associated with decision-making processes to this field allows to optimize employability perception thanks to its adaptation to real human behavior in the adoption of decisions.

In a socioeconomic context that is undergoing continuous change, career adaptability emerges as a central construct for understanding the employability of graduates. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to analyze intra-individual differences in career adaptability among graduates between the end of graduation (time 1) and integration into the labor market 18 months later (time 2); and second, to analyze the effect of career adaptability on graduates’ employment status 18 months after completing graduation.

A sample of 183 graduates in four different study fields (Economics, Engineering, Social Sciences and Humanities and Law) completed the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale at two different points in time: when they graduated and 18 months after graduation. To assess intra-individual differences over time and the effect of career adaptability on graduates’ employment status, a repeated measures design was used.

The obtained results confirmed a positive association of the four dimensions of career adaptability, with higher scores for the group of employed graduates, in the two measurement times. No statistical differences emerged within personal variables.

This study evidences the relation of career adaptability and employability and demonstrates that it is possible to identify those students who are more vulnerable in terms of career adaptability resources before university-to-work transition and, on this basis, to outline specific interventions to promote their employability.

By adopting a design with two repeated measures of career adaptability, this study offers new insights about the specific role of adaptability in a university-to-work transition period.

This study addresses the specific topic of transition between higher education and the world of work, taking differences naturally inherent to the individual and to the surrounding micro and macro contexts. With a holistic approach, this paper aimed to provide a deeper understanding about the university-to-work transition process in a period of turbulence and continuous changes in the labour market.

The three research questions that guide this qualitative study are as follows: (1) What are the factors that facilitate the transition to the labour market? (2) What are the factors that constrain the transition to the labour market? (3) What are graduates' perceptions of their employability? To answer these questions, eleven graduates were interviewed about facilitators and barriers of the transition process and perceptions of employability. Data collected from the interviews were then related to categories previously defined from the literature review. Version 12.0 of the NVivo software was used to support the process of data analysis.

Overall, participants' discourse refer to a multidimensional and dynamic perspective of factors related with work transition and employability. The obtained results indicate that the lack of career agency during graduation and professional experiences, together with late career exploration processes, represent possible barriers of transition, especially in study fields with targeted job offers. Likewise, experiences promoting the development of competencies through supportive practice from teachers, mentors and colleagues are referred as facilitators of transition.

One of the most consistent outcomes of the interviews conducted concerns the importance of a stronger focus on developing practical experiences during higher education studies. This empirical study demonstrated how this type of experience can mitigate the impact of the transition from university to the labour market.

This empirical study demonstrated how work being integrated into learning in curricula can mitigate the impact of the transition from university to the labour market. It offers important insights about possible strategies that could be adopted to promote graduates' employability from a perspective of shared responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of work experience and gender on graduates’ perception of competencies, preparation and expectations of success in labour market (LM) transition. The research questions that guide this study are: How do graduates evaluate the competencies acquired during their masters’ degree? How do graduates evaluate their preparation for transition to the LM and their expectations of success?

Within the framework of employability models, the authors explore the perception of competencies developed during higher education (HE). Given previous reported effects of gender and work experience on the process of work transition, these two variables are also considered. A questionnaire was administered to 411 students in their final masters’ degree year. Descriptive and inferential statistics, namely, univariate analysis of variance (F-anova 2×3) with post-hoc multiple comparison test (post-hoc HSD of Tukey), are developed to analyse the data and address the research questions.

The main results show that there are no significant group differences concerning perception of the development of competencies; the effect of work experience on perceptions related to preparation for transition to the LM depends on gender; and expectations of successful transition to the LM are related to gender, with no significant influence of prior work experience.

These data suggest that, in developing their programmes, it is important for HE institutions to consider self-beliefs related to students’ diversity, in order to maximize the development and effective use of competencies and individual resources in work contexts, for all students. Exploration of the effect of gender and work experience on perceptions of competencies and preparation for the LM should help HE institutions define curricular programmes and support graduates in preparing for entry to the LM.

Challenges related to sustainability have increasingly become pivotal in the realm of business strategy and innovation. Nevertheless, the incorporation of sustainability principles into business strategies and innovative practices remains a subject of ongoing scholarly debate. This paper aims to undertake a thematic literature review on this theme.

Data were gathered from the Scopus, Web of Science and Science Direct databases. The final sample comprised 85 papers. For analytical purposes, this study adopted topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) methodology.

The authors identified five dominant topics concerning the relationship between sustainability, innovation and business strategy. Through a cross-analysis of these topics, the authors theorize that a sustainable innovation strategy encompasses three complementary and interdependent dimensions: capabilities, management and firm. Building on this analysis, the authors outline a research agenda aimed at further exploration and advancement of this theme.

This review enhances the synthesis of research on the theme, prompting reflections on how companies can initiate innovative sustainable actions that align with their business strategy. Additionally, the authors identify specific elements that require improvement to enhance each of the three dimensions of sustainable innovation strategies, such as eco-efficiency, circular economy and the adoption of innovative business models oriented toward services/servitization.

By interweaving sustainability with innovation and business strategy, this study underscores the critical topics that companies and public policymakers should address to support sustainable development at the national level.

While previous literature reviews have focused on the dyadic relationships between sustainability and strategy, or sustainability and innovation, this study extends the boundaries of knowledge by integrating these three concepts into a hybrid theoretical stream.

This paper investigates which innovation capabilities are more important for driving technological and non-technological innovations and which of the two innovation types has the greatest impact on the financial performance of manufacturing companies.

Based on a theoretical model of four innovation capabilities – two technological: Technology Development Capability and Operations Capability, and two non-technological: Management Capability and Transaction Capability – a database of 1,331 Brazilian manufacturing companies was analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicate that technological capabilities (Technology Development and Operations) have a greater impact on technological innovation. However, both technological capabilities also affect non-technological innovation, with the Technology Development Capability being the most influential in this relationship. Results also indicate that non-technological capabilities (Management and Transaction) have a greater impact on non-technological innovation. Nevertheless, both non-technological capabilities also impact technological innovation, especially the Transaction Capability, which is the most influential in this relationship. Furthermore, it was identified that non-technological innovation has a more significant impact on financial performance than technological innovation, presenting a novel finding to the field of innovation in manufacturing.

This manuscript refutes prior discussions and opens new possibilities for the interconnection of dynamic and ordinary innovation capabilities in two different arrangements, each aimed at improving a specific type of innovation. A theoretical framework is proposed to highlight that, depending on the innovation type focused on, ordinary innovation capabilities can be more relevant than dynamic ones for innovation in the manufacturing sector. From these theoretical advancements, practitioners can understand that investments in non-technological resources, skills and routines can also boost technological innovation, as well as sales, profit and market share growth.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new hybrid approach based on criticality analysis and optimisation to deal with spare parts inventory management in the initial provisioning phase in the mining industry. Spare parts represent a significant part of mining companies' expenditures, so it is important to develop new approaches to reduce the total inventory value of these items.

This hybrid approach combines qualitative and quantitative methods based on VED (vital, essential and desirable) analysis, analytical hierarchical process (AHP), and e-constraint optimisation method to obtain the spare parts to be stocked. The study was applied to a large mining company. The mineral sector was chosen due to the great importance to the emerging Brazilian economy and the lack of researches in this sector. In addition, the spare parts have a relevant weight on the total inventory cost.

Present a novel approach combining multi-objective optimisation and multi-criteria evaluation approaches to tackle the inventory decision in spare parts management. This work also defines and classifies relevant criteria for spare parts management in the mineral sector validated by specialists. The proposed approach achieves an average increase of 20.2% in the criticality and 16.6% in the number of items to be stocked compared to the historical data of the surveyed company.

This paper applies the proposed approach to a mining company in Brazil. Future research in other companies or regions should analyse the adequacy of the criticality criteria, hierarchy and weights adopted in this paper.

The proposed approach is useful for mining industries that deal with a large variety of resource constraints as it helps in formulating appropriate spare part strategies to rationalise financial resources at both tactical and strategic levels.

The paper presents a new hybrid method combining the AHP a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach coupled with e-constraint optimisation to deal with spare parts inventory management allowing for a better spare parts inventory analysis in the initial provisioning phase and providing managers with a systematic tool to analyse the trade-off between spare parts criticality and total inventory value.

Routine dynamics provide a robust theoretical framework to explore a wide range of organizational phenomena. However, the study of routines and the effect of technology on its performativity in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) still lack attention by researchers. This paper aims to analyze how the balance between process technology and human cognition affects routines' performativity in SMEs.

It was conducted a multicase study composed of Brazilian SMEs in the bakery industry. Data collection took place through interviews with managers and employees, observation of operational processes and document analysis. Thematic content analysis was adopted for categorization and data analysis.

The authors’ findings allow inferring there is no primacy of a more automated or artisanal production process to achieve competitiveness, which breaks the paradigm of the superior performance of automated production over the artisanal process that haunts SMEs. Though technology increases production efficiency, the artisanal approach can be valuable at promoting a company by commercially using this know-how to explore other business models appreciated by the public.

The authors’ proposals became relevant in a practical perspective once it works as a parameter for SME managers' decision-making about new investments in production resources and to foster public policies and other actions developed by support services for small businesses.

This study expands the frontiers in routines literature on SMEs, which lacks deepening. From this, SME managers can intensify actions to optimize process routines performativity through technologies or human cognition to keep the routines on track.

This study aims to investigate routines as a conceptual tool to analyze resources management in small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) productive processes.

The authors developed a qualitative multiple case study with Brazilian companies in the bakery industry. Data were collected through interviews, on-site observation and documentary analysis. Plus, the authors used business process modeling (BPM) techniques to map the observed routines.

The restrictions of SMEs accentuate the improvisation of routines. However, contrary to expected, many of these deviations expand the possibilities of organizational action as they become successful in terms of operational efficiency, which allows these companies to extract performance from ordinary resources and imitable management practices.

The BPM shows its value to track the allocation of resources in SMEs by recording the evolution of its routines and helping to preserve an operational memory. This finding could be useful to help public agencies to develop accessible management tools to assist small business owners.

Most of the conceptual tools developed to analyze the resources management are based on the study of large organizations, which may limit the analysis and lead to restricted or mistaken results if used in another context without proper adaptation. The authors apply an objective and representational epistemological lens to organizational routines to adapt it to the pragmatic context of operations management. Also, the authors suggest that better than a resource-based view, the practice-based view is a theoretical approach more compatible with the resource constraints context of SMEs.