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Virtual teams allow companies to recruit the best talents, regardless of their geographic location, which is particularly relevant in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector given the high shortage of qualified human capital. However, the space and time flexibility of these professionals also present other challenges to Human Resource Management, such as work engagement and employee retention. This study aims to assess the extent to which supervisor support can influence work engagement and turnover intention in virtual teams.

We use a sample of 420 ICT Portuguese professionals who work in virtual teams to test a conceptual model with partial least squares (PLS).

The study results show that supervisor support decreases employee's intention to leave their job. We also found that work engagement mediates the relationship between supervisor support and work engagement. Results show that older employees present higher levels of work engagement and employees with longer tenure perceive less supervisor support.

This study contributes to elucidate the role played by supervisors in influencing employee engagement and retention in virtual work environments.

The 3,4-methylenedioxymetamphetamine (MDMA) content in ecstasy tablets has increased enormously throughout Europe across the past decade. This study aims to determine whether this is caused by the production of “stronger” tablets (more mg MDMA per mg of tablet), or if tablets have simply been getting larger and heavier (more mg of tablet in total).

A data set of 31,716 ecstasy tablets obtained in 2012–2021 by 10 members of the Trans European Drug Information (TEDI) network was analysed.

The MDMA mass fraction in ecstasy tablets has remained virtually unchanged over the past 10 years, with increased MDMA contents being attributed almost exclusively to increased tablet weight. These trends seem to be uniform across Europe, despite varying sampling and analytical techniques being used by the TEDI participants. The study also shows that while tablet weight correlates perfectly with MDMA content on a yearly basis, wide variations in the MDMA mass fraction make such relations irrelevant for determining the MDMA content of individual tablets.

These results provide new opportunities for harm reduction, given that size is a tangible and apparently accurate characteristic to emphasise that one tablet does not simply equate to one dose. This is particularly useful for harm reduction services without the resources for in-house quantification of large numbers of ecstasy tablets, although the results of this study also show that chemical analysis remains crucial for accurate personalised harm reduction.

The findings are both new and pertinent, providing a novel insight into the market dynamics of ecstasy tablet production at a transnational level.

The number of candidates applying to public contests (PC) is increasing compared to the number of human resources employees required for selecting them for the Police Force (PF). This work intends to perceive how those public institutions can evaluate and select their candidates efficiently during the different phases of the recruitment process. To achieve this purpose, artificial intelligence (AI) was studied. This paper aims to focus on analysing the AI technologies most used and appropriate to the PF as a complementary recruitment strategy of the National Criminal Investigation police agency of Portugal – Polícia Judiciária.

Using design science research as a methodological approach, the authors suggest a theoretical framework in pair with the segmentation of the candidates and comprehend the most important facts facing public institutions regarding the usage of AI technologies to make decisions about evaluating and selecting candidates. Following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses methodology guidelines, a systematic literature review and meta-analyses method was adopted to identify how the usage and exploitation of transparent AI positively impact the recruitment process of a public institution, resulting in an analysis of 34 papers between 2017 and 2021.

Results suggest that the conceptual pairing of evaluation and selection problems of candidates who apply to PC with applicable AI technology such as K-means, hierarchical clustering, artificial neural network and convolutional neural network algorithms can support the recruitment process and could help reduce the workload in the entire process while maintaining the standard of responsibility. The combination of AI and human decision-making is a fair, objective and unbiased process emphasising a decision-making process free of nepotism and favouritism when carefully developed. Innovative and modern as a category, group the statements that emphasise the innovative and contemporary nature of the process.

There are two main limitations in this study that should be considered. Firstly, the difficulty regarding the timetable, privacy and legal issues associated with public institutions. Secondly, a small group of experts served as the validation group for the new framework. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted to alleviate this constraint. They provide additional insights into an interviewee’s opinions and beliefs.

Ensure that the system is fair, transparent and facilitates their application process.

The main contribution is the AI-based theoretical framework, applicable within the analysis of literature papers, focusing on the problem of how the institutions can gain insights about their candidates while profiling them, how to obtain more accurate information from the interview phase and how to reach a more rigorous assessment of their emotional intelligence providing a better alignment of moral values. This work aims to improve the decision-making process of a PF institution recruiter by turning it into a more automated and evidence-based decision when recruiting an adequate candidate for the job vacancy.

This study seeks to collaborate with the discussions on the usefulness of the narrative approach in accounting. In this context, this study aims to elaborate small collective stories, developed from interviews, to expose the population’s perception of the social and environmental impact (positive and negative externalities) resulting from iron ore mining in the city of Congonhas-Minas Gerais (MG).

This research, using counternarratives, aims to elaborate small collective stories, developed from 52 interviews, to expose the population’s perception of externalities resulting from the exploitation of iron ore in the city of Congonhas-MG, Brazil, to give more insight for social and environmental accounting reporting. A qualitative investigation is used with a narrative approach that focuses on a specific event in the participants’ lives.

The authors sought to create a sense of collective experiences of the interviewees through narratives representative of the residents’ perception of externalities in the form of small collective stories. However, it can be observed that the local population recognizes the impact of numerous externalities. Likewise, the use of narratives allows the reader to experience another reality – a reflection on the impact of business activities in a given context. Unlike conventional corporate social reporting, models based on qualitative information can be inclusive, produced by/for the community toward action that transforms the local reality.

This study intends to contribute to the debate on reporting models that are developed by and for external stakeholders. This approach has the potential to improve participants’ both awareness and engagement, supporting transformative social action. This study makes several contributions. It contributes to the literature with a narrative approach, which is not often used in the accounting literature; it brings insights from the Latin American context, which is especially valuable given how the Anglo-American accounting literature includes few papers addressing this context; it presents the view of marginalized communities that are too often overlooked (this narrative approach offers important insights into the lived experience of people at a very granular level).

The purpose of this paper is to identify the profiles of those frequenting full-service restaurants and eating raw vegetable salads, as well as to analyze the influence of socio-demographic variables and of the tendency for social desirability in consumption frequencies.

A non-probabilistic consumer sample (n=630) was interviewed in the city of Campinas, Brazil. Besides the frequency of eating in full-service restaurants and the frequency of eating salads (as a function of the meal type and week day) in this type of restaurant, the survey instrument was also composed by socio-demographic variables and a social desirability scale. To compare data, non-parametric tests were used.

Of the interviewees, 52.3 percent were shown to eat in full-service restaurants at least once a week. The frequency of eating salads in full-service restaurant stood out as being significantly higher (p<0.05) for weekday lunches. Individuals who graduated in the areas of health or food showed a significantly higher frequency for the consumption of salads at weekends. Apparently the social desirability did not influence the responses of the consumers with respect to the frequencies studied.

The sample was of a non-probabilistic type, bringing reservations with respect to generalizations.

Socio-demographic variables should be considered in elaborating strategies for promoting vegetable salads consumption in restaurants. Health and nutrition education programs can be effective in aiding consumers to choose healthier food in this context.

Studies about frequency of salad consumption in restaurants are scarce. The influence of social desirability bias on reported frequency was analyzed in this paper.

This study aims to propose and apply a sustainability assessment model (SAM) for the mineral extraction industry developed on the basis of elements of dialogic accounting.

Distinct from other similar exercises, ours is also one in external accounting that focuses on a set of mining companies operating in a specific geographical location. It was undertaken based on different perspectives from various stakeholders, including mining workers and city dwellers, retrospectively, using publicly available information, entirely independently of the set of companies regarding which impacts the authors try to offer an account and without their approval. Twenty indicators were identified from the perspective of value for society.

The results for all environmental externalities appeared to be negative, as companies’ attitudes continue to be reactive and on the threshold of legal requirements. This assessment of the selected social indicators emphasizes that accelerated expansion of mining activities poses a threat to the mining area in the long term, as it reduces the useful lives of mineral deposits and expands social and environmental externalities.

The authors propose to expand the horizon of accounting through a framework that combines elements of the SAM technology, dialogic accounting and external accounting. This investigation contributes to the development of social and environmental accounting practices through the discussion, proposal and use of an SAM, built with the cooperation of several social actors and from the perspective of the other rather than the entity.

The authors tried to show how an SAM approach can be used in combination with dialogic accounting processes, increasing the accountability and awareness of the different groups of stakeholders, focusing on marginalized stakeholders, to offer an external account of the impacts of a set of companies from the mining sector operating in a specific geographical area.

This study’s findings suggest there are opportunities for accountants to support social and environmental accounting, thereby contributing to community awareness and empowering transformative action.

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.