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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the discursive resources used to sustain and legitimize the reputation of the mining company Samarco Mineração regarding sustainability, before the environmental accident occurred in 2015.

The sustainability reports from 2005 to 2014 were accessed for the analysis of the presentation texts, and the discourse analysis method was applied to access the discursive resources employed.

From the classical concepts of rhetoric, ethos, pathos and logos, it was found that they reinforced the reputation and legitimacy of the company. The ethos is responsible for the company’s image, while pathos triggers the emotional reception of that image, provoking positive expectations. The logos relate the built image and its emotional reception to a rational discourse that values the company’s expertise. The analysis, in the light of the new rhetoric, exposes the strategies to lead the public to accept the image of solidity and confidence given by a reputation respected nationally and internationally.

As a limitation, the quantitative data of the report were not analyzed, since the objective was to analyze the discourse construction, understanding that the research was adequate for the established purposes. For the future, it is suggested to analyze the discourse of the company after the environmental accident in order to verify the strategies used in the same theme; analyze the discourses in other reports published in the Global Reporting Initiative model; investigate how the logic of sustainability report construction based on a standard model can interfere in the formation of reputation and legitimacy of the companies; and analyze the impact of CSR on the strategy of the companies.

The knowledge about the functioning of the language and discourse as an indicative of subjectivity provides a more critical reading and reveals elements implicit in the discourse of the organization. It was verified that the sustainability reports in encapsulated formats allow some stability in the discourse, since companies tend to follow the same line of previous years, even with changes in the organizational structure.

Discourses built by the companies do not always reflect the true operational and engineering situation practiced by them, and that successful and reputed companies can surprise their stakeholders with events of great magnitude that cause significant losses, be they monetary or human lives.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how construct values, motivation, commitment, performance and reward are associated with professionals from different countries, from the framework of a hypothetical structural model.

The survey was cross-sectional, descriptive and quantitative. The sample of individuals corresponding to three different countries, with information collected from a sample of 406 respondents, and from a convenience sample of two companies, one company in the oil and gas sector, surveyed in Mexico and the USA, and the other company in the electronics industry, researched in Brazil.

Thus, the association of the construct values with motivation in Mexico, demonstrated a better balance of the proposed hypothetical structural model. The study identified six groups (clusters) of different individuals according to values, and also, its associative relationship according to the variables of the proposed hypothetical structural model. The identification of each cluster was possible, according to the variables of the hypothetical structural model, and the groups with greater proximity between Mexico and USA were very similar, mostly because US companies have many Mexicans in their staff.

Therefore, it is understood that the approach used in this work could eventually be replicated in other regions to seek confirmations and/or contradictions of the results, contributing to future studies to relate such constructs.

It is expected that this work can stimulate others that aim to explore the hypothetical structural model in more countries or organizations in order to understand the influence of the constructs in or ganizational management, enabling people management area to be more effective in conducting relevant management processes for each organization.

The proposed model has shown that organizational management allowed the verification of the association between constructs motivation, commitment, performance and reward, excluding the construct values.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of cultural, social and psychological capital on the individual job performance. The authors propose and empirically test a combination of models, which originate from sociology and positive psychology, and demonstrate that cultural capital – in addition to social and psychological capital – is an important driver of individual job performance.

The paper opted for a large-scale survey research design. The sample consists of employees in several occupations who had formal contracts with companies from the public and private sector in Brazil. The measurement instrument is developed and tested by using data collected among 369 valid respondents in 2016. The methods applied include exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis through partial least squares estimation.

The results obtained indicate that there is a significant simultaneous positive effect of cultural, social and psychological capital on individual job performance. The results indicate that cultural, psychological and social capitals together were able to explain 57 percent of the respondents’ individual job performance, with psychological capital being the dominant driver. The authors also find that cultural capital is at least as important as driver of individual job performance as social capital.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may have limited generalizability and may suffer from potential bias in terms of social desirability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the propositions in different country contexts using different research methods.

This paper is the first to quantify the relevance of Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory to the study of individual job performance, and offers tools with validated psychometric properties for its empirical assessment.

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 investigate which variables can predict clients closing their checking accounts in a commercial bank and to validate the model used in this research.

The theoretical basis of the study has contemplated satisfaction, loyalty, change mediators, switching costs and client retention. A total of 2,000 account holders plus 2,000 clients who closed their checking accounts were selected by simple probabilistic sample. The samples were probabilistic, without repetition, with an error margin of approximately 2.2 percent and trust interval of 95 percent with random drafting of the account holders' database from a large institution based in all Brazil. The variables were tested using the Binary Logistic Regression and the variables between the account holder and former account holder groups with indication of checking account closing request were compared.

Account holder's age, time of the account, investor/taker profile, internal relationship, long term assets contracts, risks in other banks, quantity of products, product canceling, average amount of entries and the existence of a joint client are the variables which better identify clients' propensity to end their relationship.

The obtained results make it possible to identify the clients' propensity to abandonment and contribute to directing future marketing actions.

The model is relevant on the theoretical point of view because it can measure the importance of each independent variable and provides elements to compare all of them in the same base (meta‐analysis). It deals with 14 independent variables and had a good adjustment once was capable to classify correctly 89.8 percent of the account holders and 87.2 percent of the former account holders. The K‐S value was 79 percent with p<0.005 and value of ROC curve was 0.947. Models like this are unknown.

This chapter explores how the capacity of different sectors of the government influences which topics are prioritized in the legislative agenda. We focus on the complex and challenging topic of agriculture and the environment in Brazil and analyze how it's framed in both the media and the legislature. Our analysis shows that, in normal circumstances, the governmental actors with the highest state capacity prevent threatening topics from entering the legislative agenda, biasing it toward the status quo. However, we find that the media can act as a tool for sectors with lower capacity to bring their priorities to the forefront and trigger a legislative response.

This study aims to analyse the importance of intellectual capital (IC) in networks formed by start-ups, with a view to obtaining resources that individually they would be unable to acquire.

To achieve this aim, a qualitative approach was adopted, and within this, the case study method was used. The data-collecting instrument was the semi-structured interview, held with the business-people/managers of five start-ups present in an incubator (Startup Rém) based in Portugal, and with the person in charge of this incubator, together with observation and documentary analysis.

From content analysis, the results suggest that the business people recognise the presence of IC at the moment of creating their business and that this is a means to attain sustainability and, consequently, business survival. The results also show that in the absence of network formation, the relation between the incubator and the incubated firms can be affected and limited, interfering directly with firms’ use of IC.

This research aimed to highlight the importance of IC as an essential resource for business survival and sustainability and to encourage start-ups to regard networks as a way to share and convey knowledge. This study also intends to help firms understand the role of cooperation and mutual assistance in seeking sustainability and economic growth.

This study is innovative because it has filled the gaps identified in the literature, particularly the absence of studies on the importance of IC in networks formed by start-ups, and the study of the impact of IC on firms focussing on cooperation networks.

The purpose of this paper is to report the implementation of an alternative time integration procedure for the dynamic non-linear analysis of structures.

The time integration algorithm discussed in this work corresponds to a spectral decomposition technique implemented in the time domain. As in the case of the modal decomposition in space, the numerical efficiency of the resulting integration scheme depends on the possibility of uncoupling the equations of motion. This is achieved by solving an eigenvalue problem in the time domain that only depends on the approximation basis being implemented. Complete sets of orthogonal Legendre polynomials are used to define the time approximation basis required by the model.

A classical example with known analytical solution is presented to validate the model, in linear and non-linear analysis. The efficiency of the numerical technique is assessed. Comparisons are made with the classical Newmark method applied to the solution of both linear and non-linear dynamics. The mixed time integration technique presents some interesting features making very attractive its application to the analysis of non-linear dynamic systems. It corresponds in essence to a modal decomposition technique implemented in the time domain. As in the case of the modal decomposition in space, the numerical efficiency of the resulting integration scheme depends on the possibility of uncoupling the equations of motion.

One of the main advantages of this technique is the possibility of considering relatively large time step increments which enhances the computational efficiency of the numerical procedure. Due to its characteristics, this method is well suited to parallel processing, one of the features that have to be conveniently explored in the near future.