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This study seeks to develop an Environmental Sustainability Balanced Scorecard (ESBSC) articulated through a strategic map for collaborative implementation by municipalities by municipalities. In addition, it aims to elucidate the architecture of this tool.

The research uses qualitative methodology, initiating with document analysis, followed by municipal-level surveys and an interview with the Norte Portugal Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N).

The study constructs an ESBSC that adopts an integrative approach to sustainability, focusing on municipal joint action. The tool fosters synergies and enhances cooperation. By incorporating a strategic mix, the tool contributes to improving the environmental management performance of the participating municipalities.

This study introduces a tool designed for municipalities that aspire to incorporate environmental sustainability into their strategies. This tool facilitates the implementation and management of a long-term environmental strategy, with potential implications for organization and its culture. In addition, it highlights critical environmental factors that should serve as a starting point in future studies or applications of this tool.

Involving both an academic institution and multiple municipalities, this research identifies critical environmental factors that enhance environmental awareness within municipalities and designs a tool that, when consciously adopted, can influence the culture dynamics of the population involved. Furthermore, it proposes a structured and systematic research method for creating an ESBSC for joint municipal action.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this research constitutes the first exploratory attempt to devise an environmental strategy for joint municipal action. Although the tool emphasizes the environmental component, it promotes an integrated vision of sustainability. Despite the extensive application of balanced scorecards in various organizational contexts, their utilization in fostering environmental sustainability at a municipal level remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by developing a tailored strategic tool that operationalizes environmental priorities within municipal governance frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the role that leadership plays in the success of Lean management (LM) implementation, by trying to identify what is the impact of the transactional, transformational, directive and empowering leadership styles on the success of such an implementation in Portuguese companies, and what are the most important leaders’ attributes.

An on-line questionnaire was distributed to 65 manufacturing and services Portuguese organizations that have implemented LM.

The results suggest that the empowering leadership style has a positive impact on the success of LM implementation. Even though results do not allow concluding about the impact of the other styles, several leader’s attributes were identified as having influence: individualized consideration, information sharing, skill development, intellectual stimulation, assigned goals and self-directed decision making.

Very few studies have addressed the role of leadership in the success of adopting LM and, to the best knowledge, only one paper studied the critical attributes of leaders in LM implementation. Moreover, the present study focuses in Portugal, country where this topic has rarely been investigated.

Governments faced formidable challenges in coordinating public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to enhance the understanding of effective organizational leadership during crises by investigating the factors influencing the turnover of health leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.

Using primary data encompassing all appointments and dismissals of federal and state health secretaries, this paper conducted a quantitative analysis of the relational and reputational factors that contributed to leader turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper also examined whether leaders’ management and public health experience increase the duration of tenure.

States encountered significant challenges in retaining experienced and effective leadership during the health emergency, primarily due to political conflicts in policymaking and, to a lesser extent, allegations of corruption. Furthermore, leaders with expertise in public health were found to be less likely to be removed from office. However, managerial experience did not prolong the tenure of state health secretaries during the emergency.

Since most health leaders have public health and management experience, the contributions of each factor to the duration of a secretary’s tenure are difficult to separate and analyze separately.

This study provides empirical insights into what factors drive health leader turnover during major health emergencies.

During major health emergencies, health leaders often strongly disagree with elected officials on the response. This paper test how crisis leadership theories help explain state health leaders’ duration in one of the world’s largest public health systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper find that policy disagreements contributed to significant turnover.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first that are aware of that uses novel primary data on public health executive leader characteristics and turnover causes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides empirical evidence contributing to the crisis leadership literature by examining health leader turnover in one of the world’s largest public health systems.

Drawing on the theory of contingency, the aim of this work is to understand how supply chain-related contingencies, arising from climate change, are related to changes in the organisational structure of firms. Further, the authors explore how this relationship influences the perception of sustainability managers on the adoption of low-carbon operations management practices and their related benefits.

To achieve this goal, this research uses NVivo software to gather evidence from interviews conducted with ten high-level managers in sustainability and related areas from seven leading companies located in Brazil.

The authors present four primary results: a proposal of an original framework to understand the relationship between contingency theory, changes in organisational structure to embrace low-carbon management, adoption of low-carbon operations practices and benefits from this process; the discovery that an adequate low-carbon management structure is vital to improve the organisations’ perceptions of potential benefits from a low-carbon strategy; low-carbon management initiatives tend to emerge from an organisation’s existing environmental management systems; and controlling and monitoring climate contingencies at the supply chain level should be permanent and systematic.

Based on the knowledge of the authors, to date, this work is the first piece of research that deals with the complexity of putting together contingency theory, climate-change contingencies at the supply chain level, organisational structure for low-carbon management and low-carbon operations management practices and benefits. This research also highlights evidence from an emerging economy and registers future research propositions.

The integration of sustainability, performance measurement and new product development (NPD) is key for aligning environmental and social objectives with business strategies. While previous research has initiated proposals for integrating sustainability into NPD or incorporating sustainability into corporate measurement systems, there is a notable deficiency in studies that comprehensively integrate these three perspectives. In this sense, this study proposes a performance framework (PF) to integrate sustainability performance indicators (PIs) into the measurement system considering the company’s NPD phases.

The PF was developed through a literature review and action research (AR). This resulting PF was positively evaluated by the practitioners in the company.

First, the review enabled the synthesis of an initial conceptual PF with 188 sustainability PIs and a five-step procedure. Then, the empirical results of the AR led to a new PF that presents the systematisation of the PIs database and a practice-based seven-stage approach.

This action-oriented research limits the extent to which this study’s findings can be generalised. Future research should apply the PF in different research designs to produce managerially relevant knowledge.

This PF may provide managers with actionable knowledge that best supports the measurement system integration with sustainability PIs considering the NPD phases.

Integrating sustainability, performance measurement and the NPD has been recognised as critical for supporting decision-making concerning the impact of processes and products. Compared with previous frameworks, the proposed PF extends the existing literature by introducing a systematised PIs database and a novel procedure for integrating sustainability measurement throughout the NDP.

This research aimed to verify how the performance measurement system (PMS) and the quality management system (QMS) work in small and medium Brazilian enterprises in the light of the typology proposed by Garengo (2009).

Using a qualitative approach PMS’s and QMS’s managers were interviewed. The data from the first interview were analyzed using the technique of content analysis and have been subsequently triangulated with other data collected. The study was conducted by means of two questionnaires, two semi-structured interviews, and the analysis of the performance measures used by five small/medium manufactures based in the State of São Paulo.

It was found that in four out of five companies, PMS does not function singly, but along with QMS, mainly with respect to performance indicators. In spite of that intrinsic operation, the systems are in different stages of evolution. It was also found that in three out of five companies, quality management area is responsible for coordinating the process of PMS use, without effective participation from the controlling and/or accounting areas in this process.

The typology of Garengo (2009), used to check the stage of the PMS, was validated and can be used by practitioners to diagnose and improve the PMS in their enterprises; companies with QMS certified by ISO, particularly with higher degree of quality management maturity, can be encouraged to implement or improve the PMS in their organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a numerical model for the numerical analysis of the hydraulic transient profile in Trabalhador channel for filling and emptying maneuvers and to determine the water level in time. Model results support operational managers in the decision-making process.

Physical data were provided for the construction and calibration of the numerical model. The equations of Saint-Venant were approximated by a finite difference scheme and the numerical model was written in Fortran. The results of filling and emptying of the channel simulations were compared with the measured water levels.

Measured water levels and those simulated by the numerical model have shown good correlation. The time recorded for the filling and emptying of the canal was also close between the measured and simulated data. The simulation design flow pointed to inundation in the channel banks. Simulation water levels were slightly higher than those measured.

In this model, the combination of canals and pressure conduits was not considered.

The findings confirm the measured time for filling and emptying of the canal, as well as inundation of canal banks for the maximum design flow. These results help in the management process.

This paper presents a numerical model for hydraulic transient analysis in channels with good agreement with the field data.

International business or International marketing.

The case is recommended for undergraduate and graduate courses in the fields of international business and international marketing. The aim is to show students the problems that a family business in the animation industry faces while growing and internationalizing. Specifically, the case discusses the entry mode selection and market selection challenges faced by an emerging market company in the comic book and animation industry to operate overseas and compete with entertainment giants such as Disney and DC Comics. The case enables the instructor to discuss international market selection theories and evaluate entry modes. For graduate students, the international market selection can be further developed by using more robust concepts such as psychic and cultural distance.

This case examines the trajectory of a pioneering company in the comic book and animation industries, and in the licensing of trademarks in Brazil. Mauricio de Sousa Productions was founded in 1959 and is considered to be one of the most successful cultural producers in the country. According to a leading Brazilian public opinion research agency, 97 per cent of Brazilian children and 96 per cent of their parents are familiar with the Monica and Friends characters. As one of the main players in the publishing market, with 86 per cent of market share, Mauricio de Sousa Productions has a product portfolio that goes beyond Monica and Friends comic strips: the company’s show on the Cartoon Network ranks third in audience viewing in the country and the company has produced animated movies, books, shows and games. However, despite its experience in publishing comic books in several countries, Mauricio de Sousa Productions (MSP)’s worldwide operations have not been as profitable and sustainable as expected. Aiming at expanding its global presence, MSP’s top management decided in 2014 to review the company’s internationalization strategy and operations to enhance the firm’s performance.

The case highlights the key factors facing firms when expanding from an emerging markets. Students are expected to discuss and evaluate options, thus developing their knowledge and decision processes related to family-owned business challenges and opportunities, international market selection theories and international market entry mode. Developing strategies to face challenges as those presented by competitors such as Disney should bring opportunities to students to think outside models and weigh risks. Finally, the case gives students opportunity to base their decision processes and evaluations on logistics problems as well as psychic and cultural distances. It also compels the students to appreciate the various challenges involved in exploiting international market with animation content and intellectual properties as a service.

Company presentation to use in the discussion introduction can be found in: www.monicaandfriends.com/content/video.php

CSS 5: International business.

Constrained input use and lower productivity of rural establishments may be associated with restricted or concentrated access to financial resources, especially in developing countries. Meanwhile, agricultural activity entails risks associated with the volatility of net cash flows and external events, which may discourage riskier but higher return investments (e.g. technology). As rural credit can alleviate the former, and rural insurance may help alleviate the latter, the combination of both policies might endorse each other. The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of rural credit and rural insurance policies with respect to productivity and crop area, in São Paulo state, Brazil, using farmer's microdata from two surveys realized in 2007/08 and 2016/17.

This study uses propensity score matching and the entropy balance approaches in a complementary way. This study compared three policy treatments – rural credit, rural insurance and both policies combined, against establishments that received neither one. The analysis considered sugarcane, grain and grape crops separately and employed farmer's microdata. Moreover, the analysis was stratified into two categories: establishments owned by family farmers and those that did not.

Rural credit policy is related to higher productivity and larger cultivated area for grains and only to larger area for grape crops in the last analyzed period (2016/17). Rural insurance, as a unique policy or combined with credit, is related to higher productivity and cultivated areas, for all analyzed crops, only in the second period (2016/17), as the policy became more accessible to farmers. Heterogeneity regarding crops and farmers might influence the effectiveness of these policies. Despite rural insurance being related to a better performance regarding the outcome variables, it still reaches a small share of farmers, especially when combined with credit.

Many studies about the effectiveness of rural credit in Brazil have been conducted throughout the years, while there have been fewer studies regarding rural insurance since it became an important policy in the mid-2000s. However, few studies have conducted an analysis comparing its individual and interactive influences, with such level of disaggregation, on a farm-level database, considering the heterogeneity of the data and the different categories of farmers.

The objective of this chapter is to outline an integrating picture of the situation, representativeness, contradictions, and challenges that the treatment of diversity assumes in Brazilian society and in its organizations. The aim is to reply to the research question: “How are public policies and organizational practices constructing ways of inserting and valuing the diversity of Brazilians?” We provide a brief background of the changes in the global and Brazilian contexts over the last few decades and analyze the demographic data presented in the 2010 Census and in studies on diversity that were published in the main periodicals in the Administration area in Brazil, between 2000 and 2014 with regard to the segments most widely studied in the academic literature: Afro-descendants, homosexuals, the elderly, Indians, women, and people with a disability. The conclusion reached is that, in a short period of time, Brazil has made great strides in constructing the mechanisms and legal devices for recognizing the rights of its diverse population and that private companies are in the initial stages of introducing diversity programs.