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The shopping center (SC) industry in emerging countries has grown fast over the past decade; however, recently, it is showing signs of slowing down. Nevertheless, some SC-companies perform well. As those firms operate in alliance networks, relational opportunities and risks should be considered in their strategic analyses. Although there is a significant amount of research on SC from a marketing perspective, there is a dearth of research on strategic alliances from an SC management perspective. This paper aims at answering the following question: How do characteristics of the alliance networks of leading SC-companies contribute to their success by mitigating the structural threats the SC-industry in Brazil is facing?

The case study method was adopted for analyzing two leading Brazilian SC-companies. Several data sources were used to allow for data triangulation. The lack of literature on strategic alliances and the SC-industry, as well as the research’s exploratory nature, justified this choice.

The research made evident that the SC-companies’ alliance network characteristics not only mitigate some of the structural industry threats but also enhance opportunities. It illustrated how firms can conduct a strategic analysis from a network perspective with the right tools. It also made evident how much more accurate the results of a comprehensive relational analysis are compared with traditional analyses that do not consider the strategic implications of relational factors.

The research contributed to SC management by highlighting the importance of taking into account the network characteristics of their relationships with key partners and of considering these as alliances and not merely contractual arrangements.

There is a dearth of research on the strategic implications of alliances of firms that own and manage a portfolio of SCs, as well as of their relationships with other actors in the industry, such as retailers and real estate owners, from a network perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to identify patterns for the intra-market expansion of international branded retailers on a continent-sized emerging market using the network approach.

A multiple-case study design of four foreign branded retailers that have expanded onto regional markets in Brazil is used.

The intra-market expansion process shares similarities with the cross-market expansion process; is influenced by the relationships of foreign branded retailers with local competitors and shopping mall firms; and market selection, mode of operation and store location decisions are interrelated and conjointly taken, instead of forming a three-stage process. Additionally, the importance of relationships with host market shopping malls firms is highlighted.

This paper advances a conceptual model of the intra-market expansion process, which comprises a system of interrelated decisions – (regional) market selection, mode of operation and store location – influenced by several network effects.

Managers of foreign branded retail suffer from liability of foreignness when undertaking intra-market expansion. Although Brazil is a large market, the retail community is highly connected because of managers’ personal relationships. Brazilian shopping malls dominate suitable store locations, and represent a valuable source of knowledge and resources for the foreign branded retailer.

This paper addresses two under-researched aspects of international retail: branded retailers – manufacturers that develop brands and operate stores – and intra-market expansion (i.e. to geographic regions of a given foreign country). It also discusses the challenges of intra-market expansion in continent-sized emerging markets, with considerable regional diversity (culture, infrastructure and institutions).

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.

Social media platforms that disseminate scientific information to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of the topic of scientific communication. Content creators in the field, as well as researchers who study the impact of scientific information online, are interested in how people react to these information resources and how they judge them. This study aims to devise a framework for extracting large social media datasets and find specific feedback to content delivery, enabling scientific content creators to gain insights into how the public perceives scientific information.

To collect public reactions to scientific information, the study focused on Twitter users who are doctors, researchers, science communicators or representatives of research institutes, and processed their replies for two years from the start of the pandemic. The study aimed in developing a solution powered by topic modeling enhanced by manual validation and other machine learning techniques, such as word embeddings, that is capable of filtering massive social media datasets in search of documents related to reactions to scientific communication. The architecture developed in this paper can be replicated for finding any documents related to niche topics in social media data. As a final step of our framework, we also fine-tuned a large language model to be able to perform the classification task with even more accuracy, forgoing the need of more human validation after the first step.

We provided a framework capable of receiving a large document dataset, and, with the help of with a small degree of human validation at different stages, is able to filter out documents within the corpus that are relevant to a very underrepresented niche theme inside the database, with much higher precision than traditional state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. Performance was improved even further by the fine-tuning of a large language model based on BERT, which would allow for the use of such model to classify even larger unseen datasets in search of reactions to scientific communication without the need for further manual validation or topic modeling.

The challenges of scientific communication are even higher with the rampant increase of misinformation in social media, and the difficulty of competing in a saturated attention economy of the social media landscape. Our study aimed at creating a solution that could be used by scientific content creators to better locate and understand constructive feedback toward their content and how it is received, which can be hidden as a minor subject between hundreds of thousands of comments. By leveraging an ensemble of techniques ranging from heuristics to state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, we created a framework that is able to detect texts related to very niche subjects in very large datasets, with just a small amount of examples of texts related to the subject being given as input.

With this tool, scientific content creators can sift through their social media following and quickly understand how to adapt their content to their current user’s needs and standards of content consumption.

This study aimed to find reactions to scientific communication in social media. We applied three methods with human intervention and compared their performance. This study shows for the first time, the topics of interest which were discussed in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper was to promote the use of residual moringa seed powder (RMSP) for the enhancement of cereal-based products. RMSP is usually discarded after seed-oil extraction. This work also promotes zero-waste and rheological approaches.

In search of novel and sustainable food products with high nutritional value, cold-pressed Moringa oleifera Lam. seeds residue (RMSP) was used for incorporation in muffin formulations. Wheat flour was partially substituted (0%, 1%, 3%, 5%, 7% and 9%) by RMSP. Sodium (Na), calcium (Ca) and iron (Fe) contents were quantified through atomic absorption spectrometry; protein, through the Kjeldahl method followed by AACC Method 46–13.01; and, fat content, by a modified version of AACC Method 30–25.01a. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey tests were performed to determine significant differences between formulations at 95% reliability using Minitab® software. Furthermore, simple viscosity studies of the dough mixture were carried in a Brookfield DV-III Ultra Rheometer; Matlab® curve-fitting tool was used for obtaining the best non-Newtonian equation that modeled experimental data. Subsequently, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of non-Newtonian fluids along a segmented pipe were carried out in Comsol Multiphysics® software to depict the importance of modeling non-Newtoning fluids for downstream processes.

RMSP significantly (p < 0.0001) increased protein and Fe content for the 7% and 9% formulations; it dramatically changed Na and Ca content in all formulations, while fat remained constant.

The development of this type of product is an opportunity for communities that grow and harvest moringa as well as for food industries which can take advantage of moringa by-products for several subsequent processing.

For the first time, it was found that dough formulations with RMSP presented a pseudo-plastic and thixotropic behavior. In addition, the use of lignocellulosic by-products such as RMSP incorporates an added value to food products. In this case, it was demonstrated that moringa seed residue enhanced nutritional value to muffins and provided coagulant/flocculant action, which is essential during dough preparation.

This study aims to estimate the overall SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and evaluate the accuracy of an antibody rapid test compared to a reference serological assay during a COVID-19 outbreak in a prison complex housing over 13,000 prisoners in Brasília.

The authors obtained a randomized, stratified representative sample of each prison unit and conducted a repeated serosurvey among prisoners between June and July 2020, using a lateral-flow immunochromatographic assay (LFIA). Samples were also retested using a chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLIA) to compare SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and 21-days incidence, as well as to estimate the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) and determine the diagnostic accuracy of the LFIA test.

This study identified 485 eligible individuals and enrolled 460 participants. Baseline and 21-days follow-up seroprevalence were estimated at 52.0% (95% CI 44.9–59.0) and 56.7% (95% CI 48.2–65.3) with LFIA; and 80.7% (95% CI 74.1–87.3) and 81.1% (95% CI 74.4–87.8) with CLIA, with an overall IFR of 0.02%. There were 78.2% (95% CI 66.7–89.7) symptomatic individuals among the positive cases. Sensitivity and specificity of LFIA were estimated at 43.4% and 83.3% for IgM; 46.5% and 91.5% for IgG; and 59.1% and 77.3% for combined tests.

The authors found high seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies within the prison complex. The occurrence of asymptomatic infection highlights the importance of periodic mass testing in addition to case-finding of symptomatic individuals; however, the field performance of LFIA tests should be validated. This study recommends that vaccination strategies consider the inclusion of prisoners and prison staff in priority groups.

This study aims to examine how Brazilian universities have implemented the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in institutional practices, curriculum and teaching, management and community outreach programs.

This study is based on content analysis of the data sets of Brazilian higher education courses and their link to SDGs. A literature review has also been developed to integrate the knowledge of sustainability practices in Brazilian universities. Dashboards will be used to present the related findings.

Brazilian universities’ practices have concentrated their efforts on SDGs, which include responsible consumption and production, sustainable cities and communities and quality education. The literature emphasizes energy efficiency, reflecting its prominence as a subject of study among universities.

This research highlights the innovative use of data analysis techniques to present the findings. It also provides examples of environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, frameworks and tools that can help sustainability management in this sector.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an organizing lens for viewing the distinct contributions to knowledge production from those research communities addressing the impact of competitive strategy on company performance in general, and the influence of cost leadership and differentiation strategy on organizational performance in detail.

The research methodology was based on the PRISMA review, and thematic analysis based on an iterative process of open coding was analyzed and then the sample was analyzed by illustrating the research title, objectives, method, data analysis, sample size, variables and country.

The main factor that influenced the competitive strategy is strategic growth; strategic growth has a significant influence on competitive strategy. Furthermore, competitive strategy will boost firm network, performance measurement and organization behavior. In the same way, the internal goal factor will enhance organizational effectiveness. Also, a differentiation strategy will support management practice factors, strategic positions, product price, product characteristics and company performance.

This study contributes to the literature by identifying a framework of competitive strategy factors, company performance factors, cost leadership strategy factors, differentiation strategy factors and competitive strategy with global market factors. This study provides a complete picture and description of the resulting body knowledge in competitive strategy and organizational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the assumptive concept of internationalization because it is discussed and understood in the international business (IB) literature. This paper develops a framework to reconceptualize internationalization in the context of global value chain (GVC) and sustainability. Based on this conceptual framework, this paper aims to formulate interrelated propositions to define internationalization.

This paper reviews the assumptive conceptualization process based on empirical evidence obtained through qualitative, illustrative and descriptive content analysis methods. Through the collection and qualitative content analysis of milestone papers, this paper demonstrates the fragmentation of the concept of internationalization. This paper reviews the evolving nature of the concept of internationalization, analyzing the accumulative issues associated with defining internationalization, as well as its potential future development.

This paper introduces a dynamic perspective on the evolving nature of the concept of internationalization and argue there is a need to reconceptualize internationalization in the context of the GVC and sustainability.

After reviewing the context in which the term “internationalization” has been applied and taking into consideration the current trends in the IB, this paper formulates an updated definition of the term internationalization. This paper offers a viewpoint on the future direction of the concept of internationalization in light of the growing importance of sustainability within IB.