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The article describes the ETC/CDS (European Topic Centre on Catalogue of Data Sources) current developments in the field of European environmental information, according to the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) needs and tasks. The objectives of the project are presented, together with the work done and results achieved. The future planned activities are also set and explained.

This paper aims to help workplace ethnographers navigate and reflect on primary access negotiations by scrutinising two of the concepts mentioned in the call for papers on this special issue: workplace relations and tensions. We introduce the frames of reference (FoRs) concept as used in the field of employment relations to the ethnographic community. We propose that the implicit frames of gatekeeper and researcher influence what they deem interesting for research, thus influencing the content of access negotiations. Moreover, we propose that tensions typically emerge when gatekeepers and ethnographers do not share the same frame of the employment relationship (ER).

We explore the ER through Fox’s (1966, 1974) framework, taking inspiration from Budd et al. (2022), who applied FoRs to employer–employee relations. We adapt the framework to the relationships between workplace ethnographers and gatekeepers by theorising the characteristics of ideal types of gatekeepers and workplace ethnographers and exploring possible implications for when they meet in access negotiations. We distil lessons learnt from previous research by drawing on illustrative examples from the literature to suggest strategies for interacting with gatekeepers when tensions emerge, providing a pragmatic application of our contribution.

Assuming that their FoR of the ER contributes to what they find to be of practical relevance/academic interest, we suggest that a (mis)match of gatekeepers’ and workplace ethnographers’ FoRs can lead to tensions between workplace ethnographers and gatekeepers, either remaining latent or becoming salient. We propose three possible strategies as to how to navigate these tensions during primary access negotiations.

Whilst previous research has mainly focused on the ethnographer as an individual who needs to give gatekeepers a reassuring and enticing impression, we discuss how an important structural factor, an organisation’s ER setup, may influence access. We thus bring an important yet hitherto neglected aspect of organisational life into the debate on the pragmatic realities of ethnography, contributing to the discussion of how to navigate the tension between the “practical” need to convince gatekeepers and the need to fulfil one’s own standards of rigorous research and ethics.

The purpose of this paper was to study how public regulation promotes or hinders openness in the food industry, specifically how European novel food regulation has affected external ties among novel food pioneers seen through patents and their inventors.

A multiphase mixed-methods design was used to combine data as follows: Worldwide patents originating from Norwegian novel food pioneers 2004–2019, downloaded through the European Patent Office database. Application data and interviews were analysed together with substantial information on 88 patents.

Firms use patenting and novel food applications as part of a wider intellectual property rights strategy to guard against unintended spillovers and to shape external collaboration. Examinations of patents indicate a pattern of selective partnership with research and development (R&D) providers.

Food industry actors can combine property rights strategies to maintain a pattern of openness and external collaboration. R&D providers should consider the food industry's flag-planting strategies by integrating these into contractual regulations.

Little is known earlier about how novel food pioneers collaborate with suppliers, research actors, governmental actors, distributors and customers regarding new product development.

This paper aims to identify a possible mismatch between the theory found in academic research and the practices of investment managers in Brazil.

The chosen approach is a field survey. This paper considers 78 survey responses from 274 asset management companies. Data obtained are analyzed using independence tests between two variables and multiple regressions.

The results show that most Brazilian investment managers have not adopted current best practices recommended by the financial academic literature and that there is a significant gap between academic recommendations and asset management practices. The modern portfolio theory is still more widely used than the post-modern portfolio theory, and quantitative portfolio optimization is less often used than the simple rule of defining a maximum concentration limit for any single asset. Moreover, the results show that the normal distribution is used more than parametrical distributions with asymmetry and kurtosis to estimate value at risk, among other findings.

This study may be considered a pioneering work in portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation in Brazil. Although academia in Brazil and abroad has thoroughly researched portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation, little is known about the actual implementation and utilization of this research by Brazilian practitioners.

This chapter presents the current research status of family constitutions from an economics perspective. It locates the family constitution as part of the family and business governance structure of a family firm and the owner family. The typical structure and content of a family constitution are introduced. The chapter focuses on the status of research about family constitutions and provides a structured map for future research. With regard to extant research, it must be stated that the stock of literature is small. The contributions to literature are categorized in surveys; conceptual contributions; survey data; small sample, qualitative, empirical studies; and big sample, quantitative, empirical studies. The latter group includes three studies with a separate family constitution variable. This small number symbolizes that the family constitution still is an under-researched area. Therefore, family constitution research is far away from being able to answer central questions of advice-seeking owner families like, for example, whether a family constitution affects family performance, firm performance, or both; or whether the development process of a family constitutions disposes of an effect on family or firm performance separately from the hypothesized effect of the family constitution document.

This study aims to examine the core challenges facing company secretaries in a two-tier board context. This study focuses on the key factors contributing to these challenges and how company secretaries can effectively address them.

An analysis of the narratives provided by 291 Dutch company secretaries in response to a series of open-ended questionnaire questions led to insights into the key challenges company secretaries face in their day-to-day work.

Company secretaries perceive a myriad of factors contributing to pressures on their time, the need to work for multiple organizational bodies and the processing of information. They believe process interventions and social interventions are needed to alleviate these issues.

The research highlights the need to deeply study boards from a holistic and systems point of view that recognizes the various actors, such as the company secretary, and their relationships in a boardroom context. Furthermore, the research shows how the two-tier board model may complicate these relational dynamics owing to the formal separation of decision management from decision control.

This study identifies various pragmatic ways to address the core challenges facing company secretaries so as to improve their contributions to decision-making at the apex of organizations.

This study sheds light on an important organizational actor (i.e. the company secretary) that hitherto has received scant attention in the governance literature.

Barriers to employment are a significant issue in the United States and abroad. As civil rights legislation continues to be enforced and as employers seek to diversify their workplaces, it is incumbent upon the management field to offer insights that address obstacles to work. Although barriers to employment have been addressed in various fields such as psychology and economics, management scholars have addressed this issue in a piecemeal fashion. As such, our review will offer a comprehensive, integrative model of barriers to employment that addresses both individual and organizational perspectives. We will also address societal-level concerns involving these barriers. An integrative perspective is necessary for research to progress in this area because many individuals with barriers to employment face multiple challenges that prevent them from obtaining and maintaining full employment. While the additive, or possibly multiplicative, effect of employment barriers have been acknowledged in related fields like rehabilitation counseling and vocational psychology, the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature has virtually ignored this issue. We discuss suggestions for the reduction or elimination of barriers to employment. We also provide an integrative model of employment barriers that addresses the mutable (amenable to change) nature of some barriers, while acknowledging the less mutable nature of others.

It is often found that the value of travel time (VTT) is higher for car drivers than for public transport passengers. This paper examines the possible explanation that the difference could be due to a selection effect. The result is an inability to measure the effect of a mode difference, e.g., comfort, among transport modes. We specify a model that captures the mode difference through a mode dummy and use econometric techniques that allow treatment of the mode dummy as the result of an individual choice and hence endogenous. Using first a standard logit model we find a large and significant difference between the VTT for bus and car. When we control for endogeneity using instruments, the mode dummy becomes smaller and just significant. Our investigation is novel in that it allows for endogeneity in the estimation of VTT but like other applications using instruments the results indicate that we have difficulty in finding good instrumental variables.