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The purpose of this paper is to obtain evidence about the scope of the determinants of the willingness to pay (WTP) of the residents in a Spanish city (A Coruña) for keeping a professional football team (Deportivo) competing at the highest level. Apart from the individual socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents and their attitudes as football fans, the authors try to know the influence on the WTP of factors such as the general economic conditions and the plausibility of the team disappearance.

The value of the intangible benefits associated with the team existence is derived from the application of the contingent valuation method (CVM), using two surveys conducted in 2003 and 2012, respectively, with the aim of obtaining information concerning citizens’ behaviour and attitudes towards a professional football team.

The consumption of public goods generated by the local football team is relatively inelastic to the sport success and general economic situation, but the value assigned by residents to those goods depends on these factors. Of the two components of the WTP, the non-use value is especially sensitive to changes both in the Spanish economic conditions and in the quality of the public goods generated by the football team.

This is the first study that applies the CVM to a football team controlling for both the general economic conditions and the team sport success and, as such, it provides interesting insights into the nature and scope of the determinants of individuals’ WTP in a CVM setting.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in‐depth appraisal of the internal drivers motivating firms to select cooperative internationalization processes.

Building on the resource‐based view, and using a sample of 401 Spanish firms, the authors examine the direct and indirect effects of ability to internationalize on propensity for cooperative internationalization.

Capabilities are a positive predictor of propensity for cooperative internationalization, though this relationship is mediated by the adoption of a differentiating competitive strategy. In contrast, the propensity for international growth through alliances decreases as the firm's degree of involvement abroad increases.

Firms that aim for international expansion should accumulate internationally transferable capabilities. Managers should reflect on the best ways to grow in foreign markets considering the maturity of the firm's internationalization process. Managers must assess whether the costs of searching for cooperative internationalization opportunities are worth paying.

The accumulation of internationally transferable capabilities does not alone determine a firm's international growth through cooperative internationalization; a strategy of competitive differentiation also plays a role. Moreover, the learning process of international growth reduces firms' need to cooperate.

The purpose of this paper is to simulate the potential costs and benefits for Spanish firms providing dual apprenticeship training.

The paper conducts simulations of ten training occupations in six different industries in Spain. For these simulations, the authors combined Spanish wage data and the existing training curriculum regarding instruction times in vocational school in Spain with data from Swiss firms offering training in similar occupations. These data contain information regarding the amount of workplace training, relative apprentice productivity, and the relative importance of non-wage training costs (such as training equipment).

The authors found that training occupation, training scenario, and firm size are important determinants of the authors’ simulations for the expected net costs of apprenticeship training in Spanish firms. Consequently, the break-even level of apprentices’ wages differs significantly by training occupation and training scenario, suggesting that one prescribed apprentice wage for all sectors and occupations would be detrimental to the willingness of many firms to provide training places.

Dual apprenticeship training may improve the labor market transition for Spanish youth. The paper provides guidelines for regulatory frameworks that allow firms to provide apprenticeship training without having to bear net training costs – an important condition given that apprentices are free to leave the training firm upon graduation.

The authors’ simulations show that Spanish firms would be able to provide high-quality apprenticeship training programs that would also appeal to more talented youth because of the combination of a decent earning opportunity during the apprenticeship and good future career options.

This paper provides novel and direct empirical evidence regarding the framework conditions within the Spanish apprenticeship system, thus incentivizing both firms and individuals to participate in dual apprenticeship training programs.

The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of the intellectual capital of SMEs on innovation and organizational performance in the context of an emerging country.

The sample consisted of 259 industrial SMEs from the Cordoba, Argentina. The data were analyzed by partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM).

The study provides empirical evidence that the three components of intellectual capital generate positive and significant effects on innovation in processes and products. Structural capital is the component that has the greatest effect on innovation. It also showed a positive and significant relationship between innovation in processes and performance, contributing to the scarce empirical literature in the context of SMEs.

The research exposes limitations that uncover a path for future. First, the work uses as the only source of information, the consultation at the highest level of the company. Second, the study covered only industrial companies. Future studies should focus on other sectors and countries.

The results may have important practical implications for SME owners and managers and offer a vision of the influence of intellectual capital on the innovative capacity of the organization.

The value of work lies in establishing the importance of intellectual capital in the environment of an emerging country such as Argentina, given the low level of knowledge that exists in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how sustainability was operationalized in the Spanish universities through plans and actions that contribute actively to the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

A systematic search and content analysis served to examine information available on websites belonging to the 76 universities listed in the Conference of Rectors of the Spanish Universities (CRUE).

The participation of Spanish universities on initiatives focused on sustainability is very limited, highlighting the negligible role of private institutions in which topics like sustainability and the 2030 Agenda/SDGs were scarcely addressed.

The study outlines the actual extent of the inclusion of sustainability in particular co-curricular actions toward the SDGs in the CRUE. The findings enable to define a long-term sustainability road map for the Spanish university system.