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The purpose of the paper is to analyze the development of business angel networks (BANs) in emerging countries such as Chile and Colombia to understand how institutions affect their development.

This is a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study based on a comparative analysis between countries, with the BANs in Chile and Colombia as the unit of observation. The comparative analysis was made in relation with the creation, operation and sustainability of the BANs. The study interviews the partners/managers of the active networks in each of the countries, as well as key informants, totalling 12 interviews.

BAN activity in Chile and Colombia is quite recent, and the countries are on a similar level of development. However, in the long term, depending on how the cultural aspects evolve in both countries and the interest that the State may have in developing business angel activity, the results could be indeed different.

Business angel activity in Latin America is quite recent; nevertheless, this activity is increasing in the region. In that sense, this comparative analysis between Colombia and Chile contributes to a better understanding of business angel markets in Latin America and also to obtain better insights into the core challenges that these markets face in emerging countries due to the existence of institutional voids. This paper is a contribution for further knowledge of BANs in emerging countries’ economies from an institutional perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI), organizational affective commitment (AC), and performance at low-skilled back office positions.

In all, 397 participants in low-skilled back office positions from a service company completed a questionnaire assessing EI, AC, and performance. The authors used multiple regression models for testing whether higher levels of EI and AC predicted better performance. Additionally, they tested to see whether EI and AC were positively related.

The results showed that workers in low-skilled back office positions with higher EI and AC had better performance. In this sense, intrapersonal skills and mood management were the dimensions of EI with the highest predictive power. Also, EI and AC were positively related, with intrapersonal skills and adaptability being the dimensions of EI most closely associated with AC. Finally, the predictive power on performance was increased when EI and AC were considered simultaneously.

Traditionally, the involvement of EI and other personal dimensions in increasing organizational commitment and better work performance has been studied in high-skilled and executive positions, as well as in front office low-skilled positions. However, there is little empirical evidence regarding the simultaneous influence of EI and AC on performance in low-skilled back office positions. This gap prompted this research, which suggests that the investment of organizational resources is mandatory for improving EI and, hence, organizational commitment and work performance in these employees.

Knowing the behavior of tourists visiting cultural destinations enables better management of tourist flows, a better understanding of areas with greater tourist density and an opportunity to decongest popular neighborhoods. The purpose of this study is to segment tourists according to their spatio-temporal behavior and identify the primary variables that characterize the resulting segments, which will help urban destinations prevent problems arising from the saturation of tourists in certain areas.

To do this, this paper analyzes the behavior of tourists visiting the southeastern Spanish city of Granada, one of the most highly visited cultural tourism destinations. The data analysis used the methodology of sequence alignment which is used to identify segments as a function of their contained elements and the order in which these appear.

The results demonstrate the existence of three segments with different behavioral patterns: the “explorer tourists” segment, the “non-traditional cultural tourists” segments and the “typical cultural tourists” segment. These segments show differences in the concentration of their visits. This study discovered that the segments that visit a greater number of destination areas are those with less cultural orientation, higher travel budgets and younger and more frequent visitors.

In the segmentation not only keep in mind the visited areas, but the order in which they were visited as well. In addition, one should consider the time that each tourist remains in each relevant zone of the destination, given that the visiting time is an important variable to assess the congestion of an area.

This paper fills a gap in the literature on branding, as local and glocal brands have not received as much attention as global brands from academics and practitioners and the scarce amount of relevant research done on glocal branding strategies is mainly theoretical or conceptual.

This paper therefore defines a model relating brand beliefs (brand quality, brand image, brand familiarity and brand as a social signalling value), brand attitudes and brand purchase intentions. The model is then tested with a sample of different categories/types of consumer brands (local, global and glocal). The influence of the type of brand on these relationships is then analysed.

The findings suggest that brand quality is the most important driver of brand attitude for any type of brand, and that the relationship between brand quality and brand attitude, as well as between brand attitude and brand purchase intention, is weaker for a glocal brand than for a local or global brand.

This paper provides new empirical evidence of the influence of brand type on brand associations and attitude configurations and the effects these attitudes have on buying intentions. This work is also relevant for the managers’ efforts to develop more effective global, glocal and local marketing strategies for brand positioning.

El presente trabajo persigue contribuir a la literatura sobre marcas al tratar sobre las marcas locales y las marcas glocales, puesto que éstas han estado menos estudiadas que las marcas globales.

Definimos un modelo que relaciona las creencias de marca (la calidad de marca, la imagen de marca, la familiaridad de marca y la marca como señal de valor social), las actitudes de marca y las intenciones de compra de la marca, probamos el modelo con una muestra de diferentes categorías de marcas de consumo (local, global y glocal) y analizamos la influencia del tipo de marca en estas relaciones.

Nuestros resultados sugieren que la calidad es el impulsor más importante de la actitud hacia la marca, para cualquier tipo de marca, y que la relación entre la calidad y la actitud hacia la marca, así como entre la actitud hacia la marca y la intención de compra es más débil para una marca glocal que para una local o global.

La investigación proporciona nuevas evidencias empíricas en relación a la influencia del tipo de marca (local, global o glocal) en las asociaciones de marca y en la configuración de las actitudes hacia dichas marcas y en su intención de compra. Nuestro trabajo es de interés también para los directivos de marketing ya que les puede permitir desarrollar mejores estrategias de posicionamiento para marcas locales, globales o glocales.

Marca global, Marca local, Marca glocal, Teoría de las señales, Actitud hacia la marca, Intención de compra

Trabajo de investigación

Open data are characterized by a number of economic, environmental, technological, innovative, and social benefits. They are seen as a significant contributor to the city’s transformation into smart city. This is all the more so when the society is on the border of Society 5.0, that is, shift from the information society to a super smart society or society of imagination takes place. However, the question constantly asked by open data experts is, what are the key factors to be met and satisfied in order to achieve promised benefits? The current trend of openness suggests that the principle of openness should be followed not only by data but also research, education, software, standard, hardware, etc., it should become a philosophy to be followed at different levels, in different domains. This should ensure greater transparency, eliminating inequalities, promoting, and achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore, many agendas (sustainable development strategies, action plans) now have openness as a prerequisite. This chapter deals with concepts of open (government) data and Society 5.0 pointing to their common objectives, providing some success stories of open data use in smart cities or transformation of cities toward smart cities, mapping them to the features of the Society 5.0. We believe that this trend develops a new form of society, which we refer to as “open data-driven society.” It forms a bridge from Society 4.0 to Society 5.0. This chapter attempts to identify the role of openness in promoting human-centric smart society, smart city, and smart living.

This paper aims at a better understanding of contemporary women’s relationship paths and their reasoning behind them. Qualitative interviews with 48 rural and urban women from Western Mexico were conducted and analyzed using a thematic approach and data discussed from a feminist, gender approach and late modernity approach. Findings reveal civil and religious marriages were the paths two-third of women followed to start a family and that women living in permanent and alternating cohabitation did not seek to marry. Women held ambivalent views on marital life and poorer and less-educated women, particularly urban participants, had no choice but to marry. Findings on reasoning reveal a more complex and diverse reality than previous sociodemographic studies have portrayed, where pragmatism and social order were the main causes for marrying and cohabitation. Narratives show premarital sex and the symbolism of marriage and family are changing. A comparative approach between contexts of study, age groups, civil status, and social strata enriched and strengthened the discussion of the findings. The results were contrasted with existing Mexican literature from different fields. A larger qualitative study is needed to broaden the scope of the findings made by this study, whilst large-scale studies should consider either the use of mixed approaches or the inclusion of items that allow them to identify the elements of social and cultural change. The study could help to demystify women’s attitudes toward marriage, sex, and love; a field currently sprinkled with western romantic love values and gender-driven idealizations. This paper might be of interest for social demographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians conducting research on these themes from feminist and gender perspectives.

The aim of this paper is to determine whether the effort invested by service companies in employee training has an impact on their economic performance.

The study centres on an intensive labor sector, where the perception of service quality depends on who renders this service. To overcome the habitual problems of transversal studies, the time effect has been considered by measuring data over a period of nine years, to give panel data treatment with fixed effects.

The prepared models give clear empirical support to the hypothesis that training activities are a positive influence on company performance.

The results obtained contribute empirical evidence about a relationship that, hitherto, has not been satisfactorily demonstrated. However, there may be some limitations related to the use of a training indicator based on effort and not on results obtained, with low representation of what happens in the smaller companies that lack structured training policies, or with no differentiation between generic or more specific training.

The results obtained can contribute towards increased manager awareness that training should be treated as an investment and not considered as an expense.

The main contributions can be resumed in three points: a training measurement has been used, based on three dimensions, which presumes to be an improvement on the more frequent method of measuring this variable. A consistent methodology was used that previously was not applied in the analysis of this relationship, and clear empirical evidence has been obtained concerning a relationship that, frequently, is mentioned with theoretical arguments, but which needs more empirical evidence.