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This paper aims to propose a high‐level structure for a global quality evaluation of a website. This structure is based on the characteristics, sub‐characteristics and attributes of three main dimensions (content, service, and technical quality) that will substantiate the development of broad website quality evaluation, comparison and improvement methodologies, according to particular sectors of activity and evaluator's perspective.

Based on the literature and the author's experience a framework is proposed for a global quality evaluation of a website.

Considering the results of some studies, as well as the systematisation of the knowledge available in several bibliographies, website quality can be grouped into three main dimensions: content quality, service quality, and technical quality. There has not yet been an evaluation methodology that focuses on these three main website quality dimensions in a broad and transversal sense.

The paper presents an innovative high‐level structure for a global quality evaluation of a website, based on three dimensions not previously considered together.

This study presents a model for assessing the effects of employee ICT training on organizations’ results. It also introduces digital transformation as a mediator between the two concepts and studies the role of organizational commitment and human capital in terms of digital transformation.

Surveys were completed by the CEOs of 184 Spanish companies, and their responses were analyzed with Partial Least Squares.

The results empirically analyze the proposed theoretical model and highlight the fact that human capital and organizational commitment partially mediate the link between ICT training and digital transformation. Furthermore, there is a direct relationship between ICT training and company performance.

Directors and managers should invest more resources in the human capital of their company through ICT training. In fact, it can improve organizational commitment, encouraging employees to adopt innovative behaviors, thus allowing for the necessary digital transformation.

Despite heavy theoretical emphasis on the study of the conditions necessary for the digital transformation of companies, few studies have empirically analyzed the effects of adopting certain practices for its implementation. This paper focuses on analyzing the effect of ICT training, which is configured as a tool capable of improving staff knowledge and increasing employee commitment. This is essential for adopting organizational change such as digital transformation.

This paper presents a new generative design system to be used by architects in early to intermediate stages of design in order to help improve the environmental performance of buildings. Both thermal and lighting analysis are included in the system, together with methods to incorporate architectural design intentions into the evolutionary process. The generative system was applied to a building by Álvaro Siza in Oporto (Portugal), to test its capability to handle complex architectural designs and to generate solutions within given language restrictions, while still reducing energy consumption levels of the building. Variables studied were fenestration design, shading systems and building shape (roof geometry). The advantages of using rapid prototyping technologies coupled with this generative system are discussed, and an example of the application of a fuse deposition modeling 3D modeler to this specific study is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a competitiveness measurement system for start-ups considering multiple critical success factors.

The methodological approach uses concepts from key performance indicators (KPIs) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) based on the fuzzy AHP (FAHP) methodology to weight the criteria related to fundamental points of view (FPVs) and critical success factors (CSFs).

Data collection was performed with 21 specialists and 28 start-ups, which returned the weights and performance of CSFs and FPVs related to the start-ups’ competitiveness. The results show only one start-up had a highly competitive global performance. In addition, all start-ups showed low competitiveness related to industry 4.0 technologies.

The article collaborates with existing research as a starting point for discussions on the subject, considering that previous research did not address the measurement of the start-ups’ competitiveness level through multiple factors, as developed in this article. In addition, we provide decision-makers and other stakeholders in the start-up ecosystem with a robust measurement system to assess business competitiveness and diagnose the company’s situation.

When entrepreneurship scholars and policy makers turned their attention to entrepreneurial ventures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023), its full effects on entrepreneurial firms and systems presented radically challenging questions and unresolved puzzles. In this paper, the authors shed light on these questions and puzzles with a large-scale empirical examination of the pandemic's overall effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses with a view toward success and failure over time.

The authors adopt a broad exploratory approach and examine different perspectives to develop a deeper understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses especially regarding the success and failure of entrepreneurial ventures during the pandemic. Thus, the authors built a dataset with 10 survey waves from 2020 to 2021, with an average of 7,000 Brazilian entrepreneurial ventures (SMEs) in each wave of the survey. The authors used this data to examine their performance and survival.

The findings suggest that the increase of the COVID-19 virus contagion per se did not severely affect entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. However, the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic did weaken entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. Moreover, the findings suggest that entrepreneur education has an inverted U-shaped relationship with entrepreneurial ventures performance. Indigenous, Brown and Black entrepreneurs experienced decreased entrepreneurial ventures survival compared to White entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurial ventures that adopted digital technologies and had access to loans increased their performance and survival during the COVID-19 pandemic, those who failed in these aspects experienced negative performance and survival effects. Thus, although the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted many entrepreneurial ventures and even forced some to close, others survived and even prospered during the environmental shock.

The paper sheds light on a little understood topic: entrepreneurial venture success and failure in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This chapter examines the relationship between news media in Cinema Novo films to underscore the impact of their shared discourse on the history of Brazilian films.

The author discusses the emplotment of news media within representative Cinema Novo films whose narratives speak to an ongoing debate concerning the role of print and televisual journalism in the increasingly repressive political environment of the military dictatorship installed in the 1960s. Interpretations on the level of film narrative, of specific scenes, and of shot and shot-sequencing contribute to the discussion, situated within the broader historical context of the established laws and commissions of 1960s Brazil.

Together, the analyzed films’ various interventions in Brazilian cultural and political history offer a complex representational fabric simultaneously constituting and critiquing national discourse.

The present research is limited to films of the 1960s but has implications for the interpretation of many Brazilian films and for Brazilian film history writ large. The overlap of film and news media is abundantly evident in the films of the Retomada and New Millennial Brazilian Cinema, but they do not fit within the scope of this chapter.

This analysis discusses a major canonical film (Entranced Earth) alongside lesser-known films (Threatened City, Freedom of the Press). When considered together in the light of their shared reflections concerning news media, these films bring up previously underexamined issues within the respective fields of Communication Studies and Brazilian Film Studies.

It has been argued in the international business literature that companies begin their internationalization trajectories by entering countries that are geographically and psychically closest to the country in which their home market is located before entering more distant ones. This paper aims to verify whether this assertion is correct for Brazilian companies. If it is correct, the companies would be expected to begin their international expansion in countries within the Latin America region. Not only is this region closest in geographical distance, but also it is most similar to Brazil in many other important dimensions.

This paper is an exploratory and quantitative research undertaken with a sample of 109 national capital companies selected from the 1,000 largest Brazilian companies in 2001 net revenues.

Empirical findings indicate that countries in Latin America have been most frequently chosen by Brazilian companies for their first expansions into international markets. Nevertheless, some companies choose divergent trajectories, initially entering markets that are geographically and psychically more distant. Those companies enjoyed structural features of certain sectors (commodities or global sectors), in which the importance of psychic distance is smaller in the face of economic transactions.

An important limitation of this paper is the impossibility to test the hypotheses in specific countries or markets. The authors are forced to analyze the psychic distance effect among regions, with the risk of not accounting for important intra‐regional differences.

The data presented in this paper have clarified some patterns and trajectories of Brazilian companies in international markets.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between administrative reform in Portugal and the impacts on the dependence of local governments in the face of budgetary resources of state and local municipal revenue collection, which is understood as a form, among others, participation civil society in local public policies.

The study opts for an exploratory analysis using the grounded theory approach, including the use of data relating to local government structures and partnerships with the private sector, based on the main lines of the public administration reform. The data were supplemented by documentary analysis, including legislative documents and papers in specialized area of administrative decentralization and civil society participation in local public policies.

The paper provides empirical insights about how the increased participation of civil society in local public policies is associated with less reliance on state budgets and a greater number of local managerial structures.

Due to the chosen research approach, the results cannot be generalized. A comparative study between several countries could bring several interesting insights.

The paper includes implications for economic and social development of new public policies in the context of administrative reforms.

This paper makes several theoretical and empirical contributions on this research field specially about local public manager's decisions for financial resources transfers within the active policy of sustainable local development.

For Colombia, cocaine is a product that is sold for profit in the United States. Mainstream political economy, let alone the other social sciences, has little to say about the process of extraction of surplus value in the production and distribution of cocaine, in other words, how cocaine is exploited for profit. The paper argues that the conventional framework, which locates profits generated from the cocaine trade in an economic model of crime shields a much deeper reality than simply ‘money laundering’ as a ‘legal problem.’ The central argument is that the cocaine trade in general, and the cocaine economy in particular, are a vital aspect of U.S. imperialism in the Colombian economic system. The paper tackles a critical problem: the place of cocaine in the re-colonization of Colombia – defined as ‘narcocolonialism’ – and the implications of the cocaine trade generally for U.S. imperialism in this context. The paper evaluates selected literature on the Colombian cocaine trade and offers an alternative framework underpinned by a political economy analysis drawn from Marx and Lenin showing that cocaine functions as an ‘imperial commodity’ – a commodity for which there exists a lucrative market and profit-making opportunity. It is also a means of capital accumulation by what could be termed, Colombia's comprador ‘narcobourgeoisie;’ dependent on U.S. imperialism. It is hoped that by analyzing cocaine with a Marxist interpretation and political economy approach, then future developments in understanding drugs in Colombia's complex political economy may be anticipated.