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This paper aims to identify the relationship between national culture, enterprise application (EA) implementations and firm value for a sample of the largest and most actively traded firms in Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA. The study seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the cultural traits that play a role in successful technological innovation.

Using 11 years of price and accounting data, as well as corporate announcements from English- and Japanese-speaking sources, this study applies event study methodology and fixed-effects regressions to a sample of international adopters of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management and firm-specific applications.

The results show a country-related contrast in the way investors perceive value in EAs. Investors with national cultures that are more collectivist perceive their firms to be well-prepared to extract value from large-scale technologies. In contrast, individualistic cultures seem to face more implementation challenges.

Although the study provides statistically significant results, a larger sample of countries and enterprise systems adopters would further enhance a generalization of results.

The empirical results provide evidence of the national culture traits that seem to increase the likelihood of success in enterprise systems implementations as seen from the perspective of actual investors.

The empirical study of how multiple EAs (ERP, SCR, CRM and SPECIFIC) and national culture differences interact with a market-based metric of value (stock market prices), while also using an international sample of firms from three distinct regions, is novel to the existent literature.

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.

Banana is an important tropical fruit with high demand in the market. The ripe fruits are less resistant to transport making logistics difficult. Moreover, as a climacteric fruit, it has a short post-harvest shelf life. Edible coatings/films, including active substances, have been used as an alternative for preserving fruits and vegetables during post-harvest period. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incorporating clove essential oil on the properties of cassava starch films and their effect on the post-harvest quality of different banana varieties.

Cassava starch films incorporating clove essential oil were developed and the films were characterized with respect to moisture, thickness, solubility, water vapor permeability (WVP), biodegradability, color and in vitro antifungal activity. Cultivars such as Prata-Anã, Grand Nine, BRS Tropical and BRS Conquista were coated with cassava starch, cassava starch film with clove essential oil (CSEO) and polyvinyl polychloride (PVC). The quality of fruits was monitored during eight storage days using mass loss, total soluble solids content (TSS) and titratable acidity (TTA).

Incorporation of clove essential oil significantly increased film thickness, reduced moisture content, solubility and WVP (p < 0.05) and did not affect the biodegradability and color of the films. The essential oil incorporated films showed antifungal activity against the fungi Colletotrichum gloeosporioides and Colletotrichum musae, but not against the yeast Saccharomyces bourladii. CSEO and PVC coating were more efficient in reducing the mass loss, SS content and TTA of the coated fruits in all varieties studied. Both CSEO and PVC coatings improve the quality attributes such as TSS and TTA and reduced mass loss, of the banana varieties such as Prata-Anã, Grand Nine, BRS Tropical and BRS Conquista during storage.

The active film with essential oil showed antifungal activity and essential oil can be incorporated into other food systems. This study approaches a new possibility of film coating with essential oil for a banana that showed minimum weight loss and satisfactory quality and increased shelf life. This film coating demonstrates biodegradable characteristics that could be eco-friendly and sustainable to consumers.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Discovering opportunities is a key entrepreneurship competence for those who want to start their own business and who choose to enter the workforce. In this study, the authors focus on the antecedents of the ability to discover entrepreneurial opportunities by uncovering how and when students' personal initiative (Frese and Fay, 2001) leads to an increase in this key competency. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of risk-taking and creativity in the interplay between personal initiative and opportunity discovery competencies among university students.

Data were collected with a self-assessment tool in two moments in time, using a sample of 103 university students from Portugal enrolled in an entrepreneurship course. The authors measured personal initiative and entrepreneurial risk-taking at the beginning of the entrepreneurship course (Time 1). Two months later (Time 2), by the end of an entrepreneurship course, the authors measured creativity and opportunity discovery abilities.

The results of this study showed that risk-taking mediates the effect of personal initiative on opportunity discovery and that creativity interacts with risk-taking and opportunity discovery. Specifically, the authors found that the relationship between entrepreneurial risk-taking and opportunity discovery is positive and statistically significant when students display average or above-average creativity. The indirect effect of the personal initiative on opportunity discovery through entrepreneurial risk-taking seems to increase when the student's creativity increases, as the index of moderated mediation is positive.

As with all studies, there are limitations to work of this study. First, data of this study is restricted to a sample of students from Portugal. As such, the authors should be careful about generalizations concerning students from other cultural settings; entrepreneurship competencies can differ across countries. Second, the findings of the present study are based on students’ self-reports regarding their own entrepreneurship competencies.

This work can inspire entrepreneurship educators to look at the entrepreneurship competencies models holistically and inspire future work to explore the relationship patterns between entrepreneurial competencies.

The potential of the Cerrado fruit could be explored by development of new products, such as jellies that can be used to add value to the fruit, as well as to preserve this biome. This paper aims to evaluate the effect of processing, the glass packaging type and storage time on the quality of jelly, prepared from reconstituted murici pulp, over 12 months of storage.

The authors used a completely randomized design (CRD) in factorial 2 × 5, with two types of glass packaging (transparent and amber) and five storage periods (0, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months), with four replications and the experimental parcel consisting of 80 g of jelly (two bottles of 40 g). The quality of jelly was monitored through 12 months using physicochemical (proximal composition, color, soluble solids, titratable acidity and pH), microbiological (coliforms at 35 °C and 45 °C, filamentous fungi and Salmonella sp) and sensory analyses (sensory acceptance and purchase intent).

The pulp processing effectively affected the physicochemical and nutritional composition (proximal composition, soluble solids and color). It was found that only the storage time significantly influenced (p < 0.05) jelly quality, considering the variables analyzed, except the soluble solids, ash, dietary fiber and sensory texture attributes. However, the glass packaging factor (transparent and amber) did not result in significant changes in those variables. Moreover, the pulp processing allows a seasonal fruit with a short harvest period and short post-harvest life to be available to consumers as a new product throughout the year.

Based on the present study, the native Cerrado fruit such as murici [Byrsonima crassifolia (L.) Rich] is appreciated for its pleasant peculiarities such as color, aroma and taste; however, it is underutilized as food for lack of information and studies. Although the fruit does not have widespread use as food, it is necessary to make the population aware about its importance, not only as a source of nutrients, but also for its functional and sensory potential. Therefore, the production of murici jelly can increase consumption of the fruit, besides being a way to add value and extend the shelf life and sensory acceptance of the product prepared.

This chapter historicizes the social construction of racism in Brazilian society and its relation to the development of the library and information science (LIS) field. It is a theoretical-reflective research built on the scientific literature of the field of LIS and related areas that aims at reflecting on social justice in Brazilian libraries and creating strategies to confront institutional racism. The authors develop five main points to understand Brazilian racism: the myth of racial democracy, structural and institutionalized racism, the whitening ideology, whiteness, and the epistemicide of black knowledge. The authors then discuss racism and the promotion of white supremacy in library teaching and professional action in libraries. Black US American and Black Brazilian Librarianship movements show that the activism and political action of black librarians advance the development of informational counter-narratives. Finally, the authors recommend three strategies for social, racial, and informational justice in the LIS field: including ethnic-racial studies in basic university courses curricula; building diverse, inclusive collections that account for ethnic-racial themes and authors; and considering “Pretuguese” keywords while indexing, in order to counter exclusion and promote epistemic repair. The authors conclude by advocating for these strategies to steer LIS professional and educational spheres toward contributing to forward an anti-racist society.

The purpose of this article is the determination of the temperature fields in a weld region has always been an obstacle to the improvement of welding processes. As an alternative, the use of inverse problems to determine the heat flux during the welding process allows an analysis of these processes.

This paper studies an alternative for the thermal analysis of the tungsten inert gas welding process on a 6,060 T5 aluminum alloy. For this purpose, a C++ code was developed, based on a transient three-dimensional heat transfer model. To estimate the amount of heat delivered to the plate, the specification function technique was used. Lab experiments were carried out to validate the methodology. A different experimental methodology is proposed to estimate the emissivity (radiation coefficient).

The maximum difference between experimental and numerical temperatures is lower than 5 per cent. The determined emissivity value for the aluminum 6,060 T5 presented a good agreement with literature values. The thermal fields were analyzed as function of the positive polarity. The specification function method proved to be an adequate tool for heat input estimation in welding analysis.

The proposed methodology proves to be a cheaper way to estimate the heat flux on the sample. The estimated power curves for the welding process are presented. The methodology to calculate the emissivity (radiation coefficient) was validated.

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.

The goal of this work is to create a computational finite element model to perform thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) with the usage of a non-ideal load frequency, containing the effects of the material thermal properties.

Throughout this document, the methodology of the model is presented first, followed by the procedure and results. The last part is reserved to results, discussion and conclusions.

This work had the main goal to create a model to perform TSA with the usage of non-ideal loading frequencies, considering the materials’ thermal properties. Loading frequencies out of the ideal range were applied and the model showed capable of good results. The created model reproduced acceptably the TSA, with the desired conditions.

This work creates a model to perform TSA with the usage of non-ideal loading frequencies, considering the materials’ thermal properties.