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The knowledge society determines a work scenario in which it is essential to manage time efficiently; a non-innate skill that should be learned at the university. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This research analyzes the attitude, habits and time management of the Economics and Business students of the UPV/EHU, in order to propose/design/specific activities for its achievement. Through a self-administered questionnaire, the sample data are obtained, which are analyzed at a descriptive and multivariate level.

The decisive factor is not the amount of time available but the management that is made of it. In general, students pay attention to short-term planning and lack habits and attitudes in the long term.

Unaware of the advantages of a correct use of time, students do not develop skills such as self-organization, prioritization of objectives and activities, etc., which is why the intervention of the educational system is necessary in order to develop this skill.

This study focuses on the importance of developing skills, beyond the strictly technical, essential in professional performance regardless of the function assigned in the organizational chart/organization. It is about assessing time management as an integral part of higher education, competence expressed on paper, but not developed in practice. The originality and novelty of this research consists of defining new dimensions of time management and proposing some specific actions to be implemented to get a better time management.

This paper aims to identify the effect of environmental management systems (EMSs), commitment to stakeholders and gender diversity on corporate environmental performance (CEP) and the extent to which an economic crisis moderates these relationships.

A regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 14,217 observations from 1,933 firms from 26 countries from 2002 to 2010. The estimator used is ordinary least squares with heteroscedastic panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs), which allows us to obtain consistent results in the presence of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation.

The results show that EMSs and stakeholder engagement are mechanisms that drive CEP but lose their effectiveness in times of crisis. However, the presence of women on boards has a positive effect on CEP that is not affected by an economic crisis.

The study has some limitations that could be addressed in the future. We present board gender diversity as a governance mechanism because its role is strongly related to non-financial performance. Future studies could focus on other corporate governance mechanisms, such as the presence of institutional or long-term investors. In addition, other mechanisms could be found that can counteract poor environmental performance in times of crisis. Finally, it might be useful to contrast these results with the crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The results obtained have important practical implications at the corporate and institutional levels. At the corporate level, they highlight, as essential contributions, that environmental management systems and stakeholder orientation are not effective in times of economic crisis, except for with the presence of women on the board.

Following the crisis, the European Commission has promoted gender diversity on boards as a mechanism to improve the governance of entities – improving, among other aspects, sustainability. In this sense, another one of the practical implications of the study is support for the policies that the European Union has implemented over the last two decades.

The paper analyses how a crisis affects the moral and cultural institutional mechanisms that promote CEP. Gender diversity on the board of directors not only promotes environmental performance but also appears to be a governance mechanism that ensures this performance in times of crisis when the other mechanisms lose their effectiveness. The study proposes specific policies that help maintain environmental performance in an economic crisis.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions are expected to reduce information asymmetries and increase legitimacy among the stakeholders of the company, which consequently should have a positive impact on the financial conditions of the firm. Hence, the objective of this paper is to find empirical evidence on the negative relationship between sustainable behavior and the cost of equity, in the specific context of Latin America. To address this issue, some proxies and moderating variables for sustainability are used in our study.

The regression model considers a sample with 252 publicly trading firms and 2,772 firm-year observations, from 2008 to 2018. The generalized method of moments is used to avoid endogeneity problems.

The study finds evidence that firms with higher environmental, social and governance activities disclosed by sustainability reports and assured by external providers decrease their cost of equity, especially if they are in an integrated market as MILA. This finding confirms that agency conflicts between firm's management and stakeholders diminish with higher CSR transparency, leading to a lower cost of capital.

Our research is unique and valuable as, to our knowledge, it is the first study to analyze the impact of sustainable behavior and the cost of equity from companies operating in Latin America.

Las actividades de Responsabilidad Social Empresarial permiten disminuir asimetrías de información e incrementar la legitimidad ante los stakeholders de una empresa, generando impactos positivos financieros para la misma. De hecho, el objetivo del artículo es medir la relación entre el comportamiento sostenible y el Costo de Capital en el contexto empresarial latinoamericano. Para ello, consideramos algunas variables proxy y moderadoras sustentables en nuestro estudio.

El modelo considera una muestra de 252 empresas cotizadas y 2772 observaciones que abarcan el período de 2008 a 2018. Se implementa el Modelo Generalizado de Momentos para evitar problemas de endogeneidad.

Los autores evidencian que empresas con altos niveles de divulgación ambiental, social y gobernanza corporativa a través de reportes de sostenibilidad y asegurados por proveedores externos disminuyen el Costo de Capital, especialmente si cotizan en un mercado integrado como el MILA. Estos hallazgos confirman que se reduce la asimetría de información entre la gerencia y los stakeholders, dado que incrementa la transparencia mediante la Responsabilidad Social Corporativa y ello conduce a un menor Costo de Capital.

Nuestro estudio es único dado que, hasta la fecha, es el primer estudio que analiza el impacto de la divulgación voluntaria de RSE y Costo de Capital de empresas que operan en Latinoamérica.

The objective of this paper is to analyze in an international setting the relationship between environmental disclosures, carbon emissions and gender equality on the board of directors with the cost of equity (CoE) in the food and beverage sector.

The study sample includes 142 listed firms and 1,562 firm-observations from 35 developed and developing countries between 2009 and 2019. The authors implement a fixed-effects regression model to contrast the impact of the three sustainable variables of interest on the CoE.

The results of this study indicate that firms in the food and beverage industry benefit from a lower CoE due to better environmental disclosures and gender equality. On the other hand, carbon intensive firms are penalized with higher equity costs.

This study expands prior research on the effects of sustainable behavior on the CoE in the food and beverage industry by taking into account additional sustainability variables and a greater number of observations, both from developed and from developing countries.

This study aims to explore the alignment between strategic plans of the Portuguese public higher education institutions (HEIs) and their perception of the integration of sustainability in education and curricula.

The strategic plans from 15 institutions were selected for content analysis; data about the integration of sustainability in education and curricula, from these HEI, were collected with an online questionnaire (self-report survey). Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed.

Strategic plans of the Portuguese public HEIs seem to not be sufficiently aligned with self-assessment integration of sustainability in education and curricula.

The classifications used in the content analysis were constructed and revised by the authors to reduce coder interpretation issues and subsequent bias in the results. However, some subjectivity could remain. The analysis of strategic plans and self-report surveys answered by top management, or a technician, does not assess the practices and sustainability implementation in education and curricula.

This study allows the self-report of already-implemented practices to be compared to the planned strategy of HEI governance in Portugal as stated in their strategic plans.

An analysis and respective insights on the lack of connection between strategic planning and self-report practices about sustainability implementation, using Portugal as a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to validate market orientation (MO) and business results scales in an area of significant interest for the literature: namely, service firms of a small and micro‐scale in a market sharing many similarities with Latin America (cultural, social and economic), specifically the Spanish rural tourism market.

On the basis of a literature review covering works specializing in MO and its impact on the service sector, and in the characteristics of small‐ and micro‐sized service firms (SMSF), a qualitative and a quantitative study are carried out in Spain, at a national level.

The results validate the scales and identify that MO comprises the following dimensions: information‐gathering, dissemination of information, and response to the market. The validated business results scale includes economic/financial results and others of a more personal nature linked to the entrepreneur business owner.

The work provides knowledge regarding the activities undertaken by SMSF in the area of MO. Professionals from the small‐ and micro‐sized service sector can use this knowledge to plan and design market‐focussed actions that will lead to improved business performance.

The work validates MO and business results scales that have been widely studied throughout the literature but that leave a significant gap in the case of SMSF operating in Latin American countries. The business base in these countries comprises a large percentage of such small‐scale operations.

El objetivo de este trabajo es validar las escalas de orientación al mercado y de consecución de resultados empresariales en un ámbito de interés para la literatura como es el de las empresas de servicios de tamaño pequeño y micro en contexto próximos al de Iberoamérica, como es el sector del turismo rural en el ámbito español.

A partir de la revisión de la literatura especializada en orientación al mercado, su impacto en el sector servicios y en las características de las empresas de servicios pequeñas y micro, se lleva a cabo un estudio cualitativo y un estudio cuantitativo a nivel nacional en España.

Los resultados alcanzados permiten validar las escalas e identificar que la orientación al mercado queda integrada por las dimensiones de captación de información, diseminación de la información y respuesta hacia el mercado. Por otra parte, los resultados empresariales incluyen resultados económico‐financieros y otros de carácter personal vinculados al empresario.

Este trabajo aporta un mayor conocimiento en relación con las actividades que las empresas de servicios pequeñas y micro pueden llevar a cabo para orientarse al mercado. Este conocimiento puede ser utilizado por los profesionales del sector al planear y diseñar las acciones de mercado de sus empresas, conduciendo a un mayor desempeño de la actividad empresarial.

La orientación al mercado y sus efectos en empresas de servicios pequeñas y micro en un contexto próximo al iberoamericano como es el de España difiere con respecto a otros ámbitos de aplicación más generales. El conjunto de aspectos considerados en este trabajo, permiten llevar a cabo una adecuada aplicación empírica en esta área donde en la revisión de la literatura aparece una carencia de trabajos empíricos.

This paper analyses how disaster risk management paradigms have gradually developed since the 1960s, shaped by practical experience of-and the debate about-the rising number of disasters, growing urbanization, and changing climatic conditions. In this context, climate change is shown as driving an urban pro-poor adaptation agenda, which could allow current shortcomings in urban risk reduction to be overcome. However, as past lessons in disaster risk management are rarely considered, any potential for improvement remains untapped. Possible ways of rectifying this situation are discussed, and a comprehensive framework for the reduction of both disaster and climate risks is presented.

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the effect of mobbing in workers’ health.

Using a dataset of Spanish workers from the VI Spanish Survey on Working Conditions, the authors identify mobbed and not mobbed workers and use two different health indicators: the worker's perception that work affects health, and the presence of bad health symptoms. The authors analyze the incidence of both indicators in mobbed and not mobbed workers then estimate an econometric model to explain the probability of suffering bad health in terms of mobbing and a set of job and workers’ characteristics. The authors deal with the potential endogeneity of mobbing.

It is found that, regardless of the health indicator used, the probability of suffering bad health is significantly higher among mobbed workers than among those not being mobbed. Moreover, when the health indicator is based on the worker's perception, not taking into account the endogeneity of mobbing leads to underestimation of its effect on health.

The results can be of interest for workers, firms and policy makers in charge of designing policies related to working conditions. Given the well‐known link between worker's health and productivity, the paper's results can have implications from the economic point of view.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to empirically analyze the relationship between mobbing and health at Spanish workplaces.

This study aims to study the impact of earnings quality on firms’ financial performance.

An unbalanced panel data of 237 small- and medium-sized Portuguese companies from the mold industry, using 2010–2018 yearly data was analyzed. While most studies focus only on earnings management when assessing earnings quality, in this study six proxies for earnings quality are used, namely, accruals quality (a proxy for earnings management), earnings persistence, earnings predictability, earnings smoothness, earnings timeliness and earnings conservatism. Moreover, two proxies of financial performance are considered, the return on assets and the economic value added. An econometric model was estimated using either a fixed-effects or a random-effects specification to account for the individual firm-specific effects and ensure heteroscedasticity corrected estimates.

The results show that managers must be concerned with the quality of reported earnings, as it can affect positively firms’ financial performance, especially regarding accruals quality. Persistence, predictability, smoothness, timeliness and conservatism are shown not to exert significant influence on financial performance in the sample.

This work contributes not only as a literature review on these thematic but also to firms’ managers and stakeholders, who have information that helps them select strategies that guarantee earnings quality and improve firms’ financial performance.

This study proposed an econometric model that studies the relationship between earnings quality (using several proxies for it) and financial performance that can be applied to all companies.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of board gender diversity on corporate social performance (CSP) in Brazilian companies.

This research collected available information on the CSP, financial performance and governance of Brazilian companies for five years (2016–2020). The dependent variable of this study is CSP (workforce, human rights, community and respect for the product). The independent variable is gender diversity. The authors control financial performance, the presence of a social responsibility committee and the industry sector. The data were analyzed using the dynamic panel data system, which is the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator.

This empirical investigation confirmed the hypothesis that the female presence on boards has a positive effect on the CSP of Brazilian companies. The findings of this study are consistent with previous studies. The authors' results suggest that women are more socially aware and exhibit more social corporate behavior.

Supplementing financial reports with nonfinancial information draws the attention of regulators and shareholders. Companies can also create human resources policies for appointing women to senior management positions and a succession plan that values the talent that women bring to companies.

A critical mass of women on the board can provide an effective balance, considering the diversity of backgrounds and experiences between men and women. Just one woman on the board can mean representation and resistance, but with a critical amount, female directors can have a voice and help formulate strategies aimed at CSP.