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This study aims to analyze the use of discourse to solve issues related to coordination between advocacy coalitions in processes of gradual and transformative institutional change related to public policies.

Theoretical background is based on the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), new discursive institutionalism and critical discourse analysis theories. The research examines shorthand notes of public hearings held in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate between 1999 and 2012, carrying out a case study on Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant. The speech extracts were categorized according to the modes of operation of ideology and typical strategies of symbolic construction proposed by Thompson (1995).

The results suggest that the discourse can be an instrument of internal coordination and between coalitions that share beliefs about a policy, as in the case of Belo Monte. Potentially existing coalitions define their identities and set positions on controversial issues, aligning interests and expectations. In the case studied, the modes of operation of ideology verified as instruments of the coalitions were dissimulation, reification, fragmentation, unification and legitimation.

The paper represents a unique analysis of the modes of operation of ideology (Thompson, 1999) in the case of Belo Monte. In addition, the paper aims to contribute to the New Discursive Institutionalism and to the ACF when it uses the critical discourse analysis to articulate a method to analyze the use of the Discourse by the coalitions. In fact, such an approach integrating the ACF, the New Discursive Institutionalism and the critical discourse analysis is something original. Finally, it also addresses a gap in ACF: issues related to advocacy coalition coordination.

Attentive readers linked to organizations working on infrastructure and environmental policies can benefit from the results by envisaging the deliberate manipulation of typical symbolic construction strategies and general modes of operation of ideology.

The study sheds light on the daily and behind-the-scenes disputes among stakeholders who are interested in a certain public policy. It may draw attention to the access and professional use of the shorthand notes of the hearings held at the National Congress.

This paper aims to fill a gap pointed out by Jenkins-Smith et al. (2014) regarding problems of coordination of advocacy coalitions. In addition, it innovates by using critical discourse analysis as a methodological reference in ACF empirical studies. In addition, this work continues a trajectory of two other previously published studies dealing with the same phenomenon: a theoretical essay and a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the emotional intelligence (EI) of the person in charge of making human resource management (HRM) decisions on the adoption of high-performance human resource (HR) practices in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This study takes evidences from 157 HR decision makers in SMEs who autonomously make the decisions in the HR area and were responsible for the HR practices in their firm. The authors used multiple linear regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

Results show that both the EI and the different EI competencies of which it is comprised affect the adoption of various HR practices. Thus, the main theoretical contribution of this work stems from the incorporation of a psychological variable (EI) as an antecedent of HRM. Managers of the SME will find guidance about which emotional competencies are the most important for them to be more successful in their roles and for improving HRM.

First, the sample of firms the authors studied is limited to a specific geographic area in one country – Spain (Canary Islands) – that will necessarily limit generalisation of the results obtained to other populations of SMEs. Researchers should replicate the current model in other geographic areas. Second, and with regard the methodology, researchers could explore other tools to measure EI and emotional competencies. It would be interesting to measure this construct using qualitative analytical techniques, with 360 – or 180 – degree tools. Finally, the current study is cross-sectional in nature, which limits our ability to draw causal inferences from the data. This cross-sectional design prevents us, for example, from analysing EI’s influence on the continued development of high-performance HR practices over time. Future research using longitudinal methodologies to study these variables could provide additional advances in this area. This work makes important contributions to both the literature and the business world. With regard to the theoretical implications, results confirm that EI as a whole, as well as in terms of its specific emotional competencies, affects the decision making related to the adoption of high-performance HR practices, which is known to contribute to the organisational performance.

With regard its practical implications, SMEs’ owners-managers and HR practitioners may find our results and conclusions interesting. Indeed, recommendations in business management have often been accompanied by new approaches in HRM (Kent, 2005), as this study proposes. In particular, managers will find evidence of how a decision-maker’s higher EI propitiates the adoption of high-performance HR practices, thus being able to improve HRM in their SMEs. Moreover, managers will obtain guidance on which emotional competencies are the most important for adopting each HR practice, and so find greater success in their HRM roles. SMEs could organise programmes to develop the HR decision-maker’s emotional competencies, as large firms do for their executives.

Thus, the main theoretical contribution of this work stems from the incorporation of a psychological variable (EI) as an antecedent of HRM. Managers of the SME will find guidance about which emotional competencies are the most important for them to be more successful in their roles and for improving HRM.

The pandemic has enhanced the global phenomenon of disinformation. This paper aims to study the false news concerning COVID-19, spread through social media in Spain, by using the LatamChequea database for a duration from 01/22/2020, when the first false information has been detected, up to 03/09/2021.

A quantitative analysis has been conducted with regard to the correlation between fake news stories and the pandemic state, the motive to share them, their dissemination in other countries and the effectiveness of fact checking. This study is complemented by a qualitative method: a focus group conducted with representatives of different groups within the society.

Fake news has been primarily disseminated through several social networks at the same time, with two peaks taking place in over a half of the said false stories. The first took place from March to April of 2020 during complete lockdown, and we were informed of prevention measures, the country’s situation and the origin of the virus, whereas the second was related to news revolving around the coming vaccines, which occurred between October and November. The audience tends to neither cross-check the information received nor report fake news to competent authorities, and fact-checking methods fail to stop their spread. Further awareness and digital literacy campaigns are thus required in addition to more involvement from governments and technological platforms.

The main limitation of the research is the fact that it was only possible to conduct a focus group of five individuals who do not belong to generation Z due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, although a clear contribution to the analysis of the impact of fake news on social networks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain can be seen from the privileged experiences in each of the fields of work that were identified. In this sense, the results of the study are not generalizable to a larger population. On the other hand, and with a view to future research, it would be advisable to carry out a more specific study of how fake news affects generation Z.

This research is original in nature, and the findings of this study are valuable for business practitioners and scholars, brand marketers, social media platform owners, opinion leaders and policymakers.

This study aims to explore the psychological effects of lockdown during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living in an Italian prison. The suspension of family visits and most activities, along with the difficulties in applying social distancing to this vulnerable population was associated with increased psychological distress. Riots broke out over two days in more than 22 prisons across Italy at the beginning of March 2020, highlighting the negative psychological impact of the pandemic and the country’s emergency policies.

The research involves 17 men (Italians and foreigners) detained in a Lombardy prison from 1 March to 4 May 2020, corresponding to the lockdown phase in Italy. The qualitative content analysis (CA) of 27 posts, written by participants during that period and published on the blog “L’Oblò”, were analysed. The analysis allowed the identification of topics and subtopics that are related to two major categories of content: cognitions and emotional connotations about the COVID-19 lockdown in prison.

Analysis showed that blog post content was predominately negative in terms of emotional connotations. The most frequent coded negative emotional connotations were: missing, worry, psychological pain and fear, whilst the most frequent coded positive emotional connotations were: hope and gratitude for the support they received from prison workers. The rest of the blog content was coded as “cognitions”. Cognitions were coded as descriptions of lockdown effect on detention; prison during the COVID-19 emergency; the pandemic situation in general; and comparison between inside and outside prison.

The current study is original as it describes through blog CA the psychological condition of prisoners during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the most affected region in Italy.

Based on the agency and resource dependence theories, this study aims to investigate whether nomination committee (NC) characteristics could serve as key attributes for reducing environmental, social and governance (ESG) disputes and whether NC composition affects the appointment of ESG-friendly directors to the board.

This study focuses on a sample of 30 global systemically important banks from 2015 to 2021. The authors estimate panel data models with fixed effects, clustering heteroskedastic standard errors at the bank level to account for the serial correlation of the dependent variables for each bank.

Banks’ exposure to ESG controversies can be reduced when NC members have specific skills, in particular when at least one member of this committee also belongs to the sustainability committee and is a foreign director. Moreover, banks’ ESG disputes decrease when the NC members are younger, while the share of independent NC members has a negative impact. Finally, a positive influence of NC composition and its members’ features as well as the appointment of ESG-friendly directors on the board is found.

The findings are particularly useful during periods such as the current one, when there is growing attention to both banks’ corporate governance, the subcommittees’ role and functioning and social and environmental issues. This study shows that the NC is important in reducing the likelihood of banks incurring ESG disputes and in appointing more ESG-friendly directors. NC effective functioning and its members’ qualities serve as a key attribute for fulfilling objective assessment and improving board effectiveness.

The study examined the personal information management (PIM) challenges encountered by faculty in six universities in Ghana, their information refinding experiences and the perceived role of memory. The study tested the hypothesis that faculty PIM performance will significantly differ when the differences in the influence of personal factors (age, gender and rank) on their memory are considered.

The study was guided by a sample survey design. A questionnaire designed based on themes extracted from earlier interviews was used to collect quantitative data from 235 faculty members from six universities in Ghana. Data analysis was undertaken with a discrete multivariate Generalized Linear Model to investigate how memory intermediates in the relationship between age, gender and rank, and, refinding of stored information.

The paper identified two subfunctions of refinding (Refinding 1 and Refinding 2) associated with self-confidence in information re-finding, and, memory (Memory 1 and Memory 2), associated with the use of complimentary frames to locate previously found and stored information. There were no significant multivariate effects for gender as a stand-alone variable. Males who were aged less than 39 could refind stored information irrespective of the memory class. Older faculty aged 40–49 who possess Memory 1 and senior lecturers who possess Memory 2 performed well in refinding information. There was a statistically significant effect of age and memory; and rank and memory.

This study was limited to faculty in Ghana, whereas the study itself has implications for demographic differences in PIM.

Identifying how memory mediates the role of personal factors in faculty refinding of stored information will be necessary for the efforts to understand and design systems and technologies for enhancing faculty capacity to find/refind stored information.

Understanding how human memory can be augmented by technology is a great PIM strategy, but understanding how human memory and personal factors interplay to affect PIM is more important.

PIM of faculty has been extensively examined in the literature, and limitations of memory has always been identified as a constraint. Human memory has been augmented with technology, although the outcome has been very minimal. This study shows that in addition to technology augmentation, personal factors interplay with human memory to affect PIM. Discrete multivariate Generalized Linear Model applied in this study is an innovative way of addressing the challenges of assimilating statistical methodologies in psychosocial disciplines.

Explore the use of Gender-Fair Language (GFL) by influencers on Instagram.

The clustering methodology. A digital Bag-of-Words (BoW) Method called GFL Clustering BoW Methodology to identify whether an inclusive marketing (IM) strategy can be used. Thus, this research has a methodological and practical contribution to increasing the number of marketing technology tools.

This study is original as it proposes an inclusive digital marketing strategy and contributes with methods associated with digital transfers in order to improve marketing strategies, tactics and operations for inclusive content with a data integrity approach.

Due to the limitations of the application programming interface (API) of the social network Instagram, a limited number of text data were used, which allowed for retrieving the last 12 publications of each studied profile. In addition, it should be considered that this study only includes the Spanish language and is applied to a sample of influencers from Chile.

The practical contribution of this study will lead to a key finding for the definition of communication strategies in both public and private organizations.

The originality of this work lies in its attractive implications for nonprofit and for-profit organizations, government bodies and private enterprises in the measurement of the success of campaigns with an IM communicational strategy and to incorporate inclusive and non-sexist content for their consumers so as to contribute to society.

本研究擬探究有影響力的人士在使用即時電報 (Instagram) 時、如何使用性別中立語言。

研究使用了聚類分析法;具體來說, 研究人員採用一個叫 GFL聚類詞袋法的數位詞袋分析法, 去確定研究可否使用信息管理策略。因此, 本研究在行銷科技方面、添加了一個工具, 就此而言, 本研究在學術的研究法和實務方面、均作出貢獻。

本研究建議了一個包括一切的數位行銷策略;研究亦構建了若干與數位傳輸有關的方法, 以能利用數據完整性的理念, 為行銷策略、行銷戰術和市場營銷, 在內容的全面包含度方面取得改善。

因為社交網站即時電報的應用程式介面有其局限, 故使用了少量的文本數據, 這可使每個被探討的傳略的最後12個發佈能被撿回。另外需注意的是、本研究只涵蓋西班牙語, 而且, 研究使用的樣本只是來自智利有影響力的人士。

本研究在實務方面的貢獻是、它為探討在公共機構和私營機構內使用的溝通策略的定義上、帶來重要的啟發和發現。

本研究的原創性在於它給營利和非營利組織、政府機關和私人企業帶來頗具吸引力的啟示。而這些啟示是與測量以包括一切的行銷溝通策略進行的專門活動是否成功有關的。另外, 涵蓋一切和無性別歧視的內容被納入供消費者使用, 以此為社會帶來裨益。

Websites are the most important element of company strategy in the digital space. Therefore, establishing strategic management of online business is essential to improve firm connectedness and competitiveness and to achieve global company reach. This paper aims to propose the analysis of technical and content quality of websites to identify the main weaknesses and strengths of online business.

An innovative measurement instrument called IWebQEI is designed to measure web quality level. This instrument is validated with data from 104 international companies. The results are used to verify whether there are quality differences between informative and e-commerce websites.

The main findings indicate that e-commerce websites achieve greater levels of technical and content quality than informative sites, and companies implementing e-commerce pay more attention to the content quality dimension. In contrast, companies using an informative website are more focused on the technical quality dimension. Based on these results, practical insights are offered to improve the strategic management of e-commerce.

Few studies have focused on analysing the technical and content quality of websites to identify the main weaknesses and strengths of online business. The results offer important theoretical and practical contributions for companies on how to manage their website to improve firm connectivity and competitiveness.

Los sitios web son el elemento más importante de la estrategia digital de la compañia. Una gestión estratégica del negocio online es esencial para mejorar su conectividad, competitividad y para conseguir su alcance global. Este trabajo propone el análisis de la calidad técnica y de contenido de sitios web para identificar las principales debilidades y fortalezas del negocio online.

Para medir el nivel de calidad web, se ha diseñado un innovador instrumento de medición, denominado IWebQEI. Este instrumento se valida con datos de 104 empresas internacionales. Los resultados se utilizan para comprobar si existen diferencias de calidad entre las webs informativas y los e-commerce.

Las resultados indican que los e-commerce alcanzan mayores niveles de calidad técnica y de contenido que las webs informativas, y las empresas que implementan un e-commerce prestan más atención a la calidad de contenido. En cambio, las empresas que implementan una web informativa se centran más en la calidad técnica. A partir de estos resultados se ofrecen ideas prácticas para mejorar la gestión estratégica del e-commerce.

Pocos estudios analizan la calidad técnica y de contenido de los sitios web para identificar las principales debilidades y fortalezas del negocio online. Los resultados ofrecen importantes contribuciones teóricas y prácticas sobre cómo gestionar los sitios web para mejorar la conectividad y la competitividad de la compañia.

企业网站是公司在数字空间中战略的最重要元素。因此, 建立在线业务本身的战略管理对于提高公司的连通性和竞争力以及实现公司的全球影响力至关重要。本文提出对企业网站的技术和内容质量进行分析, 以确定在线业务的主要弱点和优势。

设计了一个创新的测量仪器, 称为IWebQEI, 用于测量网络质量水平。该仪器通过104家国际公司的数据进行验证。结果被用于检查信息网站和电子商务网站之间是否存在质量差异。

主要研究结果表明, 总体而言, 电子商务网站的技术质量和内容质量水平高于信息类网站, 实施电子商务的公司更注重内容质量维度。相比之下, 实施信息型网站的公司则更注重技术质量维度。基于这些结果, 为改进电子商务的战略管理提供了实际的见解。

以前的研究很少关注分析企业网站的技术和内容质量, 以确定在线业务的主要弱点和优势。研究结果为企业提供了重要的理论和实践贡献, 即如何管理企业网站以提高公司的连通性和竞争力。

Employer branding (EB) has become a powerful tool for organizations to attract employees. Recruitment communication ideally reveals the image that companies want to portray to potential employees to attract talents with the right skills and competences for the organization. This study explores the impact of EB on employer attractiveness by testing how pre-existing employee preferences interact with EB and how this interaction affects employer attractiveness.

A quasi-experiment among 289 final-year students was used to test the relationships between EB, perceived employer image, person-organization (P-O) fit and employer attractiveness, and the potential moderating variables of pre-existing preferences, in this case operationalized as locational preferences. Students are randomly assigned to four vacancies: one with and one without EB cues in two different locations: Groningen and Amsterdam. The authors used standard scales for attractiveness, perceptions of an employer and person-organization fit. The authors test the relationships using a regression analysis.

Results suggest that if respondents have previous predispositions, then their preference can be enhanced using an EB-targeted strategy. Based on these results, the authors can conclude that EB and related practices can be successful avenues for organizations in the war for talent, particularly if they reaffirm previous preferences of potential employees.

The research is original in the way it provides empirical evidence on the relationship between EB and attractiveness, particularly when previous employee preferences exist. This is of value to employers using EB as a tool to influence employer attractiveness.

The study, within the Increasing Resilience of Cultural Heritage (ResCult) project, aims to support civil protection to prevent, lessen and mitigate disasters impacts on cultural heritage using a unique standardised-3D geographical information system (GIS), including both heritage and risk and hazard information.

A top-down approach, starting from existing standards (an INSPIRE extension integrated with other parts from the standardised and shared structure), was completed with a bottom-up integration according to current requirements for disaster prevention procedures and risk analyses. The results were validated and tested in case studies (differentiated concerning the hazard and type of protected heritage) and refined during user forums.

Besides the ensuing reusable database structure, the filling with case studies data underlined the tough challenges and allowed proposing a sample of workflows and possible guidelines. The interfaces are provided to use the obtained knowledge base.

The increasing number of natural disasters could severely damage the cultural heritage, causing permanent damage to movable and immovable assets and tangible and intangible heritage. The study provides an original tool properly relating the (spatial) information regarding cultural heritage and the risk factors in a unique archive as a standard-based European tool to cope with these frequent losses, preventing risk.