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The purpose of this paper is to define a general and common construct in order to measure the level of difficulty companies experience when they implement continuous improvement (CI). Additionally, a rank of barriers is obtained together with a rank of companies.

In order to achieve the objective, first, a literature review is carried out to specify the domain of the construct; second, a sample of items is selected; third a survey is carried out in companies that have already implemented CI initiatives, the results being thus limited to this population; fourth, measures are purified by analysing the reliability and validity of the measurements, and finally results are obtained. The Rasch measurement theory will be used to provide a new perspective on a mature research topic.

It can be concluded that a new valid construct has been defined together with a rank of CI barriers, being lack of time the main barrier. A rank of companies is also obtained which is a first step in the development of future research studies.

Managers are provided with a better understanding of the barriers that can obstruct CI implementation. Thus, the rank of CI barriers guides managers through the most common and important obstacles so that they will be able to plan better CI strategies. In addition, the rank of companies allows each company to undertake a benchmarking exercise.

This work proposes a new way of analysing the difficulty in implementing CI as a continuum, rather than as independent barriers. From a theoretical point of view, it defines a new construct and offers a rank of CI barriers together with a rank of companies based on their level of difficulty when implementing CI initiatives. This is something new, as previous studies were mainly focussed on the items side. From a practical point of view, this study offers the surveyed companies the opportunity to see how they are positioned with respect to the other companies. Moreover, this rank of companies is the foundation on which to develop further studies with a practical orientation in the future.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the nature of the facilitators of continuous improvement (CI), proposing a classification of them and identifying the different profiles of companies based on them.

To achieve this objective, first, a literature review was done in order to identify the main facilitators; second, some of them were included in a survey based on experts' opinions; third, a survey was conducted amongst people responsible for implementing CI; and finally factorial and cluster analysis were applied.

Based on the results, three main factors were identified: “cultural facilitators”, “tactical facilitators” and “human resources involvement facilitators”. Additionally, five clusters were defined.

As many companies still struggle when implementing CI, the results of this study can help all them to focus on the most important aspects in order to guarantee the sustainability of the CI system.

From a theoretical point of view, this work contributes to the CI field by analysing the nature of the main facilitators companies can find when implementing these initiatives. Thus, not only does this study provide a hierarchy of the most important facilitators, but also classifies them. As far as authors are concerned, this is the first attempt to categorise CI facilitators.

This study investigates the communication behavior of public health organizations on Twitter during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Brazil. It contributes to the understanding of the organizational framing of health communication by showcasing several instances of framing devices that borrow from (Brazilian) internet culture. The investigation of this case extends the knowledge by providing a rich description of the organizational framing of health communication to combat misinformation in a politically charged environment.

The authors collected a Twitter dataset of 77,527 tweets and analyzed a purposeful subsample of 536 tweets that contained information provided by Brazilian public health organizations about COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. The data analysis was carried out quantitatively and qualitatively by combining social media analytics techniques and frame analysis.

The analysis showed that Brazilian health organizations used several framing devices that have been identified by previous literature such as hashtags, links, emojis or images. However, the analysis also unearthed hitherto unknown visual framing devices for misinformation prevention and debunking that borrow from internet culture such as “infographics,” “pop culture references” and “internet-native symbolism.”

First, the identification of framing devices relating to internet culture add to our understanding of the so far little addressed framing of misinformation combat messages. The case of Brazilian health organizations provides a novel perspective to knowledge by offering a notion of internet-native symbols (e.g. humor, memes) and popular culture references for misinformation combat, including misinformation prevention. Second, this study introduces a frontier of political contextualization to misinformation research that does not relate to the partisanship of the spreaders but that relates to the political dilemmas of public organizations with a commitment to provide accurate information to citizens.

The findings inform decision-makers and public health organizations about framing devices that are tailored to internet-native audiences and can guide strategies to carry out information campaigns in misinformation-laden social media environments.

The findings of this case study expose the often-overlooked cultural peculiarities of framing information campaigns on social media. The report of this study from a country in the Global South helps to contrast several assumptions and strategies that are prevalent in (health) discourses in Western societies and scholarship.

This study uncovers unconventional and barely addressed framing devices of health organizations operating in Brazil, which provides a novel perspective to the body of research on misinformation. It contributes to existing knowledge about frame analysis and broadens the understanding of frame devices borrowing from internet culture. It is a call for a frontier in misinformation research that deals with internet culture as part of organizational strategies for successful misinformation combat.

This work discusses gender issues related to the video game medium, addressing its production, consumption, and media repercussions. It begins with an overview of the emergence of the video game with the targeting of audiences that focused on sales campaigns to consumers along gendered lines that amplified the dominance of men in the space. The discussion then focuses on numerous ways that the gaming industry as a whole perpetuates a culture of misogyny. Empirical examples are provided of harassment, attacks, and the controversial event known as GamerGate. Subsequently, the complicated history of Brazilian video gaming development is presented to draw parallels with the development of the industry and the market in the United States. Finally, the chapter concludes with suggestions to stimulate new producers, developers, and video game scholars who are committed to building a more aware and diverse community.

The purpose of this paper is to boost the internationalization of companies by implementing key factors that will help them to increase their exports in a context of an emerging country such as Mexico, where very few small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve internationalization.

According to different theories on the internationalization of companies, five independent variables were designed to measure their effect on the export performance using a multiple regression model on a sample of 95 Mexican industrial SMEs. In this context, the objective of this study is to investigate the impact of the product price, product quality, installed capacity, innovation capacity and financial capacity on the export performance of SMEs; and to identify the factors that are more significant.

The results indicate that innovation has a positive relationship, while the price of the product has a negative relationship with the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises, showing that there is a possibility of overemphasizing the role of both variables in export performance of SMEs, at least in the Mexican context. The rest of the variables were not statistically significant to the generated model, perhaps because they are implicitly considered at the time of exporting and entering international markets.

These results will help companies to focus their efforts on obtaining resources to maintain and expand exports and find new opportunities in foreign markets to grow. They also show that companies can implement different types of internationalization strategies with the study’s variables to achieve better performance.

El objetivo de este estudio es impulsar la internacionalización de las empresas mediante la implementación de factores clave que les ayudarán a incrementar sus exportaciones en un contexto de países emergentes como México, donde muy pocas pequeñas y medianas empresas logran la internacionalización.

Según las diferentes teorías sobre la internacionalización de las empresas, cinco variables independientes fueron diseñadas para medir su efecto en el desempeño de las exportaciones, utilizando un modelo de regresión múltiple en una muestra de 95 pequeñas y medianas empresas industriales mexicanas. En este contexto, el objetivo de este estudio es investigar el impacto del precio del producto, la calidad del producto, la capacidad instalada, la capacidad de innovación y la capacidad financiera en el desempeño exportador de las PYME, e identificar los factores que son más relevantes.

Los resultados indican que la innovación tiene una relación positiva, mientras que el precio del producto tiene una relación negativa con la internacionalización de las pequeñas y medianas empresas, lo que demuestra que existe la posibilidad de sobre-enfatizar el papel de ambas variables en el desempeño exportador de las pequeñas y medianas empresas, al menos en el contexto mexicano. El resto de las variables no resultaron estadísticamente significativas para el modelo generado, tal vez porque están consideradas de forma implícita al momento de exportar e ingresar a los mercados internacionales.

Estos resultados ayudarán a las empresas a concentrar sus esfuerzos en obtener recursos para mantener y expandir las exportaciones y encontrar nuevas oportunidades en los mercados extranjeros para el crecimiento. También demuestran que las empresas pueden implementar diferentes tipos de estrategias de internacionalización con las variables de estudio para lograr un mejor desempeño.

The purpose of this study is to identify how firms' sustainability performance is affected by external knowledge sources and absorptive capacity, accounting for the influence of being located in a science and technology park (STP).

Drawing on data from the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel, the authors estimate the determinants of sustainability performance using fixed effects multiple linear regression models with robust standard errors. The analysis covers the period 2009–2016, with a total panel of 8,874 companies and a total sample of 47,870 observations.

This study highlights the heterogeneity in on-park firms’ sustainability performance, which can be explained by the different capacities of these firms when it comes to embedding themselves in STP networks and processes and effectively absorbing the knowledge from the many knowledge sources that may be on offer in the park.

This paper contributes to the literature by examining the influence of external sources of knowledge and absorptive capacity, and the relationship between them, on sustainability performance. This study approaches sustainability performance as an aggregate measure of firms’ competitiveness and potential for long-term survival from the triple bottom line perspective. In addition, this study examines the effect that location in an STP can have on business sustainability performance and, more specifically, the mediating effect that knowledge sources and absorptive capacity can exert on this relationship.

This paper focuses on the analysis of fashion blog activity regarding brands under corporate crisis situations and discusses how these opinion leaders may be agents of corporate crisis management.

The authors analyzed four influential Portuguese fashion blogs regarding eight fashion brands that had experienced a corporate crisis situation. In total, five of the selected brands were mentioned in 2.846 posts of blog content, whose discourse was deeply analyzed.

The absence of express reference to brand crisis suggests that fashion bloggers tend to ignore these crisis events or divert the readers' attention to the brands' more positive aspects. This result opens the discussion whether fashion bloggers downplay corporate crisis in brand equity or whether it expresses strategies of brand crisis communication through digital influencers.

Though social media may be a source of negative word-of-mouth, social media influencers have been considered important partners of corporate crisis communication in particularly challenging times. Many studies have focused on the role of social media influencers in crisis management, but there was a dearth of research on the specific case of blogs. This study contributes to the understanding of fashion bloggers as agents of brand communication, particularly regarding crisis management and their role on brand activation and positive electronic word-of-mouth, even under crisis situations. This contribution paves the way for future research on whether this is a spontaneous phenomenon or the reflection of possible partnerships between companies and fashion bloggers for the management of corporate crisis situations in the context of fashion brands.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze empirically the fundamental role that information asymmetry plays in the functioning of an efficient capital market as mediator in the relation between corporate disclosures and cost of capital.

By using a sample of 1,260 international non-financial listed companies in the period 2007-2014.

The findings suggest that high-quality financial and social disclosures quality reduce the cost of capital, by decreasing information asymmetry. In other words, the authors find evidence of the mediator role of information asymmetry in the relation between corporate disclosures and the cost of capital. These results are also controlled for differences on accounting standards and other institutional factors.

The central assumption is that the demand for corporate disclosures that reduces the information advantages of some investors (who are more informed) arises from agency conflicts and these information differences in turn, determine the cost of capital. This paper is the first attempt to study, jointly, the effects of decreasing information asymmetries by corporate disclosures on the cost of capital in an international setting. In addition, the authors focussed on both financial and social disclosures, creating empirical proxies whose validity for the analysis has been evidenced.