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The images of Brazilian and foreign technology in the Brazilian chemical polymer industry were found to be very different. Foreign technology was generally seen as being superior technologically and the Brazilian technology as being better adapted to the national markets, raw materials and labour skills. Executives from multinational firms had much more positive views of foreign technology than did those from Brazilian national companies. The implications for both suppliers of foreign technology and the Brazilian Government are examined.

Sustainability-oriented strategies involve considering all possible environmental, social and economic factors that impact stakeholders and sustainable development. They could be a crucial contribution of the private sector to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study’s objective is twofolded. First, the authors want to discover if enterprises doing business in Brazil are contemplating the SDGs in their strategies. Second, the authors want to identify the external and internal factors that motivate them.

The authors collected data through an online survey with employees from Global Compact signatories in Brazil. From a list of 335 for-profit enterprises, the authors got back 132 answers. The sample comprises Brazilian enterprises that only operate in the Brazilian market, Brazilian multinational enterprises (MNEs) and foreign multinationals operating in Brazilian and international markets. For this study, the MNEs’ group comprises Brazilian multinationals and foreign multinationals (MNEs). To characterize the sample and identify the motivating factors, the authors conducted a descriptive analysis. To compare the domestic and MNEs’ mean differences regarding the factors that influenced their strategies and the SDGs, the authors performed Mann–Whitney's U-test.

The results of the study show that enterprises are addressing the SDGs in their strategies. All internal and external driving factors are similar for domestic and MNEs, except for the value chain's negative externalities. MNEs are more prone to consider their negative externalities, which is a positive trend. Finally, results suggest that both groups of enterprises consider the 17 goals in their strategies, contrary to the theoretical argument that multinationals suffer more pressure because of their broad geographic scope.

The database of the study involves data collected through a self-response survey. Thus, the authors cannot discuss the effectiveness of real SDGs' strategies once enterprises' discourse on sustainability does not always correspond with practices. Therefore, the authors suggest that researchers address the results of implemented strategies on the SDGs over time to check for improvements and new developments.

The authors suggest frequent materiality assessment of domestic enterprises' supply chain and articulation of explicit purposes around the selected SDGs, including setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring progress.

The authors believe that enterprises and decision makers should recognize their essential role to bend the curve on SDGs and shift their behavior toward strategic choices that could contribute to their positive performance over time, without contributing to environmental degradation and socioeconomic chaos.

Publication on how enterprises address the SDGs in Brazil is relatively scarce. This study provides some answers to that by focusing on the factors influencing sustainability-oriented strategies on the SDGs. Besides, most previous studies consider a small sample of enterprises and are industry specific or focus on the effects of the SDGs in public policy. The sample of this study is diverse and represents 42% of the for-profit signatories of the Global Compact in Brazil.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic literature review on the subject of multilatinas during 2007-2017, through a review of 55 papers published in 35 journals.

A qualitative technique for conducting a systematic literature review was used. To systematize and make the literature review more accurate, it was divided in four stages: data collection, coding, analysis and interpretation of data. Several tables and figures were developed to provide a better interpretation of the literature.

The phenomenon of multilatinas is still a regional topic. Nine specific gaps in the literature were identified: the role of the state; impact of “home-country reputation”; the role of the host country in the expansion of multilatinas; multilatina selection of markets with geographical closeness and cultural affinity; multilatinas from small economies (mainly Central American countries); studies of multilatinas operating in the service sector; the role of family ownership; studies analysing the multinationality–performance relationship; and the study of collaboration networks between researchers.

The access of academic databases, where more published studies may have been available, and the level of precision in the search for papers that meet the necessary characteristics were included in the review.

This paper contributes to not only the body of knowledge about multilatinas but also, in a wide scope, to the knowledge of multinationals from emerging countries. Furthermore also this paper provide some research directions for academics interested in multinationals.

The general contribution of this paper is in its addressing the topic of multinationals from emerging economies such as Latin America, a less-studied emerging region. Moreover, this work specifically contributes to understanding multilatinas and identifies research gaps and characteristics of the scientific papers on this phenomenon, potentially increasing knowledge about multinationals from emerging countries, and specifically Latin America.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors and conditions that influence national human resource development (NHRD) in Brazil. In this paper, the transitioning nature of the political, economic, social and educational conditions; the current challenges and trends that may impact NHRD; and the current status of NHRD research in Brazil are examined.

A search of the research literature focused on the political, economic, cultural, social and educational environment and the research associated with NHRD in Brazil was conducted. After searching several databases, including Academic Search Complete, Google Scholar, ERIC and EBSCO, several articles were selected and analyzed based on the depth of description of the conditions and research.

Among the factors discovered, race, gender and educational equality are still concerns. The complex nature of the relationship between the Brazilian Government, its people and organizations, as well as the efforts of Brazil’s multinational and indigenous organizations to address their national development needs, are also presented.

Brazil is currently and projected to be a long-term player in the global economy; however, it struggles to cope with conditions incongruent to the country’s long-term success. This paper frames the conditions and suggests ways of moving forward through human resource development practice, policy and research in Brazil.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of international expansion of emerging markets multinationals (EMNEs) on the home country nonmarket political strategy and why some EMNEs intensify this political tie more than others.

We test our theoretical framework using longitudinal data, with 16 years of observations, in Multilatinas and state loans from Brazil, one of the main outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) players in the world and the OFDI leader in Latin America.

Theoretically grounded on the institution-based view of strategy, it can be postulated that international expansion is a driver of home country nonmarket political strategy. It can also be hypothesized that political tie intensity is affected by the capacity of EMNEs to deal with international expansion issues without having to depend on relationship with homes country nonmarket political actors. The results provide support for the hypotheses presented.

This paper contributes to the EMNE internationalization literature by extending the understanding of the underlying motivations and forces shaping the home country nonmarket political strategy of multinationals from emerging markets and, thus, helping understand why some EMNEs tend to be more politically active than others. Likewise, the study contributes to advancing understanding regarding the home country strategic responses adopted by Multilatinas and the forces behind the nonmarket political strategies they employ in their international expansions, especially during turbulent times.

The purpose of this paper is to present the factors that form the innovation environment in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, from a case study in a Brazilian multinational company operating in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and BPO segment.

Minnesota Innovation Research Program (MIRP) questionnaire was adopted, aimed to environment conducive to innovation. It was applied to a sample of employees, from different hierarchical levels, who participated in an innovation training program developed and implemented by the organization. The data were analyzed to verify, in a simplified initial diagnosis, the influence of internal and external factors defined by MIRP in the company's innovation process.

Innovation management process focuses predominantly on processes (71.4% of occurrences). As impact of the factors: results (88.9%), autonomy (76.3%), leadership (74.9%), resources (74.6%), internal relationship of the innovation group (73.1%), formalization (68.4%), processes (64.5%), relationship effectiveness (63.7%), external relationship of the innovation group (63.2%) and dependence on external resources (52.6%). There was confirmation that the innovation program of company is effective and that the culture of innovation is institutionalized.

A crossing of supplementary information could reveal some significant difference in the perception of the innovative culture and performance of the innovation processes between distinguished profiles.

Better guidance for management of ICT/BPO companies in an Open Innovation paradigm.

Better relationship among the actors of an Open Innovation industry arrangement.

Improvement of the innovation process can occur through a greater focus on Open Innovation.

This study aims to contribute to the corporate political activities (CPAs) field by suggesting the effect of campaign contributions on the time that firms wait for regulators’ decisions.

This paper analyzes 358 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from 2008 to 2017 in Brazil through ordinary least squares regression with robustness control and causal operationalization in a small vote margins treatment.

Campaign contributions speed up the M&A regulator’s decisions. Campaign contributions amounts proved to be effective in decreasing the waiting time for judgments of M&A deals. Besides, National Development Bank disbursements to companies in M&A deals, served as a moderator to help reduce the waiting time.

The main implication of this paper to the antecedents of CPA research is the estimation of time as an output of the political efforts of firms. Previous research focuses on what firms could get. Here, the authors focus on when. As a limitation, this study analyzes CPA through campaign contributions, as the only reliable source of CPA publicly available. Firms use multiple mechanisms of CPA. It would be expected for new papers to test different CPA mechanisms, such as political connections and lobbying.

This study provides evidence of the use of CPA as a relevant mechanism for firms to avoid institutional risks by getting regulators’ decisions faster. This evidence is useful for firms to grant their competitive advantage in a highly volatile environment, such as an emerging market.

What happens in the nonmarket environment interferes within markets. Businesses seek to finance political projects with which they are more aligned, and governments provide capital to businesses in exchange for political support. Whether to expand successfully may also depend on early entrants, who will have acquired enough leadership to dominate the market.

While most of the research on nonmarket strategy focuses on what firms can get as an output for CPA efforts, this study provides here evidence on when firms can get it. As one can cite, in business, time is money.

Organizational process improvement plays an important role for sustaining business in a competitive environment. Therefore, enterprise leaders are increasingly prone to adopt business process improvement (BPI) practices. However, organizations are unable to implement formal and reusable solutions, representing a gap between academic research and practical use. In addition, companies adopt discipline-dependent solutions, lacking BPI representations of best practices applicable to all organizational divisions. This paper aims to propose some constructs on top of the Quintessence kernel for representing the practice systematic development of the BPI in the BPI lifecycle and we conduct two case studies in a multinational company.

A quantitative research design was adopted for recognizing gaps in previous approaches and identifying best BPI practices. Subsequently, characterization of practices and activities are represented based on a unified definition model and the Quintessence kernel. Finally, two case studies are developed for applying the solution.

The formal representation is applicable to multiple disciplines in organizational environments. Besides, the sub-alphas (abstract level progress health attribute) states and the work products resulting from each activity completion criteria evidence the health and progress accomplished during the practice execution.

The practice representation serves as a formal, graphical, reusable and multidiscipline guide compiling activities and tasks for systematically developing BPI during the radical/incremental improvement lifecycle.

The aim of the paper is to introduce a special issue which looks at the collaboration between the Brazilian state and Brazilian corporations with regard to the transnational activities of the latter.

Departing from the state of the art of current studies of emerging market multinationals, the paper highlights the need for interdisciplinary work to understand the particular role of the state with regard to the outward expansion of these companies. The paper then highlights the different approaches the five papers of the special issue have taken to address this task.

Although Brazil can be counted among the most liberal emerging markets, the special issue finds a very close cooperation between the Brazilian state and Brazilian multinationals. The former helps to finance overseas expansion of Brazilian multinationals, supports the solution of conflicts with the governments of neighboring countries and articulates the interests of Brazilian multinationals in global governance. The problems created by this close cooperation rather materialize with third parties, in particular with somewhat poorer countries in the Brazilian neighborhood, but also with smaller companies, consumers or radical social movements in Brazil.

The paper shows the diversity of approaches that an interdisciplinary cooperation between Political Science, Political Economy, Development Studies and International Business can mobilize to make sense of very close state-business cooperation with regard to transnational activities of emerging markets multinationals.

The purpose of this paper is to discover whether factors responsible for the existence of non‐local competences in emerging multinationals are different from those of traditional multinationals.

Survey of 66 subsidiaries of Brazilian multinationals (BrMNes). This represents 70 percent of the 93 subsidiaries originally sampled.

The factors responsible for the development of non‐local competences in BrMNes are: the relationship between subsidiaries and business networks, the initiatives of subsidiaries and the support of the entrepreneurial orientation of subsidiaries by the headquarters.

Even though emerging multinationals require more resources developed abroad and although some studies revealed that different management models had been adopted during the internationalization process, the factors required to develop non‐local competences in BrMNes are very similar to those required by traditional multinationals.

Subsidiary innovation in partnership with the business network in the foreign country is essential to develop non‐local competences.

The paper supports the results of studies of traditional multinationals and demonstrates that despite the differences of Brazilian multinationals the factors required to develop non‐local competences are very similar. This is an interesting result to consolidate knowledge about global competitive advantages in multinationals: the management model to develop non‐local competences seems to be the same, in order of importance, regardless of multinational origin.