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The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the characteristics of high net worth individuals (HNWI) as potential angel investor in Antofagasta, the main mining resource periphery in Chile.

Using the resource periphery approach and angel investing, the authors apply a survey to a sample of 37 HNWI in this region. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics.

Descriptive results show that the characteristics of these individuals do not significantly differ from those exhibited by angel investors in developed countries and that HNWI show a relative high willingness to become angels and to form a network.

This paper has some limitations regarding the size and scope of the sample. It is a relatively short sample that does not allow to make more sophisticated analysis and it is only regional and, therefore, it is not possible to make a comparison at a national level.

From the perspective the design of policies and programmes oriented towards the promotion of a high potential start-ups in resources peripheries, it is essential to know what the characteristics of HNWI are and their propensity to become angel investors.

Research on angel investment has been traditionally based on the experience of core regions in developed countries. This type of funding source, however, can play a significant role in the promotion of development and diversification in resource peripheries due to the limited access that these areas have to traditional capital funds and the orientation of angel investment towards innovative ventures, but studies from this perspective are very scarce. In this sense, this paper is pioneer in this topic in peripheral regions.

El objetivo de este artículo es identificar y analizar las características de las personas con alto patrimonio neto como potenciales inversionistas ángeles en Antofagasta, la principal fuente de recursos minerales en la periferia de Chile.

A través del enfoque de las periferias de los recursos naturales y la inversión ángel, se aplicó una encuesta a una muestra de 37 personas con alto patrimonio neto en esta región. La información recogida fue analizada usando estadística descriptiva.

Los resultados muestran que las características de estas personas no difieren significativamente de los inversionistas ángeles en países desarrollados y muestran un fuerte deseo de ser inversionistas ángeles y formar una red.

Este artículo presenta algunas limitaciones en relación al tamaño y el alcance de la muestra. Es una muestra relativamente pequeña y no permite realizar análisis más sofisticados y es solo a nivel regional y, por lo tanto, no es posible comparar a nivel nacional.

Desde la perspectiva del diseño de políticas públicas y programas orientadas a la promoción de empresas de alto potencial de crecimiento en las periferias de recursos naturales, es esencial conocer las características de las personas con alto patrimonio neto y su propensión a convertirse en inversionistas ángeles.

La investigación sobre inversión ángel ha estado tradicionalmente enfocada en la experiencia de las regiones centrales de los países desarrollados. Sin embargo, esta alternativa de financiamiento puede jugar un rol preponderante en la promoción del desarrollo y la diversificación en las periferias de recursos naturales debido al limitado acceso a fuentes de capital tradicionales y la orientación de la inversión ángel hacia emprendimientos innovadores en estas regiones. Los estudios desde esta perspectiva son muy escasos. En este sentido, este artículo es pionero en la investigación de la inversión ángel en las regiones periféricas de recursos naturales.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the expectations and quality gaps in services provided at city public health clinics in the city of Natal, Brazil, from the perspective of patients and healthcare service providers.

The research sample consisted of 1,200 patients who used public health services and 265 providers – doctors, nutritionists, physiotherapists, psychologists, pharmacists and managers at three health clinics in the city of Natal, Brazil. A scale with 25 health service attributes was used in data collection. Summary statistics and t-test were used to analyze the data.

The results show that the providers think that users have lower levels of expectations than those indicated by the users in all attributes. Providers and users have the most approximate insights into what attributes are considered most important: explanations, level of knowledge and attention dispensed by health professionals. Users and providers perceived similar quality gaps for most of the attributes. The gaps were statistically the same, when comparing the mean quality shortcomings by means of a Student’s test, considering a significance level of 5 percent, obtained independently by the manifestation of users and providers.

The results reveal only a photograph of the moment. The study did not consider the differences that may exist between groups with different income levels, genders or age groups. A qualitative study could improve the understanding of the differences and coincidences of the diverse points of views. A more advanced research could even study possibilities so that health managers could promote changes in the service, some of them low cost, as the health professionals training for contact with patients.

The evaluation of the service quality complemented by the matrix of opportunities, importance × quality gaps generates information to help make decisions in the rational allocation of available resources and improvement of the quality of the service delivered to patients. Besides, it offers a focus to prioritize specific actions.

It is important to compare the perceptions of service quality between patients and the healthcare service providers who work in direct contact with them. The managers can smooth out these differences and ensure, over time, customer satisfaction. In this study, providers were asked to express what they think about the expectations of patients and about their own service performance delivered. Thus, not only the traditional gap 5 was measured, but it was also possible to evaluate the distance between what providers think that patients need and their actual needs.

In this article, we discuss the issue of the right to education of young children, focusing on the Institution of Early Childhood Education (EIC in Portuguese), of views with legal markers and educational indicators of a Brazilian State. From a research that approached Early Childhood Education (EI in Portuguese) in settlements of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST in Portuguese) and making use of the Bakhtinian framework we highlight the processes of inequality that devastate childhood in the rural settings. The data reiterate the need to not only combat the logics of precariousness that affect the service given but also to guide the specificity of Children’s education field, within a framework of the effectiveness of primary school attendance. Hence, we call one’s attention to the debate of the ways of setting up institutions, with a view to serving children, urging the regulations related to the right to education, particularly, the right to Early Childhood Education in the peasant’s context, particularly in settlements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, through a longitudinal study, undergraduate student perceptions of service expectations, priorities and quality of the higher education institution that they attend, using an importance–performance rating matrix.

This research was carried out with students exposed to a new type of educational program that combines face-to-face encounters with distance learning experiences. Respondents belong to five graduate courses in management. Data collection was performed at five different time points, targeting all attending students as they continued their studies.

The findings showed that the students’ expectations of the set of factor-defined dimensions and attributes studied increased notably over time. Senior students tended to be more demanding than beginning students. Aside from the comfort levels of the classroom, the attributes rated as most important by the majority of students were directly linked to the professors, whether with respect to their practical experience, teaching methods, motivation or training received. This was the case at each stage of data collection.

The importance × performance gaps matrix offers managers at higher education institutions with information to support decisions, especially with regard to setting priorities. The information obtained enables managers to align actions with emerging areas of need, and effectively direct resources to ensure student satisfaction, retention and loyalty. Using importance ratings taken at different stages of student interaction with the institution was found to be useful at the institution investigated. Institutions could attract new student customers by meeting expectations with such trend data.

The current research captured students’ changes in expectations of their undergraduate coursework that combined classroom and distance learning approaches. In addition, the study documented variations over time in students’ perceptions on key service areas. The paper provides data on student-perceived priorities, quality gaps and criticality levels, seen both at a level of aggregate dimensions and at the level of individual service attributes.

This study aims to identify the nature of the characteristics and the social results of partnerships established between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the company.

This research is a qualitative collective case study. Data were collected through 12 interviews and analyzed through the content analysis technique.

The findings indicate that in the first case, the partnership is driven by the company’s interest in qualifying its supplier, facing a relational identity orientation, establishing philanthropic relationships. In the second case, the search for social legitimacy is evident, in the face of a collectivist identity orientation, in which Petro establishes a relationship of a transactional nature. Thus, the differential in intersectoral collaboration lies in the interaction among company, NGO and cooperatives. The results also show that the dialogue proximity between companies and civil society have a strong relationship with social results for the local communities.

This study reveals the need to broaden the understanding of the social results of social partnerships to local communities.

The nature of the relationship among state, companies, NGOs and local communities in developing countries are different from developed countries. In the first case, companies are called to assume state’s role in improving quality of life and income generation.

A sustainable transportation system should represent a win-win situation: minimizing transport's impact on the environment and reducing natural disasters' effects on transportation. A well-distributed set of rain gauges is crucial for monitoring services in smart cities. However, those services should consider the uncertainties about the registers of rainfall impacts. In this paper, the authors present a case study of optimal rain gauge location based on an actual database of rainfall events with impacts on urban mobility in the city of Sao Paulo (Brazil).

This paper presents a maximal covering location formulation and proposes a robustness analysis considering spatial location perturbations.

In this case study, the robustness of the objective function is above 99.99%. The robustness for the number of covered demand points is 88.93%, and the frequency associated with every candidate is between 11.71% and 69.49%.

Incorporating spatial uncertainties on coverage problems is essential to provide stakeholders more realistic supporting tools and to draw different possible scenarios.

This study aims to apply for the first time in literature a new multi-objective sensor selection and placement optimization methodology based on the multi-objective Lichtenberg algorithm and test the sensors' configuration found in a delamination identification case study.

This work aims to study the damage identification in an aircraft wing using the Lichtenberg and multi-objective Lichtenberg algorithms. The former is used to identify damages, while the last is associated with feature selection techniques to perform the first sensor placement optimization (SPO) methodology with variable sensor number. It is applied aiming for the largest amount of information about using the most used modal metrics in the literature and the smallest sensor number at the same time.

The proposed method was not only able to find a sensor configuration for each sensor number and modal metric but also found one that had full accuracy in identifying delamination location and severity considering triaxial modal displacements and minimal sensor number for all wing sections.

This study demonstrates for the first time in the literature how the most used modal metrics vary with the sensor number for an aircraft wing using a new multi-objective sensor selection and placement optimization methodology based on the multi-objective Lichtenberg algorithm.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and identify the various characteristics of the institutional environment and the factors that propitiate the attraction of franchise chains to cities in the interior, using Brazil as an analysis.

Secondary data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics were used. It comprised a sample of 1,683 Brazilian cities with commercial outlets featuring franchise brands. It was limited to cities with populations of up to 100,000 inhabitants that did not constitute metropolitan regions. The statistical technique performed was multiple regression.

The results of the multiple regression confirm the explanatory power of R² = 36% for the analyzed model. Such presence of franchise chains is based on four institutional dimensions and their environmental characteristics: demographic (demographic density); economic and financial (average monthly salary of formal workers and number of banking agencies); business (number of active companies and presence of shopping centers); and human resources (presence of higher education units).

The main contribution of the study encompasses the call that regional institutional characteristics are part of knowledge guidelines on regional development and institutional environments for entrepreneurship. In this sense, the paper contributes to studies on regional development in particular, by punctuating the characteristics of the institutional environment of cities that are related to the existence of franchise chain brands.

Such contributions are addressed to managers and directors of expanding franchise chains, given the choice of locations that best enable the concept of their franchises. The fact that only 20% of franchises have a presence in these cities, even if it is admitted that for 70% of these chains, their businesses have the capacity to make these locations viable, shows the importance of this contribution.

This study is addressed to public managers, represented by secretaries of municipal developments, in view of the construction of an institutional environment conducive to entrepreneurial activity, in this specific case, by franchises. It is an important mechanism for attracting new businesses and creating a virtuous cycle of regional development.

Specifically, knowledge is generated about the insertion of ventures based on the franchise business model in small- and medium-sized regional markets. A second feature involves the understanding of the insertion of enterprises in a large and heterogeneous emerging market.

The Annual Review of Comparative and International Education (ARCIE) represents a forum and an opportunity for scholars worldwide to discuss and examine trends and directions in comparative/international education, highlighting relevant developments in these fields, related to educational contexts, climates, and reforms in these contexts. Changes and reforms within these contexts and areas can have significant impacts on various education stakeholders, agents, and societies. Given the need to identify and prepare for these changes, the objective of this chapter is to discuss recent trends and directions in the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE). The method employed to identify these trends was a meta-analysis of the 23 chapters published in the 2020 edition of ARCIE. The 23 chapters composed the corpus of texts analyzed in this study, with the support of an online platform for corpora processing. Results of the analysis were contrasted with relevant literature in the field and suggest that (among the three main missions of universities) teaching and research received more attention than outreach/services, considering the corpus analyzed. In addition, teachers and students received more attention than administrative staff. Therefore, we conclude that more attention is necessary toward these aspects (outreach and administrative staff) in the pursuit of social justice and UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Finally, the prevalence of topics related to language and sustainability suggests a need for more representativeness, in terms of regions and languages studied in the field of CIE.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of sales, as a proxy for size, in moderating the impact of institutional incongruence between formal and informal institutions on the formalization of microenterprises in middle-income countries in Latin America.

The paper uses a probit regression model to examine business formalization as a binary outcome of formal and informal institutions. Data was collected through interviews and surveys across 52 municipalities in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile. The study used a stratified sampling approach and was conducted between November 2022 and January 2023.

The results offer three key insights into the formalization of microenterprises in middle-income countries. First, we show that formal institutions do not significantly influence formalization decisions among microentrepreneurs in middle-income countries, challenging the traditional belief that formal institutions alone significantly influence formalization in these contexts. Second, we show that informal institutions are significant predictors of informality, especially among smaller microenterprises. Third, we highlight that the smaller the business, the stronger the negative effect of informal institutions on formalization, and thus, the institutional incongruence between formal and informal institutions decreases for larger businesses.

This paper contributes to management literature by shedding light on the drivers of formalization in middle-income countries, a departure from most formalization studies wherein the focus is primarily on low-income economies. The findings suggest that policymakers in middle-income countries should focus on enabling microenterprise growth through sales, rather than targeting specific demographic groups or relying solely on formal institutional enforcement to promote formalization.

El objetivo de este estudio es investigar el papel de las ventas, utilizadas como un indicador de tamaño, en la mediación del impacto de la incongruencia institucional entre instituciones formales e informales en la formalización de microempresas en países de ingresos medios en América Latina.

Utilizamos un modelo de regresión Probit para examinar la formalización empresarial como un resultado binario de instituciones formales e informales. Los datos se recopilaron a través de 110 entrevistas y encuestas en 52 municipios de la Región Metropolitana de Santiago, Chile. El estudio empleó un enfoque de muestreo estratificado y se llevó a cabo entre noviembre de 2022 y enero de 2023.

Nuestros resultados ofrecen tres ideas clave sobre la formalización de microempresas en países de ingresos medios. Primero, demostramos que las instituciones formales no influyen significativamente en las decisiones de formalización entre las microempresas en países de ingresos medios; esto desafía la creencia tradicional de que las instituciones formales por sí solas influyen significativamente en la formalización en estos contextos. Segundo, nuestro estudio muestra que las instituciones informales son predictores significativos de la informalidad, especialmente entre las microempresas más pequeñas. Tercero, nuestro estudio destaca que el efecto negativo de las instituciones informales sobre la formalización es más fuerte para negocios de menor tamaño; por lo tanto, la incongruencia institucional entre instituciones formales e informales disminuye para negocios de mayor tamaño.

Este artículo contribuye a la literatura iluminando sobre los impulsores de la formalización en países de ingresos medios, a diferencia de la mayoría de los estudios de formalización en la región latinoamericana que se centran principalmente en países de bajos ingresos. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que los responsables de políticas en países de ingresos medios deberían centrarse en impulsar el crecimiento de las microempresas a través de las ventas, en lugar de enfocarse en grupos demográficos específicos o depender únicamente del cumplimiento institucional formal para promover la formalización.

O objetivo deste estudo é investigar o papel das vendas, usadas como um indicador de tamanho, na mediação do impacto da incongruência institucional entre instituições formais e informais na formalização de microempresas em países de renda média na América Latina.

Utilizamos um modelo de regressão Probit para examinar a formalização empresarial como um resultado binário de instituições formais e informais. Os dados foram coletados por meio de 110 entrevistas e pesquisas em 52 municípios da Região Metropolitana de Santiago, Chile. O estudo empregou uma abordagem de amostragem estratificada e foi realizado entre novembro de 2022 e janeiro de 2023.

Nossos resultados oferecem três ideias-chave sobre a formalização de microempresas em países de renda média. Primeiro, demonstramos que as instituições formais não influenciam significativamente as decisões de formalização entre as microempresas em países de renda média; isso desafia a crença tradicional de que as instituições formais, por si só, influenciam significativamente a formalização nesses contextos. Segundo, nosso estudo mostra que as instituições informais são preditores significativos da informalidade, especialmente entre as microempresas menores. Terceiro, nosso estudo destaca que o efeito negativo das instituições informais sobre a formalização é mais forte para negócios de menor porte; portanto, a incongruência institucional entre instituições formais e informais diminui para negócios de maior porte.

Este artigo contribui para a literatura iluminando os impulsionadores da formalização em países de renda média, ao contrário da maioria dos estudos de formalização na região latino-americana, que se concentram principalmente em países de baixa renda. Nossos achados sugerem que os responsáveis pelas políticas em países de renda média deveriam focar em impulsionar o crescimento das microempresas por meio das vendas, em vez de se concentrar em grupos demográficos específicos ou depender exclusivamente do cumprimento institucional formal para promover a formalização.