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This study aims to understand which factors determine the corporate performance of Portuguese and Spanish listed companies between 2011 and 2018, also considering the sub-period marked by the presence of the Troika in Portugal, between 2011 and 2014.

To achieve this aim, panel data methodology was used, specifically the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991), Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) for 110 non-financial companies from the Iberian Peninsula.

The results point out different signs and significance of the variables in the companies of the two countries. Regarding the sub-period, our results suggest that the intervention of the Troika in Portugal acted in a very different way from the neighboring country.

This research shows the importance of studying countries individually, even with small dimensions, to reinforce the path that is still necessary for more sustainable companies. Furthermore, when companies have strong governance structures, the harmful contagion from one neighboring country to another may not happen.

In the macroeconomic environment of the Iberian Peninsula, this paper aims to examine the influence of corporate governance characteristics on corporate sustainability performance. The purpose of this paper is to address corporate practices while determining which corporate governance characteristics can improve corporate sustainability, considering, for this purpose, three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental and social.

This sample comprises 99 non-financial companies of the Iberian Peninsula, during the 2013–2017 period. The authors have used the panel data methodology, specifically the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) to test the hypotheses formulated.

The results obtained have shown that corporate sustainability performance is affected differently depending on the sustainability dimension that is considered. Specifically, the economic dimension is determined by public debt, the board size, board diversity and the existence of an audit committee. Regarding the environmental dimension, the board size and the presence of the audit committee, as well the corporate social responsibility committee, are the most important determinants. Finally, the social dimension was influenced by the board size, audit committee and the control variable of capital structure, which means that in this dimension, the sources of financing used by the company also help in determining its levels of social concern.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that a study has been carried out in the Iberian Peninsula on the corporate sustainability using GMM-system model for three dimensions of sustainability. Corporate sustainability depends on external and internal factors of companies. Therefore, regulators and managers should realize that they will have to be more effective in their statements.

This paper aims to analyze the performance determinants of listed companies in the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on the analysis of the effect of gender diversity and the structure of the board of directors.

To achieve this aim, the authors analyzed 97 listed companies, of which 23 are Portuguese and 74 are Spanish, between 2015 and 2019. The authors use Arellano and Bond’s (1991) generalized method of moments system model to test the hypotheses.

The results show an important impact of corporate governance variables on corporate performance. Specifically, board size, average director age and board academic qualifications are crucial to explaining profitability and market value. Moreover, the authors identified a nonlinear relationship between gender diversity and profitability and market value levels due to critical mass theory and quotas that enhance more social justice. The authors concluded that the corporate performance determinants differ depending on the performance measures.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the nonlinear effect of gender diversity and board structure (size, educational qualifications and average director age) on the performance of Iberian listed companies as a single market.

In the macroeconomic environment of the Iberian Peninsula, this paper aims to understand which factors, intrinsic to management, affect the performance of wine companies.

The sample comprises 3,113 wine Iberian companies between 2011 and 2018. This study has used the panel data methodology, specifically the generalized method of moments system estimation method of Arellano and Bond (1991); Arellano and Bover (1995); and Blundell and Bond (1998) to test the hypotheses proposed.

Using return on assets (ROA) and sales growth as measures of corporate performance, this study’s results suggest that sales growth is the variable that has the most significant determining factors, both specific to the company and given the macroeconomic environment. Investors and civil society well understand the meaning of sales growth, namely, in a sector close to the final consumer. When using ROA as a dependent variable, the results suggest that because it is a pure management variable, the manager tends to be more concerned with maintaining adequate levels of economic profitability to ensure sustainability and future solvency, without giving prominence to the macroeconomic environment.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that a study has been carried out in the Iberian Peninsula on the wine industry using ROA and sales growth as measures of corporate performance. This study shows that sales growth is a measure traditionally known to external stakeholders, and to that extent, its determining factors are the variables that these players most value in the market.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functioning of the main Spanish and Portuguese containers ports to observe if they are operating below their production capabilities.

To achieve the above-mentioned objective, one possible method is to calculate the data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency, and the scale efficiency (SE) of targets, and in order to consider the variability across different samples, a bootstrap scheme has been applied.

The results showed that the DEA bootstrap-based approach can not only select a suitable unit which accords with a port’s actual input capabilities, but also provides a more accurate result. The bootstrapped results indicate that all ports do not need to develop future investments to expand port infrastructure.

The proposed DEA bootstrap-based approach provides useful implications in the robust measurement of port efficiency considering different samples. The study proves the usefulness of this approach as a decision-making tool in port efficiency.

This study is one of the first studies to apply bootstrap to measure port efficiency under the background of the Spain and Portugal case. In the first stage, two models of DEA have been used to obtain the pure technical, and the technical and SE, and both the input-oriented options: constant return scale and variable return scale. In the second stage, the bootstrap method has been applied in order to determine efficiency rankings of Iberian Peninsula container ports taking into consideration different samples. Confidence interval estimates of efficiency for each port are reported. This paper provides useful insights into the application of a DEA bootstrap-based approach as a modeling tool to aid decision making in measuring port efficiency.

The purpose of the paper is to clarify the distinction between vulnerability and energy dependence of a country and to present simple indicators that are used to analyse energy vulnerability.

This paper introduces the different facets of the energy vulnerability concept and discusses the options available to manage risks arising from energy vulnerability.

The concept of energy vulnerability takes various forms and cannot be reduced to appreciating the degree of dependency of a country concerning energy supplies.

The contribution of the paper lies in offering a coherent set of indicators for analysing the energy vulnerability issue and in identifying a potential research area of developing a composite indicator of vulnerability similar to that of the human development indicator.

This study is a targeted review of some of the major changes in European regulation that guided energy policy decisions in the Iberian Peninsula and how they may have aggravated the problem of lack of flexibility. This study aims to assess some of the proposed short-term solutions to address this issue considering the underlying root causes and suggests a different course of action, that in turn, could help alleviate future market strains.

The evolution of the most important (macro) energy and price-related variables in both Portugal and Spain is assessed using market and grid operator data. In addition, the authors present critical viewpoints on some of the most recent EU and national regulation changes (official document analysis).

The Iberian energy policy and regulatory agenda has successfully promoted a rapid adoption of renewables (main goal), although with insufficient diversification of generation technologies. The compulsory closings of thermal plants and an increased tax (mainly carbon) added pressure toward more environmentally friendly thermal power plants. However, inevitably, this curbed the bidding price competitiveness of these producers in an already challenging market framework. Moving forward, decisions must be based on “a bigger picture” that does not neglect system flexibility and security of supply and understands the specificities of the Iberian market and its generation portfolio.

This work provides an original account of unprecedented spikes in energy prices in 2021, specifically in the Iberian electricity market. This acute situation worries consumers, industry and governments. Underlining the instability of the market prices, for the first time, this study discusses how some of the most important regulatory changes, and their perception and absorption by involved parties, contributed to the current environment. In addition, this study stresses that if flexibility is overlooked, the overall purpose of having an affordable and reliable system is at risk.

This paper aims to research the reforms toward International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) implementation and the perceptions about the use and usefulness of accounting information in the context of local government in the Iberian Peninsula. The paper focuses on the perspective of chief financial officers (CFOs).

The paper uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. Beyond the study of the context of the reform in both countries through the consultation of legislation and official documents, the authors collected primary data through a survey addressed to the local CFO to catch both countries' perceptions and beliefs toward the topic under research.

The authors' findings evidence that both countries have made strong efforts to adapt IPSAS to both countries' national standards. The coercive and mimetic isomorphism and the private accounting normative were important determinants in the reform. Looking at perceptions, budget information continues to be perceived as the king information for public management and decision-making. In a comparative way, the Portuguese CFO seems to be more optimistic concerning the use and usefulness of the new accounting system. The strong orientation of CFO to cash-basis and budgeting information is an important explanation of the lower use and usefulness, essentially in the Spanish context. The regression results show that individual perceptions and beliefs on the accounting reform influence the opinion about the usefulness and use of financial information.

The use of the survey method has some limitations very discussed in the literature that are also applied in this study.

The paper has the potential to contribute to the academic, political and practitioner discussion of the core purposes of financial accounting information in the public sector and financial accounting information's impacts on the European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) framework.

The recent adoption of the new accounting system in local governments of both contexts contributes to knowledge on the public sector accounting reforms toward the transition to accrual accounting and the IPSAS. The innovative character of the paper contributes to better clarify how the perceptions of the accounting reform influence the usage level of public financial information.

The main goal of this paper is to study the influence of some corporate governance, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and corporate-specific characteristics on the performance of Iberian-listed companies.

To achieve the paper's aim, the authors have used data from 33 Portuguese-listed companies, and 60 Spanish-listed companies, for the period 2011 to 2018. To test the hypotheses, the authors employed the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method, developed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998).

The results point out that the performance determinants vary depending on the country under analysis and the variable used to measure performance. Despite being neighbors and historically commercially close, these countries have differences in their governmental, social and economic structure that lead to different stakeholder perceptions on the determinants of corporate performance. Specifically, when the authors use Tobin's Q as a market performance variable, board independence and the existence of a CSR committee have different signs in the two countries. The same happens when return on assets (ROA) is used as an accounting variable for internal management, implying that both, managers and potential investors of the two countries have different understandings about the variables that influence their performance.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to comparatively analyze the two countries of the Iberian Peninsula, analyzing the effect of corporate governance and social responsibility characteristics on the performance. The authors' results show that managers and potential investors have different points of view regarding the importance of corporate governance and social responsibility characteristics in corporate performance.

The use of standards is currently characterized by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as essential for the efficient development of products, processes, services and systems in organizations; that is the norm-profit-measuring methodology Toolkit. From an impact-analysis perspective, the purpose of this paper is to compare the existing published standards in the area of archival science and documentation in Brazil, by the hand of the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT); Portugal (NP), by the Portuguese Institution of Quality (IPQ); and in Spain (UNE), by the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification (AENOR). Finally, this paper aims to observe the convergences and divergences among these countries with respect to the first country standards organization, United Kingdom (UK), by the British Standards Institution (BSI). This paper is an extract of a deeper investigation about behaviors, uses and impact of ISO’s standards.

The methodology consists in a qualitative and quantitative comparative study, carried out through the analysis of the technical contents of the standards present in the catalogs available on the ABNT, IPQ, AENOR and BSI websites. It compares the main existing divergences in adoption, collaboration, elaboration, volume, working-group dynamism, editing schedules, costs and groups of standards.

The analysis allowed to observe the relevance of the technical standards in the studied countries and the advantages of the adoption of ISO for the dissemination of contents. For instance, the use and application of these standards for the development of archival and records management activities is considered to benefit the professionals to decrease the time of implementation and execution of the archival activities and allow continuous assessment. Besides ensuring quality in the archival processes, standardization evidences the complexity within organizational environments inherent to the metamorphosis of each’s functional context.

This paper contributes with an original analysis of how the technical standards of the Archival and Records Management area are published and used in Brazil, Iberian Peninsula and the UK.