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In this chapter, the authors explore collective entrepreneurship through the lens of how public entrepreneurship boosts collective action towards a common good. The role of public entrepreneurs and the collaborative nature of innovation community members evidence a collective action that pursues a socio-political change. Through a case study contextualized during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Spain, the authors explore how a public entrepreneur triggered a collective action that led to the creation of the innovation community: The Coronavirus makers. This collaborative network groups more than 20,000 researchers, developers, and engineers. They altruistically put their knowledge and resources at the service of the community to provide solutions for one of the healthcare system’s main problems at that time – the shortage of medical supplies to cope with the increasing number of COVID-19 cases. The collective action of the Coronavirus makers has impacted the health and wellbeing fields, the community and the values that should define social change and allow the construction of a more open, equitable and sustainable society. Potentially, our findings confirm that collective entrepreneurship derives from a function of collective action.

The inspection of flexible risers is a critical activity to ensure continuous productivity and safety in oil and gas production. The purpose of this paper is to present the design and development of a novel automatic underwater tool for riser inspection that fits the most commonly used riser diameters and significantly improves inspection quality and reduces its operating costs.

The mechanical and electronic design of the inspection system is discussed, as well as its embedded sensors and control system. The tool is equipped with a suspension system that is able to adapt to the riser diameter and negotiate obstacles on the pipe wall. Numerical simulations were carried out to analyze the mechanical design, and a hardware-in-the-loop simulation was developed for tuning the control system. Further, experimental results are presented and discussed.

Experimental tests in laboratory tanks and shallow seawater have confirmed the effectiveness of the tool for detailed real-time inspection of underwater pipelines.

The use of the proposed tool will potentially reduce the time and costs for riser inspection, currently performed by divers or high-cost ROVs.

The authors present a reliable tool able to perform automatic inspections up to 250 m deep in less than 30 min, equipped with a high-definition visual inspection system, composed of full-HD cameras and lasers and a suspension mechanism that can negotiate sharp obstacles in the pipe wall up to 25 mm high. The tool uses a comprehensive control system that autonomously performs a full inspection, collecting sensors data and returning safely to the surface. Its robust design can be used as basis for several other nondestructive techniques, such as ultrasound and X-ray.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether higher education institutions (HEIs) in EU Member States are aware of the relevance of the ongoing reforms in public sector accounting (PSA) and the need to prepare their students to become expert professionals in that area. It particularly assesses whether these organizations currently provide, or will provide in the near future, education on International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS)/EPSAS, so that a sufficient number of graduates will be ready to match the foreseeable demand for experts in IPSAS/EPSAS.

Adopting a purposive sample, the paper compares the situation in four EU countries (Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain). Data have been obtained through a questionnaire provided to selected professors in relevant HEIs in the selected countries.

HEIs are giving only limited room to PSA and financial management, with differences in terms of program offerings and coverage of topics among the four countries. Furthermore, in most cases, the programs are adapted to the national budgetary and accounting standards and courses are seldom focused on the IPSASs.

The paper contributes to the literature on PSA harmonization, through an innovative analysis of PSA and financial management teaching, both at national and international levels.

This study aims to analyse how people's perceived employability was affected during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study explores individuals' perceived financial threat, age and work situation as factors that shape perceived employability.

Data were collected via a survey at three different times between October 2020 and May 2021, which were chosen to reflect the evolution of the pandemic. The participants (n = 124) reported participants' perceived employability and financial threat during the pandemic in Portugal. Perceived employability is a multidimensional concept, as this includes the following scales: employment protective behaviour, employment risk, job-seeking behaviour, self-control and self-learning.

Participants' overall perceived employability failed to record significant variance over the period under analysis. Nevertheless, perceived employment protective behaviour decreased the most, especially in the case of young adults (aged 18 to 24). Individuals' perceived financial threat varied according to the external context, being lower during the last moment of data collection, which corresponded to the less-socially and economically restrictive period. Employees with the most stable work condition, i.e. with a permanent employment contract, were those who felt less financially threatened when compared to other respondents. A negative relationship between perceived employability and perceived financial threat was identified during the third moment of data collection.

The research informs about how individuals perceive themselves in a highly unpredictable and unstable context. The longitudinal approach shows how the external context affected people's perceived employability and financial threat throughout the pandemic.

This paper aims to investigate how personal values relate to the psychological contract employees establish with their employers.

The sample consisted of 223 frontline employees from a major Portuguese company. The paper used stepwise regressions analysis to test the research hypotheses.

Collectivistic-oriented values were generally related to psychological contract features such as long time frame, lower tangibility, flexibility, inequality and collective regulation. Conversely, individualistic-oriented values were generally associated with a short time frame and a more tangible, stable, equal and individually regulated type of contract with a narrow scope.

This study uses cross-sectional data collected from a single Portuguese company. While common method bias could potentially affect the results, various procedural remedies were used to control for it. Finally, the study relied on stepwise regression, which is a data-driven approach.

The study supports the contentions that internal dispositions are related to psychological contracts.

This paper innovates by exploring how employees’ personal values are associated with the psychological contract from a feature-oriented approach. In addition, this study was carried out in Portugal, highlighting the importance of exploring existing models and theories in different cultural contexts.

This paper aims to examine how the Master of Business Administration (MBA) curricula of top-ranked business schools are offering stand-alone courses on ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). To provide additional evidence, this study tests some hypotheses to contrast the effect of different variables on the inclusion of stand-alone courses on ethics and CSR. Also, the paper provides a comparative analysis in two ways: one comparison aims to analyse how the presence of ethics and CSR stand-alone courses in the MBA programmes over the past 10 years has evolved, and the other comparison seeks to explore whether there are differences between different rankings with regard to the inclusion of ethics and CSR stand-alone courses in the MBA curricula.

A Web content analysis was conducted on the curricula of 92 of the top 100 global MBA programmes ranked by the Financial Times in their 2013 ratings.

The findings show that there is a trend towards the inclusion of stand-alone courses on CSR and ethics as electives. Empirically, the findings suggest that the presence of ethics and CSR elective stand-alone subjects in the MBA programmes is explained by the following variables: public/private, business school’s accreditation and cultural influence. Comparatively, the findings suggest that requiring CSR and business ethics stand-alone courses in the MBA programmes ranked by the Financial Times have not increased over the past 10 years. In addition, when we have compared the results of this study with other rankings, we have appreciated that there are important differences between top MBA programmes in accordance with the aims and scope of rankings.

The findings of this study seem to suggest that business schools included in the Financial Times ranking have not changed their view based on a shareholder approach, which is focused on providing an economics-centred training.

Most OECD countries will have a considerable challenge ahead with an ageing population and necessary health care produced for retired people. Healthcare costs have increased continuously from the mid-1990’s in Finland, and growth is likely to continue in the future, as the amount of older inhabitants is increasing. Furthermore, transportation of patients and their visitors between homes and hospitals is a large component of the total health carehealth care related costs. This paper aims to estimate transport-related costs and develop ways to decrease these costs.

A system dynamics simulation model was developed to examine different scenarios for patients and their visitor transportation to hospitals until the year 2040. Model is driven by age distribution of the region and likely by development of the total population. All parameter values were defined based on real-life observations.

Patients’ need to travel to hospitals is likely to continue to grow. In addition, quality of travel will change as older retired people are not willing or able to use their own transportation equipment or public transportation modes – this is the main reason for higher transportation costs of patients. Transportation is typically conducted via taxis, private cars and ambulances. Therefore, it is critical that people from the region are able to access hospital services with short proximity.

Simulation study is limited to one hospital investment decision in Finland. Distances and population densities as well as transportation mode alternatives differ from more populous regions in the world.

Research findings stressed the importance of keeping their own hospital operations within the region and placing them in a better location. In an alternative case, where a hospital decision would have been abandoned, total transportation costs during 2012-2040 would have increased by at least the same amount that a new hospital is assumed to cost.

This research is one of the first from the health care sector, where patient transportation modes and ageing is being dealt with in the context of new investments. Patient transportation is often an overlooked issue, which bears significant costs, especially as people age.

Portfolio optimization is the process of making an investment decision on a set of assets to realize high returns with low risk. It has three major stages: asset selection, asset weighting and asset management. Asset selection is an important phase because it influences asset allocation and ultimately affects the returns of a portfolio. Today, there is an increase in the number of listings on a stock exchange. Therefore, it is important for an investor to screen and select stocks for investment. This study focuses on the first stage of the portfolio optimization problem, namely, asset selection. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and select profitable stocks quoted on National Stock Exchange (NSE) for portfolio optimization.

Financial ratios are considered as the input and output parameters for evaluating the financial performance of the firms. This study adopts a hybrid principal component analysis (PCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to evaluate the efficiency of the firms. Based on the efficiency scores, the firms are selected for the investment process.

The model helps to determine the relative efficiencies of the firms. The efficient firms are considered to be the potential stocks for investment. It helps the investors to screen the stocks from a large number of stocks quoted on NSE.

One of the limitations of the standard DEA model is that it fails to discriminate the firms when the number of input and output parameters are larger than the number of firms. To overcome this problem, either a parameter can be ignored or weight-restricted DEA can be applied. When an input/output parameter is dropped, the information in that variable is lost. Weight-restricted DEA model uses expert opinion for measuring the relative importance of input and output parameters. Expert opinion is subjective and might be biased. The PCA-DEA model helps to identify the efficient firms by improving the discriminatory power of standard DEA without any loss of information and without the need for expert opinion, which might be biased.

Asset selection is an important stage in the investment process. Selection of stocks based on the efficiency score is an easier option available to the investors. But the misclassification of firms either due to biased expert opinion or discrimination inability of DEA can be costly to an investor. The PCA-DEA model overcomes both these limitations. Investors can select the potential candidates for asset allocation based on the efficiency scores obtained using the PCA-DEA model. Further, the relative efficiencies obtained can help the firms to benchmark their performance against the best performing firms within their industry.

This paper is one of few papers to adopt the PCA-DEA framework to select stocks in the Indian stock market.

Discrimination and bullying contribute to mental ill-health in the workplace. At face value, they would seem linked but are often dealt with by different legislations. Workplace studies generally focus on bullying and population studies on discrimination. The authors aimed to evaluate the prevalence and relationship of discrimination and bullying in a male-dominated workforce, associated factors and relative impact on mental ill-health.

An online cohort survey was conducted amongst employees of an Australian mining company, measuring discrimination, bullying, demographics and workplace and health factors over two months. Cross-sectional and prospective analyses assessed the prevalence of each, their association and their effects on depression and anxiety.

A total of 580 employees (82% male) participated. There was no association between workplace bullying (n = 56, 9.7%) and discrimination (n = 160, 27.6%). Discrimination, but not bullying, was associated with higher depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation and lower well-being and resilience. After controlling for demographic, workplace and health and well-being factors, depression had the main effect on discrimination ß = 0.39, p = 0.003. Discrimination predicted an increase in depression scores at follow-up F (1, 129) = 4.88, p = 0.029.

In this male-dominated industry, discrimination was more prevalent than bullying. Discrimination, but not bullying, was associated with poorer mental health both cross sectionally and prospectively. Supporting the need to assess and manage discrimination and bullying in the workplace independently and the need for interventions to reduce a broader range of adverse interpersonal behaviours.

This paper aims to generate knowledge of the impact of different virtual reality (VR) set-ups in tourism promotion regarding destination image, place attachment and behavioural intention.

The paper presents a comparative study of the impact of different visualisation technologies (video, immersive VR and multisensory immersive VR) to promote tourism destinations. The study’s dependent variables are destination image, place attachment and behaviour intention.

Results show that VR content impacts these variables. Multisensory immersive VR is the preferred content type for destination promotion. It is also evidenced that female participants scored each variable higher than male participants. Males reported higher scores on the video set-up for destination image and place attachment. Behavioural intention reported higher values in the video when compared to immersive VR in both sexes.

This paper concludes that there is a preference towards multisensory set-ups, which suggests that incorporating audiovisual and sensory elements can significantly enhance the effectiveness of VR experiences in attracting and engaging potential tourists.

The paper contributes to the scarce body of knowledge regarding the impact of different VR factors on tourism promotion, including the multisensory VR component.

本文旨在探讨不同虚拟现实（VR）设备在旅游推广中对目的地形象、地方依恋和行为意图的影响, 并增加对此方面的认识。

本文对不同可视化技术（视频、沉浸式VR和多感官沉浸式VR）在旅游目的地推广中的影响进行了比较研究。研究的依赖变量包括目的地形象、地方依恋和行为意图。

研究结果表明, VR内容对这些变量有影响。多感官沉浸式VR是目的地推广的首选内容类型。研究还证明, 女性参与者在每个变量上的评分高于男性参与者。男性在视频设备上对目的地形象和地方依恋评分较高。无论是在男性还是女性中, 视频在行为意图方面的得分都高于沉浸式VR。

我们得出结论, 人们更偏好多感官设备, 这表明将视听和感官元素纳入虚拟现实体验可以显著提高吸引和吸引潜在游客的效果。

本文对不同虚拟现实因素对旅游推广的影响, 包括多感官VR组成部分, 做出了有益的贡献。