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This paper investigates the earnings management (EM) practices of Portuguese municipal firms (MFs), which are a special type of public-sector entity.

MFs are identified using a dedicated list maintained by the Portuguese Government. Accounting data are collected from the Bureau Van Dijk's AMADEUS database. The Burgstahler and Dichev's (1997) methodology and panel data regression methods are employed to examine the EM practices of Portuguese MFs.

Portuguese MFs manage earnings to report small and positive net earnings and to avoid disclosing losses. There is evidence that such companies are more likely to engage in EM practices when facing higher liquidation risk and financial leverage, lower liquidity and in certain periods of the local election cycle.

This is one of the first studies investigating the EM practices of MFs, directly contributing to the literature that explores the relationship between state ownership and the quality of financial statements. The paper has important implications for the MFs' stakeholders, especially regulators and supervising authorities.

In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, the move from government to governance has been well documented (Stoker, 1998; Rhodes, 1996, 1997). In the global North, governance is understood as a response to complexity and a recognition that many problems cannot be solved by government alone, whereas in democracies across the North and South, there is a concern to address the democratic deficit and [re]legitimize the state. In both contexts, new governance spaces and opportunities have emerged for non-governmental actors to engage in the process. Interest in community or “third sector” participation has spread around the globe, albeit with very different expressions in different contexts, and in many cases at the insistence of international financial institutions. Deacon (2007, p. 15) describes such global trends as “the contested terrain of emerging global governance” in which he includes both international non-governmental organizations and transnational social movements. Although this shift represents new opportunities, the extent to which the spaces for participation offer a new vision of the public domain is contested (Fung & Wright, 2003; Cornwall & Coelho, 2007).

François Perroux was an economist of strong convictions and fruitful ideas. His belief, which was also shared by other eminent development economists of his time, that backwardness was not a fate is entirely reflected in his development pole theory, which has a prominent place within the regional development theory. This implies that his theory was highly influential, as evidenced by the fact that strategies based on development poles were implemented around the world, in both developed and developing countries. Although these strategies took different forms, largely depending on the specific contexts in which they were applied, there was a common factor in all of them, which was the importance of the direct use of large-scale investment resources to generate the hoped-for structural changes through accelerated economic growth. Looking carefully at the Italian and Brazilian cases, it should be noted that the development pole strategies had, in addition to the use of heavy investment resources already mentioned, some common characteristics, such as: the focus of attention directed toward the backward regions, specifically the Mezzogiorno region in Italy and the Amazon region in Brazil; the fight against regional disparities within both countries through structural change and the strengthening of backward regional economies as an underlying reason; and the active participation of the State in the drawing up and implementation processes of development poles. This chapter aims at comparing the development pole strategies in Italy and Brazil, highlighting similarities and differences of these experiences in triggering the long-awaited regional development.

The paper aims to present a literary itinerary inspired in Julio Dinis’ novel An English Family (Uma Família Inglesa) through a comparative analysis of the places identified in the novel and the touristic attraction proposed by Visit Porto website. This novel is representative of the cultural identity and society of Porto city in the 19th century. Developing an itinerary based on this novel can facilitate the reading and understanding of the historical and cultural development of Porto.

This case study is based on the reading of the Julio Dinis’ novel An English Family (Uma Família Inglesa), whose storyline takes place in Porto city, Portugal in the 19th century. It used QGIS v. 3.12 software, a geographical information system to identify the places, to produce the maps and to create the itinerary.

The comparison between the places identified in the novel and the tourist attraction in Visit Porto website revealed that only 6 points in the novel are referenced on Visit Porto website. These points correspond to the ones in the historical city centre of Porto. However, the creation of an itinerary that brings together all the points mentioned by Julio Dinis in his novel, will allow the development of a new touristic itinerary, alternative to existing itineraries in the city and that can be seen as a distinguish offer that allows a different view of the urban space of Porto.

There are some limitations to this study that can be highlighted. First, it was difficult to find the correct location of some points identified in the novel, due to difficulty of finding historical maps with quality of the data. At the same time, as tourist information is dispersed by several sources, and most of those data is not georeferenced, it was time consuming the integration of all the information in the same geodatabase. The choice of the shortest path can also be considered as a limitation, rather than the route followed by the author in the novel, but geographic information systems operates on spatial and temporal scale, which can present a limitation in tourism analysis. In the case of this project, we have chosen the shortest path, assuming that tourist would prefer that.

This research allowed to address two areas of knowledge that are emerging in the study of urban centres as tourist areas: the use of GIS and literary tourism. Despite the fact that there are already articles on this subject, the originality focuses on the approach made around one of the greatest writers of Portugal in the 19th century, allowing to present a tourist itinerary about one of his literary works, and the comparison made between the places identified in the novel and the tourist points identified on the Visit Porto website.

This study aims to explore how corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions (i.e. economic; legal; ethical; philanthropic) foster employee creativity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, an attempt is made to investigate the mediating role of affective commitment to explain the above linkage.

The survey data were collected from 167 employees in the emerging market of Saudi Arabia. The data was analysed using PLS-SEM for frequency, reliability, confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modelling.

The CSR dimensions, particularly the ethical and philanthropic dimensions, showed both direct and indirect effects on the creativity behaviour of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, affective commitment mediated the relationship between the legal, ethical and philanthropic CSR dimensions and creativity behaviour.

This study enriches previous CSR empirical research and adds to current literature focused on the determinants of CSR dimensions' effectiveness; particularly, the research is set in a challenging scenario characterized by the pandemic. So, this paper extends previous studies by investigating under which key conditions CSR dimensions are most effective, in particular in two main directions. First, it contributes to the CSR literature by determining how various CSR dimensions influence creativity behaviour during a pandemic. Pandemics are events that occur regularly, and the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, offers the opportunity to explore its effects on employees' behaviours in the current context. Second, the study's mediation findings contribute to new empirical evidence which suggests that affective commitment has a positive effect on the CSR dimensions of employee creativity behaviour during a pandemic in an emerging market.

Drawing on the service-dominant logic and the institutional theory, this paper aims to explore the value-creating mechanisms of branding in the destination context and the brand co-creation process at and between different levels of a service ecosystem.

An exploratory research design was used to generate qualitative data from 18 in-depth interviews with important stakeholders and investigate how and why brand co-creation is fostered in the service ecosystem.

The study proposes a stepwise process of strategic imperatives for brand co-creation in the destination context. It presents the multi-directional flows of the brand meaning across levels of the tourism ecosystem and thereby interprets stakeholders’ efforts to co-create sustainable brands that gain prominence in the global tourism arena.

Future research might validate the framework in a quantitative research setting. The extended analysis of the value-creating ecosystem could investigate the role of institutions and brand value propositions across levels.

Acknowledging their limited control over the brand co-creation process, tourism practitioners are offered step-by-step guidance to help shape a destination brand that may retain relevance in the tourists’ minds. Critical insights are provided into resource sharing between actors and subsequent responsibilities for a sustainable destination branding strategy.

The paper considers the significance of the various levels in the ecosystem and the underlying mechanisms of brand co-creation in a somewhat neglected branding domain.

This paper aims to highlight the political influences that account for the destination image of a tourist city: Campos do Jordão, São Paulo State, Brazil. The study took into consideration the collective imagination and its influence on the formation of touristic destinations.

Descriptive study based on literature and document review, accompanied by an analysis of texts and photos available on non-official websites – about Campos do Jordão – from November to December 2018 and by visits to selected location.

“Charm”, “refinement” and “sophistication” are the most frequently used words to describe Campos do Jordão, which remains a symbol of exclusiveness and refuge for the highest social classes. These images are shaped by political and economic influences.

The investigation focussed on a single city. Also, as it is an analytical study aimed at showing the permanence of preconceived values used to build the image of a destination it is not possible to talk about extrapolating the present study to other cities. In addition, the research was done by using the reproduction of physical and cultural aspects in addition to the use of European landscapes structures and values in a locality with an exceptional environmental context.

Many of the images connected to Campos do Jordão are replicated by local citizens, a fact that evidences the importance of associative memory, which concerns memories citizens have of their living space. The social implications presented herein seek to recover the formative memories of the assessed city, although it is not the focus of the current study. Assumingly, becoming an active segment of the tourism sector is the only way for local citizens to appropriate the city.

The influence of local government and public actions in tourism construction and in the image linked to the city is used as a case study. Building a touristic imagination demands a wide range of businesses, but this process takes time and effort, as highlighted by the applied documental review; it would not happen without the straight interference of the public sector through the local government.