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The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between training and financial performance in cooperative organizations.

To achieve this goal, the fixed-effect panel regression technique was used, from a single database containing hours and amounts invested in training by 35 large Brazilian agribusiness cooperatives over 10 years as the main independent variable of the econometric model. Financial performance was operationalized by the Net Margin and ROE.

It was possible to identify a positive relationship between expenditure on training and the future rate of return and profitability of the organizations in question. The results also indicate that this relationship grows stronger over the first three years after the investments are made and ceases to exist after this period. The findings are robust with regard to a series of alternative explanations and contribute to understanding the relationship between training and organizational performance in financial terms, considering the extent and duration of training.

The originality this study is justified by the pioneering spirit of presenting direct evidence linking investment in training and financial performance and the duration of this relationship. Thus, the study makes a significant contribution to the construction of knowledge on the subject.

This paper aims to identify the determining factors for the financial performance (FP) of social enterprises in an emerging country, in this case Brazil.

This paper identifies the determinants of the FP of social enterprises in Brazil using the resource-based view as a theoretical lenses and the quantitative method (n = 601) of logistic regression, analyzing the importance of nine variables related to SEs.

The findings refer to practical contributions (which show how SEs should focus and allocate their resources to maximize FP) and theoretical contributions linked to entrepreneurship literature (by differentiating the results of this work from the literature on commercial entrepreneurship in terms of resources), social entrepreneurship literature (by presenting the resources that determine their FP), business literature, entrepreneurial finance and entrepreneurship in emerging economies.

This work represents a novelty from a methodological point of view, filling the gap regarding the lack of studies that apply a quantitative methodology to a large sample and analyze several different variables when most studies analyze only one factor related to the performance of an organization. It also fills the gap in entrepreneurship studies that use some theoretical lenses. This work is also a pioneer in analyzing the variables involved, such as market orientation, technologies and impact measurement in social entrepreneurship. As this work uses data from a secondary sample, there is the limitation of not choosing the analyzed variables. Even though there were many variables in the sample, it was impossible to consider some variables, referring to various aspects of resources and performance. For this same reason, the social performance of SEs, which is of fundamental importance within the objectives of any organization of this type, was not analyzed and may be a suggestion for future work.

Significant interest in Integrated Management Systems (IMS), as a key area within ISO-related Management System Standards (MSS) literature, has been evident from both academia and industry over the past three decades. This study aims to map the evolution and current state of IMS research and propose possible directions for future studies.

A comprehensive content and bibliometric analysis of 846 documents from the Scopus database across the period 1995 to 2023 was conducted. This included performance analysis to track publication trends and identify key contributors, and content analysis to specify dominant research methodologies and the MSS most commonly integrated. Furthermore, science mapping techniques—such as co-authorship networks, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and bibliographic coupling—were utilized to outline the collaborative networks and the conceptual and intellectual structure of the field.

The study identifies three principal IMS research themes: the practical implementation of IMS, their role in promoting sustainability and social responsibility, and their impact on continuous performance improvement. It also highlights the field’s evolution and key research constituents—including influential works, prolific authors, leading academic institutions and countries, and top publishing journals. It further reveals that IMS research exhibits strong collaboration across authors and countries, and a rich methodological plurality, notably with a marked increase in empirical surveys in recent years. Additionally, it identifies the most frequently referenced MSS for integration, prominently featuring ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001/OHSAS 18001.

This study is original in its application of a dual analytical approach—bibliometric and content analysis—to provide a holistic overview of IMS research. It offers new insights into the integration of diverse MSS and proposes several promising paths for future research. Among the most prominent are standardizing IMS fundamental specifications, conducting more empirical research with advanced methods to evaluate the effects of MSS integration, providing practical support for organizations in IMS implementation through tailored methodologies and tools, and exploring the potential of Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies to advance IMS practices.

Children's food insecurity experiences are largely unrepresented in academic literature. Parents and caregivers cannot always accurately evaluate their children's attitudes or experiences, and even within the same family unit, children and their parents may report differing views and experiences of family food insecurity. The purpose of this narrative review is to identify studies that include children's voices and their perceptions, understanding, and experience of food insecurity in the household.

This narrative review aimed to address the following questions: (1) “What research studies of household food insecurity include children's voices?” and (2) “Across these studies, how do children perceive, understand and experience food insecurity in the household?”. A database search was conducted in October 2022. After inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, 16 articles remained for review.

The findings from this review were organised into three themes: Theme 1: Ways children coped with accessing food or money for food; Theme 2: Food-related strategies children used to avoid hunger; and Theme 3: Children attempt to mask food insecurity.

Future research should further explore the long-term consequences of social pressures and informal economic engagement on children's well-being and social development. By addressing the social determinants of food insecurity, this study can strive to create supportive environments that enable all children to access adequate nutrition and thrive.

Overall, the findings of this review demonstrate the significant social pressures that shape children's responses to food insecurity. Results suggest that children's decision-making processes are influenced by the desire to maintain social standing and avoid the negative consequences of being food insecure. As such, this review underscores the need for a comprehensive understanding of the social context in which food insecurity occurs and the impact it has on children's lives. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing effective interventions and policies addressing the multifaceted challenges food insecure children face.

This review has highlighted a need for interventions to incorporate trauma-informed strategies to protect children from and respond to the psychologically distressing experiences and impact of living in food insecure households.

This study aims to evaluate the knowledge structure of knowledge management (KM) applications within small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In pursuit of excellence, SMEs must adopt KM like large corporations, even with limited resources.

Through a bibliometric approach, this study evaluates current themes based on bibliographic coupling analysis and predicts future trends based on coword analysis. A total of 726 documents and 2,658 keywords were derived from the Web of Science database.

Findings show four clusters in bibliographic coupling and three in coword analysis. A common theme discovered converged on digital technology to ensure SMEs follow current market trends.

Advanced application of Industry 4.0 requires digital transformation for SMEs’ pursuit of excellence. Implications include sustaining SMEs through a considerable KM system integrated with digital technology for sustainable business activities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to provide a science mapping analysis on KM in SMEs by applying a bibliometric analysis.

This study aims to focus on how the design of an organization influences employee sustainability. It also highlights how top management support can mediate this relationship.

In order to examine the role of employee quality of life on performance sustainability, a quantitative survey approach was adopted. A questionnaire was distributed using simple random sampling to the employees working in the hotel sector.

Results suggest that organizations can enhance employee sustainability, including performance, commitment, motivation and retention, by investing in values that align with their employees, providing suitable health and wellness initiatives, and adopting in career growth policies. In that, values, health and wellness and human development are confirmed to be core determinants of employee sustainability, with a negligible role of fair compensation and physical artifacts. Top management support is found to mediate the relationship between employee quality of life and sustainability.

This study contributes to a better understanding of how organizational design for quality of life can assist employee sustainability with the mediation role of top management support. The study recommends that the hotel organizations should consider designing their work environments to promote their employee quality of life, which affects their sustainability within the hotel industry.

This study contributes to a better understanding of how organizational design for quality of life can assist employee sustainability with the mediation role of top management support. The study recommends that the hotel organizations should consider designing their work environments to promote their employees’ quality of life, which affects their sustainability within the hotel industry.

While there is ample research in business and management literature on the economic and environmental factors of sustainability, social sustainability has received less concentration. This study gives more attention to how employee social sustainability can be affected by the managerial and organizational factors of ensuring work life balance and top management support.

This paper analyses the role of intellectual capital (IC) as a factor of the financial performance of entrepreneurial firms, which are recognized as the main drivers of economic growth and employment.

The sample consists of 188 business owners from Serbia. The primary data are collected using the questionnaire, while the secondary data come from the annual financial statements of their companies. The elements of IC as independent variables are grouped into three components: human, structural and relational capital; sales revenue and operating profit CAGR (5y) are used as dependent variables, while company size and industry type are used as control variables. Statistical analysis involves factor and regression analyses.

The results reveal that IC components contribute to the long-term financial performance of entrepreneurial firms. Specifically, the following elements have positive effects on financial performance: knowledge of the entrepreneur, process improvement and organisational culture. On the other hand, entrepreneurs’ social skills and tenacity were found to have a negative impact on revenue and operating profit growth, while support from informal networks had a negative effect on the growth of sales revenue.

This study aims to fill a gap in the literature on the impact of IC on the financial performance of entrepreneurial firms.

Increased competition and the constant need for companies to differentiate make markets more competitive and consumers more demanding when making purchasing decisions. Consequently, companies recognized the importance of marketing and economics, which has gradually replaced its transactional practices, focused essentially on a single transaction, with relational practices, in which the customer is considered an integral part of the process. Creating long and profitable relationships has become a business priority and the use of tools such as customer relationship marketing (CRM) has become crucial. With the increasing importance of health and wellness tourism, thermalism has become a very competitive product wanted by tourists who need treatments that are not available in their country due to lack of availability or because they are quite expensive. Since tourism is integrated in the services sector, a set of relational marketing strategies can be applied to establish and maintain relationships with tourists. Therefore, it is important to understand how relational marketing can improve health and wellness tourism. Based on a combination of theoretical and practical research, this chapter explores the dynamic system and mechanism of innovation and development of relational marketing strategies in specific contexts of tourism (i.e. health and wellness tourism) considering cross-border (i.e. Northern Euroregion of Portugal and Galicia). From an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapter presents insights for marketing and tourism (health and well-being) and for the economic development of territories (i.e. cross-border regions).

Considering the important role of knowledge management in the global growth of world economies, the importance of knowledge management in the tourism industry can hardly be overestimated. Knowledge management, empowering leadership and innovation can open new research prospects for online travel and tourism, thereby increasing organizational capacity. In this context, this study aims to investigate the relationship between knowledge management practices and transformational leadership, along with the mediating role in this relationship of leadership communication. Knowledge management practices are discussed through the lens of managers’/organizational perspectives working in the online travel and tourism industry.

Using a descriptive research method, the data were collected from a total of 174 managers/senior executives working in the online travel and tourism sectors. The proposed conceptual framework was evaluated using structural equation modeling through AMOS 21 and Process Macro (SPSS-Plugin).

The results revealed a significant increase in the adoption of knowledge management practices in the online travel and tourism sector under transformative leadership. The results also highlighted that effective communication is a vital contributor and significant complementary mediator in the relationship between transformative leadership and knowledge management practices.

The results of this study suggest that transformational leaders, who are equipped with the “high touch” nature of leadership and the “high tech” aspect of the contemporary workplace, are the best fit to manage online travel and tourism organizations. To have an adequate knowledge management system, knowledge managers should adopt a transformative leadership style and receive comprehensive training in developing leadership abilities such as effective communication competencies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate that, in emerging online travel and tourism sectors, organizational knowledge can be managed through effective leadership communication.