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This study proposes an assessment framework for improving smart building performance in the broader context of smart city development, considering dimensions like environmental sustainability, building characteristics, intelligence, computation management and analytics. The framework is crafted to guide future research, aligning with the growing emphasis on sustainability and intelligence in evolving urban landscapes within smart cities.

In the initial phase, the concepts of “Smart City” and “Smart Buildings” are analyzed through a systematic literature review, considering the impact of governance on city sustainability and growth, along with the role of public policies in transforming buildings and cities. The empirical research evaluates innovation levels in small and medium-sized European cities, proposing a new framework with validated dimensions and sub-dimensions. This validation involves input from international experts through a Focus Group.

The key research findings validate the new proposed assessment framework for smart buildings within smart city development. The experts’ insights align with and support the dimensions identified in the bibliographic research, providing a comprehensive understanding of the role of smart buildings in sustainable urban development.

This framework not only provides insights for a new model with specific dimensions and sub-dimensions but also serves as a guide for formulating strategies and policies to enhance innovation in these settings. The value of this approach is strengthened by the validation and consolidation process involving international experts in the field.

Building on the growing body of research that has addressed management control systems and innovation, the purpose of this study is to assess the extent and nature of the use of controls in an innovative setting and how they work together unveiling the relationships and tensions amongst the Simons’ levers.

This study resorts to an in-depth and single case study in a company that has both a strong orientation to innovation and stable control practices in place. Evidence was collected from 32 interviews, visits to the company and internal documentation.

At the case company, it was possible to find the presence of controls according to all the levers of control. Likewise, joint effects of controls used according to interactive and beliefs approaches and diagnostic and boundary controls showed a consistent reinforcement that push the organization in a single direction. Signs of some countervailing reinforcement between these pairs were also detected, creating tensions. This in general shows that innovation can be weighed against the necessity of goal achievement taking place within fields in which the company can exploit the effort developed.

This study documents the collective use of controls in a context in which innovation is needed and how the combination of the levers of control with their inner workings and tensions allow the company to have a corporate environment of innovation that is friendly.

The purpose of this study is to present the evolution of thinking on the role of management control systems (MCSs) in innovation, according to the development of control practices, and to provide a reflection on the achievements of the more recent literature.

This paper assesses articles, books and book chapters that have explored MCSs in innovation, together with seminal works on management accounting and control.

Moving from the traditional phase where MCSs were seen as detrimental to innovation, the literature has now reached a new consensus that attributes a positive role to control. In this recent phase, it arises from the literature that MCSs in the realm of innovation should embrace a multiplicity of controls; MCSs depend on the magnitude and innovation mode of a company; MCSs evolve over time; and that synergies and tensions are expected to arise. Adding these factors to the inherent complexity of innovation, the assertion is that qualitative approaches should be undertaken to infuse the field with more fine-grained evidence. It is also proposed that this methodological approach be used to address the following points: (1) the use of multiple controls; (2) synergies and tensions; and (3) behavioural aspects of controls in relation with innovation.

The paper is of value for researchers who have an interest in studying the use of MCSs in innovation and in qualitative research and proposes some areas of research that could be explored.

Dynamic capabilities (DCs) need renewing to respond to changes emerging in the environment, and organizations must build up their capacities to sustain good performance levels. This study aims to identifying and characterizing the DCs existing in public health sector organizations by surveying the DC-related areas in health organizations, contributing to broader and more systematized knowledge in this field.

The authors sent a questionnaire to 245 professionals with leadership and management positions in healthcare organizations in this study. The authors used multivariate methods to validate the variables used to measure the DCs.

In addition to highlighting the impact of DCs on public health organizations' performance, the study’s results allowed the authors to identify hidden capacities in the organizations of this sector, which only emerge when resource management difficulties occur. These changes and difficulties may interact with users and/or professionals' needs and make organizational management a particular challenge aggravated by quick responses to ensure the organization's survival.

This study contributes to the literature's call for a deeper understanding of the role of DCs and contribute to a greater practical understanding of how these capabilities influence the performance of such organizations.

By designing a pilot time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) model, this study aims to examine in depth the suitability and the complexity of TDABC in a manufacturing company.

To obtain a deeper understanding on the matters to analyse, this research adopts an interventionist approach. The host organisation is GP, a Portuguese company in the frozen food sector.

The authors’ experience allows them to assert that TDABC is suitable for a manufacturing company and it is able to deal with the variability of the industrial processes. Nonetheless, through a comparison with the models presented in the literature, TDABC appears to be more complex for manufacturing. The authors argue that this happens for two reasons. First, the two types of resources (human labour and machinery) used in production areas create a need to split tasks and to create two equations for each process, something that does not happen in service companies. Second, times are difficult to individualise for certain highly automated procedures, which could also give rise to some errors.

The designed model is compared to other models presented in the literature.

This study shows a real example of TDABC in manufacturing and the procedural innovation of the time equations.

As the TDABC literature has been mostly focused on examples of service companies, the authors examine the technical suitability and the complexity of TDABC in manufacturing companies.

This paper aims to investigate how implying movement in food packaging imagery may affect product liking. Furthermore, the underlying mechanism is investigated by studying the effect of implied motion visuals on design appeal and naturalness perception.

Two packages of pineapple juice were designed in which the implied motion depicted in their imagery was manipulated, and a tasting experiment was conducted in which two samples of the same juice were evaluated.

The results show that the effect of packaging imagery on product liking occurs indirectly through both design appeal and the product naturalness perception. The results of a parallel multiple-mediator analysis show that (1) depicting implied motion made the package be perceived as more appealing, (2) the product corresponding to the package depicting implied motion was perceived as being more natural, and (3) both effects equally contributed to the positive effect of visuals depicting implied motion on product liking.

Overall, these findings widen our understanding of the effects of packaging design on product liking and may help both designers and manufacturers design more appropriate packaging for their products.

Mergers in higher education seem to be more common as academic institutions work to control costs and avoid program duplications in challenging economic times and adopt the more common cost saving measures often espoused from business mergers. The purpose of this paper is to highlight successes from a complementarity-based merger of two institutions in the University System of Georgia (USG) and present results over time.

A case study methodology was employed to explain why a particular merger resulted in greater growth compared to other system-wide academic mergers. This research focuses on a single merger of two institutions in Georgia, one of seven such mergers in the USG institutions to date, involving Gainesville State College and North Georgia College and State University to become the University of North Georgia. Observations are made and complimented by secondary data to rank growth among the seven USG consolidations.

The case findings highlight the success from the complementarity of these institutions. While the two were unique institutions, the success of the merger was linked to the underlying complementarity issues.

Using the strategic issues inherent in mergers from the business literature, the merger of the two institutions is profiled and discussion and recommendations are provided along with areas for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to report the analysis of factors influencing additive manufacturing (AM) application in the food domain.

Based on literature review, 16 factors are being considered in the study. Interpretive structural modelling is used as a modelling approach. The derived structural model indicates the dominant factors. Matriced’ impacts croises-multipication applique and classment (cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification) (MICMAC) analysis is being done to group the factors.

Based on the study, it has been found that raw material usage, the shelf life of food, demand for the food and accuracy are dominant factors. MICMAC analysis indicated that number of driving, dependent and linkage factors are 6, 4 and 4, respectively.

In the present study, 16 factors are being considered. In future, additional factors could be considered to deal with advancements in the food domain.

The study has been executed in discussion with practitioners in AM, and hence derived inferences have practical validity. Food making has become more agile with 3D printer and has become sensitive to customer demand.

Social implications are primarily highlighted by the aspect of controlling the exact amount of nutrients corresponding to the application of food. In certain commercial applications, people can customize their shape and ingredients to be injected into the food.

The development of a model for the analysis of factors influencing AM in the food domain is the original contribution of the authors.

In this paper, the results of an investigation aimed at analysing and comparing the environmental competences of future teachers undergoing training in two universities are presented. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the difference in the acquisition of environmental competences amongst two groups of students enrolled in two universities with different levels of introduction of the environmental education (EE) and sustainability contents in their curriculums. This objective is inserted into a wider finality: to provide recommendations regarding the redesign of pre-service teacher training curricula and learning programmes.

A specifically designed questionnaire was used in this study to analyse the environmental competencies of students in the final year of their degree in primary education in two Spanish universities. One of them had a highly environmentally oriented programme, and the other had a scarcely environmentally oriented programme.

Results show that no significant differences were observed in the results related to the greening level of the training programmes. Pre-service teachers have insufficient environmental knowledge, but with quite positive, responsible attitudes towards environmental issues, and pro-environmental actions that could be categorised as moderate. Results point to the need for further and better pre-service teacher training in environmental issues.

One of the main factors in the appropriate treatment of EE in schools is teacher training. Despite this principle being widely recognised, not all pre-service teacher training programmes adequately address EE. The added value of this paper is the comparison established between the students that followed a degree with a high impact of the environmental competences in its curriculum and another one that has very few references to these competences in the curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the conceptual framework related to the Lean and Green practices, paradigms, future prospects and problems, indicating points of convergence and divergence between them.

Based on this premise, through vast literature systematization, the authors sought to categorize studies in order to consolidate constructs, reinforcing aspects regarding the positive and negative approaches and pointing out the gaps in the current state of the art. Broad literature systematization was carried out; the authors found 107 articles published between 2014 and 2018, separated into 10 categories.

The main constructs confirmed are the positive approximation of the Lean and Green union, evidenced by studies premised on the independent variable category demonstrating that their union influences other environmental performance variables.

The present research is a systematization of the literature, so its results have to be confirmed by other studies.

The study supports the Lean and Green theme, confirming converging issues between the two areas and launching new topics for future research.

The study contributed to the environmental theme by confirming synergies of the Lean and Green union and presenting new research themes.

To assert that Lean and Green systems union is sustainable, with regard to the tripod of sustainability, more studies on the social category are necessary.