Search results

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perceived quality of the service environment, regarding the use of the flipped classroom, through a survey of MBA students.

Four hypotheses were developed from the literature in marketing and quality services in higher education. The hypotheses were tested using linear regressions. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The sample had 981 effective responses.

The results of the statistical analysis show that the evaluation of the perceived quality of the educator and course are positively affected by the use of the flipped classroom.

Only one higher education organisation was studied. The variables analysed have no mediation and moderation, which is a suggestion for future studies.

This paper contributes to studies of higher education services and quality, as it shows the influence of the process on the educator. In higher education, the educator is usually considered independent, having a strong influence on perceived quality. The study contributes to the theme by showing the flipped classroom as an effective teaching strategy that requires further empirical study.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the work of IDMEC, a not‐for‐profit R&D private association located in Porto and Lisbon, Portugal.

The paper focuses on IDMEC's R&D activities, focusing on aeronautics.

Together IDMEC‐Porto and INEGI provide answers to R&D challenges in the broad area of aerostructures, from fracture and fatigue problems to advanced composites for space applications.

The paper offers a concise presentation of the IDMEC's R&D activities in the field of aeronautics.

Nowadays trace organic pollutants represent a major concern in water treatment systems. Activated carbon has been used for most applications aiming at the reduction of these kind of compounds in aqueous effluents, but regeneration needs and high operation costs led to a renewed interest in the search for alternative sorbents. Pine bark is an excedentary raw material from sawmills in Portugal, and therefore a profitable natural resource that has already been successfully tested in the adsorption of organochlorines from contaminated water. This study aims at characterizing the pine bark surface structurally and chemically, to understand the nature of sorption occurring when a trace organic contaminant is present in aqueous effluents. Pentachlorophenol (PCP) was the trace contaminant used in the experiments. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), mercury porosimetry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were the techniques used, in addition to classical chemical analysis and solid phase micro extraction (SPME) prior to gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC‐MS) for PCP quantification. The pine bark proved to be a material of very low porosity, low specific surface area, strong carbon aromatic content probably relative to polyphenols and lignin composition. Sorption experiments showed a good correlation for the linear adsorption isotherm, as well as the desorption experiments. In the conditions tested, the average PCP removal after 24 h was above 98 per cent. This material proved to be an encouraging sorbent for cheap water remediation solutions.

This paper focuses on the influence of stabilisation and policy choices on Brazilian banking. It is generally understood that stabilisation, ceteris paribus, allows banking to develop, but, Brazil faced its worst banking crisis just after stabilisation. The main conclusions are that a considerable proportion of the obstacles faced were due to an inappropriate banking policy and that even though many of the problems have been solved, some remain.

The goal of this work is to create a computational finite element model to perform thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) with the usage of a non-ideal load frequency, containing the effects of the material thermal properties.

Throughout this document, the methodology of the model is presented first, followed by the procedure and results. The last part is reserved to results, discussion and conclusions.

This work had the main goal to create a model to perform TSA with the usage of non-ideal loading frequencies, considering the materials’ thermal properties. Loading frequencies out of the ideal range were applied and the model showed capable of good results. The created model reproduced acceptably the TSA, with the desired conditions.

This work creates a model to perform TSA with the usage of non-ideal loading frequencies, considering the materials’ thermal properties.

The paper aims to investigate outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), aiming to unveil whether the Chinese OFDI policy acted as a country-specific advantage (CSA) that has been turned by Chinese firms, particularly SOEs, into a firm-specific advantage (FSA).

Using a data set spanning 18 years (1996-2013) on international mergers and acquisitions (IM&As) by Chinese companies (SOEs and private-owned enterprises – POEs) and drawing on extant literature, the paper systematically compares the behavior of Chinese SOEs and POEs, aiming to identify differences in their behavioral patterns that indicate that SOEs have benefitted more from policy-induced advantages than their private counterparts.

Among other aspects, significant differences were found regarding the behavior of SOEs vis-à-vis POEs that seem to show that SOEs had greater support from public entities, leading them to close larger deals and purchase more companies/stakes in cash; acquire firms with greater debt (implying higher interest payments); and purchase smaller stakes than POEs (indicating that there are other objectives than control). This lends support to the assumption that Chinese SOEs are “sitting on piles of cash”, and that the availability of capital acted as a CSA that has been transformed into an FSA by the companies involved, notably by SOEs.

The comprehensive and large-scale data set used includes wholly owned SOEs, leaving out of this research partially owned SOEs. The findings of this paper have implications for the discussion on competitive neutrality and for the academic, managerial and public policy debate.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study, to date, that shows systematic differences in financing patterns of OFDI (notably via IM&As) by Chinese SOEs and POEs, among other behavioral characteristics of both types of companies when conducting FDI abroad, linking that to CSAs and FSAs induced by CSAs.

Given the ways in which the research pressures on university staff are becoming seemingly ever greater, an issue of the European Journal of Marketing that is given over to a survey of the kinds of research initiatives which are currently being carried out is timely. The study which provides the basis for this was conducted between December 1994 and February 1995, with questionnaires being sent to staff in universities throughout Europe. At the time the final selection was made, a total of 150 responses had been received from 18 countries.

Looking at a series of recent large street protests in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, the chapter examines the relationship between political action, urban space, and media use. We specifically look at what we are calling media epiphanies, moments in which the public becomes aware of its existence as a mediated public, that is, as a public that is forged through the use of a particular media. We rely on extensive participant observation and interviews for the description of the June 2013 protests and the subsequent massive rallies. We examine the materiality of the employed media and the experience of participants to understand the meaning of the phenomenon, for which we used a combination of Frankfurt and Toronto Schools approach. The strength of the fluid June 2013 protests in São Paulo questioned the political status quo and served as a trampoline for subsequent media demonstrations whose political impact relied as well on traditional cultural forms. The 2016 impeachment House vote, as a true media event, reconstructed, in positive and negative terms, the fractured political dialogue of representation. The concept of media epiphany can be used to assess the strength of demonstrations and the meaning of collective action in general. Identifying these phenomena, we can give focus to empirical research and better examine the complex intersections between forms of communications, physical environments, and the experience of the individual in contemporary cities.