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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the best way to create value in Portugal through quality and innovation and also to check what needs to be improved.

A questionnaire was applied to population of 152 companies, with the research and development (R&D) management certified by Portuguese Standard NP 4457. The final sample was 66 companies, which correspond to 45 percent of the population. Statistical analysis of the data collected was performed using IBM SPSS Statistical Software.

The authors highlighted the main reasons/motivations that led companies to implement the NP 4457, which were, among others, competitive advantage and creating value. The systematization of information and the generation and management of ideas were highlighted as the main advantages. The lack of methodologies for innovation management and knowledge management was the difficulty experienced in the implementation of NP 4457. Portugal needs to increase patent registration and it also needs to know how to take advantage of the investment made in R&D, in order to decrease the unit cost of knowledge. Portuguese engineering should be more about product design than production processes. The involvement of top management must be greater.

This investigation contributes to the innovation and quality body of knowledge, since it explores the complementarity between the two concepts as sources of value creation. This case study is one of the first Portuguese empirical research works about value creation through quality and innovation in Portugal. It also allows to know in detail the Portuguese business reality in terms of innovation management.

This paper aims to measure the potential for electronic participation of Brazilian citizens via Facebook as social media, identifying latent factors that provide a favorable environment for such participation by Brazilian municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Based on these factors, the Potential Index for Electronic Participation (PIEP) of municipalities is calculated.

The theoretical discussion is based on the literature on electronic government and citizen participation. In the methodology, exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis have been used to identify latent factors and to classify PIEP according to the clusters.

The results of the research point to serious regional discrepancies regarding the level of participation in social media, highlighting an urgent need for national e-government policies to be rethought from a regionalized point of view.

The research enhances understanding of the relation between sociodemographic indicators such as income, education, employment and those concerning the access to and effective use of social media technologies by citizens and local governments.

The problem statement is how to identify and analyze the corporate risks involved in the relationships with external agents involved in the open product innovation process (OPIP)? Seeking to extend this investigation, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the enterprise risks identified in corporate relations with external agents of the OPIP. This study proposes the systematization of the process of identification and analysis of the enterprise risks involved in the process of open product innovation.

The case explored in this study is the OPIP of Volkswagen do Brasil (VWB), one of the most important subsidiaries of the Volkswagen Group. Criteria were selected to both assessing corporate relations with external agents of the open innovation of VWB and analyzing the enterprise risks identified in these relations. Data collection included interviews with management-level professionals engaged in the OPIP activities and technical visits to a VWB’s industrial plant.

Results demonstrate that the enterprise risks mostly affecting the OPIP have a critical impact on the manufacturing process and initial sales of the new product.

The originality of the study focuses on the proposal of a systematization of how to identify and analyze the corporate risks involved in the process of open product innovation. The study focuses on the theoretical frontier on the open innovation and enterprise risk management (ERM) in the open innovation process.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the pathological, biochemical and redox state parameters of liver tissue in Wistar rats treated from birth to adulthood (119 days) with cafeteria diet.

During the lactation, 6 liters of Wistar rats (dam + 8 pups each) were fed one of two diets: control (CTRL; n = 3) or cafeteria (CAF; n = 3) diets and water ad libitum. After weaning, the males were placed in individual cages, receiving the same diet offered to their respective dams (CTRL or CAF; n = 18) until adulthood. The following parameters were evaluated: absolute and relative liver weight; blood, liver and feces biochemistry; liver histology; and redox state of the liver.

When assessing the relative and absolute organ weight, no significant differences were found between the groups. The Cafeteria group exhibited higher values of serum LDL-c (p = 0.008), VLDL-c (p = 0.03) and triglycerides (p = 0.01), as well as several micro and macrovacuoles of fat accumulation, higher hepatic lipid (p = 0.03) and cholesterol (p = 0.0001) levels regarding Control group. Cafeteria group showed greater expression of glutathione-s-transferase (p = 0.03) and superoxide dismutase (p = 0.005) enzymes compared to the control group. In the case of the markers of oxidative stress, there was no difference between the groups.

A simple and standardized cafeteria diet caused an accumulation of fatty acids in liver tissue, inducing a state of hepatic steatosis besides an increased expression of antioxidant enzymes.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the increase in sensitivity of a single risperidone administration in relation to energy intake of Wistar rats treated with cafeteria diet from birth to adulthood (119 days).

During the lactation period, six litters of Wistar rats (dam + 8 pups each litter) were fed one of the following two diets: Control (n = 3) or Cafeteria (n = 3) diets and water ad libitum. After weaning, the males were placed in individual cages, receiving the same diet offered to their respective dams (Control = 18; or Cafeteria = 18) until adulthood (119 postnatal days). The following parameters were evaluated: food and energy intake; macronutrient intake; weight gain; adipose tissue relative weight; sucrose preference; food intake after an administration of risperidone (0.1 mg/kg body weight).

The Cafeteria group showed a higher energy intake in relation to the Control group (p < 0.001). The consumption of energy beyond the individual needs can be understood as a hyperphagic condition. Also, the Cafeteria group reported greater weight gain (p = 0.048) and accumulation of adipose tissue (p < 0.001) with respect to the Control group. These results indicate that the cafeteria diet generated obesity in animals. The Cafeteria group showed reduced sucrose preference (p = 0.031), which is associated with the development of anhedonia-like behavior. In the food intake test, risperidone showed a greater sensitivity in Cafeteria animals, promoting a decrease in their energy intake in relation to the Control group that received risperidone (p = 0.040).

The cafeteria diet promoted hyperphagia, anhedonia-like behavior and obesity in animals. Acute risperidone administration showed greater sensitivity in the Cafeteria group, with a decrease in energy intake. The reported effects may be related to a downregulation of the dopaminergic system in the NAc region.

This chapter makes a brief incursion through a trajectory of over three decades of activism by the Centre for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo (Núcleo de Estudos da Violência in Portuguese, NEV) in Brazil, recovering the legacy of its forms of activism and academic reflection while analysing the interfaces between violence and democracy in Brazil. The 1980s in Brazil were marked by expectations of profound political and social changes in the context of democratic transition. After 21 years of dictatorship (1964–1985), the military gradually withdrew from government, returning the state’s executive branch to civilian representatives. This was a moment of optimism for progressive groups and social movements, which had fought to dismantle the tradition of arbitrariness and violations of rights perpetrated by the state during the military dictatorship. In this context, NEV was founded as a research unit linked to the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences. Its core academic objective was to analyse and scientifically denounce the conjuncture of violence and human rights violations that remained recurrent; consequently, it demonstrated the continuity of unequal power relations, social and cultural practices that fuel authoritarianism in times considered not authoritarian.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the use of flexible budgets may influence different institutional logics (organizational inertia and flexibility).

A qualitative research based on a single case study in a multinational subsidiary company was carried out. The data were mainly collected using the dialog technique through open-ended and semi-structured interviews and complemented with direct observation in informal and formal meetings and the analysis of internal documents. Content analysis was used for the analysis of the findings.

The use of flexible budgets, which isolates the negative variations due to the decrease in sales volume, may contribute to organizational inertia. However, this can be counterbalanced if the managers try to minimize the decline in performance through initiatives that promote organizational flexibility. In this case study, it was found that the alignment between the production director and the controller, who frequently work under different institutional logics, was important to stimulate organizational flexibility particularly in continuous improvement projects.

The findings of this paper are based on only one in-depth case study. Hence, the results cannot be generalized, but a theoretical contribution can be made. Furthermore, the findings are constrained by the constructs used and the specific managerial and theoretical perspectives that have supported the analysis.

These results can be useful particularly for companies that are dealing with the abrupt drop in the sales volume and use the flexible budget as a performance assessment technique. These firms must pay attention because this combination can stimulate organizational inertia. To counteract this problem, it is necessary that controllers and the managers work by understanding the initiatives that promote organizational flexibility, mainly by Kaizen projects, which can minimize performance decline.

The main contribution may be how to deal with the different managers’ behaviors, given the decrease in sales volume, and it can help an organization survives in times of economic recession and fierce competition environments.

This paper contributes to both practical and academic dimensions. Indeed, despite being widely used, flexible budgeting is not a widely researched topic.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

Healthcare supply chains (HCSCs) face severe challenges when compared to regular chains. Besides avoiding bankruptcy, they must accomplish their goal which is to save lives. Since 2019 the COVID-19 pandemic evidenced that a HCSC disruption generates disruptions to other SCs. Therefore, the objective of this paper is threefold: conduct a systematic literature review to build a HCSC operational excellence (HSCOE) definition; build a conceptual framework by mapping the antecedents of HSCOE and formulate hypotheses; test the hypotheses using a fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) combined with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques to obtain empirical validation.

Given this context, this paper conducted a systematic literature review to build a HSCOE conceptual framework and used a fsQCA combined with PLS-SEM techniques to obtain empirical validation.

The paper revealed a relationship between important variables to achieve HSCOE, such as Supply chain 4.0, SC risk management, SC integration, SC resilience (antecedents) and HSCOE (consequent).

The literature contributions of this paper are as follows: validating a new scale for each of the constructs; finding evidence of the causal relationships between the latent variables; measuring how the constructs influence the HSCOE; in addition, the results address important literature gaps identified by researchers and serve as a guide to organizations that need to implement these practices. Furthermore, this study recommends that HCSC managers consider the implementation of robust initiatives concerning the latent variables presented in this work.

Established companies often engage with startups as a way to improve their innovation performance. While there has been extensive discussion on the reasons, modes, and expected outcomes of these initiatives, there is still a need to understand more about how corporate engagements with startups (CEwS) evolve and how they can enhance a company’s innovation capability. This study proposes a framework of engagement strategies, discussing their purposes and implications to understand the subject better.

This study involved managers from twelve large, established companies across various sectors. The authors used a multicase approach to analyze their experiences and offer a framework for corporate-startup engagement.

The framework for corporate-startup engagement consists of four main strategies: (1) innovative improvement, (2) R&D expansion, (3) more value to corporate venture capital and (4) ecosystem articulation. The authors found that ecosystem articulation, which combines the potentials of the other three strategies, is the most sophisticated approach.

This study offers a systematic view of the CEwS phenomenon, identifying the various modes of engagement, the reasons for adopting each one and potential ways to advance and improve them. For managers, the study reveals the CEwS as a lever to build innovation capabilities over time.