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Drawing on the ability–motivation–opportunity theory applied to the greening of service industries, this paper aims to analyze the extent to which green human resource management plays a role in the adoption of eco-efficiency principles in the financial sector. Environmental knowledge management represents one of the key green human resource management components.

This study conducted a survey with 178 employees working within one of the largest financial banks in Brazil, which has been investing in eco-efficiency for more than ten years.

On the basis of structural equation modelling, this study has provided the following findings: Among all factors taken into consideration in this study, only environmental training positively influences eco-efficiency; training may be suffering owing to barriers associated with empowerment and teamwork; the eco-efficiency program of the studied company would get benefits if it provided more autonomy to employees; and finally, the eco-efficiency program of the studied bank could be more effective if connected with green teams.

To date, this is the first work that relates – with empirical evidence from Brazil – GHRM and eco-efficiency in the financial service industry.

This article aims to analyze the incorporation of harm reduction health workers with lived experience in all services focused on the care for drug users in Belo Horizonte’s mental health network, one of the largest Brazilian Psychosocial Care Networks (Rede de Atenção Psicossocial [RAPS]), and reports the findings of a qualitative study on the life stories, recovery journeys and the professional practice of harm reducers in Belo Horizonte.

For the development of this research, the authors chose the following methodological tools: documentary research; follow-up of harm reduction interventions; access to harm reducers’ field diaries; joint writing of the life stories of the harm reducers.

It indicates that these professionals, as harm reducers empowered by their life experience, have developed various elements and active ingredients of peer support. Their practices and the results of their actions have consolidated their inclusion as Belo Horizonte RAPS’ health workers and highlight that recovery-oriented care and peer support are a real possibility in Brazil.

In this research, harm reducers are coauthors and report their own life experience. In this article, they also talk about the impact of this experience on their work and on the lives of users of mental health services, emphasizing the protagonism and exercise of citizenship by harm reducers.

In the analysis of structures in a fire situation by simplified and analytical methods, one assumption is that the fire resistance time is greater than or equal to the required fire resistance time. Among the methodologies involving the fire resistance time, the most used is the tabular method, which associates fire resistance time values to structural elements based on minimum dimensions of the cross section. The tabular method is widely accepted by the technical-scientific community due to the fact that it is safe and practical. However, its main criticism is that it results in lower fire resistance times than advanced thermal and thermostructural analysis methods. The objective of this study was to evaluate the fire resistance time of reinforced concrete beams and compare it with the required fire resistance time recommended by the tabular method of NBR 15200 (ABNT, 2012).

The fire resistance time and required fire resistance time of reinforced concrete beams were evaluated using, respectively, numerical models developed based on the finite element method and the tabular method of NBR 15200 (ABNT, 2012). The influence of the following parameters was investigated: longitudinal reinforcement cover, characteristic compressive strength of concrete, beam height, longitudinal reinforcement area and arrangement of steel bars.

Among the evaluated parameters, the covering of the longitudinal reinforcement proved to be more relevant for the fire resistance time, justifying that the tabular method of NBR 15200 (ABNT, 2012) being strongly and directly influenced by this parameter. In turn, more resistant concretes, higher beams and higher steel grades have lower fire resistance time values. This is because beams in these conditions have greater resistance capacity at room temperature and, consequently, are subject to external stresses of greater magnitude. In some cases, the fire resistance time was even lower than the required fire resistance time prescribed by NBR 15200 (ABNT, 2012). Both the fire resistance time and the required fire resistance time were not influenced by the arrangement of the longitudinal reinforcements.

The present paper innovates by demonstrating the influence of other important design variables on the required fire resistance time of the NBR 15200 (ABNT, 2012). Among several conclusions, it was found that the load level to which the structural elements are subjected considerably affects their fire resistance time. For this reason, it was recommended that the methods for calculating the required fire resistance time consider the load level. In addition, the article quantifies the security degree of the tabular method and exposes some situations for which the tabular method proved to be unsafe. Moreover, in all the models analyzed, the relationship between the span and the vertical deflection associated with the failure of the beams in a fire situation was determined. With this, a span over average deflection relationship was presented in which beams in fire situations fail.

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.

This study addresses the importance of paid work for the autonomy of poor women in the Bolsa Família Programme (BFP), Brazil. The aim of this study is to consider the influence that BFP may have on women seeking paid work, by comparing the situation and the perceptions of women who receive Bolsa Família (BF) with those of women who fall within this same profile but are not included in the programme.

The aim of this study is to consider the influence that BFP may have on women seeking paid work, by comparing the situation and the perceptions of women who receive Bolsa Família (BF) with those of women who fall within this same profile but are not included in the programme. Data were produced from a case study, using a non-probability sample and structured individual interviews in a large city in the south of Brazil.

CCTs designed in the moulds of the BFP, despite its relevance for alleviating poverty, do not have the potential to empower women or for their autonomy, since they do not contribute towards tackling the barriers resulting from the interaction between paid and unpaid labour, and gender determinants in this interaction.

The methodology adopted, with content analysis, allows the collection of the research group participants’ experiences and perceptions, considering the specific nature of the material and symbolic context investigated. However, it does not allow for broad generalizations on the relation between CCT programmes and these women`s paid labour. Within the limits of the inferences produced by the content analysis, this study does enable the theories of ‘laziness’ as a risk resulting from social assistance to be dispelled.

Given these findings, the paper reiterates the importance of taking a critical view of the family when drafting development policies.

This paper analyses the divide between the information professional and the community. It focuses on topics such as social exclusion and the bibliographical explosion; information and knowledge production; the social impact of public libraries; the role of the information specialist in a developing society; reading habits; critical reading education; and the role of public libraries in an information society.

Most carbon accounting consists of valuing what has not happened; such absent entities and their materialisation through simulated calculations can enact political participation, however. By using Marres’s (2012) notion of an “experimental site of material politics”, this paper aims to investigate the mediating role of simulated calculations of prevented carbon emissions in deploying environmental politics’ discourses. Here, such calculations become seductive forces for public engagement and help performing engaging spaces for supporting the diffusion of innovation technologies.

The empirical analysis concerns a simulated calculative device developed by Autostrade, a motorway management firm, in its work to translate questions about capacity utilisation, through the fluidity of traffic, into reductions in CO₂ emissions. These reductions took the form of a simulation that required an apparatus to be performed and involved alternative scenarios focussing on hypothetical rather than absolute CO₂ reductions.

The Autostrade case highlights how simulated calculations of absent CO₂ emissions participate in the construction of a collective experience by interfacing concerns that encompass the rationalities of the domestication of technological innovation and make motorway mobility a responsible and ac-countable action.

The paper shows how simulated and experimental calculations on absent carbon emissions act as mediators between public engagement and the deployment of environmental politics discourses. They both extend political participation and propagate and reproduce the trials, which, from time to time, challenge the enticement and forcefulness of a technological innovation.

The paper suggests a different dimension of politics that relies on material politics. Rather than considering human centric discursive acts, it looks at the power of technical objects and their augmented calculative devices in engaging the public in environmental politics. This is where absence, which is made visible and materialised through simulations, deploys affordances that reframe power relationships.

This is the first case study that addresses the issue of the role of accounting calculation on absent carbon emissions in enabling innovation and engaging publics in environmental politics.