Search results

The aim of this study is to investigate whether knowledge management (KM) contributes to the development of strategic orientation and to enhance innovativeness, and whether these three factors contribute to improve business performance.

A sample of 241 Brazilian companies was surveyed, using Web‐based questionnaires with 54 questions, using ten‐point scales to measure the degree of agreement on each item of each construct. Structural equation modeling techniques were applied for model assessment and analysis of the relationships among constructs. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and path analysis using the technique of structural equation modeling were applied to the data.

Effective KM contributes positively to strategic orientation. Although there is no significant direct effect of KM on innovativeness, the relationship is significant when mediated by strategic orientation. Similarly, effective KM has no direct effect on business performance, but this relationship becomes statistically significant when mediated by strategic orientation and innovativeness.

The findings indicate that KM permeates all relationships among the constructs, corroborating the argument that knowledge is an essential organizational resource that leverages all value‐creating activities. The results indicate that both KM and innovativeness produce significant impacts on performance when they are aligned with a strategic orientation that enables the organization to anticipate and respond to changing market conditions.

There is a substantial body of research on several types of relationships involving KM, strategic orientation, innovativeness and performance. This study offers an original contribution by analyzing all of those constructs simultaneously, using established scales so that comparative studies are possible.

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 article explores citing and referencing systems in social sciences and medicine articles from different theoretical and practical perspectives, considering bibliographic references as a facet of descriptive representation.

The analysis of citing and referencing elements (i.e. bibliographic references, mentions, quotations and respective in-text reference pointers) identified citing and referencing habits within disciplines under consideration and errors occurring over the long term as stated by previous studies now expanded. Future expected trends of information retrieval from bibliographic metadata was gathered by approaching these referencing elements from the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) entities concepts.

Reference styles do not fully accomplish with their role of guiding authors and publishers on providing concise and well-structured bibliographic metadata within bibliographic references. Trends on representative description revision suggest a predicted distancing on the ways information is approached by bibliographic references and bibliographic catalogs adopting FRBR concepts, including the description levels adopted by each of them under the perspective of the FRBR entities concept.

This study was based on a subset of medicine and social sciences articles published in 2019 and, therefore, it may not be taken as a final and broad coverage. Future studies expanding these approaches to other disciplines and chronological periods are encouraged.

By approaching citing and referencing issues as descriptive representation's facets, findings on this study may encourage further studies that will support information science and computer science on providing tools to become bibliographic metadata description simpler, better structured and more efficient facing the revision of descriptive representation actually in progress.

In this study, the authors want to identify current possible causes for citing and referencing errors in scholarly literature to compare if something changed from the snapshot provided by Sweetland in his 1989 paper.

The authors analysed reference elements, i.e. bibliographic references, mentions, quotations and respective in-text reference pointers, from 729 articles published in 147 journals across the 27 subject areas.

The outcomes of the analysis pointed out that bibliographic errors have been perpetuated for decades and that their possible causes have increased, despite the encouraged use of technological facilities, i.e. the reference managers.

As far as the authors know, the study is the best recent available analysis of errors in referencing and citing practices in the literature since Sweetland (1989).

The objective of this article is to identify through a literature study which factors determine the success of process automation in management systems.

A systematic approach is applied to analyze the available literature on the topic. The first stage of the study consisted of analyzing publications aiming to identify aspects that may influence the implementation of automated process management tools in management systems. In the second stage, a synthesis of the information was performed, resulting in a set of representative factors of the aspects identified.

As a result of the literature review, determinant aspects were identified for the implementation of process automation in organizations in general. These elements are summarized in the following factors: Characterization and diversity of the context, Organizational Performance, People Engagement, Knowledge Management, Automated Process Management and Information Technology.

Prior knowledge of the determinants and associated aspects has the potential to optimize process automation, as it eliminates unnecessary steps and allows better application of the available resources.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen the discussion regarding the competitiveness of clusters based on a theoretical and empirical study that compares the level of competitiveness of the Brazilian wine cluster located in Serra Gaúcha with the competitiveness of the Chilean cluster located in Valle del Maule.

A qualitative-descriptive approach was applied to the study, and data collection was conducted through secondary sources.

The analysis employed a competitiveness analysis model consisting of 11 competitiveness factors. The Chilean cluster presented a higher level of competitiveness in four competitiveness factors (“scope of viable and relevant business,” “introduction of new technologies,” “balance with no privileged positions” and “oriented strategy”), while the Brazilian cluster presented a higher level of competitiveness in three competitiveness factors (“concentration,” “cooperation” and “replacement”). For four of the competitiveness factors of the model, both clusters presented similar levels of competitiveness.

By comparing the two wine clusters, it was possible to identify aspects that can be improved to increase competitiveness, especially in the Brazilian cluster. These aspects include, first, the need for bottle manufacturers in Serra Gaúcha, which would have a positive impact on production costs; second, the expansion of the geographical indication registration for the entire Serra Gaúcha region, resulting in an enhanced image of Brazilian wine abroad; and third, greater incentives for exports, which would result in an increase in market share.

The paper proposes an explanation for the superior level of competitiveness of the Chilean cluster regarding the “scope of viable and relevant business,” “balance with no privileged positions,” “introduction of new technologies” and “strategy focussed on cluster development.” In terms of its contribution, the study developed additional metrics for the model adopted, which can be used for the competitive analysis of other agribusiness clusters.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the level of innovation of products, processes and services in technology‐based incubated companies.

On the basis of this review, the stages of development of companies incubated in the Incubating Center for Technological Companies São Paulo, Brazil, were analyzed and through the integration of three different statistical techniques (factorial analysis, cluster analysis and logistic regression), a basis for analyses and considerations was obtained: the companies studied were segregated into clusters according to each one's stage of innovation.

A statistical model was estimated to calculate the probability of innovation of the companies – a methodological tool for evaluating the actual presence of innovation in technology‐based companies installed in incubators.

Owing to the nature of the sample chosen, the results might not be generalized to broader or international contexts.

The estimated model should contribute as an analytical tool to incubators in evaluating the probability of innovation in technology‐based incubated companies.

With the use of this analytical model, incubators should be more capable of developing strategies to stimulate innovation.

This paper reviews widely the contributions of authors concerning factors of innovation in order to present a model drawn from three different multivariate analyses. Furthermore, the theme of innovation assessment in technology‐based incubators has few contributions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance of innovation in the industry; factors that condition technological competitiveness at Magneti Marelli Controle Motor; analyse the risks and opportunities involved in the process of diffusion and management of flexfuel technology.

The methodological approach was qualitative/descriptive case study, supported by the theoretical framework on risk analysis and strategic analysis.

In a Brazilian market context, new technologies need to make cars more competitive in cost/price terms. Magneti Marelli had an innovative and important role in the development and implementation of this technology. Thus, it achieved a higher share of market and recognition of its entrepreneurial character.

There are few academic papers that relate the topics risk, strategy and Innovation. Moreover, the paper reports a successful case of Brazilian innovation in the global automotive industry.

This paper investigates the roles and activities of the orchestrators of innovation networks constituted within cities. In this sense, the authors expected to contribute for research related to the roles and activities of the orchestrators of innovation networks constituted in the scope of cities given the large number and diversity of complex and multiple dimensions social actors (Castells & Borja, 1996; Reypens, Lievens & Blazevic, 2019).

The authors conducted an exploratory research with a single case study in depth. The case chosen for the paper is the case of Pacto Alegre. The case selection criterion was the relevance of the Pacto Alegre Case in the construction of an innovation network in the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The Pacto Alegre network was proposed by the Alliance for Innovation (composed of the three main Universities in the city: UFRGS, PUCRS and UNISINOS) and by the Municipality of Porto Alegre. In addition to these actors, the network counts on financial and development institutions as sponsors, with media partners, with design partners, with an advisory board (composed of five professionals considered references in different themes) and composed by more than 100 companies, associations and institutions from different areas (Pacto Alegre, 2019). Data were collected from 09/20/2020 to 11/30/2020 through in-depth interviews, documentary research and non-participant observation.

In this research, the authors highlighted the city as a community that involves and integrates various actors, such as citizens and companies, to collaborative innovation activities. For this, they proposed a framework on innovation networks and network orchestration. In this direction, seven dimensions of the “orchestration of innovation networks” were assumed as a result of the combination of previous studies by Dhanaraj and Parke (2006), Hurmelinna-Laukkanen et al. (2011) and da Silva and Bitencourt (2019). In the sequence, different roles of orchestrators associated with the literature were adopted based on the work by Pikkarainen et al. (2017) and Nielsen and Gausdal (2017).

The authors’ results advance in relation to other fields by promoting the expansion of the “orchestration of innovation networks” model with the combination of distinct elements from the literature in a coherent whole (agenda setting, mobilization, network stabilization, creation and transfer of knowledge, innovation appropriability, coordination and co-creation) and in the validation of its applicability in the context of the innovation network studied. In addition, when relating different roles of orchestrators to the seven dimensions studied, it was realized that there is no linear and objective relationship between the dimensions and roles of the orchestrator, as in each dimension there may be more than one role being played in the orchestration.

Therefore, the findings suggest two theoretical contributions. First, the authors identified a role not discussed in the literature, here called the communicator. In the case analysis, the authors observed the communicator role through functions performed by a media partner of the innovation network and by a group of civil society engaged in the city's causes. Second, the authors indicated a new dimension of orchestration related to the management of communication in the innovation network and its externalities such as p. ex. civil and organized society, characteristic of an innovation network set up within a city.

Although several studies have proposed advances in the understanding of the orchestration of innovation networks (Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006; Ritala, Armila & Blomqvist, 2009; Nambisan & Sawhney, 2011; Hurmelinna-Laukkanen et al., 2011), the discussion on the topic is still a black box (Nilsen & Gausdal, 2017). More specifically, the authors identified a gap in the literature about the role and activities of actors in the city level. Few studies connected the regional dimension with the roles and activities of the orchestrators (Hurmelinna-Laukkanen et al., 2011; Pikkarainen et al., 2017), raising several challenges and opportunities to be considered by academics and managers.

This paper investigates if and how entrepreneurs' social capital influences their individual entrepreneurial orientation attributes (innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking).

The research method adopted is an exploratory multiple case study. The case chosen is that of an emerging and under-examined entrepreneur, the religious entrepreneur. The study investigates 20 pastors responsible for small enterprise-churches in Brazil.

Social capital influences individual entrepreneurial orientation, being characterized by a relative paradox. The networks must be dense enough to stimulate entrepreneurs' individual entrepreneurial orientation but not be so dense as to harm innovativeness, proactivity and risk-taking. Further, data show that individual entrepreneurial orientation influences social capital.

One limitation relates to the semi-structured interviews' restricted use. A second limitation is associated with the recognition of churches only as productive enterprises.

This article suggests the significance of incorporating both themes in entrepreneurial education and training programs. It also stresses the appropriateness of religious entrepreneurship as an empirical research field for business scholars.

The contributions are fivefold. First, the authors build exploratory theoretical propositions on the influence of social capital on individual entrepreneurial orientation. Second, they highlight the significance of dense networks for individual entrepreneurial orientation, expanding the literature that supports the relevance of cohesive networks solely to the construct's organizational dimension. Third, the authors suggest that a relative paradox may characterize individual entrepreneurial orientation. Fourth, the authors suggest the existence of recursion between both constructs. Finally, this study is one of the first to examine social capital and individual entrepreneurial orientation, considering innovativeness, proactivity, and risk-taking, which represents a neglected field in benchmarking studies.