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This paper studies the environmental behavior of two low‐income social housings: one is located in Barcelona, Spain, and the other in Porto Alegre, Brazil. They were both built around the same time. A comparative study of the climates of each of the cities under consideration was made, pointing out the similarities and differences. The gathering of data was done through in situ measurement of the environmental characteristics of the open areas of the both low income multistorey housing and of the interior of two typical apartments. The technique of observation was also used to register the use and characteristics of the studied spaces. At the same time, the solar insulation was studied throughout the year, using the solar simulator (“heliodon”). The computer simulations were done to analyze the natural lateral lighting and the natural ventilation. Based on the environmental measurements done throughout the year and the opinion poll about the satisfaction of the user, the principles of projects and constructive characteristics, the condition of the resulting habitability, as well as the ways of using the exterior and interior spaces and the user’s opinion about their residence were analyzed. It concludes with an evaluation of the results obtained.

Extant literature on strategic environment analysis confirm broad evidence of studies on competences in the context of private sector organizations. Nevertheless, there is a growing interest and evidence of strategic competence in public sector organizations seeking to deliver improved performance. This paper attempts to determine the strategic competences of a National Health Service (NHS) unit for better organizational performance.

Based on the qualitative analysis of empirical evidence collected in a UK based NHS case study organization, we arrive at a strategic competence performance framework for the health unit using research carried out through interviews with employees and partner organization members.

By examining a UK-based qualitative case study, the proposed framework puts forward four strategic competence pillars vital for delivering organizational performance and effectively managing the environment of NHS unit's operations. The four strategic competences that are identified to foster NHS unit's performance are strategic leadership, staff engagement, knowledge transfer and partnership working.

The study examines the environment in which a UK based NHS health unit operates and identify the different strategic competences to deliver organizational performance.

This study aims to examine the degree to which a selection of home country factors affects the proclivity of firms to internationalise. The study also proposes and tests a conceptual model that fuses institutional and resource-based theories to improve our understanding of firm internationalisation.

The study uses cross-sectional, national-level secondary data from the 2018 Global Entrepreneurship Development Institute and World Economic Forum data sets on global entrepreneurship and competitiveness indices for 137 countries. The data is analysed using correlation and hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that national income, institutions, trade openness and availability of risk capital positively influenced firm internationalisation, while home-country networking had an inverse effect. However, home country infrastructure had no statistically significant effect on firm internationalisation.

The findings highlight the importance of considering home country attributes in understanding the internationalisation of firms.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence of the role of local factors on the internationalisation of entrepreneurial ventures. It also tests a novel conceptual model that integrates institutional and resource-based theories to explain the nuances of the internationalisation of business ventures globally.

The current pilot study explored food insecurity, food waste, food related behaviours and cooking confidence of UK consumers following the COVID-19 lockdown.

Data were collected from 473 UK-based consumers (63% female) in March 2020. A cross-sectional online survey measured variables including food insecurity prevalence, self-reported food waste, food management behaviours, confidence and frequency of use of a range of cooking methods, type of food eaten (ultra-processed, semi-finished, unprocessed) and packaging type foods are purchased in.

39% of participants have experienced some food insecurity in the last 12 months. Being younger, having a greater BMI and living in a smaller household were associated with food insecurity. Green leaves, carrots, potatoes and sliced bread are the most wasted of purchased foods. Polenta, green leaves and white rice are the most wasted cooked foods. Food secure participants reported wasting a smaller percentage of purchased and cooked foods compared to food insecure participants. Overall, participants were most confident about boiling, microwaving and stir-frying and least confident with using a pressure cooker or sous vide. Food secure participants were more confident with boiling, stir-frying, grilling and roasting than insecure food participants.

This has implications for post lockdown policy, including food policies and guidance for public-facing communications.

We identified novel differences in self-report food waste behaviours and cooking confidence between the food secure and insecure consumers and observed demographics associated with food insecurity.

This study investigates how the degree of internationalization (DOI) affects the financial performance of emerging market companies by making the distinction between export intensity and multinationality (i.e. foreign direct investment). The authors argue that the different DOI-performance patterns in the literature relate to different internationalization approaches, which are moderated in distinct ways by formal institutions in the home country.

Based on data of Brazilian firms in several industries and with different internationalization patterns including 100 exporting firms and 30 multinational companies with varying degrees of multinationality over a period of five consecutive years, the authors test their hypotheses using an unbalanced panel data with 346 firm-year observations. In order to test how the quality of formal institutions moderate the DOI-performance relationships, the authors estimate the changes in the slope of the regression line by adding and subtracting one standard deviation to the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) variables.

A positive and linear association between export intensity-performance (EI-P) highlights the location specific comparative advantages of exporting Brazilian firms, while the multinationality-performance (M-P) relationship points to a horizontal S-shape pattern which conforms to the theoretical assumptions of the three-stage internationalization process. Formal institutions moderate positively the EI-P relationship, but moderate negatively each of the three stages of the M-P relationship.

The findings from this study provide critical insights that contribute to the ongoing debate on how formal institutions in the home country affect the DOI-performance relationship of emerging market companies (EMCs). However, the authors consider that it has limitations as they focused exclusively on formal institutions captured by governance institutions in the Brazilian context.

This study provides relevant insights to managers and policy makers. Findings reveal that strong formal institutions in the home country make it easier (cheaper) for EMCs to invest abroad, and, at the same time, increase the efficiency of exporting firms and positively influence financial performance. Moreover, results show that during downturns in their domestic markets, multinational EMCs outperform domestic firms. In that sense, while policy makers can promote the internationalization and competitiveness of EMCs by implementing more supportive formal institutions, managers should consider a proactive approach and invest abroad when conditions in the home country are favorable.

By making the distinction between export intensity and multinationality this study contributes to the literature on the DOI-performance of EMCs providing a more nuanced view on how formal institutions in the home country moderate the EI-P and M-P relationships in different ways.

The objective of this explorative study was to analyse the association of socio-economic factors and attitudes towards cooking with the time devoted to home meals cooking in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, the authors tested and analysed data to see if there is any relationship between the time devoted to cooking by respondents and obesity.

The sample data consisted of 1,006 inhabitants’ subjects selected using the quota sampling following the structure of the population structure. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions were estimated to analyse factors influencing the time spent in the preparation of meals at home. The correlation between time devoted to cooking by respondents and obesity was addressed using the Kruskal–Wallis test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The results showed that female gender, higher age, smaller household size and presence of children increased the time spent by respondents in the preparation of home-cooked meals. Home cooking is perceived as a tastier option compared to, for example, chilled ready meals. The time devoted to cooking by respondents and her/his above average weight are correlated in our study.

To the authors’ knowledge, no recent study has comprehensively analysed cooking behaviour and time spent cooking in the post-Soviet countries, including the Czech Republic. The authors’ quota-representative study provided relevant insights into eating behaviour, as the Czech Republic has faced a high increase in the obesity rates in the last decade.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a complete guide to a qualitative method for capturing critical moments of managerial practice that combines interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and existential hermeneutic phenomenology (EHP).

This article is based on the findings of extensive research and describes in detail the specific steps that must be taken for complete replication of research. The research uses methods of IPA and critically develops the EHP framework with an emphasis on the analysis of interpersonal relationships.

Depending on the testing of the research method in practice, the article evaluates the IPA-EHP method as suitable for the research on critical moments of managerial lived experience, considering the causes of the crisis.

This article is based on demand from academics who would like to use this method to analyse managerial practice. Especially now, at a time associated with a number of challenging events, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, qualitative research is gaining in importance, even in management science. The original interpretative framework based on the phenomenology of Fink and Patočka is appropriate in this respect.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge on how research evaluation in different national and organisational contexts affects, often in unintended ways, research and publication practices. In particular, it looks at the development of book publication in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the Czech Republic since 2004, when a performance-based system of evaluation was introduced, up to the present.

The paper builds upon ethnographic research complemented by the analysis of Czech science policy documents, data available in the governmental database “Information Register of R&D results” and formal and informal interviews with expert evaluators and other stakeholders in the research system. It further draws on the authors’ own experience as scholars, who have also over the years participated in a number of evaluation procedures as peers and experts.

The number of books published by researchers in SSH based at Czech institutions has risen considerably in reaction to the pressure for productivity that is inscribed into the evaluation methodology and has resulted in the rise of in-house publishing by researchers’ own research institution, “fake internationalisation” using foreign low-quality presses as the publication venue, and the development of a culture of orphaned books that have no readers.

In the Czech Republic robust and internationally harmonised bibliometric data regarding books would definitely help to create a form of research evaluation that would stimulate meaningful scholarly book production. At the same time, better-resourced and better-designed peer review evaluation is needed.

This is the first attempt to analyse in detail the conditions and consequences the Czech performance-based research evaluation system has for SSH book publication. The paper demonstrates that often discussed harming of SSH and book-writing in particular by performance-based IF-centred research evaluation does not necessarily manifest in declining numbers of publications. On the contrary, the number of books published may increase at the cost of producing more texts of questionable scholarly quality.

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.

Intellectual capital represents an integral part of evaluation in many companies. Applied methods do not consider three crucial aspects of intellectual capital, which are up-to-date research topics, dynamic nature, and internal perspective. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a novel intellectual capital self-evaluation method, addressing this issue.

Analysis of topics is based on collocation, correspondence, and co-occurrence analyses. Method construction stage is grounded in knowledge processes and deploys a panel of expert evaluations, Saaty’s decision matrix, based on pairwise comparison and the stakeholders’ estimates.

A new method for evaluation enables complex internal view on the status of intellectual capital in an organisation, as it is based on up-to-date research topics, a self-evaluation approach, and the dynamics of knowledge processes.

The list of applied criteria is extendable, and the set weights are adjusted. Estimates are subjective in their nature. Provided results are tied with the specifics of self-evaluated organisations and cannot be used for inter-organisational comparison.

Presented system enables organisational self-evaluation, focussed on the complex and dynamic internal view, based on up-to-date topics. Despite the limitations, this self-evaluation can be conducted for various types of economic systems.

Proposed method is patterned on the current research topics and offers dynamic- and internal-oriented approach to self-evaluation of intellectual capital status.