Repositório RCAAP

Empirical results of the concept of territorial capital suggest that the Hungarian regional economic development is defined by the coopetitive networks of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, overall purpose of this paper is to scrutinize theoretically and empirically on one hand the structural characteristics of the Hungarian coopetitive networks of SMEs, on the other hand is to analyze effects of the networks of same firms on regional economic development. Altogether three Hungarian coopetitive networks of SMEs were found and analyzed longitudinally embracing 127 entrepreneurs thus 127 interviews and 127 questionnaires were conducted as well. Since the coopetitive networks of enterprises have territorial extension, the advanced methods of network science and spatial econometrics were combined. The key findings show that focal firm plays outstanding role in redistributing market information, organizing mutual transportation and guarantees robustness of the coopetitive networks. Finally, the coopetitive networks of SMEs determine significantly the new jobs creation and pay raise, in general, the accumulation of territorial capital at regional scale as well.

We are witnessing a need for a quick and intelligent reaction from organizations to the level and speed of change in business processes.New information technologies and systems (IT/IS) are challenging business models and products. One of the great shakes comes from the online and/or mobile apps and platforms.These are having a tremendous impact in launching innovative and competitive services through the combination of digital and physical features. This leads to actively rethink enterprise information systems’ portfolio, its management and suitability. One relevant way for enterprises to manage their IT/IS in order to cope with those challenges is enterprise and process architecture. A decision-making culture based on processes helps to understand and define the different elements that shape an organization and how those elements inter-relate inside and outside it. IT/IS portfolio management requires an increasing need of modeling data and process flows for better discerning and acting at its selection and alignment with business goals. The new generation of enterprise architecture (NGEA) helps to design intelligent processes that answer quickly and creatively to new and challenging trends. This has to be open, agile and context-aware to allow well-designed services that match users’ expectations. This study includes two real cases/problems to solve quickly in companies and solutions are presented in line with this architectural approach.

This article seeks to demonstrate the impact three economic concepts that gained traction in the last decades of neoliberalism – experience, attention and ubiquity – have caused in the current role of digital arts and artists in society, both on and off-line, as well as how they have changed the arts ecosystem, namely by altering the relationships between artists, audience, curating, public spaces – material and virtual, academia and companies. It addresses the commoditisation of creativity and innovation, which are now organised and consumed like products. It also offers insights on how the concept of art ownership has been replaced by experience, how mass-individualization of the selfie generation artists in a globally aestheticised and exposure-addicted world has contributed to the dismantling of community and association mind-sets and how the architecture of participation, presented as a vector of globalisation, inclusion, and democratisation of access to creation and enjoyment, actually revealed itself as a vector of inequality. It concludes by showing how hacktivism and artivism rise as new vanguards in an environment that is written and reads itself, bridging materiality and virtuality, in a multiplicity of blended spaces.

Summary: Comparative evaluation on Quality of Life (QoL) perception on different communitarian residential institutional environments for senior citizens. Method: Cross-sectional comparative study, using a deductive and a descriptive statistical method on a sample of 50 senior citizens inhabitants in the Retirement-village St. Joseph of Alcalar (Alcalar group), 56 senior residents in traditional retirement homes (RSS group) and on 52 senior attendees of day care institutions (DCI group). This research comprised on two self-applicable questioners for elderly citizens on WHOQOL-BREF e WHOQOL-Old PT. We evaluated 158 senior citizens selected from 22 Institutions. Results: QoL levels perceived by Alcalar Retirement-village inhabitants were predominantly higher than QoL levels perceived by residents in RSS and DCI attendees. The trend in QoL results obtained by the Alcalar Retirement-village inhabitants just wasn’t absolute because they were overcome by DCI attendees results in some (few) areas assessed in both WHOQOL scales. Conclusion: The Alcalar Retirement-village group globally showed higher levels of Quality of Life perception by comparison with the other two group subjects’ residents and attendees, respectively, from RSS and DCI.

The purpose of this study was to revisit the inventory developed by Galvão and Pinheiro (2016), measuring seven psychological traits common to business owners, and to propose an inventory that could improve the measuring of psychological traits of Portuguese business owners. The 26 items inventory was used on two samples. Sample 1, included 229 individuals (33.2% business owners) and Sample 2, used to cross-validate findings, included 257 individuals (44.0% business owners). Correlational statistical tests and a Principal Component Analysis were carried out, resulting in items loading to 3 components. The loading items were presented to 17 business owners to validate the trait they most associated to each question, resulting in a fit to 16 items also identified by the authors as having theoretical foundations. Structural Equation Modelling was performed showing good fits for both sample 2 (RMSEA=0.052; TLI=0.942; CFI=0.951) as sample 1 (RMSEA=0.036; TLI=0.966; CFI=0.971). With this study we were able to create the Portuguese Entrepreneurial Psychological Traits Inventory (PEPTI), an inventory that measures psychological traits that are significantly higher in business owners and that is adapted to Portuguese culture and that overcame the issues pointed out by Galvão and Pinheiro (2016) in their study.

Originally the Attachment-Aversion model of consumer-brand relationships, elaborated by Park, Eisingerich & Park in 2013, was analyzed with the help of the sample of English speaking respondents, living in Great Britain and the USA, and focused on two brands: Manchester United Football Club and Apple iPhone. The present study tries to validate the model regarding other type of brand and in conditions of another cultural background. The focal brand for the study was chosen from a high-end beauty category (Chanel). For the purposes of this research, a questionnaire was designed and spread online within the target population: the current students and alumni of Belarusian universities that are Russian/speaking, fluent in English and had a class in branding. A total of 273 responses was analysed using structural equation modelling. The outcomes of the research have shown that the Attachment-Aversion model of consumer-brand relationships has not proven to be totally versatile, while applied in the conditions of the other cultural background as some of the relationships of the model have shown to be insignificant. The enticing determinant has no effect on brand attachment relationship and the enabling determinant has no effect on the brand prominence. The implications of the findings are discussed.  

Overweight and obesity are growing health problems in children. The increase in fast-food consumption has greatly contributed to this phenomenon. Children are a frequent target for fast-food advertising, and the television is one of the most used marketing channels. We assessed the frequency of fast-food ingestion, television viewing time and body mass index (BMI) in children from 8 to 12 years of age. A quantitative approach was followed, using a self-report questionnaire. The sample was composed of 60 children with an age average of 9.88 years (SD=1.37). It was found that longer television viewing times were associated with higher frequency of fast-food ingestion for both school days (rS = 0.54, p < .001) and weekends/holidays (rS = 0.50, p < .001). A positive and moderate correlation between television viewing times and BMI (rS = 0.51, p < .001; rS = 0.55, p < .001) was also observed. The results indicate that television advertising makes children wanting to try the fast-food advertised (67%; n = 40), and ask parents to buy it (60%; n = 36). The good taste (72%; n = 43) and the gifts (38%; n = 23) are what the children in our study most appreciate in fast-food restaurants. Despite legal regulatory mechanisms, marketing continues to have a strong impact on the promotion of fast-food consumption in children.

This paper explores how Northern Denmark is becoming an international flight destination through the strategic route development in Aalborg Airport and the integrated collaboration with regional tourism actors. Aalborg Airport is primarily a regional airport serving primarily the people living in the northern part of Denmark, but in the past decade the airport has experienced growth in the number of international arrivals. This paper explores who these international travellers are and why they fly to Northern Denmark. Both Aalborg Airport and Northern Denmark in general has an interest in increasing the number of international arrivals, and in the effort to attract more visitors, a better understanding of this group of travellers is necessary. This paper explains that a significant number of the foreign arrivals come to Northern Denmark to visit friends and relatives, and that the geographical reach of the airport is larger than expected. This finding challenges the current approach to regional development associated with the airport and this paper suggests two new focus points for the further strategic route development in Aalborg Airport: awareness of the geographical reach of the airport and incorporation of the knowledge that the international travellers are arriving in order to visit friends and relatives or to do business.

Over the last decade, the Brazilian air market has tripled in size, a result of economic expansion and the spread of the air travel culture, among others. As far as airport infrastructures are concerned, during the mega-events era (2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics), the airport management sector started to receive greater investments from private and foreign companies. After 2012, a large array of improvements took place, in order to meet the demands associated with the mega-events, but also to tackle the increase of domestic air traffic. In this context, this paper aims to identify, describe and analyze the influences of the airport concession in Brazil on the quality of services perceived by the users (passengers). For that, an analysis of the reports of the aviation authorities is carried out. The airports of Guarulhos (São Paulo) and Brasília (Federal District), among the first to be privatized, were selected as case studies. From this study, the mobility of global capital associated with airport management deserves to be highlighted, while the expertise of these large companies is expected to contribute to the increase in the quality of services in Brazilian airports - historically managed by public sector.

The Brazilian government stepped up investments in works related to improving access to cities, when it was announced as the venue for the 2014 Football World Cup. The difficulties observed to guide these investments were to select regional airports of greater relevance for the tourism sector. Given the unavailability of data that could serve this purpose, the present study sought to define, from secondary and qualitative information extracted from government documents, five indicators to allow a priority hierarchical. The methodology applied the hierarchical analysis method (AHP) and standardization procedures, resulting in the selection of five airports in the North region, four airports in the Southeast, South and Northeast regions, and one in the Center-West region of Brazil. The main advantage of the methodology was the significant reduction of cost and time in the decision-making process. An important conclusion was the understanding of tourism as an option for regional economic diversification.

The New Bilateral Air Services Agreement between Mexico and the United States specifies that all cargo and passenger aircraft of both countries will allow any airline to flight from one point in the neighboring country and make a stop at another airport to pick up and unload passengers or cargo in the airports of both countries. This paper analyzes the 2016 “open skies agreement” between United States of America and Mexico and its expected effects on the Mexican airlines industry. After reviewing the evidence and analyzing the performance of Mexican and US airlines, it is inferred that the bilateral agreement will increase foreign investment in Mexico due to the entry into the market of a greater number of North American passenger and cargo airlines, but above all, will increase international trade in goods and services, being the United States airline industry the one that will benefit the most due to the superiority of the air fleet over the Mexican. The theoretical Cournot model adapted from Alves and Forte (2015) indicates that airlines that do not have the ability to compete for new routes will be adversely affected, their profits will decrease, an assertion that contradicts the expected effects in the literature.

This paper investigates the choice of airline itineraries in dynamic settings using a tailored stated preference survey. The paper hypothesizes that airline itinerary choice is not a one-time event, but a continuous process during a certain time frame. Consumers can choose either to purchase an itinerary, deferring choice up to the end of the sales period, or completely declining the purchase. Understanding such consumers’ behavior is specifically relevant to the tourism industry, where firms are extensively utilizing internet websites to offer their products (e.g., airline tickets, hotel rooms) to consumers.The paper describes the stated preference survey with real itineraries of various airlines on medium and long-haul routes. Choice sets are composed with dynamic and static variables and socio-economic variables. Questionnaires were distributed electronically among various groups of respondents, yielding a sample of 914 persons.Results show that (i) itinerary choice deferring takes place, with differences between tourists and business-travelers, (ii) the decision whether to defer choice is affected by dynamically changing variables and by the length of each respondent’s allocated choice period, and (iii) the proposed methodology is adequate for investigating choice in dynamic settings and thus indicating its potential for further research in transportation planning and in tourism.

This paper explores how Danish tourists represent distance in relation to their holiday mobility and how these representations of distance are a result of being aero-mobile as opposed to being land-mobile. Based on interviews with Danish tourists, whose holiday mobility ranges from the European continent to global destinations, the first part of this qualitative study identifies three categories of representations of distance that show how distance is being ‘translated’ by the tourists into non-geometric forms: distance as resources, distance as accessibility, and distance as knowledge. The representations of distance articulated by the Danish tourists show that distance is often not viewed in ‘just’ kilometres. Rather, it is understood in forms that express how transcending the physical distance through holiday mobility is dependent on individual social and economic contexts, and on whether the journey was undertaken by air or land. The analysis also shows that being aeromobile is the holiday transportation mode that removes the tourists the furthest away from physical distance, resulting in the distance travelled by air being represented in ways that have the least correlation, in the tourists’ minds, with physical distance measured in kilometres.

The reputation of companies within the transport industry is influenced by competitive dynamics within the sector: low-cost flights, the attractiveness of destinations, online user-generated content about users’ experiences, and more. At the same time, social media provides a means for companies to manage issues of tourism intangibles. Thus, it is relevant to analyse transport reputation in the digital environment, taking into consideration the resources for managing these intangibles. This paper presents a method for measuring transport reputation based on an analysis of tourism consumers’ digital opinions and passengers’ comments about their experiences with these firms. The use of social media, such as TripAdvisor and Facebook, conjugated with business intelligence tools and complemented by data mining techniques, can contribute to the development of metrics that consider intangibles like emotions and experiences, with the aim of measuring, analysing, and visualizing the complex relationships between these intangibles and transport companies’ reputations. The results present the impacts of these intangibles through clusters and positioning maps focusing on these issues. This investigation contributes to our knowledge about airlines and terrestrial transport companies that seek to differentiate their positioning in tourism markets through their reputations.

An increase in information readiness and intense competition between service organizations leads to more challenges in the business environment. On top of these service characteristics and need for a human touch are additional challenges for airline companies, not only to be successful but also to survive. Thus, knowing what airline customers think about an airline and gauging their satisfaction levels are of utmost importance. The aim of this study is to analyse the perceptions of service quality and levels of satisfaction among customers of the national airline of Saudi Arabia. To do so, it adopts the Airline Quality (AIRQUAL) scale. This scale comprises 44 items on seven distinct dimensions, namely; airline tangibles, terminal tangibles, personnel, empathy, image, perceived service quality, and customer satisfaction. Results of extensive data analysis support significant relationships with these study dimensions. Most notably, ‘Airline Tangibles’ are found to be the most influential factor creating a pool of satisfied airline customers. The text discusses the findings and implications of the survey.

The rapid growth in the air transport required satisfying the increased demand for tourism become a factor of unsustainability due to the substantial environmental impact that supports such a development. There is the need to establish an alternative to the traditional air transport pricing structure that reflects the true cost that air market operators impose on others. This paper analyses one application of a Carbon tax by considering the CO2 emission costs as a valuable input. A tentative tax on CO2 emissions from air transport is calculated considering its applications in leisure air transport market. Finally, one of the main conclusions of the analysis performed is that the available evidence suggests that international aviation emissions should be restricted. In this case, a Ramsey pricing structure, which involved aviation users bearing the environmental costs, would work reasonably well at restricting inefficient demand and produce a reasonable welfare gain respect to the do-nothing scenerywill be pointed out.

Changes in families and in the structure of the workforce have contributed to a change in traditional roles, leading to an increase of the number of men and women who simultaneouslyhave family and work responsibilities. Because the workforce has different sources of support in the labor environment – organizational, supervisor, and coworker support – it becomesimportant to study the impacts that each of these sources of support has on workers’ general well-being and to understand whether the existent work-family conflict explainsthis relationship. Indeed, the present research aims to examine the relationship between perceived support and general well-being as well as the mediating effect of work-life conflicton this relationship. The data were collected from a company from the textile industry, composing a sample of 821 store operators. The results show that work-life conflict helpsexplain the relationship between support from the organization and coworkers and workers’ general well-being. However, supervisor support did not relate to work-family conflict. Basedon the specific managerial characteristics of this company, some plausible explanations for these results are provided. Practical implications related to the results obtained are presented,in addition to the research limitations and suggestions for future research.

Psychosocial risks, its diagnosis and better understanding, have, in recent years, occupied a central place in the societal debates, setting new demanding to the ones involved in thefield of occupational safety and health. In line with this, the concerns of evaluation and diagnosis of psychosocial risk factors boosted the development of several questionnaires,their widespread dissemination, and even their “exportation”, not always sensitive to the specificities of local realities. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the methods of“diagnosis” and the type of prevention practices, taking into account the comparison of two surveys in this area and the theoretical and epistemological approaches that underlie them:(i) the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) and (ii) the Health and Work Survey (INSAT). The results reinforce the importance of a contextualized approach in worksituations, as well as in the perspective of the workers themselves about the risks to which they are exposed to - beyond what is, or not, significant from the statistical point of view, orwhat can be normatively defined as an “acceptable risk”.

Environmental and personal characteristics influence the behavior of individuals through the limitation of effort levels by a more or less rapid induction of fatigue. In particular, mentalfatigue is recognized as a major cause of errors leading to accidents. As a consequence, thermal environment study has gained increasing importance in recent years. In orderto contribute to enlarge the knowledge in this field, this work aims to present an essay protocol to evaluate the influence of the thermal environment on mental fatigue, based onelectroencephalographic (EEG) analysis. With this purpose an exploratory study was held with 36 volunteers to validate the protocol. Volunteers simulated an administrative task forone hour. Fatigue assessment was carried out by analyzing Alpha and Beta waves amplitude over time. Assays were performed in a climatic chamber with controlled temperature andhumidity: 22°C (40 and 80% RH) and 32°C (40 and 80% RH). Results suggest that both temperature and humidity influence the amplitude of the EEG signal (Alpha and Betawaves) in both hemispheres. The greatest amplitudes were found whenever environmental temperature and/or relative humidity values were higher. At the end of the article theadvantages and limitations of mental fatigue assessment are discussed.

Workaholism, defined as an addiction or dependence on work, is a subject that has become prominent in the literature, although its investigation is still at an early stage. The presentstudy aims to adapt the Spence and Robbins’ Workaholism Battery - WorkBat (1992) to the Portuguese reality. The sample of the present study consists of 407 participants (313women, 92 men, 2 don’t answered), aged between 18 and 68 years (M = 39; SD =10.449). The results from confirmatory analysis corroborate the original three factors structure: workinvolvement; work drive; work enjoyment. At the level of internal consistency, global and by dimension, the obtained values are acceptable; allowing reiterating what was observedin the original scale study. Although none of the models tested guarantees ideal adjustment values, either for the reasonableness of the values or for a better theoretical adequacy, themodel considered more suitable meets the threefold solution initially proposed by Spence and Robbins (1992).