Narrow Results

This paper identifies the profiles of Brazilian firms according to their use of knowledge management (KM) practices, and then compares both innovative performance and organisational performance among these profiles. It contributes to the knowledge-based view literature by extending our knowledge about the most efficient configurations of KM practices in emerging countries. A sample of 206 Brazilian firms was surveyed, and cluster analysis was used for identifying the firm profiles. We found that in emerging countries like Brazil, there are different firm profiles regarding the KM practices they use, and these configurations may lead the firm to different levels of performance. Specifically, we found that firms that achieve superior innovation performance have configurations of KM practices that include a high use of strategic management of knowledge, Information and communication technologies (ICT) that supports KM, and three knowledge-based human resource management practices: recruitment, training and development, and appraisal.

This paper sets out to understand the use of public procurement as a policy instrument for catching up. Brazil and China, who have explicitly linked procurement to innovation, are used as empirical cases. We review their respective institutional settings, policy approaches, and micro-level processes related to the public procurement of innovation (PPI). We have discovered that they share similarities concerning issues encountered during PPI implementation. Although both countries have made some achievements in promoting innovation through procurement, this paper highlights some of the obstacles they have experienced when implementing this policy, such as institutional problems, changes in the political landscape, and macroeconomic constraints. Such obstacles, more prominent in the case of Brazil, may have acted as an obstruction to achieving the pursued objectives, thereby restricting the full potential of PPI in driving technological catching up. The article then offers managerial and policy implications for the implementation of PPI, such as the importance of choosing relevant procurement procedures, critical roles played by policy champions, and demonstrating effects of leading firms and regions. While in China PPI was once an instrumental part of its technology development agenda, in Brazil it has been sporadic and unconnected to a given national strategy.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically the gender variations in informal sector entrepreneurship. Until now, a widely-held belief has been that entrepreneurs operating in the informal sector in developing nations are lowly paid, poorly educated, marginalized populations doing so out of necessity as a survival strategy in the absence of alternatives. Reporting an extensive 2003 survey conducted in urban Brazil of informal sector entrepreneurs operating micro-enterprises with five or less employees, the finding is that although less than half of these entrepreneurs are driven out of necessity into entrepreneurial endeavor in the informal economy, women are more commonly necessity-driven entrepreneurs and receive lower incomes from their entrepreneurial endeavor than men despite being better educated. The outcome is a call to recognize how the gender disparities in the wider labor market are mirrored and reinforced by the participation of men and women in the realm of informal sector entrepreneurship.

This paper provides an overview of current IA research in Brazil, considering its extension, lessons learned and the quality of its practice, as well as barriers to research, current gaps and future research endeavours. Despite the big effort devoted to IA research in the country, there is a small number of groups dedicated to the systematic research of IA instruments, its procedures and methods, the assessment of its effectiveness and the evidence to support good practice, the study of the organization of IA systems and their influence on decision-making. In our opinion, the lack of a well structured and distinct field of training and research is one of the major barriers to IA research. Similar to other countries, IA research is not recognised by scientific agencies/committees as a proper field of research, which means the majority of IA research grants is being evaluated/approved by committees with a small or no background in IA. There is, however, a significant contribution to be offered by research to foster IA development in Brazil. Besides the systematic assessment of IA effectiveness and the definition of procedures, methods and approaches to fill the currently well-described gaps, future research efforts should include the study of learning processes through IA practice and their influence in decision-making, the connections between IA and planning, and the benchmarks to environmental governance coming from IA practice.

After the first applications in the early 1990's, the practice of SEA in Brazil has been going through a slow, but important evolution. In this paper we elaborate on the main aspects of this evolution, based on the findings of a comparative study that put the practice of SEA in different contexts into perspective. SEA systems considered included consolidated (UK, Spain and Portugal) and unconsolidated (South Africa, Mexico, Angola and Mozambique) systems. The Brazilian system is characterised by a disperse structure and a low level of self-organisation, which makes integration with plan making difficult while, at the same time, stimulating "flexible" and "adaptive" SEA processes. We suggest that the lack of both, institutional drivers and a clear procedural framework are hindering further development of the Brazilian system.

This paper investigates the effects of climate on residential electricity use for households from different income classes in Brazil. Using cross-sectional data, the study finds that the temperature elasticity of electricity consumption varies significantly across income classes. The temperature elasticity of low income households is not significantly different from zero but middle and high income families have a long run temperature elasticity of 0.8 and 1.6 respectively. As emerging low latitude countries develop and incomes rise, the welfare damages of warming in the energy sector will become substantial.

The scene of Brazilian infrastructure has changed in recent years, highlighting the growing participation of the private sector and the falling public investments as a result of the constraints on the federal public expenditure as from 2016, the Lava Jato operation, and reduction in the number of available loans. Particularly, the Lava Jato operation led most Brazilian infrastructure corporations to fully rethink their processes and opened the way for new national and international companies. In the restructuring phase, project management has shown itself to be sensitive to the changes made. In this sense, fostering risk management in the corporations, combined with efficient cost management, tends to become a decisive factor to guarantee the results of projects. Integrated management solutions, obtaining licenses, regularization, and authorization also became essential to attain efficiency in the use of resources. Considering the scenario of infrastructure projects in Brazil, this chapter discusses the market and internationalization trends in infrastructure projects, and the current state of project management knowledge through diagnosis and cases. Aiming to contribute to a better comprehension of procurement, risk, cost, and stakeholder management, as well as by using Building Information Modelling (BIM) processes to support the efforts to address challenges in the sector, some recent research results are summarized. Further, ethics and governance as pillars for infrastructure project management are also discussed in the text. In the conclusion, we present some proposals about new management areas that can be truly relevant in infrastructure project management in a developing country.

Sargassum furcatum population dynamics was studied at Cabo Frio Island, where generally the effect of upwelling waters is sporadic and occurs mainly during the summer months at Farol Beach. Model sensitivity analyses were compared for Sargassum simulations at Cabo Frio Island and for Ulva dynamics simulated with data sets collected at two other upwelling sites, Sonar and Jaconé. Field data suggests that Sargassum growth shows a delay to nutrient enrichment events, whereas Ulva growth follows nutrient peaks more closely. Algal biomass was simulated with parameter values changed plus and minus 10%, one at a time, while holding all other parameters constant. Those parameters that cause, a plus or minus change of greater than 10% in the model output, were used in the next stage of the sensitivity analyses. In the second stage, a fractional factorial design was used to evaluate the main effect of a particular parameter. The parameter literature survey and sensitivity analyses, for both Sargassum and Ulva models, suggest that parameters related to environmental factors, such as minimal cellular nutrient quota for growth- and temperature-related growth functions, should be further investigated for algae at the Cabo Frio upwelling region, since they caused a change in the biomass output greater than 10%.

A significant phenomenon of the international system over the past decade is the empowerment of emerging economies, particularly the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), in diplomatic and trade relations. Thus, alliances between China, the world’s largest developing country, and newly efficacious powers in the global South have become salient topics in foreign policy research. This article focuses on the relations China maintains with Portuguese-speaking countries, or Lusophonia, which are notable for their geographic and cultural heft in the global South. As a nation removed from foreign imperial influence only a few decades ago, China shares a series of cultural commonalities with a Brazil-dominated Lusophonia that represents key political influences in middle-income countries. As a result, Lusophone countries are core targets in an overall international policy strategy that serves to benefit China for continued trade and economic growth, an orientation well aligned to enhance Sino-Lusophone cooperation in the short to medium term.

Emerging markets face a challenging recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Although most nations strive to improve their competitiveness to escape from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, the results may be different from the expectations of these governments. In this chapter, we analyze competitiveness in Mexico and Brazil. We attempt to go beyond the interpretation of results collected in well-known reports, such as the Global Economic Index, to demonstrate the need for further analysis in those countries where political factors may carry a non-comparable weight. We use the DD-Based 9-Factor Model, which considers the impact of politics in public policymaking. We compare Mexico and Brazil, as both nations are undergoing substantial political change, with personal leadership and geopolitical impact unmatched in the region. International managers should be aware of the impact of strong leadership upon public policy and national competitiveness. Those findings are no novelty in Latin America, a region where the political dimension may turn the table on investors without warning. Indeed, political factors should not be adequately addressed by competitiveness benchmarks in those nations where the rule of man may replace the rule of law.

Evidence about internet access and use in Brazil is presented using 2005 Brazilian Bureau of Census data. The importance of internet access outside home, especially by disadvantaged groups is pointed out as well as the impact of socio-technical factors on types of internet access and use is analysed. The relevance and the complexity involved in identifying and classifying internet use and social factors involved are stressed. The role played by specific "social facilitators" of internet use, with emphasis on the role of the public libraries, is also considered.

The Brazilian Fiscal Council can mitigate the consequences of the separation between cash flow and voting rights that is one of the problems of corporate governance in Brazil. The Fiscal Council that is set up in Brazilian companies should be composed of professionals who are nominated by the minority—noncontrolling common and preferred stockholders—and the majority shareholders. Its main function is to monitor the activities and financial statements of the company. The purpose of this chapter is to test, even in a weak legal system, whether there is any legal mechanism to increase the number of shareholders monitoring the management to get better results for them. As a consequence, an active Fiscal Council, as a reflection of better corporate governance, is associated with higher returns on equity, Tobin's Q and dividend payout, smaller betas, debt to equity ratios, lower costs of debt financing and more restrictions on earnings management. We found that the existence of an active Fiscal Council is associated with a higher ROE, which improves the firm's performance. We also found that firms with Fiscal Councils engage significantly less in their earnings management. The Brazilian Fiscal Council is capable of improving the shareholder protection and forcing companies to have better disclosure for their investors. Our research found real benefits for firms with a Fiscal Council in the form of higher returns on equity, lower debt costs and less earnings management. These benefits are important to firms with less corporate governance.