BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

Este artículo analiza el comportamiento proambiental en individuos ofreciendo una clasificación del comportamiento según la diversidad/ intensidad de las acciones ambientales emprendidas, y explicando el desarrollo del comportamiento pro-ambiental y algunos de los factores que lo determinan. Mediante análisis cluster y modelos de ecuaciones estructurales, aplicado al Estudio 2837 del CIS, se obtiene una clasificación en cinco grupos de individuos que pone de manifiesto cómo se desarrolla el comportamiento pro-ambiental, desde niveles con poca intensidad en acciones medioambientales muy concretas (como el reciclado) hasta niveles de mayor implicación proambiental en un buen número de acciones proambientales.

The aim of this study is to learn more about pro-environmental conduct in individuals, providing classification in levels of conduct according to diversity/intensity of environmental actions, showing how proenvironmental conduct develops in people and identifying the factors that determine such conduct. The application of cluster analysis and structural equation models to CIS Study 2837 classifies individuals with different degrees of environmental involvement into five groups, showing how pro-environmental conduct develops in people, from specific activities (such as recycling) performed with reduced intensity to greater and more intense pro-environmental involvement.

The Circular Economy is a paradigm shift attempting to replace the end-of-life concept with reducing, reusing, recycling and recovering materials and to slow down, close and narrow material and power loops. This concept is much discussed in the academic literature, but limited progress has been accomplished so far regarding its empirical analysis. The objective of this work is to study circular economy practices and analyze in depth the circular economy behavior in European firms. We find that firms' circular economy behavior is a gradual process where measures are implemented gradually, starting with activities involving control measures and ending with putting preventive practices in place. We discovered also that the most proactive companies in implementing circular economy measures generally come across certain common barriers such as administrative processes, regulations and a lack of human resources to perform these practices, while firms that have not implemented circular economy measures view financing, investment and cost¿benefit barriers as the most significant. Significant efforts need to be undertaken by firms to accomplished circular economy. Also circular economy regulation should be improved to make it easier for companies to implement strategies that will make them more sustainable.

This study provides empirical evidence related to the “it pays to be green” hypothesis. Based on information from panel data approximately 42 industrial companies during an 8-year period, we determine some of the factors and contingences that affect the fulfilment of that hypothesis. We find that a certain level of proactivity in environmental strategy design is one of the conditions that favors a positive relationship between environmental investment and financial performance. We also provide empirical evidence on how some external conditions affect this positive relationship, such as regulatory pressure from the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the financial crisis.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and women are important agents for economic and social development. This study attempts to understand how the economic crisis has affected the behavior of SMEs with high female participation in the decision-making process. To that end, the quantitative research focused on a sample of 425 small and medium-sized enterprises in Spain relying on a questionnaire-based survey. The results of the empirical study offer new evidence on the effects of the recession on decision-making female-dominated bodies in organizations and illustrate the importance of corporate governance issues. In addition, the research provides greater knowledge of female entrepreneurs in a country severely affected by the global economic crisis. Several recommendations are proposed to provide a theoretical basis for governments to reduce glass ceiling and promote women’s empowerment policies.

This paper examines three channels of influence of the business cycle in the propensity of firms to introduce technological innovations: Aggregate demand (firms initiate more innovation projects in expansion than in recession; risk (the probability that initiated projects fail is higher in contraction than in expansion); and obstacles to innovate (more firms perceive the obstacles to innovate as high in recessions than in expansions and the high obstacles implies lower propensity to initiate innovation projects). With Spanish CIS data we find evidence that the three channels contributed to the fall in the proportion of firms that introduce technological innovations during the Great Recession, compared with the proportion of innovators in the years of expansion. The research methodology consists on estimating a multiprobit model with the probability that firms introduce technological innovations, the probability that firms abandon ongoing innovation projects, and the probability that firms perceive the obstacles to innovate as high.

This article analyzes the impact of ownership structure on corporate diversification,with reference to large listed family business groups. By considering agency theoryand socioemotional wealth, the study examines the relationship between family own-ership, concentration of ownership, and degree and type of diversification. The studyconsiders 99 Spanish listed business groups (50 family-controlled- and 49 nonfamily-controlled groups) and considers diversification of business group as the focus ofanalysis. The results show how family business groups present a lower preference forunrelated diversification than related diversification. There is also a nonlinear rela-tionship between the concentration of ownership in family groups and the degree ofdiversification, showing different behaviors in family groups according to sharesowned by the family's leading shareholders. This article contributes to the literatureby providing a more precise identification of the corporate strategy adopted by busi-ness groups and establishing new evidence about the impact of family control ondiversification strategies and the differences regarding nonfamily business groups.

This paper examines the sensitivity of firms'' R&D expenditures to being externally financial constrained to undertake innovation projects, considering that being constrained is endogenous. It focuses on devising a model that enable us to explore the combined impact of liquidity constraints, demand shocks, and credit cycle on the cyclically of R&D, controlling by the firms characteristics. The methodology proposed consists of jointly estimating three interrelated equations with mixed distributions of dependent variables. The results obtained complete and improve those of the previous research. It is found that the effect of the business cycle on the perception of external financial constraints is subject to the availability of internal funds in each firm. On the other hand, constrained firms expend in R&D halve of the unconstrained ones, and the sensitivity of firms'' R&D expending to GDP is countercyclical in firms with low cash flows and procyclical in firms with high cash flows. The R&D expending of firms is negatively associated with the aggregate leverage ratio of the non-financial sector. These results mean that business decisions, in particular R&D expending decisions, and macroeconomic variables are strongly related. A better understanding of these interrelations should help in designing macroeconomic policies aimed at stabilizing the economy and reduce growth volatility.

El enfoque de enseñanza-aprendizaje impulsado desde el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) incorpora una nueva forma de concebir la educación universitaria, donde el alumnado asume un papel principal en su aprendizaje. A su vez, implica una revalorización de la tarea docente y de la acción tutorial para reforzar el proceso formativo y el desarrollo integral de los alumnos y alumnas universitarios/as. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo conocer la opinión del alumnado acerca de los elementos relevantes en el uso de las tutorías académicas con el fin de identificar sus necesidades y mejorar la acción tutorial. En el diseño del estudio se adopta un enfoque descriptivo a partir de un cuestionario dirigido a estudiantes universitarios, que incluye preguntas relativas a su comportamiento y actitud personal ante las tutorías, a la eficacia de las mismas, a su grado de utilización, y a la comunicación y relación establecida con el profesorado en dicho proceso. Los resultados, obtenidos a partir de una muestra de 322 estudiantes del campus de Teruel de la Universidad de Zaragoza, muestran cuatro aspectos relacionados con la autoconfianza del alumnado, la utilidad percibida, la motivación personal y el ahorro económico y/o de tiempo que supone el uso de las tutorías académicas. Si bien el grado de utilización de las mismas resulta moderado, es preciso destacar el valor que el alumnado otorga a la acción tutorial como estímulo para afrontar el trabajo requerido para superar la materia, así como para optimizar su tiempo de estudio.

La conducta observada en las organizaciones que conforman el entramado de la Economía Social\u00a0ha supuesto un precedente en actuaciones y prácticas que representan una forma de hacer empresa basada\u00a0en la responsabilidad social, incluidas sus múltiples acepciones y enfoques. Asimismo, se percibe un creciente\u00a0interés en la llamada Responsabilidad Social de la Empresa (RSE), un modelo de gestión implantado en diversos\u00a0tipos de organizaciones, con y sin fines lucrativos, que lleva consigo el compromiso con un conjunto de valores\u00a0ligados a todos sus grupos de interés. En el marco de la Economía Social, las cooperativas operan en\u00a0conformidad con los criterios, valores y principios de RSE, interés por la comunidad y servicio a sus miembros, \u00a0no solamente en la esfera económica, sino también en el ámbito social y medioambiental. Múltiples trabajos manifiestan\u00a0la concordancia entre el desarrollo de las políticas de RSE en sus tres vertientes (económica, social y\u00a0ambiental) y los valores y principios cooperativos enunciados por la Alianza Cooperativa Internacional (ACI, 1995).\u00a0Estos estudios avalan la afirmación de que la propia naturaleza de las cooperativas implica un comportamiento\u00a0socialmente responsable. Asumidos estos postulados, el objetivo del presente trabajo es observar y constatar el\u00a0cumplimiento efectivo de los mismos en cooperativas de diferentes sectores y entornos, cuestión que conlleva el\u00a0análisis de la gestión integral de las actuaciones inherentes de RSE, derivadas de sus relaciones con los distintos\u00a0agentes, según la Teoría de los grupos de interés (Turker, 2009). Adicionalmente, las cooperativas deben buscar\u00a0la supervivencia mediante sus resultados económicos plasmados en la obtención de unos excedentes y una rentabilidad\u00a0adecuados (López y Marcuello, 2006), con la finalidad de prestar servicios a los socios a lo largo del tiempo, \u00a0y todo ello en sintonía con las demandas de los distintos grupos de interés. Por estos motivos, el estudio contrasta\u00a0la aplicación de la RSE con la obtención de resultados económicos en un entorno de crisis económica. Mediante\u00a0una metodología de estudio de casos, se han seleccionado seis cooperativas españolas pertenecientes a diversos\u00a0sectores, para analizar sus memorias y cuentas de resultados, con el objeto de identificar relaciones entre sus comportamientos\u00a0de RSE y los resultados económico-financieros obtenidos en un periodo de tiempo determinado.

This study aims to develop a better understanding of what drives small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in environmental practices in isolated rural areas. Despite a growing literature on environmental behavior in different contexts, the green activities of SMEs in rural areas remains underexposed. This neglect is remarkable, and deserves attention given the serious depopulation problems they have to face, and the economic and social challenges that lie ahead. Using unique data from 141 SMEs in one of the most sparsely populated regions in the European Union, we study the influence of territorial relations on firms’ environmental conduct. Our results suggest that different territorial factors have some impact on the adoption of environmental practices. We report evidence indicative of the role of these factors in shaping environmental decisions. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that could further develop our understanding of environmental management decisions in rural and underpopulated areas.

La conducta observada en las organizaciones que conforman el entramado de la Economía Social ha supuesto un precedente en actuaciones y prácticas que representan una forma de hacer empresa basada en la responsabilidad social, incluidas sus múltiples acepciones y enfoques. Asimismo, se percibe un creciente interés en la llamada Responsabilidad Social de la Empresa (RSE), un modelo de gestión implantado en diversos tipos de organizaciones, con y sin fines lucrativos, que lleva consigo el compromiso con un conjunto de valores ligados a todos sus grupos de interés. En el marco de la Economía Social, las cooperativas operan en conformidad con los criterios, valores y principios de RSE, interés por la comunidad y servicio a sus miembros, no solamente en la esfera económica, sino también en el ámbito social y medioambiental. Múltiples trabajos manifiestan la concordancia entre el desarrollo de las políticas de RSE en sus tres vertientes (económica, social y ambiental) y los valores y principios cooperativos enunciados por la Alianza Cooperativa Internacional (ACI, 1995). Estos estudios avalan la afirmación de que la propia naturaleza de las cooperativas implica un comportamiento socialmente responsable. Asumidos estos postulados, el objetivo del presente trabajo es observar y constatar el cumplimiento efectivo de los mismos en cooperativas de diferentes sectores y entornos, cuestión que conlleva el análisis de la gestión integral de las actuaciones inherentes de RSE, derivadas de sus relaciones con los distintos agentes, según la Teoría de los grupos de interés (Turker, 2009). Adicionalmente, las cooperativas deben buscar la supervivencia mediante sus resultados económicos plasmados en la obtención de unos excedentes y una rentabilidad adecuados (López y Marcuello, 2006), con la finalidad de prestar servicios a los socios a lo largo del tiempo, y todo ello en sintonía con las demandas de los distintos grupos de interés. Por estos motivos, el estudio contrasta la aplicación de la RSE con la obtención de resultados económicos en un entorno de crisis económica. Mediante una metodología de estudio de casos, se han seleccionado seis cooperativas españolas pertenecientes a diversos sectores, para analizar sus memorias y cuentas de resultados, con el objeto de identificar relaciones entre sus comportamientos de RSE y los resultados económico-financieros obtenidos en un periodo de tiempo determinado.

The behaviour observed in the organizations of the Social Economy framework has set a precedent in business practices which are based on social responsibility. There is also a growing interest in so-called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a management model implemented in different types of for- and non-profit organizations, which entails a commitment to a set of values linked to all its stakeholders. Within the framework of the Social Economy, cooperatives operate under the criteria, values, and principles of CSR. They have an interest in the community and in providing service to their members, not only economically but also socially and environmentally. There is a body of evidence which shows the link between the development of CSR policies (economic, social and environmental) and the cooperative values and principles laid out by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA, 1995). These studies support the claim that the very nature of cooperatives implies socially responsible behaviour. In the last two decades, and more intensely during the recent economic crisis, Spanish cooperatives have shown an increasing interest in the development of CSR policies through concrete actions (Monzon and Antunano, 2012). Likewise, cooperatives seek to broaden the communication channels with their stakeholders and with society as a whole, through the preparation of well-defined and accessible CSR reports, as an additional element of transparency in their management model. In light of the above, the general objective of this study is to observe and verify the effective CSR compliance in a scenario of economic crisis across cooperatives from different sectors and environments. This issue entails the analysis of the management of CSR actions, derived from the relations with the relevant agents, according to the Theory of Stakeholders (Turker, 2009). This is linked to the nature of cooperatives and their operating principles given their afore-posited predisposition to more effective CSR implementation in comparison to other business formulas (Bel and Marin, 2008; Sanchis and Rodriguez, 2018). This facet goes hand in hand with a marked interest in transparency, accountability and the preparation of SCR reports as a way of transmitting their differentiating characteristics to their interest groups (Gallardo and Castilla, 2015). In addition, the economic literature on the subject recognises CSR as a fundamental resource for creating a competitive advantage applicable to cooperatives. These organizations develop strategies that allow them to survive thanks to their economic results, reflected in the obtaining of adequate surpluses (Lopez and Marcuello, 2006), by the aim of providing services to members over time, and all in tune with the demands of the different interest groups. For these reasons, the second objective of the study is to contrast the CSR implementation with profit generation in these entities, in a context of economic crisis, and to seek certainties on the alignment between the social and economic function of the cooperatives (Gallardo and Castilla, 2015). Following Villareal and Landeta (2010), a case study methodology has been applied. For this, we have selected six Spanish cooperatives from different sectors with a high degree of significance within the Ranking "Relevant Companies of the Social Economy" 2010-2011 published by the Social Economy Business Confederation (CEPES). Subsequently, the chosen cooperatives have been refined and sorted based on the available documentation. For this, first all the potentially comparable information regarding the development of CSR actions has been collected. Then, the available financial data have been obtained. In parallel, qualitative and quantitative information of these cooperatives has been extracted from the publications of CSR and economic reports. These data have been complemented with information from other secondary sources. Consequently, the relevant CSR factors relating to the social, economic and environmental dimensions have been determined according to the RSECOOP model (2011) following the indicators of the Global Reporting Initiative. Then, the economic-financial ratios have been selected, which reveal positions in accordance with the different interest groups of the selected cooperatives. Next, we start from the hypothesis, widely reviewed in the literature, which associates cooperative principles with behaviours consistent with the development of social responsibility towards stakeholders, and considers that these organisations should integrate these behaviours into their management policies (Server and Capo, 2009). This issue is closely related to the creation of added (Mozas, 2010) and the obtaining of lasting competitive advantages (Castilla et al., 2015). Thus, under the stated objectives, a basic evaluation of compliance with the relevant CSR factors for these six cooperatives is first carried out (COCETA, 2001). To this end, the results obtained are verified and compared using the numerical values offered and are grouped into charts for better visualization of the degree of compliance (concentration-dispersion) with the CSR in the three vectors considered. Then, the CSR values obtained are contrasted with the average values of the profitability ratios applied for these cooperatives, to observe possible relationships between compliance with the CSR variables and the economic results of the organizations. After analyzing the CSR practices developed by the cooperatives under study, relatively high compliance with socially responsible behaviours has been observed, since the results show positive values and highly homogeneous deviations. However, not all cases denote a development of CSR according to the relative position of the cooperative in the market and its economic results. Therefore, a degree of commitment to its stakeholders based on the specific corporate culture and values present is perceived. On the other hand, certain biases in the configuration of the CSR have been observed as an integral business management model, ` since not all CSR vectors have been observed with the same intensity in each of the cases. Also, there is a correlation in the cooperatives between the economic results obtained, measured in terms of commercial margin, and the overall development of CSR practices. It is reflected more intensely in the economic profitability ratios and corresponds to the progress of social responsibility aspects in the economic vector. Finally, the results obtained could serve, in general, to strengthen the theory, generally accepted in the literature about the capacity of cooperatives to be more resistant in crisis environments by promoting a more socially responsible economy. However, it is still necessary for these organizations to make greater efforts to communicate their social performance and the advantages of the CSR''s reported management as a tool for competing in markets. One of the limitations of the study derives from the difficulty of configuring and examining a large number of variables. This leads to a reduced case study, which prevents, due to the size of the sample, the establishment and/or modelling of causal relationships for Spanish cooperatives in the reference period as a whole. Nevertheless, this issue has not been the object of analysis, as justified in the design of the study. We must also add the limitation of not having homogeneous and constant information for all cooperatives or more extended periods. The contribution of this research is reflected firstly in the particularities that can be approached in greater depth from the analysis of specific cases, reviewing social and economic behaviour of cooperatives. And secondly, the proposed methodology can be used as a guide to be adapted and expanded to analyze this type of relationship in different contexts and scenarios. For example, the study can be replicated to analyze cooperatives from the same sector or to carry out cross-sector comparisons. Future research can consider specific geographical areas and different periods, with varying dimensions and sizes, or even ultimately, the model may allow comparisons with other companies that are not part of the Social Economy.

The aim of this paper is to study the relationships between Marketing and Logistics Performance in a context of inter-organisational integration to search for differences between Manufacturers and Distributors. The information has been provided by 450 companies in the Spanish construction materials sector. The results obtained show the importance of the Logistics Service as an instrument to improve the Relational Performance of the integrated company and the different paths that Manufacturers and Distributors take to increase short- and long-term Marketing Performance. El objetivo de este artículo es estudiar las relaciones entre los Resultados de Marketing y los Logísticos en un contexto de integración inter-organizacional, buscando diferencias entre fabricantes y distribuidores. La información ha sido proporcionada por 450 empresas del sector de materiales de construcción español. Los resultados obtenidos muestran la importancia del Servicio Logístico como instrumento para mejorar los Resultados Relacionales de la empresa integrada y los diferentes caminos que toman los Fabricantes y los Distribuidores para aumentar los Resultados de Marketing a corto y largo plazo.

This article proposes the application of the maximum-entropy principle (MEP) to agency contracting (where a principal hires an agent to make decisions on their behalf) in situations where the principal and agent only have partial knowledge on the probability distribution of the output conditioned on the agent’s actions. The paper characterizes the second-best agency contract from a maximum entropy distribution (MED) obtained from applying the MEP to the agency situation consistently with the information available. We show that, with the minimum shared information about the output distribution for the agency relationship to take place, the second-best compensation contract is (a monotone transformation of) an increasing affine function of output. With additional information on the output distribution, the second-best optimal contracts can be more complex. The second-best contracts obtained theoretically from the MEP cover many compensation schemes observed in real agency relationships.

Purpose
This paper aims to assess the vulnerability and resilience of the Spanish non-financial corporations (NFC) to the shock from the COVID pandemic with consolidated income accounts data, and shows comparative labor productivity and endowment of organizational capital of Spanish firms, as indicators of their capabilities at the outset of the new digital transformation wave proposed by the next generation EU program.


Design/methodology/approach
The paper first describes the recent evolution (quarterly 2020 data) of the Spanish non-financial corporate sector (gross value added, labor cost, capital formation, profits) in the assessment of the vulnerability and resilience of the sector to the shock of the COVID pandemic. Then second, it estimates a probit model to evaluate the EU country effects in the explanation of the different propensity firms in the European Company Survey database to adopt innovative management and organization practices.


Findings
In the Spring of 2020, the Spanish NFC were still recovering from the great recession (low resilience), and the severe contraction in value-added and profits of the corporate sector in the first three quarters of the year evidences its high vulnerability. The proved complementarity between organizational and information related assets implies that the low endowment of organizational capital of Spanish firms, could be a severe limitation for the advancement toward digitalization.


Research limitations/implications
The aggregate corporate sector data used in the analysis of vulnerability and resilience of Spanish firms does not account for the heterogeneous effects of the pandemic across economic sectors (manufacturing and services, for example) and across firms (large versus small ones).


Originality/value
The paper complements the country-level analysis of the impact of the COVID pandemic in the Spanish economy with the analysis of the impact of the pandemic in the performance of the corporate sector. It provides one of the first analysis of the current endowment of organization capital of Spanish firms and highlights its relevance for productivity growth.

Este artículo establece los déficits que se observan en la inversión en recursos intangibles (capital directivo y capital organizacional), en las empresas españolas cuando se comparan con las empresas de los países más avanzados de la Unión Europea. Se sugiere que «la política industrial» se oriente a actuar sobre estos problemas del ámbito empresarial y se centre más en las cuestiones de cómo deben innovar y competir las empresas que dónde deben competir, para diseñar las palancas que estimulen los cambios.

This paper examines the perceptions of firms in April 2020, one month after the Spanish Government declared the state of alarm, about how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect their business activity in the following months, and what employment decisions they expect to make in response. The data for the study was collected by the Government of the region of Aragon (Spain) through a survey of a non-randomly selected sample of firms located in the region. In addition to prospects and intended actions, firms were asked whether or not they had applied for ERTE aid (the Spanish job retention scheme to contain the pandemic crisis). We find that firms participating (voluntarily and anonymously) in the survey anticipated rather well the severity of the effects of the pandemic in the following months. The ERTE aid helped firms to maintain the jobs of their inactive employees, while firms that did not ask for aid responded by laying off employees. Further, the ERTE aid helped to maintain the jobs of furloughed employees, but the firms receiving ERTE aid expected to lay off the same proportion of employees as firms without that aid, controlling for the different anticipated effects of the pandemic in the two groups of firms.

Teaching-learning based on cooperative learning is grounded on a methodology that is currently one of the most widely used within formal education classrooms. Recently, special attention has begun to be paid to a fundamentally relevant aspect of the assessment of the learning of university students within their group performance: their individual grades obtained from teamwork. In addition to describing the individual grading system that is used to assess individual contributions, this study analyses the perceptions of 99 university students regarding the benefits that the system has for students’ learning process. A system of evaluation based on self-assessment, co-assessment and peer-assessment was implemented in a Spanish university. The results collected using a specially designed questionnaire led to the conclusion that improvements were achieved in the teaching-learning process, in manifesting positive attitudes and in improving students’ ability to learn to learn. In conclusion, students feel that they are granted greater control over their final grade and, as a result, perceive that their involvement in the task increases and their capacity for self-criticism develops.

Expert's judgments have been crucial in the development of decision theory; however, what criterion to use in the selection of experts remains an issue to address. Decision support techniques proposed to improve the quality of expert judgment decision making consider a demonstrated inconsistency of the judgments expressed by an expert as a criterion of exclusion in the decision-making process of such expert. Although consistency appears to be a desirable condition to qualify as “expert”, little is known about the quality of the decisions made imposing consistency as the expert qualifying condition. This paper proposes a simulation methodology, based on an automaton programmed to make decisions in an intended but bounded rational way, to assess the cost-benefit of different aspects of decision support techniques. Within this methodology, the imposition of the consistency condition in the selection of experts is studied. In particular, the paper shows with a case study example that the Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) decision support technique expected payoff is at most 5% higher when implementing Saaty's consistency criterion of the expert's judgments than when the consistency criterion is not considered.

Why do innovation projects fail? The most common answers are (A) the implementation differs from what was planned; (B) despite positive expected payoffs, there is an ex-ante positive probability that payoff can be negative (risk). As a third option, we consider the fallibility of individuals who evaluate innovation projects using their limited information-processing capabilities (bounded rationality). Furthermore, we compare the overall organizational performance of two decision mechanisms. First, an informal Collective Decision as an unanimity participative mechanism to decide on technological innovation adoption and, second, a centralized Authority decision. Authority-based decision-making results in higher commission errors (acceptance of projects that an unbounded rational decision-maker would reject) and lower omission errors (rejection of projects that an unbounded rational decision-maker would accept) than Collective Decision. In a dynamic technological adoption process where a sequence of randomly generated innovation projects is evaluated using the two mechanisms, the simulations show that, in the short-term, omission errors dominate and Authority is preferred to Collective Decision; however, in the mid and long terms, commission errors dominate and Collective Decision is preferred to Authority, especially if Collective Decision does not incorporate social influence. With Collective Decision, the ratio of projects that fail is lower, more innovation projects are rejected, and fewer innovation projects are accepted, which can be interpreted as resistance to innovation.

The article presents a decision-making model that can be used with blockchain technology. Blockchain is used as an alternative transaction mechanism to authority and the market, where the decision is decentralised within the organisation. Thus, the process is parameterised around the acceptance or not of a project, depending on individual levels of expertise, consensus level and including deliberation time. In addition, commission and omission errors are also evaluated.We show that this technology should be imposed naturally because, at the same level of information, it can obtain better results than any other decision mechanism in a systematic way. In addition, the blockchain ensures that both commission errors and omission errors are reduced with decision times that do not increase the expected opportunity loss on omission errors.

This paper proposes to analyze how the differences in expertise, diversity, and group decision procedures affect the quality of the strategic decision of steering committees. Strategic decisions are difficult to anticipate, and performances of the alternatives are often not observable in their entirety, which prevent researchers from obtaining controlled empirical studies. This paper proposes to analyze the performance of steering committees where managers can err in their decisions using the Intentional Bounded Rationality (IBR). The majority procedure improves the committee's performance concerning authority when the level of diversity and expertise increases. However, in situations of low expertise, the gains over authority narrow. This work provides guidance in terms of trade-offs between the mentality of managers, their expertise, group decision procedures, and diversity, which in the empirical works are contradictory. This study contributes to current theorizations of committee management using the IBR methodology, which is new and allows quantifying the contribution of the distinct characteristics of the committee.

This paper models how the business and financial cycles interact in firms’ export activity. Specifically, we study the influence of macroeconomic variables on the decision to export and on the volume of exports, being controlled by firms’ characteristics. A distinction is made between the firms’ export activity in reaction to increases in external demand after improvements in national competitiveness, and firms’ exporting in response to a reduction in aggregate internal demand. The decision to export depends positively on the countries’ competitiveness variables, and the volume of exports also depends positively on national competitiveness and negatively on growth of internal demand. We also find a positive influence of the leverage of the economy on extensive and intensive export activity. Our results suggest that the financial cycle overlaps with the business cycle in influencing firm export activity decisions.

The manifestation of the intensity in the judgment of one alternative versus another in the peer comparison processes is a central element in some decision support techniques, such as the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). However, its contribution regarding quality (expected performance) with respect to the priority vector has not been evaluated so far. Using the Intentional Bounded Rationality Methodology (IBRM), this work analyzes the gains obtained from requiring the decision-maker to report an intensity judgment in pairs (AHP) with respect to a technique that only requires expressing a preference (Ordering). The results show that when decision-makers have low levels of expertise, it is possible that a less informative and computational cheap technique (Ordering) performs better than a more informative and computational expensive one (AHP). When decision-makers have medium and high levels of expertise, AHP technique obtains modest gains with respect to the Ordering technique. This study proposes a cost-benefit analysis of decision support techniques contrasting the gains of a technique that requires more resources (AHP) against other that require less resources (Ordering). Our results can change the managing approach of the information obtained from experts’ judgments.

At a micro level, eco-innovation marks a transition towards a circular economy (CE), and standardised routines and controls are being implemented by businesses to introduce eco-innovative processes and thus a circular business model. Eco-innovation applied to a circular model implies changes to companies'' environmental management and accounting practices used to manage natural resources. In this context, this study analyses and measures formal and informal environmental management systems, such as certification standards and other management and environmental accounting procedures used in eco-innovation and the CE within the dynamic capabilities theoretical framework. The study also investigates the cause-and-effect relationship between firms'' “circular eco-innovation” and environmental capabilities using partial least squares structural equation modelling and tests it using a sample of Spanish companies. This study offers new knowledge about the interposition of business eco-innovation and CE-related activities introduced by firms from the dynamic capabilities perspective. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

With firm data from the Spanish Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for the period 2003-2014, we find a positive and significant effect of innovation in the demand for labor when firms introduce product and process innovations in the same time period. The effect of innovation on the demand for labor is countercyclical, higher in the recession, after 2008, than in the expansion, before 2008, but the probability that firms innovate in product and process is counter-cyclical, i.e. lower in the recession. Altogether, the elasticity of the demand for labor to the probability that firms introduce product and process innovations remains stable throughout the sample period, at around 0.035. Innovation contributes to stabilize average employment during the cycle, more so when the innovation is in product, alone or together with process, than when it is only in process. These results are broadly consistent with product and process innovations shifting firms'' demand and production functions upwards, but differentially in expansions (less product market competition) than in contractions (more competition).

Despite the prevalence of Decision Support Systems (DSSs) in the field of decision-making, there is a paucity of research dedicated to the evaluation and comparison of these systems. This paper put forward a novel approach to symbolically encoding a DSS, which enables the generalization of comparisons between DSSs for any distribution of performances of the alternatives. The only hypothesis required in the proposed methodology is that the probability of choosing each alternative is proportional to its latent performance. The approach developed is demonstrated with its application to compare two paradigms commonly employed in DSS: holistic versus pairwise. Using a set of three alternatives, the present study provides mathematical proof that a DSS based on the pairwise comparison paradigm achieves higher expected performance than a DSS based on the holistic evaluation paradigm. This result challenges the emerging preference for holistic evaluation of alternatives and suggests that this result may apply to any number of alternatives.

The view of corporate managers as agents of the shareholders has been questioned from inside and from outside the business community, with demands that they be committed, instead, to value-maximization for all stakeholders. This paper maintains that existing theories of strategy make implicit or explicit assumptions on the irrelevance of transaction costs in the processes of value creation and appropriation that result in a minor role of managers and directors in stakeholders' value-maximization. Next, it explains why managers and directors acting as trustees of the business venture, with the mission of governing and managing the business under the prescriptions of the axiomatic Nash bargaining solution, can be a transaction costs efficient way of governing the multi-stakeholders firm.

Este artículo establece los déficits que se observan en la inversión en recursos intangibles (capital directivo y capital organizacional), en las empresas españolas cuando se comparan con las empresas de los países más avanzados de la Unión Europea. Se sugiere que 'la política industrial' se oriente a actuar sobre estos problemas del ámbito empresarial y se centre más en las cuestiones de 'cómo' deben innovar y competir las empresas que 'dónde' deben competir, para diseñar las palancas que estimulen los cambios., This paper establishes the deficits that are observed in the investment in intangible resources (managerial capital and organizational capital) in Spanish companies when compared with companies in the most advanced countries of the European Union. The paper suggests that the Industrial Policy should be oriented to deal with these problems in the business environment and to focus more on the questions of how companies should compete rather than where they should compete., CREVALOR (S42_17R, Gobierno de Aragón (España); FEDER 2014-2020 'Construyendo Europa desde Aragón'; proyecto ECO2017-86305-C4-3-R, 'Contribuciones al Diseño de Modelos de Negocio Socialmente Sostenibles' Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (España) y FEDER.

This article proposes the application of the maximum-entropy principle (MEP) to agency contracting (where a principal hires an agent to make decisions on their behalf) in situations where the principal and agent only have partial knowledge on the probability distribution of the output conditioned on the agent's actions. The paper characterizes the second-best agency contract from a maximum entropy distribution (MED) obtained from applying the MEP to the agency situation consistently with the information available. We show that, with the minimum shared information about the output distribution for the agency relationship to take place, the second-best compensation contract is (a monotone transformation of) an increasing affine function of output. With additional information on the output distribution, the second-best optimal contracts can be more complex. The second-best contracts obtained theoretically from the MEP cover many compensation schemes observed in real agency relationships.