Telecommuting: The employee's perspective

Available telecommunication technology enables the substitution of commuting by “telecommuting”, or working at home, for a wide range of white collar occupations. Research on the potential of this phenomenon along with some ongoing experiments point at an array of social and personal benefits that may be realized by this working arrangement. An assessment of the possible implications of work-at-home on the individual employee indicate that the burden on him or her may be greater than the benefits accrued and, therefore, the journey to work may be a more desirable act than traditionally perceived by transportation planners. This paper focuses on two aspects of the work-at-home arrangement. Previous research on the sociology of work as well as preliminary empirical results indicate that 1) social interaction at work and 2) the need to separate home and work roles are important elements for the individual worker. The fact that work-at-home will affect these attributes, is likely to discourage wide-scale transition to this arrangement, despite the availability of the technology. Most research published to date on the subject is qualitative in nature, as only little empirical evidence is available. The objective of this paper is to stress, based on a wide literature review, the need for a thorough behavioral evaluation of the available technology to provide a sound basis for decision making on implementation of the technology.     

Innovation and performance in the hotel industry

The growing competition in the hotel industry is one of the main challenges of this segment, which increasingly depends on the ability to innovate. Thus, this article aims to analyze the impact of innovation on the performance of employees and hotel organizations. This is an exploratory study, with a quantitative approach using a structured computer-administered questionnaire to 73 managers of hotel chains, located in Brazil, which correspond to 792 hotels. Data analysis used multiple linear regression method with SPSS software to find out the relationship between the factors of innovation (communication, processes, leadership, and strategy) and the performance of employees and hotel organizations. Results show that the factors of communication, leadership, and strategy directly influence the performance of the employees. However, only the leadership factor directly affects the performance of hotel organizations.     

Spatial Ethics Beyond the North–South Dichotomy: Moral Dilemmas in Favelas

Journal of Business Ethics - Western representation of countries from the Global South implies a dichotomist view of business ethics: on the one hand, universal ethics largely reproduces...     

Treating and Pruning: New approaches to forecasting model selection and combination using prediction intervals

We propose a new way of selecting among model forms in automated exponential smoothing routines, consequently enhancing their predictive power. The procedure, here addressed as treating, operates by selectively subsetting the ensemble of competing models based on information from their prediction intervals. By the same token, we set forth a pruning strategy to improve the accuracy of both point forecasts and prediction intervals in forecast combination methods. The proposed approaches are respectively applied to automated exponential smoothing routines and Bagging algorithms, to demonstrate their potential. An empirical experiment is conducted on a wide range of series from the M-Competitions. The results attest that the proposed approaches are simple, without requiring much additional computational cost, but capable of substantially improving forecasting accuracy for both point forecasts and prediction intervals, outperforming important benchmarks and recently developed forecast combination methods.     

Can sustainable investments outperform traditional benchmarks? Evidence from global stock markets

To contribute to overcoming global sustainability challenges, investors have been increasingly interested in making sustainable investments and incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into their portfolio selection decisions and managerial activities. However, these investors and other agents interested in sustainable investment need updated and robust information to support their decision making. We analyzed the performance of several Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSIs) and compared them with their respective market benchmarks from 2013 to 2018. The indices comprise the following regions and countries: the world, the Asia‐Pacific, Europe, emerging markets and the US. The analysis was conducted based on both classic and modern portfolio metrics. The results suggest that sustainable investment performance is still heterogeneous worldwide, but there is a promising opportunity for investors to obtain superior risk‐adjusted returns in certain regions while incorporating sustainable investment practices. The findings are of utmost importance to financial market practitioners, business managers, academics and other stakeholders interested in promoting investments, corporate practices and scientific knowledge to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).     

Sustainable finance and investment: Review and research agenda

Sustainable finance and investment (SFI) is key to fostering sustainable global development. Research in this field has focused on specific topics, such as the financial performance of sustainable investments and companies committed to sustainability. The SFI literature is excessively fragmented, rendering it difficult to identify what constitutes the field and what differentiates it from traditional finance and investment. Based on a systematic literature review of 166 articles, we map and integrate the main elements of the SFI field and identify the most relevant avenues for further research. In this process, we provide a definition of SFI; identify the main players in the field; and describe their profiles, strategies, and outcomes. We also propose a framework for understanding the SFI field and a research agenda. This agenda organizes the main SFI research questions and suggests suitable approaches to address them. We conclude that SFI players have worked together to promote positive social and environmental impacts through their financial and investment activities. However, the under-theorization of the SFI concept, the traditional short-term nature of financial logic, and the lack of evidence on the SFI impacts on society and the environment are the greatest challenges facing the field.     

Cross-border cooperation: A response to the challenges facing agri-food cooperatives in Southern European countries

All agri-food cooperatives share common interests, irrespective of their geographical borders, which should encourage them to undertake inter-cooperation processes as well as to set up transnational cooperatives. This paper has two objectives. The first is to analyze Spanish and Portuguese cooperative regulations and the Statute for a European Cooperative Society to define how to embark on these processes in the two countries while also pinpointing the conflicts that may arise from the different regulations. Secondly, it seeks to ascertain which Spanish and Portuguese cooperatives have had experience in this field and to characterize them through a multiple-case study, including the rationale for the processes, the advantages and the constraints. The results have revealed five cross-border cooperation categories and show that the Statute for a European Cooperative Society has not had the expected success at the EU level, due to its complexity. However, in general, the lack of expected cross-border cooperative experiences is not due to legal, language or management issues. It is for different reasons. Firstly, cooperatives think that they can achieve the same objectives through inter-cooperative agreements. Secondly, government policies protect the regional nature of their cooperatives, rather than encouraging them to expand their business and therefore their capacity to respond to current challenges.