When sociable workers pay off: Can firms internalize social capital externalities?

We use an endogenous growth model to contrast the socially optimal allocation of human capital with the decentralized solution, in a context where workers make the choices that determine social capital accumulation. As social capital is expected to increase productivity but is not traded in markets, a positive social capital externality is identified. We discuss the possibility that, in response to this externality, firms subsidize social capital accumulation activities, incurring into additional costs that are recouped through productivity gains. This reaction by firms may be seen as a justification for some corporate social responsibility actions targeted at workers, although a full internalization of the externality does not look achievable in practice.     

Author’s Biographies

Leadership has become a more popular term than management, even though it is understood that both phenomena represent important organizational behaviors. This paper focuses on empathy in leadership, and presents the findings of a study conducted among business students over the course of 3 years. Finding that empathy consistently ranked lowest in the ratings, the researchers set out to discover the driving motives behind this invariable trend, and conducted a second study to obtain opinions about possible underlying factors. The paper presents the findings of both studies, as well as literature reviews on the differences between management and leadership, a historical overview of leadership, a reflection of 21st century leadership, the ongoing debate on the effects of corporate psychopaths on ethical performance, and scholars’ perception on empathy in corporate leadership. The findings indicate the need for a paradigm shift in corporations as well as business schools in regards to leaders’ required skills, and suggest a proactive approach from business faculty to change the current paradigm.     

Public policies,political cleavages and urban space: state infrastructure policies in São Paulo,Brazil, 1975–2000

This article deals with the state policies of urban infrastructure in São Paulo, Brazil, from 1975 to 2000. Working with primary information about the investments made by the state in public works, we discuss a series of arguments present in the urban studies literature about the patterns of state investment in urban spaces and propose an alternative explanation for state action in Brazilian urban spaces in recent decades. We analyze the main elements that have influenced the overall pattern of investments, describe the main characteristics of this policy over time and in each of the municipal governments of the period, as well as develop an evaluation of the spatial distribution of the resources among each of the main social groups in the city.     

Profiling the segments of visitors to Portuguese protected areas

This study identifies the diversity of domestic visitors to Portuguese protected areas (PPA) based on benefit segmentation. The segments of PPA visitors are also compared with other nature-based tourist segments using some empirical benefit segmentation literature. Data were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire and multivariate statistics techniques (principal components, hierarchical and K-means cluster analyses) were applied. Five distinct segments of visitors were identified based on the motivation for their visit and further characterized by the perceived importance of activities, facilities and services, frequency of visit and socio-demographics. Three segments are nature-focused and two are focused on activities or events. Only one segment shows specific interests and motivations associated with ecotourism and similar characteristics to international ecotourists; moreover, the reasons for the visit in one segment are unrelated to any of the motivations of nature-based tourism. Some implications for management are also described.     

Airport regulation in Europe: Is there need for a European Observatory?

This paper provides an overview of how the major airports are regulated in Europe. In order to eliminate the potential of airports to exercise market power and protect the public interest, it has become increasingly necessary to set a common regulatory framework. We intend to discuss the need for a single regulator in Europe to monitor or establish the quality of service and the charges practiced by the airports, to ensure cost-relatedness, transparency and non-discrimination. The existing regulatory approaches regarding aeronautical charges and their economic implications are also analyzed. We propose the creation of a European Observatory for this sector.     

Some unpleasant currency-devaluation arithmetic in a post Keynesian macromodel

The conventional view argues that devaluation increases the price competitiveness of domestic goods, thus allowing the economy to achieve a higher level of economic activity. However, these theoretical treatments largely neglect two important effects following devaluation: (1) the inflationary impact on the price of imported intermediate inputs, which raises the prime costs of firms and deteriorates partially or totally their price competitiveness; and (2) the redistribution of income from wages to profits, which ambiguously affects the aggregate demand as workers and capitalists have different propensities to save. New structuralist economists have explored these stylized facts neglected by the orthodox literature and, by and large, conclude that devaluation has contractionary effects on growth and positive effects on the external balance. Given that empirical evidence on the correlation between devaluation and growth is quite mixed, we develop a more general Keynesian–Kaleckian model that takes into account both opposing views in order to analyze the net impact of currency depreciation on the short-run growth rate and the current account. We demonstrate that this impact can go either way, depending on several conditions such as the type of growth regime, that is, wage-led or profit-led, and the degree of international price competitiveness of domestic goods.     

Ethical Ideology and Ethical Judgments in the Portuguese Accounting Profession

The purpose of the present study is to examine the attitudes of Portuguese chartered accountants with respect to questions of ethical nature that can arise in their professional activity. Respondents were asked to respond to the Ethics Position Questionnaire developed by Forsyth (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(1), 175–184, 1980), in order to determine their idealism and relativism levels. Subsequently, they answered questions about five scenarios related to accounting practices, with the objective of measuring their ethical judgments. Based on the idealism and relativism levels of our respondents, they were classified into one of four groups, representing different ethical ideologies (absolutism, exceptionism, subjectivism, and situationism). The results indicated that age was the major determinant of relativism. Contrary to previous research, older respondents revealed themselves significantly more relativistic than younger ones. Gender seems to be the most important determinant of ethical judgments; against expectations, men evidenced significantly stricter judgments than women in two of the five scenarios. Findings also indicated that respondents’ ethical judgments did not differ significantly based on their ethical ideology, supporting the idea that ethical ideology is not an important determinant of ethical judgments.     

Rural tourism and the development of less favoured areas—between rhetoric and practice

Tourism has, in recent times, been advocated as a particularly efficient way to promote the development of the so‐called less favoured regions, mostly inland and mountain, owing to its potential for employment and income creation and the synergies it is able to generate in other sectors of activity. Based on the results of empirical research carried out in two distinct inland zones of Portugal, this article tries to demonstrate that a wide gap and considerable contradictions are emerging between the rhetoric and the real benefits that tourism has been producing in the local societies and economies of these regions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The dimensions of rural tourism experience: impacts on arousal,memory, and satisfaction

ABSTRACT

Rural tourism is driven by the search for unique and memorable experiences in particular settings, but knowledge on visitors’ experiences in rural destinations is still scarce. This paper analyzes the rural tourism experience of Portuguese tourists who answered an online survey (N = 252). The paper aims at validating, in the rural tourism context, a previously proposed tourist experience scale, and analyzing the relationships between the experience, arousal, memory, and satisfaction. Results reveal that the rural tourism experience dimensions of education and esthetics positively predict rural tourists’ arousal, whereas escapism and esthetics determine memorability. Finally, implications for rural tourism marketing are discussed.     

Re‐Thinking Territorial Cohesion in the European Planning Context

The socio‐economic dimensions of cohesion have long been considered an integral part of Europeanization. However, recently a third dimension has been added to the Europe 2020 cohesion policy debate: territorial cohesion. Consequently this term is as yet undeveloped, resulting in a lack of consensus on how to define and interpret it. Such ambiguity represents a theoretical and empirical challenge to regional actors needing to respond to European Union (EU) directives while operationalizing the concept within their national and/or regional agendas. This article uses Portugal as a case study to examine how the concept of territorial cohesion is being interpreted and transposed from EU‐based to territorial‐based instruments and policy documents. First, we conducted a qualitative content analysis (QCA) of a selection of European and regional publications to compare their intrinsic discourses. This was followed by around 60 structured qualitative interviews, conducted with leading actors who had been instrumental in writing or implementing regional policy documents. On the basis of this dual analysis we conclude that, as a whole, the writers of the Portuguese strategic documents successfully transposed this concept, although perceptible differences exist between regions, as local actors have selectively redefined it to better suit their strategic priorities. These differences are debated with the aim of contributing to the design of effective public policies that facilitate inclusion, cohesion and Europeanization.