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This review aims to identify the determinants of voluntary disclosure of corporate social performance (CSP) and to analyze and consolidate previous quantitative studies to identify the theoretical perspectives and the variables used in measuring the determinants of CSP disclosure (CSP-D).

A literature review of articles published from 1987 to 2015 was conducted using the three databases, Ebsco, ISI and Jstor, with CSP-D as the dependent variable. The goal was to identify the theoretical perspectives underlying the studies and the independent variables.

The literature revealed a set of variables and their general measures, but the consensus confirmed that there was no single explanation for what determined CSP-D. The published theories that support a relationship between CSP-D and its determinants are legitimacy, institutional, stakeholder, agency and voluntary disclosure theory.

The results allowed us to identify the perspectives underlying the major theories and disclosed a set of factors considered by the literature as the ones that influence CSP-D. This information will be useful for researchers interested in developing their own studies on CSP-D because it presents the evolution of CSP-D factors over time and organizes the findings of multiple studies developed since the emergence of the theme.

This study aims to explore worldwide innovative solutions that have been proposed to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on people’s mental health.

A qualitative methodology is adopted, which performs an exploratory study considering the innovative projects identified by the Observatory for Public Sector Innovation framework. Additionally, the analysis of the relevance and characteristics of these projects are explored considering a multidimensional framework composed of five dimensions: novelty level; social need; improvement of society; sector neutrality; and level of emergence.

The findings reveal that the number of projects in the field of mental health is low, despite their strong relevance to their communities. These projects arise from a strong social need to protect especially the most vulnerable groups in this pandemic and involve a large number of partners in the public sector, business and civil society. The role of volunteering in the revitalization and growth of these initiatives is also recognized.

This study is relevant in both the theoretical and practical dimensions. It allows the exploration of these projects considering the dimensions of social innovation and offers practical implications that allow these projects to be replicated in other countries and regions.

This chapter historicizes the social construction of racism in Brazilian society and its relation to the development of the library and information science (LIS) field. It is a theoretical-reflective research built on the scientific literature of the field of LIS and related areas that aims at reflecting on social justice in Brazilian libraries and creating strategies to confront institutional racism. The authors develop five main points to understand Brazilian racism: the myth of racial democracy, structural and institutionalized racism, the whitening ideology, whiteness, and the epistemicide of black knowledge. The authors then discuss racism and the promotion of white supremacy in library teaching and professional action in libraries. Black US American and Black Brazilian Librarianship movements show that the activism and political action of black librarians advance the development of informational counter-narratives. Finally, the authors recommend three strategies for social, racial, and informational justice in the LIS field: including ethnic-racial studies in basic university courses curricula; building diverse, inclusive collections that account for ethnic-racial themes and authors; and considering “Pretuguese” keywords while indexing, in order to counter exclusion and promote epistemic repair. The authors conclude by advocating for these strategies to steer LIS professional and educational spheres toward contributing to forward an anti-racist society.

This paper aims to propose a translation library capable of generating robots proprietary code after their offline programming has been performed in a software application, named AdaptPack Studio, running over a robot simulation and offline programming software package.

The translation library, named AdaptPack Studio Translator, is capable to generate proprietary code for the Asea Brown Boveri, FANUC, Keller und Knappich Augsburg and Yaskawa Motoman robot brands, after their offline programming has been performed in the AdaptPack Studio application.

Simulation and real tests were performed showing an improvement in the creation, operation, modularity and flexibility of new robotic palletizing systems. In particular, it was verified that the time needed to perform these tasks significantly decreased.

The design and setup of robotics palletizing systems are facilitated by an intuitive offline programming system and by a simple export command to the real robot, independent of its brand. In this way, industrial solutions can be developed faster, in this way, making companies more competitive.

The effort to build a robotic palletizing system is reduced by an intuitive offline programming system (AdaptPack Studio) and the capability to export command to the real robot using the AdaptPack Studio Translator. As a result, companies have an increase in competitiveness with a fast design framework. Furthermore, and to the best of the author’s knowledge, there is also no scientific publication formalizing and describing how to build the translators for industrial robot simulation and offline programming software packages, being this a pioneer publication in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of SERVQUAL to assess service quality in Dentistry, by evaluating patients’ expectations and perceptions of dental care and their association to patients’ sociodemographic data.

The sample constituted of 379 subjects in the first assessment and 155 in the second phase. All employees of the companies that were clients of the dental insurance participated, a total of four companies in two states (São Paulo and Minas Gerais) of Brazil. SERVQUAL questionnaires about expectations and sociodemographic data were dispatched in the first phase, and in a second phase SERVQUAL questionnaires about perceptions. Those who had not yet received dental treatment and had agreed to participate filled out their survey in the first phase. In the second phase, the respondents had to have completed their treatment.

When the value gap is considered, Reliability (as a dimension) had the smallest score (−3.71). This means that it was the worst result, i.e. there is a higher difference between expectations and perceptions, and problems can be identified here. t-test confirmed that all the dimensions had some statistically significant difference with p<0.05 in relation to expectations and perceptions. Women presented higher prevalence of dissatisfaction (Tangible and Reliability dimensions), as well as the oldest participants (Empathy dimension) and those with lower parental literacy (Assurance and Empathy dimensions). The only dimension that was not significantly associated was Responsiveness.

This research suggests that the patients evaluated the physical characteristics of the premises and the interaction with the staff as the priority issues that need special attention in this service. Moreover, the use of SERVQUAL was extremely relevant for the oral health service, because it assessed the users’ subjective perceptions.

The successful implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) depends on the adoption and subsequent maintenance of accrual accounting policies. Moreover, Financial Management Information Systems (FMIS) are important drivers of reforms, and their replacement might disrupt the execution of accrual accounting policies. This paper aims to analyze the effects of FMIS replacement (or maintenance) on the retention of accrual accounting policies in Brazilian local governments.

The research adopts a sequential mixed-methods approach, starting with a quantitative analysis of the presence of accrual accounting policies in local governments and the effects of FMIS replacement. Next, a qualitative analysis is conducted with a survey, documents and interviews to observe the FMIS replacement process. Our analysis focuses on local governments from one state in Brazil, but the context is highly transferable to other states, as the same procurement law and accounting regulations apply.

FMIS replacement may reduce accounting policies retention; consequently, public procurement regulation may induce a public procurement context in which the IPSAS project would find more difficulties to prosper.

This research contributes to the IPSAS literature by examining the phenomenon of accounting policies retention or persistence, as one should not take it for granted that an adopted accounting procedure will be sustained over time. The analysis argues that FMIS replacement due to compulsory rebidding should be carefully considered.

Promoters of accounting reforms may consider the regulation of contracting out for FMIS a relevant issue to the institutionalization of accounting policies.

The analysis innovates by linking IPSAS accounting reform to the contracting out of FMIS.

This paper aims to propose an automated framework for agile development and simulation of robotic palletizing cells. An automatic offline programming tool, for a variety of robot brands, is also introduced.

This framework, named AdaptPack Studio, offers a custom-built library to assemble virtual models of palletizing cells, quick connect these models by drag and drop, and perform offline programming of robots and factory equipment in short steps.

Simulation and real tests performed showed an improvement in the design, development and operation of robotic palletizing systems. The AdaptPack Studio software was tested and evaluated in a pure simulation case and in a real-world scenario. Results have shown to be concise and accurate, with minor model displacement inaccuracies because of differences between the virtual and real models.

An intuitive drag and drop layout modeling accelerates the design and setup of robotic palletizing cells and automatic offline generation of robot programs. Furthermore, A* based algorithms generate collision-free trajectories, discretized both in the robot joints space and in the Cartesian space. As a consequence, industrial solutions are available for production in record time, increasing the competitiveness of companies using this tool.

The AdaptPack Studio framework includes, on a single package, the possibility to program, simulate and generate the robot code for four different brands of robots. Furthermore, the application is tailored for palletizing applications and specifically includes the components (Building Blocks) of a particular company, which allows a very fast development of new solutions. Furthermore, with the inclusion of the Trajectory Planner, it is possible to automatically develop robot trajectories without collisions.

Food socialization is the process of influences that forms children's eating habits and preferences, affecting their well-being for life. The authors' study explores what children and adolescents eat and how they obtain food at school, aiming to describe the deleterious food socialization phenomenon. The authors focused on understanding how deleterious food socialization influences children's food well-being within the school environment.

The authors developed a mixed methodology using structured questionnaires with open and closed questions. The authors also took pictures of the schools' canteens, which allowed deepening the understanding of the school environment. The data collection occurred in two Brazilian private schools. The schools' teachers were responsible for collecting 388 useful questionnaires from students between 10 and 14 years old.

The authors found statistically significant differences between food originating at home and school. The amount of ultra-processed foods and beverages consumed at home and taken by children and adolescents from home to school is smaller than what they buy in the school canteen or get from their colleagues. Thus, the authors suggest that the school environment tends to be more harmful to infant feeding than the domestic one.

This study coins the concept of deleterious food socialization: situations or environments in which the food socialization process negatively impacts one's well-being. The authors' results illustrate the deleterious food socialization phenomenon in the school environment.

This article analysed how data collection systems (DCS) developed by governmental audit organizations (Court of Accounts) affect budgetary planning within local governments.

Eighteen semi-structured interviews complemented by six time-lagged interviews via WhatsApp were carried out with the actors involved in the preparation and auditing of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) in Brazilian local governments. Documents such as the structured layouts of Courts' DCS and the publicised MTEF prepared by local governments were also analysed.

The findings indicate that Courts' DCS structured layouts reduce local governments' budgetary planning autonomy in elaborating their MTEF. It happens as the Courts' main driver is to make MTEF information auditable and not to improve the usefulness of information by governments. As a result, the planning choices of the local governments end up limited, not by the general legislation but by the rules established by the computerized systems of the Courts.

The paper's originality relies on demonstrating that the digitalisation of audit processes ultimately affects local governments' practices through structured layouts for the data collection on MTEF information - that impose rigidity on the budget planning process of local governments. The authors highlight the role of public sector auditing organisations as potential catalysts of reforms; however, this should be considered cautiously since the drivers and motivations of the organisation that sponsors public financial management reforms matter for overall reform effectiveness.

Manufacturing systems have undergone radical changes because of the implementation of physical and digital innovating technologies with high levels of connectivity, interoperability and autonomy. In this regard, the objective of this study was to investigate whether industrial engineers graduated in recent years in Brazil are prepared or not to work in companies and industries within the scope of Industry 4.0 technologies in a way that they positively contribute to the implementation and management of such technologies.

To achieve these objectives, a literature review and a survey on managers of the industrial sector acting in Brazil were carried out as the research strategies. The data collected were analyzed through a quantitative approach by means of the structural equations modeling method.

The hypothesis that the competencies of industrial engineers currently graduating in Brazil have a positive impact on the implementation and management of Industry 4.0 technologies has been confirmed. Predicting the evolution of production scenarios, understanding the interaction between organizations and their impacts on competitiveness and keeping abreast of technological advancements, organizing them and putting them to the service of business and societal demands were the competencies that obtained the highest factor loadings in the construct of industrial engineer competencies. In addition, cloud manufacturing, automation and robotization were the competencies that obtained the highest factor loadings in the industry 4.0 construct.

The analysis of skills development stands out as a source of competitive advantage for companies that intend to transition to a production system aligned with the principles of Industry 4.0, considering the training of professionals in an emerging economy context.