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The main aim of this chapter is to show the paramount role that both creativity and innovation have in order to state competitive advantages in tourism.

The approach is based both on literature review and on various business cases to underline the ideas derived from the literature review.

An entrepreneurial mind must be creative and innovative. This simple idea takes a special value in tourist businesses because of the need to survive in a global market full of competitive actors, dynamism and volatility of preferences in consumers’ attitudes.

This chapter is an approaching essay based mainly on a general literature review supported with several case studies.

Tourism entrepreneurs must take into account the role that creativity and innovation have for their business plans. These two dimensions are the head and tail of the same coin that will help them not only to create value for tourist customers but also to make the difference between them and their competitors.

This chapter shows the connections between creativity, innovation and competitive advantages, and their critical value for any entrepreneur who wants to deploy a successful business venture.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a computer simulation model to evaluate the bowl phenomenon and the allocation at the end of the line of stations with either greater mean operation times or higher variability of operation times.

The model was developed on the basis of a realistic case problem and applied to a six‐station assembly line. The evaluation criteria were the: minimization of the total elapsed time; maximization of the average percentage of working time; and minimization of the average time in the system.

The performance of an assembly line with independently normally distributed operation times could be improved by applying the bowl phenomenon. The allocation of large operation mean times to stations located near the end of the line did not produce improved results. Instead a more balanced allocation proved to be more significantly effective. On the other hand, the assignment of larger variability of operation times to the stations near the end of the line improved the performance of the assembly line.

The investigation contributed to the computer simulation approach to solving assembly line problems that dealt with the impact of normally distributed operation times on the bowl phenomenon and assembly lines with increasing mean operation times and higher variability of operation times at the end of the line of stations.

The aim of this paper is to review and analyze the research literature on the health and safety issues of migrant workers in the construction industry from 2000 to 2022.

5 steps method is used to conduct a systematic review to achieve the objectives. After scanning two authoritative search engines “Web of Science” and “Scope”, 60 articles are selected from 225 publications for identification and review. These identified articles are classified by research fields, countries and time span.

The review finds that with the increasing influence of migrant construction workers, the number of publications on the health and safety of migrant workers has shown a rapid upward trend. Moreover, language barriers are the most dominant safety risk factors encountered by on-site migrant workers. This systematic literature review also summarizes the definition of migrant workers and solutions to reduce safety risk factors.

The research data on the health and safety issues and risk factors of migrant workers in the construction industry is still limited. This literature review summarizes the research trends and contributions of the literature in this field in the past 22 years and provides theoretical support for future research on the safety management of the migration construction field.

The evaluation of management systems is usually based on a series of assumptions which are never questioned. The purpose of this paper is to focus on two of these assumptions, in order to further develop a quantitative model to evaluate metrological management in companies, based on the ISO 10012:2003 standard.

First, the paper uses structural equations to identify the underlying relations between the different variables of the model and conclude that it follows the typical continuous improvement cycle formulated by Deming. And second, the paper processes the opinion of experts using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques in order to prove that not all the variables included in the model are equally relevant in metrological management.

The first SME analysis validates the model itself and its integration with the other management schemes in the company, all based on the Deming cycle. The second AHP analysis leads to a reformulation of the model, assigning weights to the different variables and providing better guidelines for companies to improve their metrological management.

This constitutes a development of the management guidelines contained in the ISO 10012:2003 standard for metrological management, establishing the appropriate evaluation procedures.

Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, this study examines the structural relationships between negative school social relationships, school safety, educational expectation, and academic achievement of Latino immigrant students. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling show that discrimination, unhelpful school social relationships, and experiences of unsafe school environments influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement indirectly and directly through their educational expectations. Specifically, this study explores how noncognitive and contextual factors embedded in different structural layers of school organization influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement. It draws attention to the impact of negative school factors such as discriminatory and unsupportive school social relationships, and negative and unsafe school structures that undermine school life. Based on our findings, we argue that as Latino immigrant students internalize negative experiences from their school experiences during the critical period of adolescence, such accumulated negative internalization may reinforce negative self-perceptions and inaccurate stereotypes. Not only discrimination but also other negative school features such as the absence of academic supporters, nonacademically oriented friends, and unsafe learning environments inhibit them from navigating positive school opportunities and ultimately, successful school achievement. Implications for the social organization of U.S. public secondary schools with a focus on Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement are discussed.

This study aims to present the climate change effect on soil moisture regimes in Mexico in a global 1.5°C warming scenario.

The soil moisture regimes were determined using the Newhall simulation model with the database of mean monthly precipitation and temperature at a scale of 1: 250,000 for the current scenario and with the climate change scenarios associated with a mean global temperature increase of 1.5°C, considering two Representative Concentration Pathways, 4.5 and 8.5 W/m² and three general models of atmospheric circulation, namely, GFDL, HADGEM and MPI. The different vegetation types of the country were related to the soil moisture regimes for current conditions and for climate change.

According to the HADGEM and MPI models, almost the entire country is predicted to undergo a considerable increase in soil moisture deficit, and part of the areas of each moisture regime will shift to the next drier regime. The GFDL model also predicts this trend but at smaller proportions.

The changes in soil moisture at the regional scale that reveal the impacts of climate change and indicate where these changes will occur are important elements of the knowledge concerning the vulnerability of soils to climate change. New cartography is available in Mexico.

This chapter presents an overview of social entrepreneurship and social innovation in Colombia and explores its implications in the Pacific Alliance. It is organized into five sections that provide an overview of the fields of social entrepreneurship and social innovation with the aim of sharing experiences that have occurred in the country with the international academic community. It offers a description of the social and economic context of Colombia and then presents the situations that currently serve as the basis of social entrepreneurship and social innovation. It also discusses the main actors that are active in this context. In particular, the chapter emphasizes the experience of the city of Medellín, which is thought to provide an auspicious scenario for the establishment of a business ecosystem based on social entrepreneurship and social innovation. The learnings of Colombia can serve as a relevant example for the countries of the Pacific Alliance that are currently building their social business ecosystems.