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With the growing importance of performance measurement and management, this exploratory study intends to examine the practices of maintenance managers with regards to maintenance measures, as used in their organizations. In this process, the study attempts to uncover the relevant maintenance performance dimensions from the perspectives of the surveyed managers. In addition, the mediating effect of information availability on the main performance measures utilization is studied.

The research at hand is survey-based. It utilizes the responses of a sample of ninety-five (95) experienced maintenance managers to identify the most relevant maintenance performance measures. Factor analysis is then utilized to uncover the important dimensions of performance, as seen by the respondents. Additionally, using the Partial Least Squares method, several models were studied.

The findings of this exploratory research appear to suggest that maintenance managers are beginning to broaden their perspective with regard to performance management. While machine and plant-related performance measures are still emphasized, maintenance managers are slowly moving toward a wider organizational orientation. While the manufacturing organizations are becoming more and more customer-oriented open systems, the maintenance function of these organizations is still, for the most part, operating under the semi-open system orientation. Overall, it appears that an emerging maintenance strategy is slowly taking shape.

For the most part, performance measures and measurement related to maintenance have not received enough attention from researchers. Therefore, the literature dealing with the different facets of performance in maintenance has not been forthcoming. The study attempts to fill this apparent gap in the literature. This is important, as maintenance managers are being asked to contribute to the achievement of the competitive strategies of their organizations. Therefore, they must quickly learn how to view maintenance from a coherent strategic organizational perspective. Such a perspective should help in integrating the maintenance, resources, capabilities, and technical know-how in order to serve the strategic goal of their organization. The research at hand is limited to a sample from Portugal. Therefore, the results and conclusions must be interpreted accordingly.

As maintenance managers struggle to move from a machine-orientation to a more organizational-wide strategic orientation, they are often left with many questions and few answers. This study attempts to bring this problem to the spotlight so that it can receive more systematic empirical and practical research. In this context, the role of maintenance managers in the process of organizational strategy formulation should be examined.

The study presented in this article has practical, as well as theoretical contributions. It deals with an area of performance measurement, which so far has been relatively ignored. It uses a system orientation (closed vs open), in addition to the strategic orientation (single vs multi-faceted strategy) in order to shed some light on the need to have consistency between the nature of the system and its strategic objective.

The commercialization of research produced by universities constitutes a core facet of academic entrepreneurship (AE). Academic literature reveals the need to shed light on entrepreneurial processes in higher education institutions (HEIs). This study intends to fill this gap by researching the mechanisms for facilitating AE and the variables that can moderate the relationship between such mechanisms and AE in Portuguese HEIs.

Our research model aims to assess the mechanisms of academic entrepreneurship (AE) within a sample of 125 Portuguese public higher education institutions (HEIs). To test our research hypotheses, we employed a structural equation model (SEM) using the partial least squares (PLS) method. Additionally, our evaluation examines the potential moderating effects of incubator programs, support initiatives, and proof-of-concept programs (PoCs). Our research model seeks to evaluate the mechanisms for facilitating AE and explore the effects of including incubator programs, support initiatives, and PoCs as moderators. The seven variables (Research mobilization, Unconventionality, Industry collaboration, University policies, Incubator programs and support initiatives, Proof-of-concept programs, and academic entrepreneurship) were measured using a 7-point Likert scale.

The results revealed that different drivers of AE influence the creation and development of entrepreneurial activities. Our findings also show the moderating effects of incubator programs, support initiatives, and proof-of-concept programs on AE. We find that incubator programs, other support initiatives, and PoCs maintain a moderating effect on AE and benefit their respective HEIs.

The study examines only the Portuguese HEI context. Therefore, generalizing these results necessitates reservations. However, the responses came from various actors in HEIs, from different academic backgrounds and research interests. This makes the results more generalizable. Limitations are evident in external validity, given that we gathered the data over a relatively short period.

Observed factors are explored to gain a deeper understanding of their influence on the mechanisms of AE. The implications arise from the new perspective presented and the methodology used to identify mechanisms capable of fostering AE. We hope this research will encourage other researchers to study this topic further.

the engagement of universities at the global level should be emphasised in future policy. While universities in innovation systems often have a local focus, their engagement in innovation ecosystems transcends the boundaries of geographic locations.

PoCs had a significant positive moderating effect on the impact of research mobilization and university policies on AE. Thus, we find interactions between universities and industry boost AE. This study demonstrates how AE benefits HEIs by extending orientation towards mobilizing research, unconventional approaches, cooperation with industry, and university policy implementation. We thus advocate a new approach, demonstrating the influence that the mobility of research, unconventionality, industry collaboration, and university policies hold over AE.

Dynamic capabilities (DCs) need renewing to respond to changes emerging in the environment, and organizations must build up their capacities to sustain good performance levels. This study aims to identifying and characterizing the DCs existing in public health sector organizations by surveying the DC-related areas in health organizations, contributing to broader and more systematized knowledge in this field.

The authors sent a questionnaire to 245 professionals with leadership and management positions in healthcare organizations in this study. The authors used multivariate methods to validate the variables used to measure the DCs.

In addition to highlighting the impact of DCs on public health organizations' performance, the study’s results allowed the authors to identify hidden capacities in the organizations of this sector, which only emerge when resource management difficulties occur. These changes and difficulties may interact with users and/or professionals' needs and make organizational management a particular challenge aggravated by quick responses to ensure the organization's survival.

This study contributes to the literature's call for a deeper understanding of the role of DCs and contribute to a greater practical understanding of how these capabilities influence the performance of such organizations.

This paper focuses on the development of a new class of eight‐node solid finite elements, suitable for the treatment of volumetric and transverse shear locking problems. Doing so, the proposed elements can be used efficiently for 3D and thin shell applications. The starting point of the work relies on the analysis of the subspace of incompressible deformations associated with the standard (displacement‐based) fully integrated and reduced integrated hexahedral elements. Prediction capabilities for both formulations are defined related to nearly‐incompressible problems and an enhanced strain approach is developed to improve the performance of the earlier formulation in this case. With the insight into volumetric locking gained and benefiting from a recently proposed enhanced transverse shear strain procedure for shell applications, a new element conjugating both the capabilities of efficient solid and shell formulations is obtained. Numerical results attest the robustness and efficiency of the proposed approach, when compared to solid and shell elements well‐established in the literature.

Inspired by the debates on participatory methods and drawing from research on “digital childhoods” in Portugal, this chapter aims to address the methodological innovations and challenges in collecting visual and digital data with children at their homes. As one of the stages of a research project on internet use, children were asked to take photos of their favorite objects at home and to collect screenshots of their most used webpages, followed by a conversation with the researcher. The use of photography allowed children greater expression and autonomy and gave researchers access to the children’s own perspectives on their home environment. It also provided unique information about the arrangement of digital objects at home and their different appropriations by girls and boys. Screenshots showed creative uses of the internet by children and gender differences. Ethical concerns were raised, due to the specific nature of working with children and with visual material (anonymization and dissemination). Entering the domestic setting provided a privileged access to children’s private sphere and to the in situ observation of their use of technology. However, the home is not a neutral place for a researcher and crossing the border into the private domain involves risks. These findings, illustrated by empirical examples from the research field, stress the importance of reflecting on and discussing the potentials, limitations, and ethical considerations of different methodologies, as well as their suitability to specific research objects, subjects, and contexts.

Isolated steel columns, when exposed to high temperatures, lose strength in a few minutes due to the high thermal conductivity of its constituent material. When these structural elements are embedded in walls, the response to exceptional action is altered so that the compartmentation offers an increase in the fire resistance of the columns. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the behavior of steel columns inserted in walls subject to thermal action in a numerical context.

For this purpose, the computational code ABAQUS version 6.14, which applies the finite element method formulation to solve engineering problems, was used.

The thermo-mechanical modeling, considering the wall only as a compartmentation element, generated few consistent results, leading to the conclusion that the walls influence the structural response of columns in a fire situation.

There is a lack of both numerical and experimental research works. In numerical modeling, the research works found in the literature had difficulties in developing a numerical model that satisfactorily represented steel columns inserted in walls, not being able to adequately understand their behavior at high temperatures. All of them did not consider the influence of masonry on the thermo-structural behavior of the columns. In this paper, this influence was evaluated and discussed.

Family, media and peer pressure seem to influence adolescent development activating the perception and internalisation of thin ideals that may trigger dieting, bingeing and other self-harming disorders. The proliferation of problematic online content consumed and produced by young people, such as in the case of pro-anorexic web sites, seem to worry not only parents but also young people. The aim of this work is to analyse content produced by a group of Portuguese speaking pro-anorexic adolescents in order to better understand how social and cultural pressures may influence their disruptive behaviours and how they seem to cope with them.

A qualitative exploratory content analysis examined 11 Portuguese-speaking blogs written by teenagers (boys and girls) between 13 and 19 years old who use these environments to validate their pro-anorexic lifestyle, share body and image issues or search for diets and support from like-minded others.

Blogs content analysis suggest that peer pressure, need for acceptance, and conflicts with parents denote the power of subliminal messages, revealing that, even at very young ages, stereotypical messages may be easily understood and internalised. The authors organised the collected evidence into three categories: common shared content found in the pro-anorexic blogs; celebrities and fashion models that young people worship as thinspiration; how youth deal with parental, peer and social and cultural pressures.

Although this is a very small group of blogs, this work offers a research contribution about pro-anorexic dangerous content consumed, produced and disseminated online by Portuguese speaking young people. This exploratory study is a starting point for further research. This is a field the authors intend to explore deeply using more child centred and participative research techniques in order to fully understand the issues at stake and to get the actual young people's point of view and experiences.

Provisional findings trigger the authors' concern and scientific interest in learning more about pro-anorexic and other self-harming disruptive online content produced and consumed by young people. With this study they aim to help to raise awareness among parents, caregivers and teachers about problematic eating and self-harming contents as they may affect adolescent development and well-being.

This paper aims to debate the main factors influencing trust in mobile government (m-government) in the developing country of Jordan. The transformation from government services offered through a government website to services offered via smartphone devices needs further investigation to better understand the factors that might influence citizens’ trust in m-government, in particular, young citizens. This paper presents the concept of m-government and reports on a study of the main predictors affecting citizens’ trust in it. The theoretical framework used is based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT).

A survey study of 510 Jordanian young citizens, who had access to the internet and were smartphone users, investigated the influence of the identified factors on their trust in m-government. The hypotheses testing used multiple regression analysis.

Contrary to previous claims reported in relation to facilitating conditions, the following predictors: trust in government, word of mouth (WOM), social influence and facilitating conditions were found to be significant factors in predicting Jordanian citizens’ trust in m-government services.

This is one of few studies to investigate what influences trust in m-government by citizens in Jordan. The current research significantly contributes to the literature by incorporating factors from the UTAUT model with personal perception factors to elucidate m-government adoption. The integration of UTAUT with factors such as “WOM”, is a direction that can be followed in research on the adoption of and trust in e-government and m-government by citizens in any social community. This study clearly identities the relationship between m-government trust and the WOM construct, which is rarely discussed in this type of research context. Although the facilitating conditions construct is claimed to be non-significant in the presence of performance expectancy and effort expectancy, the current research shows the importance of including the facilitating conditions construct when considering the topic of m-government trust in Jordan. Finally, this paper provides a foundation for future empirical studies on the adoption of m-government.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce an emergent type of INV (international new venture) – designated as “borderless firm” – present some recent cases and speculate about its future occurrence.

A search of the literature identified 25 cases that fitted, to a greater or lesser extent, the conceptual definition of a borderless firm presented in the chapter. We also found three teaching cases whose focus-firms fitted our definition.

The three firms present a combination of intentional design with fortuitous experimentation and intensively exploited relationships. They fulfill the key features of our definition.

This study is still embryonic and was driven by the authors’ conceptual thinking, based on their intuition about a new type of firm. Detailed data came from only three cases, but 25 other cases were identified, which did, to some extent, fit the definition of a borderless firm and, as such, could be studied with this focus in order to provide further evidence and to refine the conceptual definition and our understanding of the empirical manifestation of this type of firm.

We shed light on an interesting – and probably bound to occur more frequently in the future – type of firm with distinctive characteristics: a managerial mindset that does not feel constrained by geographical frontiers; a high geographical dispersion of value-added activities (beyond the sales and distribution activities that characterize most of the literature on Born Globals and INVs); and a multi-country pool of founders/managers and internationally dispersed staff.

This study aims to focus on the impact of COVID-19 on the Spanish wine sector and the financial resilience of Spanish wineries in the period 2019–2020.

The data set contains 355 limited companies of the Spanish wine sector which were active in the period 2019–2020. The explanatory variables used are size and age of the company, exports, subsidies and gender distribution in the workforce. The financial statements of the companies are treated as compositional data, using log-ratios for asset structure, leverage, margin, turnover and debt maturity. The first-difference estimator is used for the panel-data model relating the differences in the log-ratios between 2020 and 2019 to the explanatory variables.

In average terms, margin and turnover have significantly worsened between 2019 and 2020, while debt maturity has increased. A larger firm size, a greater age, a higher share of women in the workforce and subsidies have made wineries more resilient between 2019 and 2020.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first financial statement analysis of the impact of COVID-19 in the winery sector.