Search results

Christmas is the most consumed event of the year, always full of traditions, namely family ones, which are very significant. In this way, it is intended to find out the importance of traditions at Christmas time and analyze their implications for family businesses.

The study is quantitative in nature, based on a questionnaire survey carried out with 551 Portuguese individuals, over 18 years of age, where different issues related to Christmas traditions and family are addressed.

The results demonstrate that the Christmas traditions scale is made up of four factors: family traditions on Christmas Eve, aspects related to the Christmas spirit, changes in Christmas traditions with the COVID-19 pandemic and traditions of participating in events with family at Christmas. Cod and octopus dishes are the most popular dishes on Christmas Eve. In relation to sweets/desserts, king cake, rabanadas, vermicelli, children's bread and sponge cake are the most common on Christmas Eve.

The study helps to understand Portuguese Christmas traditions, providing knowledge that allows defining strategies for family businesses, improving the experience and relationship with consumers at a special time of year. It is hoped that the trends in Christmas traditions in this study will contribute to unveiling the Christmas spirit, also serve as a marketing image and create curiosity and motivation on the part of other cultures to visit Portugal during this festive season, in order to experience Christmas traditions.

Errors are inevitable, resulting from the human condition itself, system failures and the interaction of both. It is essential to know how to deal with their occurrence, managing them. However, the negative tone associated with them makes it difficult for most organizations to talk about mistakes clearly and transparently, for fear of being harmed, preventing their detection, treatment and recovery. Consequently, errors are not managed, remaining accumulated in the system, turning into successive failures. Organizations need to recognize the inevitability of errors, making the system robust, through leadership and an organizational culture of error management. This study aims to understand the role of these influencing variables in an error management approach.

In this paper, the authors applied the methodology of a quantitative nature based on a questionnaire survey that analyses error management, leadership and the organizational culture of error management of 380 workers in Portuguese companies.

The results demonstrate that leadership directly influences error management and indirectly through the organizational culture of error management, giving this last variable a mediating role.

The study covers companies from different sectors of activity on a topic that is little explored in Portugal, but part of the daily life of organizations, which should deserve greater attention from directors and managers, as they assume a privileged position to promote and develop error management mechanisms. Error management must be the daily work of leaders. This study contributes to theoretical knowledge and business practice on error management.