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This paper studied organizational culture in two different countries during the COVID-19 lockdown, a stressful social and labor context that obliged entire working populations to telecommute from home. We considered how people have coped with this new scenario, bearing in mind that one of the most relevant aspects of organizational culture and climate is the face-to-face interactions that take place in offices. With telework, that important physical relationship disappears and, since body language has its own grammar, work-related messages logically become open to misunderstanding between leaders and subordinates, as well as among peers.

An anonymous questionnaire (in Spanish and Russian) was distributed through the LinkedIn social media platform. The study intended to capture responses from white-collar professionals with managerial profiles, including those occupying high and medium-level positions, consultants, section directors, and project managers across different industries in both the countries. We collected 142 responses from Spain and 115 from Kazakhstan, with a total of 257 valid responses. Principal component's analysis (PCA), to obtain factorial axis was applied. We then performed a factor analysis of those principal components using Coheris Analytics SPAD 9.1.

The first finding herein points to the fact that the same experience had different consequences in these two different places, which can be traced back to national-cultural values. Spain and Kazakhstan share some common values and, at the same time, are culturally opposite. People fear uncertainty and one of the best ways to avoid this feeling is to provide them with technical and emotional support to manage a situation. During the COVID-19 lockdown, professionals from both countries expected their bosses to be assertive, driven, attentive and encouraging. And it seems they got just that. Secondly, a robust structure is mandatory for feeling secure: workers reported devoting more hours to telecommuting at home and even felt that their jobs were invading their personal lives, but they handled it because they knew to whom they should report. Procedures, rules, and methods were clear enough to avoid uncertainty. They even invented new rituals, patterns and practices that helped to reinforce their sense of belonging to the team. On top of this, in their responses, they noted that leaders acted consistently, even admirably, during lockdown and, for this reason, they gained their subordinates' respect.

Responses from female participants more than doubled those from males in this sample. Women are assumed to prefer flexible working conditions so that they can better take care of children and/or elderly or dependent persons, but this could just be a long-standing bias. On the other hand, the incorporation of women into professional life has feminized work environments, translating into more concern for workers' personal circumstances and more awareness of the human relationships therein. Thus, independent of the country studied, gender is another factor to consider for future research.

This article proposes further exploratory study of how organizational contexts are affected by unexpected, informal and even radical changes, as well as of organizations' ability to manage said changes by looking to their cultural values.

Facing a common enemy— the coronavirus— seems to have made workers more positive and less prone to complaining. Workers have been resolute and have tried their best not only in their individual work, but also with their co-workers and teams. The data suggests that, even when analyzing two diverse countries in terms of their cultural historical, and sociological contexts, companies' reactions impacted their employees somewhat similarly and engendered similar responses. At the same time, the reactions of Spanish and Kazakhstani professionals vary on certain aspects, and, surprisingly, converge in terms of avoiding uncertainty, which suggests a conservative reaction in both countries. This study concludes that structure (clarity of procedures, norms, patterns) and leaders' recognition of their employees' efforts to overcome uncertainty were of utmost importance.

This chapter presents a systematic review of over 30 types of online marketing methods. It describes different methods like email marketing, social network marketing, in-game marketing and augmented reality marketing, among other approaches. The researchers discuss that the rationale for using these online marketing strategies is to increase brand awareness, customer-centric marketing and consumer loyalty. They shed light on various personalization methods including recommendation systems and user-generated content in their taxonomy of online marketing terms. Hence, they explain how these online marketing methods are related to each other. The researchers contend that the boundaries between online marketing methods have not been clarified enough within the academic literature. Therefore, this chapter provides a better understanding of different online marketing methods. A review of the literature suggests that the “oldest” online marketing methods including the email and the websites are still very relevant for today’s corporate communication. In conclusion, the researchers put forward their recommendations for future research about contemporary online marketing methods.

In a distributed learning environment, the development of learning objects is a participative task. We consider learning objects as knowledge pieces, which are subject to the management processes of acquisition, delivery, creation and production. A multiple‐tier architecture for participative knowledge production tasks is introduced, where knowledge‐producing agents are arranged into knowledge domains or marts, and a distributed interaction protocol is used to consolidate knowledge that is produced in a mart. Knowledge consolidated in a given mart can be in turn negotiated in higher‐level foreign marts. The proposed architecture and protocol are applied to coordinate the authoring of open e‐book packages as learning objects by a distributed group of authors.

The purpose of this paper is to present eight papers selected from ALTEC 2015 that provide an overview of innovation in Latin America.

This editorial seeks to define innovation by examining its conceptual foundations. It considers innovation beyond firms and technology to address other forms, such as social and institutional innovations. Thereafter, it discusses innovation in the context of Latin America and suggests means by which to stimulate it in the region. Finally, the authors present the eight papers included in this “special edition.”

The major findings of the paper are that it considers non-technological innovation within firms, innovation beyond the firm and innovation beyond technology. Moreover, it helps to better understand a core issue of innovation in Latin America, which is the focus on macroeconomic policy instead of microeconomic stimuli.

A broader understanding of the concept of innovation is of notable importance. Innovation implies the recognition of issues related to the market (firm), but also to the community (society) and to humanly devised constraints (institutions). Technology is only one part of it. For this special issue, the selected articles highlight the efforts made by different authors to contribute to innovation studies in the editors’ region.

Este número presenta ocho manuscritos seleccionados del ALTEC 2015, que ofrecen un panorama de la innovación en América Latina.

Esta editorial busca definir la innovación mediante la examinación de sus fundamentos conceptuales. Esto considera que la innovación va más allá de las firmas y la tecnología para abordar otros tipos, tales como innovación social e institucional. Posteriormente, se analiza la innovación en el contexto de América Latina y se sugieren medios para su estimulo en la región. Finalmente, presentamos los ocho artículos incluidos en esta Edición Especial.

Las principales conclusiones de esta editorial son que se considera la innovación no tecnológica dentro de las firmas, la innovación más allá de la firma y la innovación más allá de la tecnología. Además, esto ayuda a comprehender mejor una cuestión central de la innovación en América Latina, que es el enfoque en política macroeconómica en lugar de los estímulos microeconómicos.

Un mayor entendimiento del concepto de innovación es de gran importancia. La innovación implica el reconocimiento de las cuestiones relacionadas con el mercado (firma), pero también con la comunidad (sociedad) y con las restricciones humanamente concebidas (instituciones). La tecnología es solo una parte de esta. Para esta Edición Especial, los artículos seleccionados destacan los esfuerzos realizados por diferentes autores para contribuir a los estudios de innovación en nuestra región.

The world’s aging population has led to a greater use of prescription and non-prescription medication by the elderly. Besides, older drinkers consume alcohol often regardless of the medication they consume. The purpose of this paper is to examine the intake of medication and alcohol simultaneously in a group of elderly in the community of Madrid, and the possible differences in consumption between men and women.

An observational cross-sectional study of 342 elderly in Madrid, aged 65–96 years was conducted, including the collection of anthropometric data (weight, height, waist circumference, BMI), information about the quantity of daily alcohol intake and medication taken from each subject.

A high percentage of the sample used medication, especially women. A smaller percentage of the sample consumed alcohol, being more frequent among men and decreasing with age. In addition, almost half of the sample (46.4 percent) combined medication intake with alcohol, especially men. High alcohol consumption was observed simultaneously in those subjects taking medication; in addition to the non-perception of the real risk to health. Statistically significant sex differences were observed, since men drank more, including when taking medication; although women may be more vulnerable to harm derived from alcohol.

This study contributed to estimate the risk to the public health of old people, and the integrity of their health, by observing the consumption of both medication and alcohol, given that medication taken in conjunction with alcohol can cause adverse side effects.

Many international retirement migrants are amenity movers undertaking the first move in the late life course model of migration. The purpose of this paper is to examine second moves within the retirement destination community to test whether the model of late life course migration accurately portrays the motivations and housing choices local movers make after retiring to another country.

The paper combines secondary data and survey results to examine the composition of the retiree migrant population in the Alicante province of Spain. The socioeconomic characteristics and housing choices of those who have made a second move since retiring to Spain are compared with those who have not moved through a series of t‐tests and chi‐square tests.

The paper finds that those who have made a second move within Spain are somewhat typical of second movers in the late life course. They are likely to cite mobility or health problems as a reason for moving and appear to recognize the need for a home that provides living area on one floor. Yet, they are choosing to move within an area that does not provide them with access to informal family care givers.

The data are restricted to retirees of two nationalities in one province of Spain. Further research is suggested in other locations and with retirees of other nationalities for comparison.

Because many international retirees do not plan to return to their countries of origin, they will create demand for formal in‐home care services and supportive retiree housing in the near future in their retirement destination countries.

This paper provides understanding of a growing consumer housing segment in retirement destinations.

This paper aims to examine the sixteenth-century Nahua society of central Mexico to answer the question, what commercial ethical norms operated in the sixteenth-century Nahua society? After decades of trying, Western business models and managerial theories have not met expectations in terms of fostering a socially and environmentally sustainable future. Qualitatively different approaches are needed, and one way to find them is to look at business models, norms and practices that operated in societies that were isolated from Western influences.

This paper contributes to efforts to find and analyze historical texts that include business practices. In particular, this study uses grounded theory techniques to examine the presence of ethical commercial norms in one of history’s foundational ethnographic texts, The Florentine Codex, a sixteenth-century study of Nahua society.

This study identified six commercial ethical norms that structured Nahua commerce: “care for others,” “exercise prudence,” “tell the truth,” “be respectful of others,” “show reverence to the gods” and “be humble.” Confidence in these findings was enhanced by their “qualitative degrees of freedom,” whereby these norms were found to operate in other sectors of Nahua society.

This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating ethical norms of commerce that can emerge in isolation from Western cultures; providing a rigorous and novel methodology for deriving norms from historical texts; and expanding knowledge of business practices beyond modern Western contexts.

Large numbers of Northern European retirees have migrated to Southern European countries. A relevant part of this migration is not driven by work purposes but rather the desire to establish residence in a warmer country. These migrants come from different countries and exhibit diverse socioeconomic characteristics and preferences, including varying income levels, housing tastes and cultural habits, which could potentially influence the housing market in their host countries. This paper aims to examine the permanent impact of retiree migrant flows on house prices in Alicante, Spain, from 1988 to 2019, explicitly considering the impact related to the country of origin.

This paper examines the permanent impact of retiree migrant flows on house prices in Alicante, Spain, from 1988 to 2019, explicitly considering the impact related to the country of origin using panel cointegration – Dynamic Ordinary Least Squared (DOLS) models.

Results indicate that the long-term relationship captures the entire effect on house price change and that prices react immediately to the immigrants' presence with permanent effects. The results also suggest that the strong retiree migration flow created a shock in the housing market with different effects on house prices related to the immigrants' country of origin. The model identifies that when income growth in the origin country is slower than in Spain it has a major impact on house prices. When purchasing capacity is larger in Alicante than in the origin country it exerts a stronger effect on housing prices. Retiree migration flow has permanent effect on housing market prices.

Results indicate several ways to act on social and housing policies in specific cities in Alicante province, as well as in the origin countries, to alleviate potential disadvantages faced by expatriate retirees.

This paper finds evidence of the specific impact of international retiree migrants on the hosting housing market. This study is the first paper that can estimate the specific effect on housing prices from a flow of retiree migrants by country of origin.