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This chapter addresses the profession of research management and administration (RMA) in Portugal. It starts with a brief outline of the national research and innovation (R&I) ecosystem that contextualises the development of the profession. The RMA community is characterised and the expectations for the future of the RMA profession are summarised using data collected through a national online survey. It is posited that RMA in Portugal is an emergent career having developed key traits of a profession, namely common interests and practices, a concern with deepening specialised knowledge and skills, the existence of an organised network of practitioners, the offer of academic qualifications and training in the area, and the integration in international RMA communities of practice. Nevertheless, future developments in the European Research Area (ERA) are identified as a critical milestone that will influence the development and formal legislative institutionalisation of the RMA profession in Portugal.

Part of the runway at Madeira Airport is a platform above the sea at a 60 m height, supported by a series of frames. When aircraft land on this section, a load is exerted on the structure, resulting in bending of the beams which constitute the frames. A vision-based monitoring system was devised and implemented to measure the deflection of the runway's beams when a landing occurs.

An area on the midspan of two beams, located on the area where aircraft are most likely to land, was prepared with a speckle pattern, and a camera was assembled above a column on each of the adjacent frames, enabling the computation of displacements using digital image correlation (DIC). The camera continuously acquires images of the monitored area and compares them to a reference using DIC. If a displacement is detected, a number of frames before and after this event are saved for further DIC processing.

The installed systems successfully detected several events corresponding to landings and, for each of those events, measured the deflection of the beams over time and computed displacement fields for critical images, with strain values obtained up to this point being too small to measure using the current system.

This work provides novel insights into the behaviour of a unique structure and constitutes the first use of a vision system in its structural monitoring operations. It is also a valuable development in the implementation of automated DIC monitoring systems in locations of difficult access.

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for incubating business ideas in rural communities in Portugal. The work provides an example of a bottom‐up approach to rural entrepreneurship.

The paper analyses case study of an entrepreneurial support organisation conceived and used in rural European regions and aiming at local development through entrepreneurial boost.

Although the methodology for incubating business ideas was adapted from a similar situation in France, its originality comes from the description of how the awareness of local specificities requires a calibration of the framework.

The case study is the outcome of a pioneering study of incubation of business ideas in rural areas. Further research needs to be taken in order to claim generalisability of these findings to other less favoured target groups.

The incubation of business ideas can be used to encourage local development in declining rural regions. It is important to calibrate the framework used to the local/regional reality.

Apart from being innovative in providing a supportive entrepreneurial infrastructure with mentoring people‐based support in the creation of new firms in rural areas, it is also a nation‐wide entrepreneurial service innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of R&D investment as a determinant of ongoing or abandoned innovation activities. The literature review focuses especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that deploy R&D investment as a way of developing innovation processes.

This study’s design used a sample of 4,229 Portuguese SMEs to analyse the effects R&D investment has on the innovation activities; the results obtained demonstrate the great importance of firms investing in R&D internal activities for the development of their innovation process.

The most important findings highlight the types of activities that emerge as relevant to innovation processes susceptible for development to avoid abandoning and maintaining ongoing innovation activities. Among them, the authors would highlight the design of products or services, the introduction of innovations to the market and the acquisition of machinery, equipment and specific software, among others.

In addition, other types of activities emerge as relevant to innovation processes susceptible for development to avoid abandoning and maintaining ongoing innovation activities. This research adds value to the current literature mainly showing several determinants related to R&D, which could be used by SMEs to improve and develop their activities of innovation.

The objective of this paper is to examine the ways in which tourism can be regarded as a catalyst for positive change, benefiting both people and the planet. The authors consider the integral role of community engagement as a tangible component within the governance frameworks of destination management organizations (DMOs).

Originating from the authors' professional experience and academic expertise in managing and marketing tourist destinations, both at the local and regional levels, the article explores the pressing requirement for reevaluating policies and strategies. It aims to emphatically underscore and reiterate the role of tourism as a pivotal driver for enhancing peoples' quality of life and ensuring the sustainability of tourist destinations. This effort involves not only maintaining equilibrium among the four widely recognized pillars of sustainability but also pondering the significance of an equally crucial aspect of destination management – the political sustainability of the governance framework of tourist destinations.

Current realities encourage the authors to contemplate and act, guided by the unfolding of tourism's swift regenerative influence. It is anticipated that people have gleaned vital lessons from the collective pause people underwent during the pandemic, coupled with the stark realization of being unable to partake in the favourable contributions of tourism in everyday life. This article highlights the urgency of implementing DMO models that are capable of conceptualizing and operationalizing a human-centred tourism development policy and the resulting sustainability strategies, enhancing representation and guidance for the satisfaction of stakeholders.

It is neither a widespread practice, nor are there many prior studies that tackle the potential of forecasting the comprehensiveness of governance and management models for tourist destinations that encompass stakeholders who represent the direct interests of local communities within the tourism system. Supported by a literature review, analysis of secondary data and the first-hand experience of the authors, it becomes apparent that the operational landscape of most organizations functioning as tourist destination managers is predominantly at the regional and local tiers. These very organizations are the ones that have been progressively evolving, displaying a readiness to introduce innovation in this realm. Implementing these models would represent an approach to governance more inclined towards a bottom-up style, thereby posing a challenge to the more rigid and commonly employed strategies that emanate from a centrally structured national framework.

The purpose of the paper is to reflect on the conditions of referenda as an EU input legitimacy, on the era of social media microtargeting campaigns. Taking the case of Brexit as an example, it takes conclusions for the democracy as an inherent value of the EU multilevel polity and opens prospects for possible solutions.

The paper is interdisciplinary based, complementing political science approaches on EU democratic legitimacy and communication studies on social media and political communication. These are the theoretical frameworks for analysing the case of Brexit referendum campaign, which is based on an empirical tracing of strategies and contents used. This empirical assessment is supported by official reports of the House of Commons and of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office and media news on the case. Analysis and discussion of it allows to come to conclusions.

Primary finding is that manipulation and disinformation occurred in Brexit campaign, creating a biased, fake and unbalanced information. Second main finding is that microtargeting and suppression of public debate enhances the typical polarisation of binary options on a referendum, and in the case of Brexit deepened the social cleavage that already shaped voter’s preferences, once information consumed by citizens functioned as “eco-chambers”, strengthening preconceptions. The ultimate conclusion in this case is a sign that social media can deepen the historical gap between elites and voters in the EU, with negative consequences for democracy and social legitimacy of the EU political system.

The almost impossible access to the digital microtargeted adverts used in campaigns, to allow a more detailed analysis of the EU content issued.

Conclusions of this research are useful for politicians and advisers of policy-making to reflect on the future of the political system of the EU in terms of democracy, and the Europe as a whole and think about measures to be taken either on the level of improving legitimacy processes or regulation of digital media.

If practical implications are taken from conclusions of this study, enhancing democratic processes, avoiding privacy data manipulation and providing accurate, impartial and trustworthy information to citizens public can be a social benefit achieved mainly through regulation.

Despite some studies have been released on Brexit referendum, they have mainly been single-disciplinary. This study innovates because it conciliates political science theoretical views with communications studies’ ones, to produce strengthened reasoning ground on the purposed of this research: to search evidence that new political communication strategies within the social media landscape can be of special negative influence in EU referenda and for the future of the multilevel polity.

This paper aims to relate conceptually decent work and the economy for the common good describing the main contributions of the former to the latter.

This conceptual paper analyses the relationships between the values of the economy for the common good that have been explicitly stated and the psychological dimensions of the decent work concept.

Four conceptual propositions concerning the contributions of decent work to the economy for the common good are presented.

Because the four conceptual propositions were not submitted to empirical research, future studies are suggested.

The pursuit of decent work is aligned with the economy for the common good, which contributes to reinforcing both proposals.

Both decent work and the economy for the common good are synergistic and values-based approaches that consider the social system as a whole instead of proposing strategies to improve the competitive advantage of one over the other. This synergistic idea through cooperation contributes to overcoming the limitations of “business as usual”.

This is the first paper discussing the relationships between decent work and the economy for the common good.

The purpose of this paper is to study the specialization of regional clusters and their innovative behaviour, in a particular Portuguese region.

A regional case study (Region Centro of Portugal) is used, employing secondary and primary data in order to measure specialized critical mass of a region's clusters and analyze their innovative behavior following the European Cluster Observatory (ECO) methodology.

Combining the different nature of data (primary and secondary), this paper identifies the specialized critical mass of a region's cluster, makes statements about the role of clusters in a regional context, and demonstrates how a regional clustering approach is important to understanding the innovative process. Based on an empirical survey, three types of clusters were found: basic, intermediate and advanced.

Among the research limitations is the undersized sample of primary data which does not allow deep findings to be drawn about the innovative behavior of the clusters in a general way. Therefore, future research should focus on this area, extending the empirical analysis presented here to add qualitative indicators on innovative behaviour, to calculate the impact of absorptive capacity in the case of regional clusters.

This study provides a consistent methodology of cluster operation which could be useful for undertaking comparative work within regions' clusters across different sectors and countries, to reinforce the importance of the current discussion of policy clusters, and to identify specific requirements and needs of each cluster in order to improve the quality of decision making and to draw some policy implications.

This paper is the first to measure specialized critical mass of a region's clusters at the enterprise level and to explain cluster innovative behaviour, combining primary and secondary, based on ECO criteria. Furthermore, it provides initial empirical evidence and an amount of significant findings to support managers and policymakers in the understanding of regional and innovation clustering of small to medium‐sized enterprises.

This paper aims to describe and characterise the actions carried out by Italian organisations participating in the Economy for the Common Good (ECG) movement and to analyse these actions through the lens of decent work (DW), identifying patterns leading to a typology and conceptual propositions on the subject.

A documentary analysis was conducted on 14 reports describing the actions taken by Italian organisations that belong to the ECG movement. Qualitative content analysis was performed using QSR-NVivo12. The descriptive analysis of the codes was made, as well as a cluster analysis based on coding similarity.

A total of 1,497 actions were coded, and four clusters, grouping sets of the common good reports, were identified. Results suggest that Customers, Business Partners and Staff and Owners are the most addressed stakeholders, human dignity and environmental sustainability are the most addressed values and Fulfilling and Productive Work and Fundamental Principles and Values at Work are the most addressed DW dimensions. Additionally, all clusters are intensive in environmental concerns but have differentiated priorities. Cluster analysis suggests three drivers: recognition, core business closeness and social common good impact. A total of five conceptual propositions are being made useable by organisational leaders who intend to adhere to the ECG movement.

The main limitation is the low number of organisations participating in the ECG movement in Italy, which restricts the scope of the conclusions.

The results are helpful as inputs for designing interventions in organisations that intend to start or strengthen their involvement in the ECG movement.

Identifying DW aspects related to common good indicators and the four approaches to the ECG adhesion corresponding to the four clusters.