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This study aims to conduct a pertinent assessment of the concept of business competitiveness and how Portugal can progress in that field, for the sake of becoming a more sustainable and wealth-creator economy.

The research was elaborated with 65 in-depth interviews with expert persons from the Portuguese business ecosystem, who were asked to reflect on the state of the economy and competitiveness of the country.

There is much room for improvement in almost all areas of activity, in particular by promoting an innovative, value-adding and exporting private sector and a lighter and more efficient public sector. The conclusions point to modernisation of the Portuguese economy as a way of making it more competitive in a highly competitive and demanding global scenario.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that a reflection with experts of the local Portuguese economy has been carried out, especially after a difficult period of COVID.

The authors analyzed data and information mainly from the company’s annual reports and the books written by the CEO.

How and when can a “value” brand upscale its brand image? In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, UNIQLO – Japan’s street fashion brand – considered introducing a new brand collaboration. They needed to capture the attention of younger, more fashionable consumers. However, people were tightening their spending as they faced uncertainties related to their jobs and wealth. Even though UNIQLO had had a steady growth in sales for the previous 24 years, it was questionable whether it was strategically a good time to launch a premium brand collaboration. And if so, who was the right partner? High-end designer Jil Sander, fashionable New York-based Theory or emerging French “casual luxury” brand Comptoir des Cotonniers?

This case is about the challenges faced by a low-priced brand to collaborate with a high-end brand to enhance the brand image. It explores the important elements to take into consideration when evaluating launching collaboration using the high-end brand’s name. The students will learn how to examine the risks and benefits of creating a new image for the core brand. If the students had learnt branding or brand extension before, this case can be used to teach how consumer’s perception affects brand extension and the target market’s impact on pricing and distribution strategies. It can be used for a marketing course at the MBA level to explore the concepts in a growing company’s brand image or an undergraduate specialized course in brand management or marketing management. The students also learn how the fashion industry’s supply chain management works to adapt to rapidly changing fashion trends.

Protecting business value is regarded to be the cornerstone of any organization. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and explore the potential contributions of the integration of standardized management systems (MSs) into an integrated MS. This will support a better coordinated management of different kinds of risks that exist in organizational processes.

The findings are based on literature as well as empirical case studies conducted by the authors. It focuses on the potential results of integration of MSs.

It is found that the integration of MSs leads to a more coherent, extensive, consistent, and harmonized process of identification of hazards. Also, it is found that from integration also results in the minimization of associated risks that affect key aspects of business, considering the organizational context vs requirements of each relevant stakeholder, as defined in related management systems standards.

This research, investigate the risk management (RM) and the integration of MSs from existing research papers about empirical studies for the period 2000-2014, including case studies in which the authors are involved. The number of enterprises can be larger.

Although there is some research regarding RM in organizations related to isolated implementations of MSs, this paper stands in a different perspective, since it addresses the issues emerging from the integration of standardized MSs in a broader perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study regarding the deployment of a previously developed model for the integration of management systems (MSs). The case study is developed at a manufacturing site of an international enterprise. The implementation of this model in a real business environment is aimed at assessing its feasibility.

The presented case study takes into account different management systems standards (MSSs) progressively implemented, along the years, independently. The implementation of the model was supported by the results obtained from an investigation performed according to a structured diagnosis that was conducted to collect information related to the organizational situation of the enterprise.

The main findings are as follows: a robust integrated management system (IMS), objectively more lean, structured and manageable was found to be feasible; this study provided an holistic view of the enterprise’s global management; clarifications of job descriptions and boundaries of action and responsibilities were achieved; greater efficiency in the use of resources was attained; more coordinated management of the three pillars of sustainability – environmental, economic and social, as well as risks, providing confidence and added value to the company and interested parties was achieved.

This case study is pioneering in Portugal in respect to the implementation, at the level of an industrial organization, of the model previously developed for the integration of individualized MSs. The case study provides new insights regarding the implementation of IMSs including the rationalization of several resources and elimination of several types of organizational waste leveraging gains of efficiency. Due to its intrinsic characteristics, the model is able to support, progressively, new or revised MSSs according to the principles of annex SL (normative) – proposals for MSSs – of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, that the industrial organization can adopt beyond the current ones.

The main goal of this paper is to study the specific characteristics of the performance of companies in the metallurgical sector, in the northern region of Portugal.

To achieve this aim, the authors have used data from 325 companies manufacturing metal products, except machinery and equipment (CAE Rev.3 25) and 27 companies that manufacture machinery and equipment (CAE Rev. 3 28). The models were estimated by using the panel data methodology for the period between 2011 and 2019. Specifically, the estimation method of the generalized method of moments system (GMM system) proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) was used.

The results show that the main decisions on the performance of metallurgical companies in Northern Portugal depend on the dimensions of sales in the domestic market (SDM), sales in the community market (SCM), and sales in the foreign market (SFM) and also highlight that the signal and significance of the specific variables depends on how the different stakeholders understand performance.

As far as the authors know, this is the first study to comparatively analyze the two metallurgical databases in Portugal. Despite the huge difference in the size of the sample, this study’s results show that in an era of paradigm shift about what business objectives should be, stakeholders are still not environmentally aware and the social dimension is only considered by shareholders, but not yet by the manager and the general community.

The net outward investment position (NOIP) indicator is insufficient for the purposes of understanding firms’ internationalization decision-making behaviour. The indicator does not allow for the withdrawal of insights into the structure of an economy and is a weak predictor of the degree of foreign direct investment. The purpose of this paper is to argue that a typology of firms aggregated according to intrinsic characteristics of those firms is a better predictor of the degree of internationalization of an economy than the NOIP.

This paper uses a database of 2,133 firms located in Portugal with international operations, made available by AICEP, a government agency. This paper uses multiple correspondence and cluster analyses to build a typology of firms and obtains evidence of common characteristics of the constituent groups.

This paper identifies a typology of firms characterized by five types differentiated by firm age, length of internationalization process, sector of economic activity, legal status and psychological/cultural proximity. These variables suggest an evolutionary, iterative, self-learning approach to internationalization, which can be better explained by the combined use of the investment development path (IDP) framework, the Uppsala Evolutionary School and Vernon’s product life cycle theory. Additionally, this paper finds that the most striking differences between developed and developing host countries are in terms of the economic sector, legal status of the firm and belonging (or not) to an economic group.

This paper establishes a link between the IDP framework, the Uppsala Evolutionary School and Vernon’s product life cycle theory, using a categorization of firms made according to selected characteristics to understand the internationalization of firms.

Institutions play a central role in service-dominant logic. However, the discussion regarding how institutional theory supports service-dominant logic advancements is still insufficient. This paper aims to contribute to a discussion on the multiple service-dominant logic approaches to institutions.

This conceptual paper presents the characterization of the existing streams in the broad institutional literature, highlighting the differences among those streams and elaborates on how one of the discussed streams – neo-institutionalism – is suitable to support service-dominant researchers in understanding the role of institutions in markets and value co-creation.

The paper shows that the three institutional perspectives presented are used indistinctly by service-dominant logic and a greater fit between the service-dominant logic and the neo-institutionalism stands out.

The paper proposes that service-dominant researchers should look at the neo-institutional stream as a particularly fertile ground for furthering their research.

This study aims to address a systematic literature review (SLR) using bibliometrics on the relationship between academic integrity and artificial intelligence (AI), to bridge the scattering of literature on this topic, given the challenge and opportunity for the educational and academic community.

This review highlights the enormous social influence of COVID-19 by mapping the extensive yet distinct and fragmented literature in AI and academic integrity fields. Based on 163 publications from the Web of Science, this paper offers a framework summarising the balance between AI and academic integrity.

With the rapid advancement of technology, AI tools have exponentially developed that threaten to destroy students' academic integrity in higher education. Despite this significant interest, there is a dearth of academic literature on how AI can help in academic integrity. Therefore, this paper distinguishes two significant thematical patterns: academic integrity and negative predictors of academic integrity.

This study also presents several contributions by showing that tools associated with AI can act as detectors of students who plagiarise. That is, they can be useful in identifying students with fraudulent behaviour. Therefore, it will require a combined effort of public, private academic and educational institutions and the society with affordable policies.

This study proposes a new, innovative framework summarising the balance between AI and academic integrity.

The year 2020 was heavily marked by an unprecedented pandemic affecting society as a whole. However, under-represented groups may have seen their financial and social situation affected differently from other groups. Thus, it was found that in the literature, the term inclusive entrepreneurship, which addresses these issues, was fragmented in view of its similarity and association with social entrepreneurship, inclusive business and sustainability. In this sense, this paper aims to map the scientific knowledge on this topic.

To fulfil this aim, a systematic literature review was supported by bibliometrics (performance analysis and scientific mapping) and by the use of the software Bibliometrix R and VoSviewer.

The results obtained show that in the Web of Science, there are 121 documents related to this topic whose content analysis revealed that they are distributed between sustainability, entrepreneurship and inclusive entrepreneurship in the close triple association.

The main contributions of this study are the connection established between the three concepts and the emergence of continuing to develop research on inclusive entrepreneurship, given its binary function: employment generation for disadvantaged groups and inclusive business creation.

The relevance of this bibliometric analysis stands out, providing the positioning of academics on the importance of leveraging emerging research on this topic, not only in poor countries but also in others.

Using self-determination theory and individual social responsibility’s (ISRs) association with pure social entrepreneurship, this study aims to answer the following question: How and why have the different actors responded to the crisis caused by the pandemic?

Qualitative research (multiple case studies) was adopted, resorting to interviewees with seven economic and non-economic actors in the Portugal context.

The results obtained, using MAXQDA software, show that those carrying out actions of social responsibility have a high degree of self-determination and intrinsic motivation, and are true social entrepreneurs, which lets them improve the well-being of those around them. In addition, these individuals feel good about themselves by performing these actions, as they measure their performance by the social impact of their actions on society in general.

This study suggest there is a high awareness amongst people to exercise that responsibility in a voluntary way, through humanitarian initiatives and campaigns brought about especially by an unprecedented pandemic. In practice, people joining these initiatives motivate many others towards the causes, creating the will to continue in the future and satisfy unmet needs provoked by social crises.

This study is innovative because it is related to filling the gaps identified, mainly by carrying out an empirical study about ISR, rather than that of firms, where studies are more common.