New source-material for the socio-economic history of the Hindus of Goa

The Mhamai brothers were the suppliers of daily commodities / stationery to the viceroys / governors of Goa. Since late 18th century their agency house worked in partnership with several other trading houses all over the west coast of India. They also served as brokers for the French East India company in Goa during the critical period of anglo-french wars. The Mhamais were also revenue farmers, particularly customs and tobacco tax farming. I had the privilege of taking their family archives to the Xavier Centre of Historical Research in 1979 and making the history of the family known worldwide.

Determinants of portuguese wine & enotourism consumer behaviour

This study tries to understand what needs to be done to improve value perceptions and wine usage (1) Change the Portuguese wine and enotourism industry profile to adjust to huge competitive marketplace because it is still production-based; more sales than marketing oriented and the market data are less important then production and sales ones; (2) Enhance strongly the relationship between the wine and enotourism company and final consumers by “management synergies”; high “innovativeness to market”;“marketing research” and by an effective brand strategy. In this line, this paper provides an overview about strategic factors that determine the Portuguese wine and enotourism decision making process. The results of this research enable the essential features of a consumer profile of purchase and consumption to be obtained with respect to: (1) the structure of attributes - intrinsic and extrinsic - that Portuguese still wine consumers best recognise and value in determining its quality, (2) the motivational structures that encourage and guide them in their decision making process when purchasing and consuming wine and enotourism services, (3) the anticipated effect of interaction between different situations of consumption with different price bands.

Innovation, talent attraction and retention

The success of an organization isn’t, in most cases, only shown trough their profits. Today the value of a company, with respect to its market value exceeds their financial quality. Intellectual capital is a major share in the value of the company. Managing employees with an emphasis on intellectual capital and talent is an emergency that arises in the path of human resource managers. The definition of intellectual capital and talent, leads us, first, to a high IQ (Intelligence Quotient), good schools and / or university results. But the intellectual capital and talent of an employee must be linked to his ability, to high performance and good results. How to manage, attract and keep these employees in organizations is also something that requires talent. Now, the basic skills of employees aren’t sufficient for competitive companies. There are currently required higher levels of skills, because there are a growing number of activities that involve "knowledge work". Most companies in the world have a great challenge for the coming years: the challenge of scarcity of talent. The most competitive companies will be those that have the most talented employees. In terms of originality, this paper aims to create discussion about the relationship between talent attraction, talent retention and innovation, as drivers of business competitiveness. The research is based on the categorization methodology defined by Yin (2003) as single case study carried out in a company that is specialized in high precision components.The findings presented here show a strong link between talents attraction, talents retention and innovation.