The influence of relationship quality and culture in the relations between exporter and distributor : the case of portuguese exports to Angola

The objective of this research is to investigate the role of the relationship quality, cooperation and culture between Portuguese companies and their export market intermediaries in Angola. In particular, we aim to understand the importance that the quality of the relationship has in cooperation and the role of cultures in export activities. An important aspect of this study is precisely the fact that it includes an African country, where, in terms of the literature, there is a strong lack of studies. In terms of methodology we opted for qualitative analysis; we present the results of two case studies of Portuguese exporting companies and one case study of Angolan intermediate. In general, the results are that the business relationships are characterized by trust, commitment, cooperation, culture, similar values, as in the past, Angola belonged to Portugal there is easy communication because both countries share the same. Such factors will influence the trade relations between Portuguese exporters and their Angolan distributors.

Folk culture and political power: practices and representations of moliceiro culture in Portugal, cultural sociology

This article analyses the painted panels of the moliceiro boat, a traditional working boat of the Ria de Aveiro region of Portugal. The article examines how the painted panels have been invented and reinvented over time. The boat and its panels are contextualized both within the changing socio-economic conditions of the Ria de Aveiro region, and the changing socio-political conditions of Portugal throughout the 20th century and until the present day. The article historically analyses the social significance of ‘moliceiro culture’, examining in particular the power relations it expresses and its ambiguous past and present relationships with the political and the economic powers of the Portuguese state. The article unpacks some of the complexity of the relations that have pertained between public and private, local and national, folk culture and ‘art’, and popular and institutional in the Ria de Aveiro region in particular, and Portugal more generally.

Virtual communities of practice: investigating motivations and constraints in the processes of knowledge creation and transfer

With accelerated market volatility, faster response times and increased globalization, business environments are going through a major transformation and firms have intensified their search for strategies which can give them competitive advantage. This requires that companies continuously innovate, to think of new ideas that can be transformed or implemented as products, processes or services, generating value for the firm. Innovative solutions and processes are usually developed by a group of people, working together. A grouping of people that share and create new knowledge can be considered as a Community of Practice (CoP). CoP’s are places which provide a sound basis for organizational learning and encourage knowledge creation and acquisition. Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP's) can perform a central role in promoting communication and collaboration between members who are dispersed in both time and space. Nevertheless, it is known that not all CoP's and VCoP's share the same levels of performance or produce the same results. This means that there are factors that enable or constrain the process of knowledge creation. With this in mind, we developed a case study in order to identify both the motivations and the constraints that members of an organization experience when taking part in the knowledge creating processes of VCoP's. Results show that organizational culture and professional and personal development play an important role in these processes. No interviewee referred to direct financial rewards as a motivation factor for participation in VCoPs. Most identified the difficulty in aligning objectives established by the management with justification for the time spent in the VCoP. The interviewees also said that technology is not a constraint.

A competing values framework approach on growth and performance in micro firms

This study aims to analyze and compare four micro-firms' organizational culture, evaluated through the Competing Values Framework (Quinn & Rohbaugh, 1983). Data was collected in 2011 and 2013 in firms selling the same type of software and providing the same kind of services, focusing on the years between 2008-2011. Findings point to somewhat different results of micro-firms, when comparing to other samples in the literature. Suggestions for future research are given.

Organizational Culture in Cooperatives: an exploratory approach

In recent years, organizational culture has become one of the common themes of interest of scientific and academic research. Each organization has its own unique cultural identity. Based on the recognition that organizational culture is considered important to an organization’s results, and social economy organizations are concerned with improving managerial practices and results, our objective is to study organizational culture in cooperatives: identifying their organizational culture as a specific type of organization of the social economy, recognized as increasingly important economic agents; and in doing so, explore the usage of a widely known model, the Competing Values Framework (Quinn & Rohrbaugh 1983). Three cooperatives were studied. Their presidents were interviewed, and a questionnaire was applied to cooperative members to obtain demographic and organizational culture data. Differences between the cooperatives’ cultural profiles seem to be consistent with both the circumstances of Portuguese social economy organizations (SEOs), and to the organizations’ uniqueness regarding their trade, focuses, and history. International firm trends were compared with this study’s results, and also appear to be explained by the SEO’s management practices evolution standpoint: lack of structured way of working, and the need to improvise and innovate in order to get things done. The importance of our research is held in the fact that social economy, and the cooperative movement in particular, has a developing importance in the expansion of many economies, the lack of literature on culture in SEOs, and the exploratory usage of a well-known model of management literature in cooperatives.

Organizational culture in cooperatives: an exploratory approach

In recent years, organizational culture has become one of the common themes of interest of scientific and academic research. Each organization has its own unique cultural identity. Based on the recognition that organizational culture is considered important to an organization’s results, and social economy organizations are concerned with improving managerial practices and results, our objective is to study organizational culture in cooperatives: identifying their organizational culture as a specific type of organization of the social economy, recognized as increasingly important economic agents; and in doing so, explore the usage of a widely known model, the Competing Values Framework (Quinn & Rohrbaugh 1983). Three cooperatives were studied. Their presidents were interviewed, and a questionnaire was applied to cooperative members to obtain demographic and organizational culture data. Differences between the cooperatives’ cultural profiles seem to be consistent with both the circumstances of Portuguese social economy organizations (SEOs), and to the organizations’ uniqueness regarding their trade, focuses, and history. International firm trends were compared with this study’s results, and also appear to be explained by the SEO’s management practices evolution standpoint: lack of structured way of working, and the need to improvise and innovate in order to get things done. The importance of our research is held in the fact that social economy, and the cooperative movement in particular, has a developing importance in the expansion of many economies, the lack of literature on culture in SEOs, and the exploratory usage of a well-known model of management literature in cooperatives.