Transaction costs: an empirical analysis of their relationship with investment and foreign direct investment

As stated by the New Institutional Economics theory, transaction costs play a relevant role in economics and, according to the extent of such costs, agents make investment decisions. Actually, transaction costs may represent a disincentive to entrepreneurship. This work aims to verify whether transaction costs are related to investment rate and foreign direct investment rate (FDI) in different business environments. The results suggest that foreign investors do not have precise information about other countries as domestic investors do; as it is observed, only the relation between transaction costs and investment rate is significant. Furthermore, there is evidence that the business environments of BRIC countries are less developed when compared to business environments of other countries in the study

Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) já é uma escola de pensamento em marketing?

A década de 1980 trouxe uma visão alternativa à corrente positivista predominante no campo de pesquisa do consumidor: a Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), que assume uma orientação epistemológica baseada no interpretativismo e na pesquisa qualitativa. Diante do destaque alcançado pela CCT, levantou-se a seguinte questão: a CCT já pode ser considerada uma escola de pensamento em marketing autônoma? Pautados em três critérios fundamentais para a qualificação de uma escola de pensamento (reconhecimento acadêmico, corpo de conhecimento e contribuições), foi realizada uma desk research, baseada em periódicos e artigos da área e na construção de um corpus de pesquisa construído com base nas referências contidas no texto seminal Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): twenty years of research. A conclusão é de que a CCT atende aos critérios adotados na presente pesquisa, podendo ser considerada uma escola de pensamento a utônoma dentro do campo de pesquisa do consumo.

Theory of reasoned action for continuous improvement capabilities: a behavioral approach

The importance of interaction between Operations Management (OM) and Human Behavior has been recently re-addressed. This paper introduced the Reasoned Action Theory suggested by Froehle and Roth (2004) to analyze Operational Capabilities exploring the suitability of this model in the context of OM. It also seeks to discuss the behavioral aspects of operational capabilities from the perspective of organizational routines. This theory was operationalized using Fishbein and Ajzen (F/A) behavioral model and a multi-case strategy was employed to analyze the Continuous Improvement (CI) capability. The results posit that the model explains partially the CI behavior in an operational context and some contingency variables might influence the general relations among the variables involved in the F/A model. Thus intention might not be the determinant variable of behavior in this context.

Organizing resistance movements: contribution of the political discourse theory

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of articulating Political Discourse Theory (PDT) together with Organizational Studies (OS), while using the opportunity to introduce PDT to those OS scholars who have not yet come across it. The bulk of this paper introduces the main concepts of PDT, discussing how they have been applied to concrete, empirical studies of resistance movements. In recent years, PDT has been increasingly appropriated by OS scholars to problematize and analyze resistances and other forms of social antagonisms within organizational settings, taking the relational and contingent aspects of struggles into consideration. While the paper supports the idea of a joint articulation of PDT and OS, it raises a number of critical questions of how PDT concepts have been empirically used to explain the organization of resistance movements. The paper sets out a research agenda for how both PDT and OS can together contribute to our understanding of new, emerging organizational forms of resistance movements.

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES THROUGH FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT

ABSTRACT State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are created to focus on domestic needs, and yet recent evidence points to increasing outward foreign direct investment by SOEs. Existing International Business (IB) theories focus on efficiency-based motives for internationalization; therefore, they do not fully capture SOEs' internalization dynamics, which are driven largely by political factors and social welfare considerations. We integrate public management and IB theories to develop propositions that combine these questions: why SOEs internationalize; what are their motivations; and what are the main managerial outcomes of SOEs' internationalization. Our findings suggest that SOEs display little hesitancy in entering international markets, and that SOE international expansion is not contradictory with the goals of state-ownership if the purpose is to adjust the company to changing institutional environments both in the domestic and international markets. Our propositions about SOE internationalization are based on an in-depth case study of the outward foreign direct investment conducted by Brazil's Petrobras over the past three decades.

The institutional configuration of sport policy in Brazil: organization, evolution and dilemmas

Brazil has become the center of the spotlight of the whole world recently, amongst many other reasons, one of them was because it was chosen to host a series of mega sporting events - Pan American Games in 2007, Confederations Football Cup in 2013, Fifa Football World Cup 2014 Games and 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016. However, little is known about the country's administrative governmental structure focused on sport policy. The available studies focus their analysis on the sport policies content, but not on the arrangement of its structural decision-making. The main aim of this article is indeed to describe, based on official documentation, the evolution and the current arrangements of the government responsible for the administrative structure for the planning and implementation of sports policies in Brazil. Thus, we tried to list the main problems arising from the organization of the Brazilian sports' management. These problems are: (1) inappropriate institutional structure in terms of human resources and obstacles to participation by other social actors beyond the officials (parliament and members of the Ministry of Sports) in the sports policy; (2) disarticulation between public institutions generating redundancies and conflicts of jurisdiction due to the poor division of labor between bureaucracy agencies; and (3) inadequate planning proved by the lack of organization of some institutions, and by the lack of assessment and continuity of public policies over time. Therefore, we must emphasize those problems from above, and due to these administrative arrangements, Brazilian sports' policy has big challenges in the sport development in this country, which includes the creation of a national "system" for sports and a priority investment in sport education.

Institutional Development for Good Governance: the role of intermediary NGOs in Pará state, Amazonia

The paper analyses the roles of intermediary NGOs for linkages between government and rural communities in carrying out socio-environmental development programs as a mean of institutional development for good governance. In particular, the paper focuses on the Proambiente program that was carried out in Pará State, Amazonia, Brazil. This program was the first experience of a socio-environmental development program in Brazilian Amazonia that took into account local communities' demands to link environmental conservation and small-scale family-based rural production. Methodologically, the research was based on qualitative analysis and used semi-structured interviews for data collection. The paper shows that NGOs as intermediaries between government and rural communities is a significant mechanism to promote the strengthening of the power of local communities, to create bridges between federal government and local communities; and to stimulate participatory processes by engaging rural communities' culture and knowledge in socio-environmental development program as Proambiente.

Towards a Unified Theory of Health-Disease: I. Health as a complex model-object

Theory building is one of the most crucial challenges faced by basic, clinical and population research, which form the scientific foundations of health practices in contemporary societies. The objective of the study is to propose a Unified Theory of Health-Disease as a conceptual tool for modeling health-disease-care in the light of complexity approaches. With this aim, the epistemological basis of theoretical work in the health field and concepts related to complexity theory as concerned to health problems are discussed. Secondly, the concepts of model-object, multi-planes of occurrence, modes of health and disease-illness-sickness complex are introduced and integrated into a unified theoretical framework. Finally, in the light of recent epistemological developments, the concept of Health-Disease-Care Integrals is updated as a complex reference object fit for modeling health-related processes and phenomena.

Towards a unified theory of health-disease: II. Holopathogenesis

This article presents a systematic framework for modeling several classes of illness-sickness-disease named as Holopathogenesis. Holopathogenesis is defined as processes of over-determination of diseases and related conditions taken as a whole, comprising selected facets of the complex object Health. First, a conceptual background of Holopathogenesis is presented as a series of significant interfaces (biomolecular-immunological, physiopathological-clinical, epidemiological-ecosocial). Second, propositions derived from Holopathogenesis are introduced in order to allow drawing the disease-illness-sickness complex as a hierarchical network of networks. Third, a formalization of intra- and inter-level correspondences, over-determination processes, effects and links of Holopathogenesis models is proposed. Finally, the Holopathogenesis frame is evaluated as a comprehensive theoretical pathology taken as a preliminary step towards a unified theory of health-disease.