Influência da utilização de práticas de gestão operacional no desempenho de empresas do setor sucroalcooleiro no Estado de São Paulo

A compreensão das condições necessárias para a criação de vantagem competitiva sustentável nas empresas tem sido o principal campo de estudo da estratégia empresarial. A discussão sobre quais fatores são geradores de diferenças significativas no desempenho entre empresas e qual a razão da criação de valor superior de algumas sobre outras que operam no mesmo mercado, são temas de extrema relevância, tanto na academia quanto na gestão empresarial. Entre as escolas de pensamento estratégico, a Visão Baseada em Recursos – RBV (Resource-Based View) oferece uma explicação conceitual para estes temas, indicando que os recursos e competências internas das empresas podem ser a base para a construção de diferenciais competitivos sustentáveis. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido a partir desta base teórica e da pergunta de pesquisa: “A utilização efetiva de práticas de gestão operacional influencia o desempenho das empresas do setor sucroalcooleiro no Estado de São Paulo?” O trabalho está estruturado em quatro grandes tópicos: (a) a descrição do contexto da Indústria pesquisada, principalmente no que se refere à evolução do ambiente competitivo e das práticas de gestão utilizadas; (b) uma revisão teórica sobre competitividade e sobre as fontes de vantagem competitiva, a partir dos conceitos da RBV e sobre o construto desempenho; (c) a pesquisa de campo, realizada a partir de um questionário desenvolvido pelo “Observatório de Gestão: Práticas Gerenciais de Empresas Brasileiras”, que por sua vez tem como base o questionário da pesquisa originalmente conduzida pelo Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) da London School of Economics and Political Science. O questionário base foi adaptado após pesquisa qualitativa realizada com especialistas do setor sucroalcooleiro do Estado de São Paulo e (d) a análise dos dados obtidos e conclusões resultantes da pesquisa. Os resultados da regressão múltipla e da análise de clusters evidenciaram que existe relação positiva significativa entre a utilização de práticas de gestão operacional e de gestão financeira sobre o desempenho das empresas representado por lucratividade e crescimento. Foram encontrados ainda resultados indicando que outras práticas avaliadas, ainda que não tenha relação estatística significativa, apresentaram a mesma tendência de relação positiva com o desempenho.

Variabilidade da tendência do desempenho das firmas: uma análise mltinível

Compreender a variabilidade do desempenho entre as firmas e compreender o que leva a desempenhos acima da média e vantagem estão entre as principais questões no campo da estratégia empresarial. Vantagem competitiva é um construto de difícil operacionalização, por seu significado complexo, que dá margem a diferentes interpretações. Entretanto ela é apontada com freqüência como causadora de desempenho acima da média. A variabilidade do desempenho das empresas ao longo do tempo também é uma questão tratada com frequência, especialmente no que se trata dos níveis firma e setor. No entanto, a maior parte dos trabalhos empíricos no campo de estratégia dá apenas uma dimensão a essa variabilidade, estudando-a apenas em termos de média. Uma segunda dimensão, a tendência do desempenho, passa a ser considerada neste estudo, utilizado modelos multinível. Como o desempenho de uma firma evolui ao longo do tempo comporta assim, uma diferente análise, em termos de vantagem competitiva, desvantagem competitiva ou paridade. A comparação deste resultado com aqueles de desempenho médio tornou claro a importância de se analisar o desempenho em duas de suas dimensões: a média e sua tendência.

Corporate governance and its influence on the investment decision process of equity market's professionals: An inside view of how corporate governance issues influence the decision-making process of sell-side and buy-side professionals when analyzing Brazilian listed companies

Corporate governance has been in the spotlight for the past two decades, being subject of numerous researches all over the world. Governance is pictured as a broad and diverse theme, evolving through different routes to form distinct systems. This scenario together with 2 types of agency problems (investor vs. management and minorities vs. controlling shareholders) produce different definitions for governance. Usually, studies investigate whether corporate governance structures influence firm performance, and company valuation. This approach implies investors can identify those impacts and later take them into consideration when making investment decisions. However, behavioral finance theory shows that not always investors take rational decisions, and therefore the modus operandi of those professionals needs to be understood. So, this research aimed to investigate to what extent Brazilian corporate governance standards and practices influence the investment decision-making process of equity markets' professionals from the sell-side and buy-side. This exploratory study was carried out through qualitative and quantitative approaches. In the qualitative phase, 8 practitioners were interviewed and 3 dimensions emerged: understanding, pertinence and practice. Based on the interviews’ findings, a questionnaire was formulated and distributed to buy-siders and sell-siders that cover Brazilian stocks. 117 respondents from all over the world contributed to the study. The data obtained were analyzed through structural equation modeling and descriptive statistics. The 3 dimensions became 5 constructs: definition (institutionalized governance, informal governance), pertinence (relevance), practice (valuation process, structured governance assessment) The results of this thesis suggest there is no definitive answer, as the extent to which governance will influence an investment decision process will depend on a number of circumstances which compose the context. The only certainty is the need to present a “corporate governance behavior”, rather than simply establishing rules and regulations at firm and country level.

A influência do alinhamento estratégico da tecnologia de informação no desempenho empresarial: um estudo sobre o impacto da orientação estratégica na integração, uso e benefícios desta tecnologia ao negócio

Este estudo tem como objetivo avaliar a influência da Tecnologia de Informação (TI) no Desempenho Empresarial sob o direcionamento da Estratégia de Negócio. A pesquisa faz um estudo específico da TI pelo alinhamento estratégico da tecnologia na integração, uso e benefícios da TI ao negócio e a influência nas diversas perspectivas de desempenho da firma. A estratégia recebe o recorte na pesquisa da orientação estratégica ao impactar a integração da TI ao negócio. O estudo utilizou da técnica de modelagem em equações estruturais com estimação PLS-PM (Partial Least Squares Path Modeling) num estudo empírico de 222 empresas. Os resultados indicam influência da TI no desempenho empresarial, ao explicar a variabilidade de 34,1% do desempenho de aprendizado & crescimento, 46.1% do desempenho do processo interno, 44,7% do desempenho do mercado, e 32,7% do desempenho financeiro. O estudo possibilitou explicar 74,1% da variabilidade do uso e benefícios da TI à estratégia e os processos de negócio e os diversos efeitos da TI no desempenho empresarial, além de destacar a importância e ênfase dada pelas empresas às variáveis da orientação estratégica. O modelo possibilitou explicar a variabilidade das várias perspectivas do desempenho e sugere outras formas de mensurar a adoção e uso da tecnologia nas organizações.

Growth process in business and social entrepreneurship: the case of Brazil

The purpose of the dissertation is to investigate in depth the difference between the challenges social and business entrepreneurs face in the growth phase of their business in the particular environment of Brazil. This objective has been achieved through a two-steps methodology. The first step is a set of in-depth interviews carried out with industry experts such as professors, venture capitalists, consultants, fund managers or people involved in the support of growing startups (i.e. accelerators). These interviews allowed, first, to build a general perspective on the environment entrepreneurs operate into and to identify a list of challenges entrepreneurs face in the growth process of their business. This list was completed with the additional challenges identified in the previous literature. The second step of the methodology was to test the relevance of these challenges in the mind and experience of social and traditional entrepreneurs. A questionnaire was then submitted to 145 social and 286 traditional entrepreneurs. The results were statistically analyzed to test the relative relevance of these challenges for one group of entrepreneurs with respect to the other. The outcome of the analysis was significant. The most relevant challenges identified were, for both groups, taxation, bureaucracy, finding the right employees, creating effective teams, measuring firm performance and social value creation and obtaining funds. On the other side motivation, innovation, competition and lack of market space for growth represented the least relevant issues in the minds of entrepreneurs. This rank however did not differ significantly from social to traditional entrepreneurs. This testifies that in Brazil social and traditional entrepreneurs face the same set of challenges despite the widespread belief of the opposite.

A relação entre origem do controle acionário, valor e desempenho das empresas no Brasil

Este trabalho tem como objetivo identificar se a origem do acionista controlador tem relação com o valor e desempenho das empresas no Brasil. A literatura existente sobre essa tema é extensa e, embora a teoria possa elencar diversos fatores que influenciariam no valor e desempenho, os estudos já efetuados mostraram resultados divergentes e, em alguns casos, inconclusivos. Este trabalho realiza um estudo no Brasil, com 407 empresas no período de 2002 a 2009. Os resultados indicam que o controle familiar e governamental reduz o valor das empresas. Por sua vez, não encontramos evidências relacionando origem do controle e desempenho das empresas.

The importance of firms' strategic resources and capabilities in crisis situations

The general idea of this research is to analyze overall firm performance before and after the global financial crisis of 2008. The main question is: What kind of strategies did companies adopt that led to positive business performance after the crisis? Are there any particular competitive advantages that bring better performance in the case of an economic downturn? This research focuses on competitive advantage gained by resource-based view attributes of a product (quality, durability and prestige) and dynamic capabilities (strategic flexibility in product development and technological innovation ability). The economic crisis setting provides a proper background to analyze the competitive advantage strategies in a dynamic, low-probability environment to determine which are most worth adopting in the business world. I employ an OLS regression analysis in order to measure the business performance of 136 Brazilian firms across four years – 2002, 2005, 2008 and 2012. The findings indicate that even though all of the strategic resources and capabilities positively influence firm performance in expansionary periods, only the superior product characteristics are pertinent in surviving an economic downturn.

A eficiência do sistema superprecoce com bovinos de diferentes proporções do genótipo Bos indicus

Pós-graduação em Zootecnia - FMVZ

Environmental management in Brazil: is it a completely competitive priority?

Current studies indicate a need to integrate environmental management with manufacturing strategy, including topics like cross-functional integration, environmental impact, and waste reduction. Nevertheless, such studies are relatively rare, existing still a need for research in specific regional contexts. At the same time, the results found are not unanimous. Due to these gaps, the objective of this article is to analyze if environmental management can be considered a new competitive priority for manufacturing enterprises located in Brazil. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with Brazilian companies certified by ISO 14001. Sixty-five valid questionnaires were analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The first conclusion is that environmental management presents a preventive approach in the sample analyzed, focused on eco-efficiency, what potentially do not to create a competitive advantage. This preventive approach inhibits environmental management from being regarded as a new competitive manufacturing priority, in the full sense as defined by the literature. Another important result is that environmental management, although following a preventive focus, may influence positively the four manufacturing priorities: cost, quality, flexibility and delivery. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Intangible resources and organization capital: measurement and economic evaluation

Intangible resources have raised the interests of scholars from different research areas due to their importance as crucial factors for firm performance; yet, contributions to this field still lack a theoretical framework. This research analyses the state-of-the-art results reached in the literature concerning intangibles, their main features and evaluation problems and models. In search for a possible theoretical framework, the research draws a kind of indirect analysis of intangibles through the theories of the firm, their critic and developments. The heterodox approaches of the evolutionary theory and resource-based view are indicated as possible frameworks. Based on this theoretical analysis, organization capital (OC) is identified, for its features, as the most important intangible for firm performance. Empirical studies on the relationship intangibles-firm performance have been sporadic and have failed to reach firm conclusions with respect to OC; in the attempt to fill this gap, the effect of OC is tested on a large sample of European firms using the Compustat Global database. OC is proxied by capitalizing an income statement item (Selling, General and Administrative expenses) that includes expenses linked to information technology, business process design, reputation enhancement and employee training. This measure of OC is employed in a cross-sectional estimation of a firm level production function - modeled with different functional specifications (Cobb-Douglas and Translog) - that measures OC contribution to firm output and profitability. Results are robust and confirm the importance of OC for firm performance.

Reputation, VC funding, and innovation: Evidence from the UK Micro and Nanotechnology sector

Startups’ contributions on economic growth have been widely realized. However, the funding gap is often a problem limiting startups’ development. To some extent, VC can be a means to solve this problem. VC is one of the optimal financial intermediaries for startups. Two streams of VC studies are focused in this dissertation: the criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate startups and the effect of VC on innovation. First, although many criteria have been analyzed, the empirical assessment of the effect of startup reputation on VC funding has not been investigated. However, reputation is usually positively related with firm performance, which may affect VC funding. By analyzing reputation from the generalized visibility dimension and the generalized favorability dimension using a sample of 200 startups founded from 1995 operating in the UK MNT sector, we show that both the two dimensions of reputation have positive influence on the likelihood of receiving VC funding. We also find that management team heterogeneity positively influence the likelihood of receiving VC funding. Second, studies investigating the effect of venture capital on innovation have frequently resorted to patent data. However, innovation is a process leading from invention to successful commercialization, and while patents capture the upstream side of innovative performance, they poorly describe its downstream one. By reflecting the introduction of new products or services trademarks can complete the picture, but empirical studies on trademarking in startups are rare. Analyzing a sample of 192 startups founded from 1996 operating in the UK MNT sector, we find that VC funding has positive effect on the propensity to register trademarks, as well as on the number and breadth of trademarks.

Contextual Information and Memory for Unfamiliar Tunes in Older and Younger Adults

We examined age differences in the effectiveness of multiple repetitions and providing associative facts on tune memory. For both tune and fact recognition, three presentations were beneficial. Age was irrelevant in fact recognition, but older adults were less successful than younger in tune recognition. The associative fact did not affect young adults' performance. Among older people, the neutral association harmed performance; the emotional fact mitigated performance back to baseline. Young adults seemed to rely solely on procedural memory, or repetition, to learn tunes. Older adults benefitted by using emotional associative information to counteract memory burdens imposed by neutral associative information.

Do individual directors matter?

Paper 1: Pilot study of Swiss firms Abstract Using a fixed effects approach, we investigate whether the presence of specific individuals on Swiss firms’ boards affects firm performance and the policy choices they make. We find evidence for a substantial impact of these directors’ presence on their firms. Moreover, the director effects are correlated across policies and performance measures but uncorrelated to the directors’ background. We find these results interesting but conclude that they should to be substantiated on a dataset that is larger and better understood by researchers. Also, further tests are required to rule out methodological concerns. Paper 2: Evidence from the S&P 1,500 Abstract We ask whether directors on corporate boards contribute to firm performance as individuals. From the universe of the S&P 1,500 firms since 1996 we track 2,062 directors who serve on multiple boards over extended periods of time. Our initial findings suggest that the presence of these directors is associated with substantial performance shifts (director fixed effects). Closer examination shows that these effects are statistical artifacts and we conclude that directors are largely fungible. Moreover, we contribute to the discussion of the fixed effects method. In particular, we highlight that the selection of the randomization method is pivotal when generating placebo benchmarks. Paper 3: Robustness, statistical power, and important directors Abstract This article provides a better understanding of Senn’s (2014) findings: The outcome that individual directors are unrelated to firm performance proves robust against different estimation models and testing strategies. By looking at CEOs, the statistical power of the placebo benchmarking test is evaluated. We find that only the stronger tests are able to detect CEO fixed effects. However, these tests are not suitable to analyze directors. The suitable tests would detect director effects if the inter quartile range of the true effects amounted to 3 percentage points ROA. As Senn (2014) finds no such effects for outside directors in general, we focus on groups of particularly important directors (e.g., COBs, non-busy directors, successful directors). Overall, our evidence suggests that the members of these groups are not individually associated with firm performance either. Thus, we confirm that individual directors are largely fungible. If the individual has an effect on performance, it is of small magnitude.

A longitudinal cross-country study of entrepreneurial orientation

As recent research documents, there has been an impressive effort of studying the entrepreneurial orientation construct and its nomological role. However, most research has been very context specific and based on the analyses of cross-sectional information. We study causal performance effects from entrepreneurial orientation and its key dimensions in two economic contexts–developed and emerging markets. Gathering data on a sample of 94 firms in developed market context and 108 in emerging market context at two time-points we explore our hypotheses. The results suggest that in a developed economy entrepreneurial orientation has a positive impact on firm performance, whereas in the emerging market context this effect is negative. Furthermore, we assess the contribution of each dimension to the aggregate construct and reveal the importance of risk-taking in both contexts. Finally, we highlight the role of environmental dynamism and explain its varying effect