Centro de Estudos em Gestão e Economia (CEGE)
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- Financial instruments of forest policy in Portugal in the 80s and 90sPublication . Mendes, Américo M. S. Carvalho; Dias, Rafael A. R. da SilvaThis paper reviews the main programmes of financial incentives to forestry in Portugal through the 1980s and 1990s. First, these programmes are put in perspective with respect to the trends in forest resources and forest policy since the mid-19th century. Then, the main measures, beneficiaries and outputs are presented for each programme, together with an implementation analysis comparing the targets and outputs and giving plausible hypotheses to explain the implementation failures. The main conclusions of the paper are a long-term trend of increasing public financing to private forestry, with some remaining problems: unsustainable sources of public funds, and rates of afforestation and reafforestation still insufficient to make the forest industries competitive and to compensate for the damages caused each year by forest fires.
- The effects of misclassification costs and skewed distributions in two-group classificationPublication . Duarte Silva, A. P.; Stam, A.; Neter, J.In this study, Monte Carlo simulation experiments were employed to examine the performance of four statistical two-group classification methods when the data distributions are skewed and misclassification costs are unequal, conditions frequently encountered in business and economic applications. The classification methods studied are linear and quadratic parametric, nearest neighbor and logistic regression methods. It was found that when skewness is moderate, the parametric methods tend to give best results. Depending on the specific data condition, when skewness is high, either the linear parametric, logistic regression, or the nearest-neighbor method gives the best results. When misclassification costs differ widely across groups, the linear parametric method is favored over the other methods for many of the data conditions studied.
- Linking quality management to manufacturing strategy: an empirical investigation of customer focus practicesPublication . Sousa, RuiQuality management (QM) has often been advocated as being universally applicable to organizations. This is in contrast with the manufacturing strategy contingency approach of operations management (OM) which advocates internal and external consistency between manufacturing strategy choices. This article investigates, using the case-study method, whether customer focus practices—a distinctive subset of the whole set of QM practices—are contingent on a plant’s manufacturing strategy context. The study strongly suggests that customer focus practices are contingent on a plant’s manufacturing strategy and identifies mechanisms by which this takes place. The findings inform the implementation of QM programs.
- Convivência internacional, economia e valoresPublication . Mendes, Américo M. S. Carvalho
- Trust: theoretical framework, underlying disciplines, and measuresPublication . Cruz, Joaquin Garcia; Silva, Susana Costa eToday it is necessary to study trust considering the characteristics of the environment in which organizations operate. The relevance of the concept is more than justified, as much for the academic world as for the organizational practice. On one hand, the extant amount of literature shows its importance in the academic scope. And, on the other hand, since organizations are more and more concerned with replacing conflict management by the use of cooperative behaviours, trust becomes a key element. Trust is a multidisciplinary, heterogeneous and ambiguous construct. There is a lot of literature about it in different fields. Despite all research on trust to date, it so far impossible to reach an agreement concerning a consensual paradigm about conceptualisation, theoretical framework and underlying disciplines, levels of analysis, unit of analysis, generating factors and consequences. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of trust, through a literature review and a content analysis about: theoretical framework according their purpose of study; conceptualisation, generating factors and consequences. The sources for this analysis are papers published at the three EURAM Conferences (2001, 2002 and 2003), as well as, the special issues on trust published by three prestigious journals, such as the Academy of Management Review (1998), Organization Studies (2001), and Organization Science (2003). These conferences and journals are taken as basis for this study as they have explicitly shown a particular interest in the understanding of the trust concept.
- The Portuguese forests: country level report delivered to the EFFE Project: evaluating financing of forestry in EuropePublication . Mendes, Américo M. S. Carvalho; Feliciano, Diana; Tavares, Marisa; Dias, Rafael
- Growing pains of a web-based survey on international alliancesPublication . Silva, Susana Costa e
- Luzes e sombras da globalizaçãoPublication . Mendes, Américo M. S. CarvalhoO autor versa aqui sobre o fenómeno da globalização, centrando a sua atenção sobretudo no plano económico (predomínio da economia de mercado), decorrente da sua natureza expansionista. Além disso, tem em conta o efeito das novas tecnologias da informação e a expansão das democracias e da inerente afirmação dos direitos humanos. Analisa a potencialidade de conflitos decorrente das tensões entre democracia e economia de mercado. Aponta algumas pistas de actuação, em face da situação analisada.
- PortugalPublication . Feliciano, Diana; Mendes, AméricoThe evidence provided in this report shows that the Portuguese forest sector has been responsive to demands for its products, not only timber, but also cork and some other non wood forest goods and services. The area of forests almost tripled since the mid of the 1990s and the main cause of this has been that response to market conditions. Given the very high salience of private ownership, private forest owners played a major role in that response, even when there were no supported public policies, which was the case until the 1980s. Private forest owners obviously have not been alone in making up these adjustments to demand. Forest industries have been the essential connecting link between the forests and the final consumers, either in the domestic markets, or abroad. The first jump in expanding the forest resource base was the installation of the cork oak stands in the southern regions, mostly from the mid of the XIXth century until the mid of the XXth century. This was and still remains an export oriented business. It has successfully resisted the arrival of plastics, and is now facing new forms of competition from this material. Again this competition is meeting an active response from the industry and the forest owners, but a lot is still undecided about the end of this game. Pulp and paper is another story of creation of a new forest resource base and a new industry oriented essentially towards exports. Like in the case of cork, the quality of the product has been generally good, but here also new threats are arising. The resource base of the industry is under increasing risk of forest fires and the fundamentals of the Portuguese economy, in recent years, are not favouring exporting business. The wood based panel industry is another case where the forest resources built up by private forestry during the last one hundred years were able to trigger and sustain industrial conglomerates of large international scope. Nowadays the leading group in the world in this industry is Portuguese. The tree species at the base of this industry is maritime pine. This is the species which has been suffering most with forest fires and this is not good news for the industry. However, entrepreneurs here have been able to evolve towards other products and other markets. The rest of the forest industries (sawmilling, carpentry and furniture) are essentially made of small, even very small enterprises relying almost entirely on the domestic market. Rising real incomes and lower real interest rates, until the turn of the century helped these activities. These favourable conditions stopped to hold at the same time as the exposure to foreign competition became more intense. The strong dependence of these industries on the macroeconomic situation of the country is now pushing them towards improvements in labour productivity, at lower levels of employment.
- The process of closing down a factory: Ethical behaviour in businessPublication . Soares, Conceição; Oliveira, Eva Dias de