CEGE - Contribuições em Revistas Científicas / Contribution to Journals
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- The economics of structured leasingPublication . Pinto, João M.; Pacheco, Luís K.This paper provides details on the characteristics of structured leasing transactions and surveys the existing theoretical and empirical research. A structured leasing is a new and highly flexible transaction that develops synergies between funding policy, risk management of the underlying assets, and tax benefits. It is used in particular transactions involving complex and large-scale assets, such as airplanes, ships, industrial plant and equipment, and large real estate projects. The existing literature shows that structured leasing creates value by increasing liquidity and funding, reducing the funding costs, allowing sponsors to attain greater leverage and to increase tax shields, improving lessees’ risk management, and allowing lessees to maintain financial flexibility, by improving or maintaining financial ratios. However, structured leasing deals also have disadvantages. The most commonly reported drawbacks in the literature are complexity, off-balance sheet treatment, higher transaction costs than straight leasing transactions, and wealth expropriation.
- Qual o valor económico do trabalho voluntário? O caso das colectividades de cultura, recreio e desporto em PortugalPublication . Santos, Joana; Mendes, Américo M. S. CarvalhoO estudo focou-se no trabalho voluntário exercido durante o ano de 2011 nas coletividades de cultura, recreio e desporto - o maior grupo das organizações de economia social (INE, 2012), e um dos três tipos de organizações com a maior percentagem de voluntários entre os seus colaboradores (OEFP, 2008). A metodologia adoptada foi a recomendada no Manual on the measurement of volunteer work (ILO, 2011), chamada 'custo de reposição'. Esta metodologia consiste em calcular o valor (salarial) que seria necessário pagar se o mesmo trabalho que é feito por voluntários fosse feito por trabalhadores remunerados. Com este estudo é possível dizer que se estima que durante o ano de 2011 foram praticadas 147.335 horas de trabalho voluntário nas coletividades filiadas na Confederação Portuguesa das Coletividades de Cultura Recreio e Desporto (CPCCRD). Isto é o equivalente ao trabalho de 25 a 33 mil trabalhadores equivalentes a tempo inteiro (ETI), que corresponde a 0,5% dos postos de trabalho em Portugal, valorado em mais de 300 milhões de euros (pelo método 'custo de reposição'). Para o total das coletividades em Portugal - 26.779 – estima-se que o trabalho voluntário praticado no ano de 2011 seja o equivalente a mais de 350 mil postos de trabalho a tempo inteiro, o que equivale a mais de 6% do total de postos de trabalho em Portugal, e valorado em mais de 2,7 mil milhões de euros.
- The economics of human development, the new (old) ‘witches’, and the government of social reproductionPublication . Fernandes, LilianaThis paper argues that the Economics of Human Development, advanced by Chicago School economist James J. Heckman and presented as a strategy for social investment in disadvantaged children, can be interpreted as an instrument for the government of social reproduction. The paper asserts that the Economics of Human Development is mostly concerned with the reproduction of a quality workforce. It further contends that its underlying argument is that disadvantage is the result of inadequate parenting, especially from mothers, who have raised a generation of workers unfit to meet the demands of the market and imposing costs on society. It is also argued that the resulting social policy proposal is intended to conform children’s and mother’s behaviour to the needs of the capitalist accumulation system.
- Leader-expressed forgiveness and team performance: a two-paths modelPublication . Rego, Arménio; Valverde, Camilo; Oliveira, Eduardo; Silard, Anthony; Cunha, Miguel Pina e; Sobral, FilipaAs role models and salient sources of social information, forgiving leaders are prosocial facilitators of team interactions, with consequences for team performance. Through a multi-source field study (227 teams/leaders) and a vignette-based experiment (101 teams), we show that (a) leader-expressed forgiveness predicts team performance through, serially, team forgiveness climate and team helping behavior, and (b) this indirect effect is stronger when the strength (i.e., the consistency of expressed forgiveness across team members) of leader-expressed forgiveness and team forgiveness climate are high. Findings also show that (a) leader-expressed forgiveness predicts team performance through, serially, team psychological safety and team creativity, and (b) this indirect effect is stronger when the strength of leader-expressed forgiveness is high. Our findings suggest that forgiving leaders may play an important role as enactors of several team processes and emergent states that make teams more effective.
- A decision support system to define new inventory management policies in companies transitioning towards data-driven decision-makingPublication . Sá, Sara; Carvalho, Maria do Sameiro; Gonçalves, João N. C.Information and Digital Technologies (IDT) not only help connecting processes and making them more efficient, they also increase one's visibility over them, by the intensive data creation and collection associated to their use. This data, when properly treated, can be quite revealing of a company's performance status and what future direction it seems to be heading. Data transformed into information is a powerful tool that must be used to support decision-making. Unfortunately, many companies have not yet mastered this transformation and plenty of others have not even acknowledged its potential. This article describes a case study carried out at a company responsible for the production of car seat covers, aiming to transition towards a data-driven decision making mindset. Revising their raw materials inventory management policies was their first step towards this goal, which led to the creation of a Decision Support System (DSS) that analyses the trade-offs between inventory-related costs and achieved service levels, considering the separate and joint use of safety stocks and safety time buffers. This paper presents the proposed DSS and illustrates its application to a small set of raw materials from the case study organisation.
- Contract mechanisms for value-based technology adoption in healthcare systemsPublication . Teymourifar, AydinAlthough technological innovations are often intended to improve quality and efficiency, they can exacerbate systemic challenges when not aligned with the principles of value-based care. As a result, healthcare systems in many countries face persistent inefficiencies stemming from the overuse, underuse, misuse, and waste associated with the adoption of health technology. This narrative review examines the dual impact of healthcare technology and evaluates how contract mechanisms can serve as strategic tools for promoting cost-effective, outcome-oriented integration. Drawing from healthcare management, and supply chain literature, this paper analyzes various payment and contract models, including performance-based, bundled, cost-sharing, and revenue-sharing agreements, through the lens of stakeholder alignment. It explores how these mechanisms influence provider behavior, patient access, and system sustainability. The study contends that well-designed contract mechanisms can align stakeholder incentives, reduce inefficiencies, and support the delivery of high-value care across diverse healthcare settings. We provide concrete examples to illustrate how various contract mechanisms impact the integration of health technologies in practice.
- The biodiversity moonshot: a spark for a transformative change or a new business-case facade?Publication . Testa, Francesco; Minin, Alberto Di; Tosi, Duccio; Cucino, Valentina; Ontano, Gianmaria; Russo, Michael V.; Dahlmann, Frederik; Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby; Thorpe, Andrea Stevenson; Figge, Frank; Shapira, Philip; Unter, Kerrigan Marie Machado; Walls, Judith; Darnall, Nicole; McCarthy, Adam; Ferri, Priscila; Holland, Claire; Cricchio, JacopoBiodiversity has recently gained increased attention in sustainability management research. It sustains the ecosystems on which organizations depend, while simultaneously being threatened by organizational activities. By highlighting this dynamic of impact and dependence, the integration of biodiversity into management discourse offers an opportunity to foster a more holistic understanding of the business–nature relationship, grounded in a systems perspective. At the same time, however, there is a risk that biodiversity will be reduced to yet another environmental variable subsumed within the prevailing business-case logic that views nature primarily as a source of economic value. This approach has proven inadequate to drive the transformative change needed to address the environmental crisis. Drawing on a discussion among scholars, this essay outlines six critical challenges—measurement, strategic decision making, innovation, public policy, interdisciplinary approaches, and dominant ontologies—which, depending on how they are addressed, may either catalyze a rethinking of the business–nature relationship or merely perpetuate existing paradigms.
- A company-basedvView on sustainable packaging orientationPublication . Duarte, Paulo; Ribeiro, Maria Inês; Silva, Susana C.; Pinhal, Rúben; Estima, AnaThis study aims to understand how companies address and integrate sustainability challenges in packaging design, as well as the motivations and processes that influence managers’ decisions when adopting sustainable practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers from five major Portuguese companies to gather qualitative data on the motivations and processes related to sustainable packaging strategies and actions. The list of questions was developed based on the literature review, from which the dimensions to be analyzed were identified. The results indicate that several factors influence companies’ decisions regarding sustainability in packaging. Despite some factors being beyond the control of companies, the interviews reveal that companies possess the necessary knowledge and are committed to adopting more sustainable packaging.
- Probabilistic vector machinesPublication . Silva, A. Pedro DuarteThis paper proposes a novel Support Vector Machine (SVM) methodology for finding accurate probabilities of class memberships in supervised classification problems. Classical SVMs do not complement their class predictions with reliable confidence measures for each class assignment. For two-class problems this problem can be overcome by combining a sequence of weighted SVMs predictions into consistent class probabilities. In this work we show how a smart use of mathematical programming models can be used to extend this approach to the general multi-class classification problem. Previous attempts to tackle this problem either do not scale well with the number of different classes, or rely on sub-optimal partition strategies. Numerical experiments reveal the good scaling properties of the proposal, and the relative advantages of its class probability estimates over alternative approaches
- Understanding the determinants of adoption and intention to recommend AI technology in travel and transportationPublication . Baptista, Gonçalo; Pereira, AntonioThe travel and transportation sectors continuously fight to stay up to date with new advancements in technology. Disruptive technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), are being used to develop businesses, enhance economic growth, revolutionize existing industries, create new opportunities, and increase productivity and efficiency. Notwithstanding the several advantages that this technology may bring, there is still little research on AI use in the travel and transportation sectors. This research contributes to this still understudied field to fill a gap in the literature by putting out a novel, thorough, and as far as we know not yet tested until now theoretical model, designed with the combination of the outcome of a literature meta-analysis study with Travel Experience and the Intention to Recommend technology constructs. A quantitative investigation using an online questionnaire was administered through social media and reached a total of 100 European participants. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed to test the suggested model empirically. The findings highlight that the user’s attitude towards AI is strongly influenced by Performance Expectancy and that the Intention to Use this technology is significantly influenced by Initial Trust and Attitude. Theoretical and practical contributions, limitations, and future areas of research are discussed.