Abstract Purpose: By considering the organizational legitimacy framework, this work examines how offending companies decouple their narratives from the facts as a communication strategy when handling environmental crises in the Latin American context. It also considers the implications of such behavior in terms of its potential inconsistency with the organizational value system, and therefore with the ethical sense of the crisis communication practice. Design/methodology: The research relies on a multi-case study approach, where four major environmental incidents involving four extractive companies in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina are analyzed. By scrutinizing public sources, these companies’ crisis communication processes are examined to allow for the linking of theory and practice. Findings: Results obtained suggest that to defend their legitimacy, companies deliberately conveyed untruthful messages and decouple their communication in crisis from reality, which in turn exposes a delinking between values and actions, resulting in ethical concerns for the practice of both crisis management and crisis communication. This work identifies four different decoupling-based crisis communication strategies performed by companies and the way these are accompanied by secondary strategies. Research limitations/implications: By emphasizing the connection between legitimacy and crisis communication, the study illustrates how narrative-fact decoupling (i.e., untruthful crisis communication practices) can be an indicative of more profound organizational contradictions. However, due to the constraints of case studies, it is acknowledged that the results obtained have boundaries for generalization. Originality/value: Instead of approaching decoupling as a trigger for crisis, the present investigation considers decoupling as a communicational strategy some companies engage with, when handling crisis. Furthermore, by focusing on Latin America, the study reflects the potential impact that the geographical context may have on the bodies of knowledge of organizational crisis communication and legitimacy.

Abstract: This study examines outsourced workers’ assessment of job satisfaction and the degree to which it can be affected by their perception of the reputation of the outsourcing company (i.e., their employer), that of the user company (i.e., their client), and their level of affective commitment to each one of them. Therefore, this study proposes a partial least squares structural equation model with four correlational hypotheses and two mediation hypotheses. A cross-sectional instrument was administered to 138 outsourced workers employed by the same outsourcing company in Colombia. The results indicate that the outsourcing company’s reputation has a slight influence on its employees’ affective commitment to said company, but not on their job satisfaction. Finally, the user company’s reputation has a strong influence on its outsourced workers’ affective commitment, and the latter variable plays a partial mediating role in the link between the user company’s reputation and outsourced employee satisfaction. Resumen: El presente estudio se propuso indagar por la forma en que los trabajadores en condición de tercerización laboral conciben su nivel de satisfacción en su trabajo, y el grado en que dicha valoración puede ser afectada en función de su propia percepción de reputación sobre la empresa subcontratista (su empleador) y la empresa usuaria (su cliente), así como de su nivel de vinculación afectiva con respecto a cada una de ellas. Para ello se planteó un modelamiento de ecuaciones estructurales mediante mínimos cuadrados parciales, empleándose cuatro hipótesis correlacionales y dos hipótesis de mediación. De esta manera, se aplicó un instrumento transversal sobre una muestra de 138 trabajadores tercerizados, vinculados a una misma empresa subcontratista en Colombia. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la reputación de esta empresa parecería incidir ligeramente sobre la vinculación afectiva de los trabajadores con respecto a ella misma, más no sobre su propia satisfacción en el trabajo. Finalmente, se observa una fuerte incidencia de la reputación de la empresa usuaria sobre la vinculación afectiva de sus trabajadores, variable que a su vez ejerce un rol de mediación parcial dentro del vínculo existente entre la misma reputación (de la empresa usuaria) y la satisfacción de los trabajadores.

Resumen: Este artículo ilustra el papel del populismo en la defensa de empresas estatales transgresoras, a partir del estudio del caso de la empresa Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) y su relación con el Estado venezolano durante la era del autodenominado “socialismo del siglo XXI”. Para ello se hace una investigación descriptiva y de sistematización de datos sobre algunos eventos de transgresión socioambiental en los que incurrió la compañía entre 2010 y 2020. Los resultados apuntan al uso continuo de una retórica incendiaria, constituida por el antielitismo, la defensa de la soberanía popular y la consideración de una ciudadanía homogénea y virtuosa. Esto sugiere que el populismo también puede ser utilizado como un estilo discursivo particular para defender la legitimidad de empresas transgresoras subordinadas al poder. Abstract: This work illustrates the role of populism in defending transgressing state-owned companies, based on the case of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and its relationship with the Venezuelan state during the self-titled era of ‘21st-century socialism.’ To this end, a descriptive research design and systematization of data was performed on some socio-environmental transgressions by this company between 2010 and 2020. The results point to the continued use of inflammatory rhetoric, represented by anti-elitism, defense of popular sovereignty, and the consideration of homogeneous and virtuous citizenship. These findings suggest that populism can be used as a particular discursive behavior meant to defend the legitimacy of transgressing, subservient-to-power companies.

Abstract: The adoption of teleworking as a work modality in organizations has grown exponentially due to the current COVID-19 pandemic crisis. This phenomenon has allowing the development of remote activities that are normally carried out in person. However, there is a concern among managers and employers due to the apparent absence of control and decreased productivity when using teleworking. For this reason, this article reviews, through two case studies of teleworkers surveillance and control software, the way in which their use provide support to the theory of formal and informal control, and how it can improve perception about the teleworking application and offer guarantees to employers. Similarly, the manuscript discusses the effects on the quality of life and personal behavior of employees who are involved within this modality. Resumen: La adopción del teletrabajo como modalidad laboral en las organizaciones ha crecido exponencialmente debido a la crisis actual de pandemia por COVID-19. Esto ha permitido el desarrollo de actividades a distancia que normalmente se realizan de forma presencial. Sin embargo, existe una preocupación en los gerentes y empleadores por la aparente ausencia del control y disminución de la productividad en su uso. Por tal razón el presente artículo revisa, a partir de dos casos de estudio de softwares de vigilancia y control de teletrabajadores, la forma en que su utilización brinda soporte a la teoría del control formal e informal, y cómo puede mejorar la percepción en la aplicación del teletrabajo al ofrecer garantías a los empleadores. De igual manera, se discuten las afectaciones en la calidad de vida y comportamiento personal de los empleados involucrados en esta modalidad.

Abstract: Visionary Brazilian families have been instrumental in establishing the impact investing ecosystem in Brazil. Today Brazilian families are accelerating the impact investing sector by establishing new impact funds, testing new interventions and business models, engaging in field building, and transforming the impact of their operating businesses. There are a growing number of ways for families to create shared, sustainable prosperity in Brazil through business and investments. This report analyzes the history and current trends of how families are pursuing positive impact by aligning their investments and business activities with their values and legacy. The insights in this paper gathered from twenty-five leading families and ecosystem players provide inspiration and a path to action for families planning the next steps in their impact investing journey. This report outlines how the education, healthcare, and environmental preservation sectors are particularly well suited to attract impact investments in Brazil in the future. The challenges Brazil faces provide a diverse set of opportunities for families to deploy impact capital across asset classes, sectors, geographies, impact strategies, and return profiles. Resumen: Visionaras familias brasileñas han sido fundamentales en el establecimiento del ecosistema de inversión de impacto en Brasil. Hoy en día, las familias brasileñas están acelerando el sector de la inversión de impacto estableciendo nuevos fondos de impacto, probando nuevas intervenciones y modelos de negocio, participando en la construcción del ecosistema y transformando el impacto de sus negocios operativos. Hay un número creciente de formas en las que las familias pueden crear prosperidad compartida y sostenible en Brasil a través de negocios e inversiones. Este informe analiza la historia y las tendencias actuales de cómo las familias buscan un impacto positivo alineando sus inversiones y actividades comerciales con sus valores y legado. Los conocimientos en este documento recopilados de veinticinco familias líderes y actores del ecosistema brindan inspiración y un camino hacia la acción para las familias que planean los próximos pasos en su viaje de inversión de impacto. Este informe describe cómo los sectores de educación, salud y preservación del medio ambiente son particularmente adecuados para atraer inversiones de impacto en Brasil en el futuro. Los desafíos que enfrenta Brasil brindan un conjunto diverso de oportunidades para que las familias desplieguen capital de impacto en clases de activos, sectores, geografías, estrategias de impacto y perfiles de retorno.

Abstract: Physicians are no strangers to situations where they have to decide with resource restrictions and uncertainty on the relative needs of future beneficiaries of the scarce resources. We propose a lab experiment to understand if such an environment affects physicians' resource allocation decisions and how. When there are incentives to overtreat, we find that a patient tended by a constrained physician under uncertainty obtains higher benefits and receives allocations closer to her optimum than patients from physicians with no constraints or deciding under uncertainty alone. In addition, we observe a redistribution of resources when physicians decide with resource restrictions and uncertainty. In particular, when resources are scarce, physicians tend to allocate the limited services to patients with higher benefits in the absence of medical services, a higher capacity to benefit from the resources, the scantiest need for service units, and the lowest benefits at the optimum. Finally, we find that constraints, with or without complete information on patient characteristics, lead selfish physicians to approximate what is best for the patient. Resumen: Los médicos no son ajenos a situaciones en las que tienen que decidir bajo escasez de recursos e incertidumbre sobre las necesidades relativas de los futuros beneficiarios de servicios de salud. Proponemos un experimento de laboratorio para entender sí, y cómo, este entorno afecta a las decisiones de asignación de recursos de los médicos. Cuando hay incentivos para la sobre provisión de servicios médicos, encontramos que los pacientes atendidos por médicos que enfrenta restricciones e incertidumbre obtienen mayores beneficios en salud y reciben servicios de salud más cercanos a su óptimo, en comparación con los pacientes vistos por médicos sin restricciones o que deciden sólo bajo incertidumbre. Además, observamos una redistribución de recursos cuando los médicos deciden bajo restricciones e incertidumbre. En particular, cuando los recursos son escasos, los médicos tienden a asignar servicios de salud a los pacientes con mayores beneficios en ausencia de servicios médicos, con mayor capacidad para beneficiarse de servicios adicionales, con menores necesidades de tratamiento médico y con menores beneficios en el óptimo. Por último, encontramos que las restricciones, con o sin información completa sobre las características del paciente, llevan a los médicos egoístas a aproximarse a lo que es mejor para el paciente.

Abstract: One of the strategies to improve governments’ allocation of resources, particularly when these are insufficient to meet all the public needs, is the use of targeting indices. Generally, a targeting index is a linear combination of wellbeing indicators (for example years of education, dwelling conditions, and so forth) that orders the members of the population according to their living conditions to classify and identify the beneficiaries of social programmes. The weighting method that we propose maximises a function that depends on the number of poor beneficiaries, by income and/or expenditure, given some normative restrictions. Therefore, the indices designed with this method target poor people taking into consideration not only the income dimension, but also other dimensions, such as health, nutrition, and dwelling, although they are not correlated with income and/or correlated with one another. The method for taking these dimensions into account is to specify weighting restrictions by an indicator of wellbeing. In other words, we establish maximum and minimum values for the weights according to the number of indicators and the needs of social programmes. These values maintain the balance between income-based weights and normative weights. Because of these characteristics, we call our method Maximising Poor Beneficiaries with Normative Restrictions (MPBR). The algorithm behind MPBR can maximises or minimises any function. For instance, in the first exercise of this study, it exclusively counts the number of expenditure -poor beneficiaries, and in the second it contemplates both income-poor and expenditure-poor beneficiaries, given double weight to those that meet both conditions - thus the poorest of the poor households become the first beneficiaries of social programmes-. We find that when the function to maximise counts exclusively the number of income-poor (or expenditure-poor) households before a cutoff, it is equivalent to minimising the IE (Inclusion error) and EE (Exclusion error). In fact, we theoretically and empirically demonstrate that the models that minimise the IE and EE (considering income-poor or expenditure-poor households) are probabilistic models. Therefore, we conclude that probabilistic models are a useful tool to determine approximately the minimum IE and EE that can be obtained with a set of indicators. Applying MPBR, we find that when the increase in an indicator of wellbeing statistically increases the probability of not being expenditure-poor, the weight of the indicator converges to a specific positive value to maximise the number of expenditure-poor beneficiaries; in contrast, if the increase in an indicator statistically decreases this probability, the weight of the indicator converges to the minimum allowed weight. In the case in which the indicator is not statistically significant in the probabilistic model, its weight does not converge to a specific value. However, when the weighting restrictions become stronger (for example a greater minimum weight), most of the weights converge to a value. In a comparison of MPBR with other weighting methods (for example PCA and normative method), we conclude that the index estimated with MPBR has a smaller IE and EE and distributes the weights between indicators more equitably than the indices calculated with other methods.

Abstract: Este artículo analiza el impacto de la política costarricense de apoyo al turismo sostenible, y en particular con el sistema de Certificación para la Sostenibilidad Turística (CST) del Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) en la innovación en servicios, procesos, mercadeo y organización de las empresas hoteleras del país. Se indagaron las causas y motivaciones para hacer cambios e introducir nuevos atributos dentro de la empresa. En la primera fase, se condujo encuestas con el 27% de todos los hoteles con declaratoria turística en Costa Rica y el 48% de los certificados con CST, para investigar los determinantes de la innovación y de la búsqueda de la certificación de sostenibilidad. Se aplicaron herramientas estadísticas para analizar diferencias entre los hoteles con y sin CST, así como la correlación de los determinantes de la innovación con el grado de innovación. Posteriormente se entrevistaron a seis hoteleros de diversos tipos para profundizar sobre las innovaciones realizadas, los determinantes y motivaciones. Los resultados indican que la certificación es un instrumento para ayudar a los gerentes a mejorar sustancialmente sus empresas, en términos de servicios, procesos, estructura interna y ahorros en agua y energía. Los hoteles con CST demuestren una tasa de ocupación 8% más alto que los hoteles no certificados, con un valor de p=0,01. No se evidenció una diferencia en innovación en mercadeo entre los hoteles con y sin CST.

Abstract: What some practitioners coyly called Industrial Revolution 4.0 some years ago is now a reality, and it is drastically changing the way businesses are done in many industries worldwide. The European Union is no exception. Despite being a powerful region, but with conservative, traditional industries, many of these have found it necessary to implement changes in their business models to survive the digital changes. Therefore, the European Commission has prioritized the digital development of the region and the growth of all industries leveraged on the information technologies that can have the most significant impact. As the literature indicates, business models and competitive advantage are complex systems that require essential elements to function synchronously and thus generate value. Hence, cutting-edge technologies play a unique role because they become elements that transform markets and complement the current capabilities of industries and take them to a new stage of development. Therefore, it is essential to know how the adoption of different technologies is related to the economic growth of industries, which technologies generate the most value, and what is needed to drive this growth. This study makes a theoretical review of the impact of ICTs on the European economy, the actions that the European Commission has taken to promote the digital transformation. Finally, it exposes which technologies indeed positively correlate with industries' added value.

Abstract: Although the analysis of urban poverty has advanced towards the integration of objective and subjective approaches to assessing urban development, evaluation of quality of life in cities remains tied to a commodity framework which conceptualises it as the mere dotation of urban amenities. Multidimensional indicators of quality of life attempt to overcome this sort of restriction by considering broader informational spaces to assess well-being in cities. The capability approach has gone some way in addressing this as a multidimensional approach, however the interpretation of spatial phenomena has been absent from its application, meaning that the role of space in the configuration of urban poverty has been neglected. Drawing on cross-sectional data, this paper examines a multidimensional measure of urban poverty based on capabilities of young adults in Bogota in order to identify clusters of deprivation and affluence of well-being and determine levels of urban segregation based on this type of metric. The result is a spatialised index of capabilities that allow us to assess well-being from a perspective of socio-spatial differences. The findings support the importance of considering spatial patterning of capabilities in understanding poverty dynamics in cities. Spatialised capabilities may help to support urban policy design and promote greater understanding of spatial inequalities in cities.