Resumo em Inglês:

The towering figure of the Baron of Mauá holds an indisputable place in the economic development of Brazil. His trajectory is widely analyzed not only because of his important achievements, but also because he became the symbol of an entrepreneur, whose failure in business is often blamed on an institutional context that could not understand his vision of development for the country and was hostile towards his industrialization projects and modernization of Brazil. Nevertheless, if we review his trajectory, we will see that not only can his actions in business be considered mistaken, if analyzed in the light of current concepts developed in the field of strategy, but they were also close to the governmental policies of the time. Therefore, to a certain extent, Mauá was a prisoner of the Brazilian institutional context of his day. The aim of this article is to review the position that Mauá, as a classic-style entrepreneur, was opposed to the institutional order of his day and, for that reason, would have been punished. We will actually see that on the one hand, he was opposed to it, and on the other he also trusted it and came to depend on it.

Resumo em Inglês:

Relationship marketing is essential for success in business. The need to understand better the differences in the strategies buyers and suppliers follow is what has motivated this study. We drew on emerging perspectives on inter-firm governance and networks to develop a theoretical framework to understand the success of long-term relationships. We tested the framework using data from 67 merchant distributors (buyers) and 174 suppliers of theirs in the Dutch potted plant and flower industry. While the most successful distributors tend to take the "hard", tangible strategy using transaction specific investments and fostering joint action, the successful suppliers take the "soft", social approach by emphasizing trust and the norm of flexibility in the relationship.

Resumo em Inglês:

We have carried out an event study to investigate stock returns associated with the announcement of equity issues by Brazilian firms between 1992 and 2003 in order to determine market reaction before, during, and after the issue announcement. After measuring abnormal returns by OLS, we used ARCH and GARCH models over 70% of the sample. Our results are remarkably consistent with most of the international empirical literature. Some previous empirical findings have turned up abnormal returns before the announcement date, interpreted as signs of insider information. This evidence also appears in our study as we found an average cumulative abnormal return of -0.01 three weeks before the announcement. With respect to the announcement date, the evidence reported in the literature is virtually unanimous in showing negative abnormal returns, meaning that stock issues convey pessimistic information to the market. Our study confirms these findings with an average -0.03 cumulative abnormal return on the first three days following the announcement. Finally, the empirical literature has also collected evidence of long-term negative abnormal returns after the issues, which we also confirm, with an abnormal return of -0.28 after one year following the announcement. The results also show that ARCH/GARCH estimation of abnormal returns is superior to OLS estimation.

Resumo em Inglês:

This article proposes a model to measure tourism cluster impact on local development with a view to assessing tourism cluster interaction, competitiveness and sustainability impacts on the economy, society and the environment. The theoretical basis for this model is founded on cluster concept and typology adapting and integrating the systemic competitiveness and sustainability concepts within economic, social, cultural, environmental and political dimensions. The proposed model shows a holistic, multidisciplinary and multi-sector view of local development brought back through a systemic approach to the concepts of competitiveness, social equity and sustainability. Its results make possible strategic guidance to agents responsible for public sector tourism policies, as well as the strategies for competitiveness, competition, cooperation and sustainability in private companies and institutions.

Resumo em Inglês:

Evaluating students' learning experiences outcomes cannot be considered a simple task. This paper aims at investigating students' overall performance and the discriminating power of particular tests' items in the context of business courses. The purpose of this paper is to contribute with this issue while analyzing it, with scientific approach, from an accounting information systems standpoint: two experiments based on a database management system (DBMS) undergraduate course, involving 66 and 62 students (experiments E1 and E2, respectively). The discriminant analysis generated discriminant functions with high canonical correlations (E1= 0.898 and E2= 0.789). As a result, high percentages of original grouped cases were correctly classified (E1= 98.5% and E2= 95.2%) based on a relatively small number of items: 7 out of 22 items from E1 (multiple-choice), and 3 out of 6 from E2 (short-answer). So, with only a few items from the analyzed instruments it is possible to discriminate "good" or "bad" academic performance, and this is a measure of quality of the observed testing instruments. According to these findings, especially in business area, instructors and institutions, together, are able to analyze and act towards improving their assessment methods, to be of minimum influence while evaluating students' performance.