Editorial

EDITORIAL

It is a coincidence that precisely this issue, published a few days after the passing of Professor Clovis Luiz Machado-da-Silva, opens with an article entitled The Meanings of the Death of the Founder: The Constructionist Approach (written by Mozar José de Brito, Sabrina Soares da Silva and Mayara Maria de Jesus Muniz).

Besides being the founder of this journal, Professor Machado-da-Silva was reelected President of ANPAD - National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Administration just a few weeks ago.

The aim of the article is to investigate the meanings constructed around the death of a university center’s founder, and Clóvis was a founder in many senses: founder of this journal, founder of RAC – Revista de Administração Contemporânea, and also one of the founders of ANPAD itself, to mention but a few of his achievements.

The paper uses the culture theory and the social constructionism approach as its theoretical-methodological basis. Culture theory would also serve well to discuss Professor Machado-da-Silva’s legacy to ANPAD and its journals as he played a central role in casting a culture of professionalism based upon solid academic values. The paper’s authors say that “reflections presented in this article could serve as a starting point for other researchers who are interested in investigating and constructing new theoretical and methodological reflections on this subject ”. On the other hand, I believe that all of us should reflect on Clóvis’ prolific contribution to the development of Organizational Theory in Brazil, particularly on its beloved Institutional Theory as he made a decisive contribution to institutionalizing the aforementioned values in our academic circle.

The paper’s authors say that “The analyses of the research results also lead to the conclusion that the death of the founder of any organization will always be marked by a network of intersubjectively constructed meanings that serve as a reference for the reproduction of the history of the organization and the heroic deeds of he who pioneered its construction”.

Certainly Professor Machado-da-Silva’s death, days after his reelection as ANPAD’s President, is replete with symbolism. It leaves a legacy of quality and hard work which will inspire all of the Brazilian Administration Review’s collaborators in their duties, be they authors, referees, staff or editors.

In my particular case, as Chief-Editor and close friend, he leaves behind an indelible presence which will permanently inspire me to strive for better results and qualitative growth.

The second paper in this edition is entitled Empirical Evidence of Trade Credit Uses of Brazilian Publicly-Listed Companies, written by Richard Saito and Márcia Lima Bandeira, who present empirical evidence that listed firms do indeed use bank debt and trade credit as two complementary sources of financing in line with most recent theoretical papers on the subject. By using a sample of 263 publicly-listed companies for 2006, their findings present empirical support that trade credit may be used as a signal for the firm’s quality and also facilitates access to bank debt, as trade credit seems to be a substitute for bank debt.

To follow, Chan Yie Leng and Delane Botelho present How Does National Culture Impact on Consumers’ Decision-making Styles? A Cross Cultural Study in Brazil, the United States and Japan. “This empirical article investigates the relationship between national culture and consumer decision-making styles in the purchase of cell phones, a product category that appears to be required by consumers independent of their nationalities”. To make the research measurable Delane and Chan Yie used Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions - power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity - and Sproles and Kendall’s Consumer Style Inventory framework - quality conscious, brand conscious, innovative, recreation, price conscious, impulsive, confused, and brand loyal – to test nine hypotheses through MANOVA in a sample of 108 buyers of the product in Brazil, 104 in the USA, and 107 in Japan.

Consumers are also the object of the fourth article in this issue. Diogo Fajardo Nunes Hildebrand, Daniel Von Der Heyde Fernandes, Andres Rodriguez Veloso and Luiz Antônio Slongo are the authors of Consumer-company Identification: Development and Validation of a Scale, a paper discussing Consumer-Company Identification. In their present research a new instrument was constructed and validated that enables the empirical verification of the phenomenon described by Bhattacharya and Sen (2003).

Next comes the paper entitled Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility Management for Competitive Advantage, written by José Milton de Sousa Filho, Lilian Soares Outtes Wanderley, Carla Pasa Gómez and Francisca Farache. Their paper presents a theoretical review that demonstrates the association between social strategy and competitive advantage through the formulation of social strategies that influence and are influenced by opportunities, resources, skills, corporation merits, industry structure and stakeholders. “This article seeks to enrich the discussion on the strategic management of social responsibility and contribute to the literature on Corporate Social Responsibility as well as Strategy and Competitive Advantage”.

Finally, in the last paper, The Influence of Transverse CSR Structure on Headquarters/Subsidiary Integration, Luciano Barin Cruz, Eugenio Avila Pedrozo, Vania de Fátima Barros Estivalete and Debora Nayar Hoff try to answer what the influence of the introduction of centralized/decentralized structure is on conducting a corporate social strategy in a multi-national corporation. Their main objective is to identify conditions through which the structure of the CSR department influences the CSR strategy of MNCs.

I hope you all enjoy this edition.

Rogério H. Quintella

Chief - Editor

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  19 Aug 2010
• Date of issue
  Sept 2010