Resumo em Inglês:

This paper presents inductive theoretical work inspired by the empirical study of the high-tech rivals General Electric and Westinghouse. Comparative historical analysis suggests that each firm's responses to five organizational challenges have affected their chances of enjoying long-term success. In addition, the theoretical work advances two polar ideal types of organizational success and failure: the self-perpetuating and the self-destructive archetypes, respectively. These should be seen as extreme states of the existence of firms since, in reality, firms operate in some intermediary state. A process-oriented perspective of theory building advances relations of necessity towards organizational long-term success, and integrates the responses to challenges into a requisites model for the development of a propensity for organizational self-perpetuation

Resumo em Inglês:

One of the greatest challenges in brand management lies in monitoring brand equity over time. This paper aims to present a simulation model able to represent this evolution. The model was drawn on brand equity concepts developed by Aaker and Joachimsthaler (2000), using the system dynamics methodology. The use of computational dynamic models aims to create new sources of information able to sensitize academics and managers alike to the dynamic implications of their brand management. As a result, an easily implementable model was generated, capable of executing continuous scenario simulations by surveying casual relations among the variables that explain brand equity. Moreover, the existence of a number of system modeling tools will allow extensive application of the concepts used in this study in practical situations, both in professional and educational settings.

Resumo em Inglês:

Firms exhibit a wide variability in growth rates. This can be seen as another manifestation of the fact that firms are different from one another in several respects. This study investigated this variability using the variance components technique previously used to decompose the variance of financial performance. The main source of variation in growth rates, responsible for more than 40% of total variance, corresponds to individual, idiosyncratic firm aspects and not to industry, country, or macroeconomic conditions prevailing in specific years. Firm growth, similar to financial performance, is mostly unique to specific firms and not an industry or country related phenomenon. This finding also justifies using growth as an alternative outcome of superior firm resources and as a complementary dimension of competitive advantage. This also links this research with the resource-based view of strategy. Country was the second source of variation with around 10% of total variance. The analysis was done using the Compustat Global database with 80,320 observations, comprising 13,221 companies in 47 countries, covering the years of 1994 to 2002. It also compared the variance structure of growth to the variance structure of financial performance in the same sample

Resumo em Inglês:

This paper is part of a large study that combines several groups of municipalities in São Paulo State that are analyzed through multivariate statistical techniques. This study is intended to indicate whether the variables per capita transfer amounts from the Municipalities Participation Fund [MPF], Product and Service Circulation Tax Quota [ICMS] and collected tributary income have different average values among the municipalities of São Paulo State that present different economic and social situations according to the social responsibility index. The evaluation was carried out by multivariate analysis of variance. The results show that the tributary income has the greater difference of average among the groups. It was also found that MPF distribution criteria are applied differently and contribute to the available income fairness, giving support to local governments in the development of public policy

Resumo em Inglês:

Evaluation is defined as the assessment of the positive and/or negative qualities of an object, which is assumed to be among the most pervasive and dominant human responses. Individuals constantly need to evaluate things, people, products and so forth. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the Need to Evaluate [NES] scale in Brazil. Specifically, the paper assesses its psychometric proprieties. From the evidence reported in the study, the validity of the NES scale is poor and its dimensionality questionable. The alpha value was above .70 in only one of the three dimensions. Furthermore, the outcomes did not suggest that the NES is a unidimensional scale, as originally constructed. Moreover, a formative (vs. reflexive) scale model presented the best adjustments from the concurrent models