In your hands you have the five papers that compose the vol. 12, n° 1–2 of the Tékhne – review of applied management studies. In 2014 we publish this ordinal issue of the Tékhne that covers the periods January–June and July–December, and a special issue that will be published in December. The five papers that compose this edition highlight different themes of the scientific management area, like knowledge management, tourism, marketing and investment analysis.
(FIFTH) The first paper, authored by Rocha, Tereso, Cunha and Ferreira, and entitled “Investments analysis and decision making: Valuing R&D project portfolios using the PROV exponential decision method”, proposes a new multi-criteria procedure to create a predefined model to assess multiple projects considering the decision-maker knowledge, preferences and purposes. The objective of the paper is to develop an R&D projects evaluation matrix and a new procedure based on the PROV Exponential decision method. This method uses multiple utility functions modelled to establish a common framework from which it is possible to perform an effective assessment of numerous projects. The exponential normalization and the processes used to deal with the decision makers knowledge, preferences and purposes provide a useful support system to analyze tangible and intangible assets and intellectual capital.
(THIRD) The second paper is by Governo and Teixeira and is entitled as “Marketing and technology sophistication as key determinants of the demand for ‘art house’, cinema films: a cross country analysis”. From a cross country perspective, this paper examines the determinants of consumer demand for cinema. The study incorporates two types of film: the artistic content (art house films) and the intensity of their special effects (mainstreams’ films) and explores its association with individual, industrial, and cultural/social/structural factors. Logistic regressions results indicate that: (1) cinema tastes diverge into different patterns across countries; (2) larger marketing investments emerge as a strong predictor of the consumption of art house films; and (3) technological level plays a significant role in creating stratified consumption for art house films. Authors obtain support for general principle that cinema tastes can diverge into different patterns across countries. The film patterns can be regarded as carrying certain elements of social reproduction, which means that some countries are more exclusive in their attitude towards mainstream films, while others look at films as art work. Their findings further suggest that structural factors, namely technological levels, play a significant role in creating stratified film consumption. In this line of reasoning, technological sophistication and relative demand for art house films emerge as intimately related. Although some limitations are pointed out in the paper, it contributes to the general literature on cultural consumption. Authors conclude that a more comprehensive research on demand for art house vs mainstream films is needed.
(FIRST) The third paper is by Patil and Kant and is about “Methodological literature review of knowledge management research”. The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of knowledge management research from the standpoint of existing methodologies. The state of knowledge management research is assessed by examining the research design, number of hypothesis tested, the research methods, data analysis techniques and level of analysis. Based on the analysis of 344 published articles that have the expression ‘knowledge management’ in their title, the empirical results show that qualitative research methods (such as a case study, conceptual models, archival studies) are used in a great majority of the papers and hold greater credibility than other kind of research methods. The preference for qualitative research is justified by the fact that knowledge management is a relatively new field and researchers still believe on conceptual models rather than mathematically proving the theories.
The main conclusions of the paper are (a) the research at an inter organizational level is very less, (b) hypothesis testing is being done in very less number of articles and maximum articles have come with only conceptual analysis, and (c) mathematical models are used in very limited articles.
(SECOND) The fourth paper is by Teixeira and Fernandes and is about “Tourism time series forecast with artificial neural networks”. The objective of the paper is to forecast the time series of tourism, namely the Tourism Revenue, Total Overnights, Domestic and Foreign Overnights in establishments registered in the region North of Portugal. Several feed-forward Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) models using different input features and number of hidden nodes were experimented to forecast the Tourism time series. Empirical results indicate that the Dedicated ANN models perform better than models with several outputs. Authors conclude that for the prediction of Tourism Revenue, the Foreign Overnights and GDP of contributing countries are relevant.
(FOURHT) Finally, the fifth paper is by Monteiro and Natário and is entitled as “Safety culture in the surgical services: Case study”. This paper develops an exploratory study in a Local Health Unit with the goal to understand the culture of safety in surgical services. Based on the survey method, the paper examines whether the culture of surgical services is influenced by three dimensions: (1) leadership, (2) teamwork and (3) communication. The methodology used on the paper is based on the application of multivariate statistical inference, through clusters analysis, to see how the health professionals are classified regarding their behaviour in culture of patient safety and in order to group them according to their attitude. Empirical results show that the security culture is influenced by all the three dimensions.
