The most recent general issue of Tékhne – Review of Applied Management Studies presents seven original research articles, authored by national and international academics and professionals. These articles cover a range of themes of the scientific field of management that include strategic management; accounting; auditing; social entrepreneurship; production management; finance; and organizational culture.
In the first article, Helena Saraiva and Maria Alves present a historical review on the evolution of the use of the balanced scorecard in large Portuguese companies, and perform an analysis of the current situation regarding the use of this strategic management tool in Portugal. Basically, the study explores how the use of the balanced scorecard has evolved in Portugal over the last twenty years and how the application of the tool contributes to changes in management.
The second article is by Ruzita Jusoh and Seyed Mahmoud Miryazdi. Based on binary logistic regression models, this study provides empirical evidence on the different relationships between several technological and environmental factors and activity-based costing (ABC) diffusion stages in Iran. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire sent to public listed Iranian manufacturing companies.
The third article focuses on the theme of audit market concentration. Bruno José Machado de Almeida and Alexandre Silva study the concentration in the Portuguese legal audit market both in terms of revenues and in terms of clients. An empirical analysis is undertaken from 2010 to 2014 based on information disclosed in annual transparency reports published by auditors of public interest entities.
The following article contemplates the theme of social entrepreneurship. Based on the Portuguese context, Susana Bernardino and José Freitas Santos analyze the extent to which two social attributes, education and professional background, influence the creation of social entrepreneurial initiatives. This issue is approached using empirical data collected through an online survey aimed at social entrepreneurs who have already launched a social venture.
The fifth article, authored by Shib Sana, Shibaji Panda, and Nikunja Modak, deals with a just-in-time manufacturing environment which produces perfect quality items with defective items irrespective of the nature of the preventive maintenance. An optimal just-in-time buffer is determined to minimize the system running cost by considering the holding cost of perfect and imperfect quality items and shortage cost of perfect and imperfect quality items.
The sixth article, by Luís Pacheco and Fernando Tavares, addresses capital structure, one of the most frequent topics in the finance literature. More specifically, the authors study the determinant factors of the capital structure of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Portuguese footwear industry and how these factors may influence their indebtedness levels. A panel data analysis was conducted based on a selected sample of footwear firms, obtained form the SABI database and covering the period from 2010 to 2013.
In the final article, Konstantinos Malagas, Stefanos Gritzalis, and Nikitas Nikitakos, based on institutional theory, examine how specific institutional factors contribute to the success of the public procurement of innovation and, specifically, to the use of innovation by the employees of a public organization. A single case study is used to achieve a comprehensible understanding of employee behaviour regarding innovation. The study focuses on Olympic, a former Greek national airline, during the period in which it was a public organization. Data were collected using a questionnaire distributed to the organization's employees.
