Educational Choices, Family Background, and Social Mobility

Education is generally considered a valuable tool to improve individual socio-economic status. In European peripheral countries, up to the late 1970s, only a small elite had access to higher education and such privilege guaranteed a comfortable socio-economic position, not only via the job market, but also by allowing the sustainability of pre-existing social links. From then on, democratization of access to higher education should have prompted a decrease in social and economic inequalities within and across countries. However, current data still reflects that, despite gained access to social uplifting tools, individuals from less favored backgrounds appear to not have been able to close the various gaps separating them from the more privileged ones. In this chapter, the authors analyze recent data to characterize higher education attendance in Portugal, highlighting some factors that may still block the socio-economic improvement of the less favored students and suggesting policy measures to overcome them.

The Policy of Technological the Policy of Technological Innovation and Economic Trajectory of Portugal

This chapter is the result of an interuniversity exchange doctoral research project carried out in the Algarve region, Portugal, in 2017. Its objective was to discuss the economic trajectory of Portugal and its implications for those political strategies encouraging technological innovation. The empirical research used interviews and the analytical results were based on the path dependence theory. The outcomes of this study point to the dependence of the Algarve region from external investments.

Roles of Market Orientation and Social Orientation on Sustainability

The empirical literature relates increasingly competitive environments to innovative business activities. The chapter aims at analyzing proactivity as a condition of the dynamics to which organizations are obliged to search for, devise, and generate an adequate response, accompanied by the capacity for innovation and sustainability in the nature of the response to achieve a competitive advantage. This chapter contributes to the understanding of small business innovation capacity. It proposes a model that starts from the market orientation and the social orientation, as variables that enhance the innovation capacity of the companies, impelling in this way, their response to the needs of the customers. A multi-case study is used to validate the said model in the SMEs rural in Cáceres. The results show a reactive market orientation and a high awareness of generating sustainability conditions. This means that environmental and social orientation should be maintained or adapted to so innovation can be sustainable in the long run.

Recommendations to Enhance Communication With Users Through Prototypes and to Assist Open Innovation

Innovation has been increasingly becoming a major competitive differential for companies. However, innovation alone is not enough. Innovations encompass new products to new business models, but they need well-defined strategies to deliver value according to the market needs and to be well accepted. Innovations looking at differentials for the users should consider their problems, including products and services, so that they can promote solutions to meet the users' expectations. Therefore, the involvement of stakeholders in the innovation process who are beyond the organisation's frontiers, such as users, is important as it allows the inclusion of new abilities, resources, and knowledge in the process of development.

Management Innovation and Business Performance in Services

The concept of management innovation, the characteristics of the services, as well as the multiple ways in which innovation can occur in services make it difficult to measure the result of the influence of management innovation on performance. Based on the rational and institutional perspectives relevant in the study of the effects of management innovation, the objective of this chapter is to analyze how the introduction of this type of innovation determines the performance of service firms. Thorough analysis of the literature suggests that the innovative challenge of service firms focuses not only on technological innovation but also on management innovation focused on economic and/or social potential. The characteristics of management innovation as well as the ability of service firms to integrate different types of innovation enable them to achieve distinct competencies and high sustainable performance in the form of economic and social gains.

Fashion Design Entrepreneurs

The fashion industry is experiencing a new dynamic as many professionals have decided to take the risk to create fashion-related businesses. As universities and private schools provide fashion courses, many paths can be taken by graduates in this vast and challenging industry, including careers as fashion design entrepreneurs. However, the lack of information regarding networking and business-creation can be a hard wall to come across, as fashion designers are not prepared in that sense by higher-education courses. Fashion education is still very focused on hard skills, forgetting to teach students to be pro-active and forward-thinkers; yet a new generation of fashion designers has transformed past experiences and professional vision to become entrepreneurs. This chapter provides results obtained through interviews of these fashion entrepreneurs in Portugal, as well as other countries around the globe. This work observes this ever-changing industry and suggests the rise of a new entrepreneurial reality in fashion design, as well as the multi-disciplinary people who are changing it.

Profile of Top Companies Compared to the Most Valued Companies for Professional Performance in Spain

The objective of this chapter is to analyze the profile of the hundred most valued companies in terms of job performance in Spain in the 2013-2016 period, comparing it with those who have been in the ranking every year, which are called “top.” The study compared the 400 most valued companies with the 160 “top” companies and classified them by nationality, location, size, share price, and economic activity through the measurement of seven factors—talent management, retribution, work environment, RSC, education, employee perception, and total value—using unifactorial variance analysis and multiple linear regression techniques. It is concluded that size, nationality, location, and sector have no relevance and only the share price shows the influence. It is an innovative and quantitative work that allows measuring the characteristics of the most attractive companies in terms of professional performance and those companies that always appear in that ranking as the “best.”

The Multiculturalility Issue on Globalization

The globalization of markets emphasize the entrepreneurship phenomenon. Cantillon is identified as one of the pioneers in the subject. In this chapter, the authors work this subject in the field of sociology, focused on agency and structure pleadings, understandable as a human action, which starts from a rational choice and with an action sociology. Based on a doctoral research carried out with the objective of identifying the profile of women entrepreneurs, this chapter seeks to stylize some material that was left open in the empirical elements collected, namely the role of entrepreneurial immigrant communities in the Algarve region and the interculturality present in the behaviors observed.

Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation

This chapter aims to identify and analyze the main strategies for the qualification of inbound tourism and hospitality. This study is supported by the theory of planned behavior and concepts of inbound tourism, hospitality, creativity, and innovation. The study uses method of case study, as methodological procedures workshops were held with stakeholders of Rondônia tourism trading; there were collection of data, participant observation, and an analysis of documents, allowing critique about the causal relationship. The SWOT matrix was applied in the production of the survey report. As a result, there has been a recognition of the tourism potential in the scenario and the necessity for strategic planning of the attributes; valid elements for social innovation by qualifying strategies for inbound tourism and hospitality are indicated. The originality is on proposing strategies that empower the marginalized and socially excluded population, promoted the touristic resources, indicate management alternatives to qualify the inbound and hospitality, and contribute to the regional development.

Digital Marketing and Grocery Retailing Evidence From a Large Retailer in Italy and Belarus

Today the competition in the distribution sector is becoming increasingly more cut-throat and consumers have multiple channels to choose from for making their purchases, each with different characteristics and use methods. The objective of this chapter is to obtain information and identify the elements that allow for highlighting the ability of the grocery retailers who use the web and the social media to expand their own reference markets and establish lasting relationships with the consumers, establishing high loyalty rates of the same. The basic idea is that of verifying the importance for the enterprises operating in the grocery sector both in Italy and Belarus of setting up an e-commerce website, and of making the means and instruments available to the clientele to allow them to shop in different ways to the traditional one. The information will be acquired by means of interviews with customers of a retailer in Italy and a retailer in Belarus. The analyses of the results will provide useful indications concerning the marketing activities of the retailers in both countries.