BAR - Brazilian Administration Review

25

Authors: Elda Barron, Linda Elizabeth Ruiz

Entrepreneurship education is an approach that universities employ to attempt to produce more ventures. Currently, entrepreneurship education programs do not capture the perceived progress of their students because they lack such a method. In this study, we develop an instrument that measures students’ perceptions. We perform exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses based on the responses of 304 college students to identify the main factors that students consider in an entrepreneurship education program. The results show a measurement scale constituted by the following dimensions: learning, resources, instructor role, and a new dimension called the meaning of life. This new construct reflects the importance of factors beyond education or university resources and highlights individual perceptions. This study contributes to our understanding of the value that entrepreneurship education programs offer to their participants and provides insights into future adjustments to these programs.

28

Authors: Leonardo Marques, Alice Erthal, Catia Silva da Costa Moreira Schott, Dafne Morais

Research on supply network transparency is incipient and focused on how focal firms can improve monitoring of supplier misbehavior. This narrow focus has restricted advancements in the topic. Our research, firstly, shifts the focus from supplier to focal firm misbehavior, and secondly, focuses on Brazil as an exemplar of an emerging economy. We explore how institutional voids influence supply network transparency. We focus on how voids in regulation, labor market, and contracting systems provide fruitful land for buyer misconduct and undermine supply network transparency. We review legislation in five developed countries to contrast with legislation in Brazil and we synthesize six years of Brazilian law suits regarding outsourcing issues in the apparel sector. This study exposes that voids can ease pressures allowing firms to navigate ‘below the radar’ and sustain poor working conditions along the supply network. Within this context, society has limited information availability and accessibility — what we label inhospitable accessibility (due to the regulatory void), as well as limited proportionality between real risks in the supply network and traceability of those risks back to the buying firm — what we label blurred liability (due to voids in labor market and contracting systems), thus preventing supply network transparency.

32

Authors: Marco F. Simões-Coelho, Ariane Roder Figueira

This article proposes a framework of corporate motivations for sustainability based on the study of sustainability engagement most prevalent in the different UN-defined macro-regions. Four main motivations were uncovered in the literature: Legitimacy — the perception that the actions are appropriate within a system of norms and beliefs; Market Success — increase in turnover, brand equity, or innovation due to sustainable practices; Process Improvement — sustainability-oriented optimization of processes; and Social Insurance — preemptive insurance against reputation or goodwill losses. Field articles were selected via a bibliometric review to develop the propositions. They indicate which motivations are of more academic concern in general and in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern America, and Oceania. Legitimacy appears as the most prevalent motivation, followed by Market Success. More developed regions tend to have more studies on Market Success, while Social Insurance seems linked to less developed markets, where corporations must provide access to needs beyond their business.