BAR - Brazilian Administration Review

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Authors: Ivan Lapuente Garrido

This editorial summarizes a talk presented during the 47th EnANPAD Annual Meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, exploring the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic journals. It highlights the impact perspectives of AI, recognizing its effects in various social and academic areas. Although the effects are extensive and their full ramifications are unknown and uncertain, the editorial highlights elements of opportunities and threats of this impact, as well as some ways to mitigate the impact. Journals could become smarter and more accessible with AI, providing a personalized experience for researchers and readers. However, significant challenges, such as the risk of inequality between journals with and without AI capabilities, are also highlighted. To seize opportunities and mitigate challenges, the author advocates for investment in AI, the creation of clear editorial guidelines, and an institutional commitment to responsibility and ethics.

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Authors: Guilherme Lecco Tessarolo, Luiza Gagno Azolin, Luiz Cláudio Louzada

This research aims to investigate the effect of generic positioning strategies (cost leadership and product differentiation), adopted in pure or hybrid form, on firms’ performance and to verify the moderating effect of product market competition in this relationship. A sample with 11,322 firm-year (2008-2019) observations, including data from firms in the G20 countries, was analyzed through logistic regression models. The competition level in the product market is measured using the Herfindahl-Hirshman index. The results indicate that firms adopting a hybrid strategy are more likely to achieve good performances than the others. The relationship between strategic positioning and operational performance is moderated by product market competitiveness level. In a low competition market, the adoption of a strategy is unnecessary. For low to medium levels of competition, pure strategy appears superior. In highly competitive environments, the hybrid strategy is more advantageous. This study brings a new discussion about choosing a more advantageous positioning strategy, in which the main issue is not which positioning strategy is superior, but under what conditions of the market environment the adoption of the hybrid strategy is related to superior performance. Contributing to advance in this research field, our outputs suggest that the effect of the positioning strategy on performance is moderated by the product market competition. The effort to establish a hybrid strategy is advantageous in highly competitive environments.

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Authors: Nathália Rigui Trindade, Flavia Luciane Scherer, Maíra Nunes Piveta, Luis Felipe Dias Lopes, Soraya de Souza Soares

Objective: This study aims to analyze the mediation of institutional factors in the relationship between strategic orientations and the propensity of companies, particularly technology-based companies (TBCs), to internationalize in emerging economies. Method: This quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional survey was conducted with a population and sample of 137 Brazilian TBCs. The data were analyzed through correlational and multivariate analysis using the structural equation modeling technique. Results: The findings indicate that institutional factors positively influence the propensity for internationalization of the investigated TBCs. Additionally, these institutional factors mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial strategic orientations and international growth orientation. In other words, entrepreneurship can enhance the international expansion capacity of TBCs, and the institutional environment of the target market often influences the success of this expansion. Conclusion: The presence of mediation, even when there is a strong entrepreneurial orientation, suggests that TBCs do not operate in isolation. Rather, their success is deeply connected to the institutional contexts in which they operate. For an effective international growth strategy, TBCs must focus on their internal capacities and orientations and remain attentive and adaptable to the nuances and demands of the institutional environment.

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Authors: Filipe Augusto Silveira de Souza, Ana Heloisa da Costa Lemos

In this paper, we employ the life story method to investigate the multiple boundaries that, visible or invisibly, have influenced the trajectories of outsourced cleaners working in organizations, delimiting their career opportunities. Based on the Bourdieusian framework, we aim to contribute to the expansion of the debate in the field of career studies by emphasizing the influence of the contextual dimension of analysis in the career construction process. Above all, we privilege a social class perspective, scarcely present in career studies, in which the dominance of constructs such as boundaryless and protean careers reflects the typical emphasis attributed to individual agency. Access to the life stories of the respondents enabled us to unveil multiple boundaries interposed throughout their trajectories, associated with family (family disorganization and early transitions: maternity, conjugality, and insertion into domestic work), educational (early school dropout), neighborhood (local ties associated with low career returns), and professional (intersubjective relationships associated with experiences of pleasure and social humiliation) contexts. Taken together, these boundaries ended up circumscribing the topography of their careers by largely limiting them to providing care and cleaning services.