Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Management Research: The Journal of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, Volume 13, Issue 2
Dear colleagues,
You have in your hands the second issue of volume 13 of Management Research. In line with previous issues, this one contains four interesting research articles, plus a new interview of our “A life in research” section. The research articles deal with different but complementary topics. The paper by Sacramento and Pinho uses a qualitative approach to help us better understand existing institutions. Specifically, they seek to identify the factors that approach and that separate the Brazilian bureaucracy from the model advocated by Max Weber. Their results reveal that the patrimonialism bases, in which society and the Brazilian State still rely, seem to prevent the full implementation of the bureaucracy proposed by Max Weber. The study conclusions contribute to our understanding of the specific characteristics of the institutions in Iberoamerican countries, and may provide some ideas about the implementation and effectiveness of certain management practices in these countries.
The article by Costa, De Freitas, Pereira and Shimoda aims at identifying the criteria that can be used in assessing the successful implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Based on a systematic study of answers provided by ERP experts in Brazil, the authors are able to identify 25 key criteria to evaluate the implementation of ERP systems. These results may be of great guidance to managers who seek to successfully implement ERPs in their firms. Bello Pintado, Kaufmann and Merino Diaz-de-Cerio’s article provides interesting evidence about the relationship between advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) and quality management (QM) practices on manufacturing performance. Their analyses on a unique sample of 301 manufacturing companies from Argentina (151) and Uruguay (150), employing at least 20 workers, indicate that QM practices and AMTs complement each other to improve manufacturing performance. One interesting feature of their research is that information was collected in two countries (Argentina and Uruguay) whose firms have been rarely studied in relation to these issues. Their findings provide interesting insights for industry managers seeking to improve their manufacturing performance.
Finally, Vasconcelos provides a framework to better understand an issue that may bring important consequences for organizations: discrimination in the workplace. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the paper examines five aspects that may lead to discrimination if not properly approached: moral imperative, organizational injustice, corporate social responsibility, non-spiritual business orientation and unethical leadership. The article undertakes a thorough analysis of the factor and conditions that may lead to discrimination, and, therefore, may provide relevant intuitions to managers.
The issue is completed by an interview to Africa Ariño, conducted by Santiago Ibarreche, in our section “A life in research”.
I would also call your attention to the call for papers on “Case Study Research in Mergers and Acquisitions”, Guest edited by Dr En Xie, Associate Professor in Strategy and International Business, Xi’an Jiaotong University, School of Management, Xi’an, China; Dr Narendar V. Rao, Professor in Finance and Management, Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), Chicago, Illinois, USA; and Dr K. Srinivasa Reddy, Postdoc in International Management (PhD from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India).
We continue working to offer to our community a selection of high quality research help to enlighten our understanding of central issue in management. If you want to contribute to this endeavor, please send your research to Management Research. We will be glad to review and consider it for publication in our journal.
Martin Larraza
Editor in Chief, Department of Business Management, Public University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
