Articles publicats (Economia i Empresa)
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- ItemOpen AccessStudy of the corporate social responsibility in the leather tanning sector(Sage, 2023-05-06) Pons, Adrià; Rius Torrentó, Josep Maria; Vintró Sánchez, Carla; López Sorribes, SergiReasons to adopt Corporate Social Responsibility reporting by leather tanning companies must primarily be sought in the specific nature of the industry, where leather is a material from renewable sources, however part of its manufacture process might pose one of the gravest environmental hazards in the world. The tanning industry appears, therefore, as a sector compiling CSR reports expected to confirm its environment-friendly actions. The purpose of this research is to examine and understand CSR roles and diffusion in the small and medium enterprises of the leather tanning industry in Catalonia (Spain), especially in relation with the adoption of other management systems. It identifies the most distinguished CSR practices, procedures and metrics and the profiles of companies more prone to adopt them. We used a qualitative approach to fulfill this aim. Results show that leather companies are familiar with CSR practices, but there is further scope for improvement in terms of formalization of CSR procedures and measurement systems. Results show that the majority of socially responsible practices are related to environmental issues and consequently there is a relation between CSR and the application of environmental management systems. The analysis reveals that the management of CSR activities improves with the diffusion of knowledge on CSR practices.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Influence of Intellectual Capital on the Financial Performance of Spanish New Firms(Economic Laboratory Transition Research Podgorica, 2023) Tong, Yehui; Saladrigues Solé, RamonUsing the ordinary least squares regression, this paper explores the influence of intellectual capital on the financial performance of manufacturing new firms in Spain. The research is designed into three tiers for finding the differences: comparing the economic downturn period with the upturn period; comparing the high-tech new firms with the low-tech new firms; comparing the impacts in the current period with in the future period. The results show that: first, intellectual capital influences firms’ financial performance in both the short-term period and long-term period; second, human capital works as the most influential component of intellectual capital with a positive effect in the models for current return and for future return; third, compared to the model for current return, in the model for future return there are more variables showing changes of their impacts between the downturn and upturn periods; fourth, macro-economic situations tend to affect more on the factors for high-tech new firms than low-tech ones. Therefore, the findings can help the managers of new firms better utilize their intellectual capital elements to drive financial performance.
- ItemOpen AccessSolving the stochastic team orienteering problem: comparing simheuristics with the sample average approximation method(Wiley, 2023) Panadero, Javier; Juan , Ángel A.; Ghorbani, Elnaz; Faulin, Javier; Pagès Bernaus, AdelaThe team orienteering problem (TOP) is an NP-hard optimization problem with an increasing number of potential applications in smart cities, humanitarian logistics, wildfire surveillance, etc. In the TOP, a fixed fleet of vehicles is employed to obtain rewards by visiting nodes in a network. All vehicles share common origin and destination locations. Since each vehicle has a limitation in time or traveling distance, not all nodes in the network can be visited. Hence, the goal is focused on the maximization of the collected reward, taking into account the aforementioned constraints. Most of the existing literature on the TOP focuses on its deterministic version, where rewards and travel times are assumed to be predefined values. This paper focuses on a more realistic TOP version, where travel times are modeled as random variables, which introduces reliability issues in the solutions due to the route-length constraint. In order to deal with these complexities, we propose a simheuristic algorithm that hybridizes biased-randomized heuristics with a variable neighborhood search and MCS. To test the quality of the solutions generated by the proposed simheuristic approach, we employ the well-known sample average approximation (SAA) method, as well as a combination model that hybridizes the metaheuristic used in the simheuristic approach with the SAA algorithm. The results show that our proposed simheuristic outperforms the SAA and the hybrid model both on the objective function values and computational time.
- ItemOpen AccessWhat are the determinants affecting cooperatives’ profitability? Evidence from Spain(John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2023) Sala Rios, MercèThis study focuses on the analysis of the determinantsof Spanish cooperatives’ profitability. We inspect sev-eral variables, whose influence on firms’ profitabilityhas been verified by prior literature, and we assesswhether these results are confirmed in cooperatives.The data span 13 years (2008–20). We approach theanalysis including: (i) firm-specific factors, (ii) industry-specific factors, and (iii) location factors. There is a mainresearch question: Are there significant differences incooperatives’ profitability depending on firm-specific,industry-specific and/or location factors? The resultsemphasize that firm-specific effects are the most impor-tant for cooperatives’ profitability. Summarizing ourfindings, cooperatives’ profitability is positively affectedby size, liquidity, indebtedness, regional specializationin cooperatives, location economies, and lagging prof-itability, and negatively affected by age and presence ininternational markets.
- ItemOpen AccessA Dynamic Programming approach for batch cycle time optimization in hot metal forming(Elsevier, 2022-01-01) Nievas Viñals, Nuria; Pagès Bernaus, Adela; Bonada, Francesc; Echeverria Rovira, Lluís; Abio, AlbertIn the framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the manufacturing industry has been immersed in a digitalization process leading to constantly increasing available data at the production line thanks to novel sensors, Cyber-Physical Systems, and the Industrial Internet of Things. These newly available process data streams can be leveraged for real-time planning, control, and process optimization towards a more efficient and competitive manufacturing paradigm. The metal forming process is a manufacturing process used in a wide variety of complex industrial pieces and products: from automotive parts such as car body panels to furniture, electronics, etc. Ensuring high quality and robust materials while optimizing production of parts is an important industrial challenge. Nowadays, batch and cycle time optimization rely on experience and expert knowledge. In this work, we propose a dynamic programming approach for real-time decision-making in hot metal forming production to minimize batch and cycle time. This paper introduces a successful proof of concept, and the first step for an autonomous self-learning control system in stamping processes, demonstrating its capabilities for overall batch and cycle time process optimization while maximizing product quality.