Maria do Rosário Alves Moreira

Factors Influencing the Internationalization of Services Firms: The Case of Design, Engineering and Architecture Consulting Firms

Globalization has created countless opportunities for the internationalization of a wide range of services. Recent technological innovations associated with the reduction or elimination of trade barriers, resulted in an exponential expansion of service firms. This paper analyzes the internal and external factors that influence the decision to operate internationally. The hypotheses are empirically examined through a survey sent to 322 firms from the design, architecture and engineering sector. Multivariate analysis is used to ascertain the main determinants of internationalization in these firms.

Factors Influencing Purchase Intention of Private Label Products: The Case of Smartphones

A growth of the market share of private label brands has been observed in developed countries. This growth was initially confirmed for food and drugstore categories, but it quickly expanded to new product categories, particularly technology products.

Hybrid heuristics for the single machine scheduling problem with quadratic earliness and tardiness costs

In this paper we present three hybrid heuristics for the single machine scheduling problem with quadratic earliness and tardiness costs, and no machine idle time. Our heuristic is a combination of a steady-state genetic algorithm and three improvement procedures. The two computationally less expensive of these three improvement procedures are used inside the genetic algorithm to improve the schedule obtained after the application of genetic operators, whereas the more expensive one is used to improve the best solution returned by the genetic algorithm. We have compared our hybrid approaches against existing recovering beam search and genetic algorithms. The computational results show the effectiveness of our hybrid approaches. Indeed, our hybrid approaches outperformed the existing heuristics in terms of solution quality as well as running time.

Theory of Constraints in the Service Sector: Characterization for Banking and Analysis of the Factors Involved in Its Adoption

In this research we represent the major elements of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) in a services environment, specifically for the banking sector, and we analyze the factors involved in the decision to adopt the TOC by companies in this sector.

Input-output control order release mechanism in a job-shop: how workload control improves manufacturing operations

This paper presents and evaluates an order release decision rule in a job-shop, based on the input-output control concept. The order release mechanism is part of a global decision-making scheme that includes four main decisions: accept/reject orders, define the orders due date, release the accepted jobs and dispatch it on the shop floor. This paper also presents an evaluation of two acceptance rules, four release mechanisms, and two dispatching rules, using four levels of due date tightness. Extensive simulation experiments were performed to compare the different decision rules, using several criteria: mean tardiness, percent tardy, mean absolute deviation, mean queue time in the shop floor and in the system, and machine usage. We conclude that considering the four decisions simultaneously improve the job-shop performance, and planning both the input and the output when deciding to release a job, leads to an improvement of the operational performance measures.

Exploring the Drivers of E-Commerce through the Application of Structural Equation Modeling

E-commerce is a form of trade that has gained increasing attention from consumers and sellers. However, despite high growth rates, e-commerce still has low levels of consumers. This study aims to determine the factors that influence the purchasing decision in e-commerce, in order to better understand acceptance or rejection of e-commerce among consumers. To this end, a first framework was constructed based on previous research on consumer adoption of e-commerce. Then, three categories (derived from interviews) were added. This more complete model was tested using the structural equation model based on partial least squares. The results obtained allow us to conclude that the perceived relative advantage, the ease of use, the drawbacks associated with a non-European Union country of sale and the perceived risk, directly influence the consumer’s purchase intent in e-commerce. We also found a set of twelve variables that act as indirect influences.