António Abreu | ISEL - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by António Abreu
Collaboration in a Data-Rich World, 2017
Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation
Nowadays, enterprises in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiv... more Nowadays, enterprises in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiveness to stay "alive". In order to be competitive enterprises must develop capabilities that will enable them to respond quickly to market needs. According to several authors and as frequently mentioned by reports from practical case studies, one of the most relevant sources of competitive advantage is the involvement of enterprises in collaborative networks. However, in spite of this assumption, it is also frequently mentioned that the lack of operational tools tailored to collaborative networks is not available yet and might be an obstacle for a wider acceptance of this paradigm. In this context, the collaborative networks need new statistical tools, new approaches and concepts of quality improvement. Starting with a brief discussion about the nature and the role of some tools in order to support the development of robust design, this paper introduces some discussion about the application advantages of product design in a collaborative environment as a contribution to a future identification of methodologies, approaches that are suitable for collaborative contexts.
Nowadays, companies to be competitive must develop capabilities that enable them to respond quick... more Nowadays, companies to be competitive must develop capabilities that enable them to respond quickly to market needs. According to some managers, the strategy is the development of dynamic logistics networks based on a collaborative environment. However, the absence of mechanisms to detect and even anticipate potential opportunistic behaviour is an obstacle to the proliferation of this way of working. The article aims to understand the role of trust to sustainability of collaborative processes. The paper begins by discussing the trust properties. It is then discussed how statistical control charts can be used to support the trust monitoring of each member within a collaborative ecosystem. The control charts’ tools suggested in this paper are the Z control charts for trust level monitoring and the Zi capacity index. Finally, it is discussed how this approach can be applied to dynamic logistics networks within the context of a collaborative ecosystem.
2018 13th APCA International Conference on Control and Soft Computing (CONTROLO), 2018
Nowadays, enterprises in global markets must achieve high levels of performance and competitivene... more Nowadays, enterprises in global markets must achieve high levels of performance and competitiveness to stay "alive". According to several authors and as frequently mentioned by reports of practical case studies, one of the most relevant sources of competitive advantage is the innovation capacity. The identification and quantification of the existing or potential innovation risks in a collaborative environment, is an important element for the wide adoption of the innovation ecosystem paradigm. However, models to understand the innovation risks in a collaborative environment are lacking. To address this issue, this paper introduces an approach based on a qualitative assessment, including a quantitative basis, whose development was supported by fuzzy logic for analyzing the level of risk in co-innovation projects. Finally, based on experimental results from a Portuguese collaborative network, a discussion about the benefits and challenges found are discussed.
Revista Produção e Desenvolvimento, 2018
According to the traditional perspective the maintenance function is counted as a secondary activ... more According to the traditional perspective the maintenance function is counted as a secondary activity consuming human and financial resources, which is why many companies, use as maintenance strategy for several years, the subcontracting of maintenance services to specialized companies. However, the need to perform maintenance operations on increasingly complex systems requires access to several distinct types of skills that small and medium-sized firms specialized in maintenance services generally do not have. This paper aims to illustrate the role of the Six Sigma Scorecard approach as a management tool for improving quality in service provided in a collaborative context. The article begins by discussing the principles of the Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard backgrounds. It is then discussed how the two methodologies can be combined as a management tool of maintenance activities. Finally, it is discussed how this approach can be applied in the assessment of maintenance activiti...
Open Engineering, 2016
Nowadays, companies in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiven... more Nowadays, companies in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiveness to stay “alive”.Within this assumption, the building maintenance cannot be done in a casual and improvised way due to the costs related. Starting with some discussion about lean management and building maintenance, this paper introduces a model to support the Lean Building Maintenance (LBM) approach. Finally based on a real case study from a Portuguese company, the benefits, challenges and difficulties are presented and discussed.
Administrative Sciences
Due to constant change in the marketplace, it can be difficult for companies to secure the materi... more Due to constant change in the marketplace, it can be difficult for companies to secure the material, human, and technological resources necessary for competitive innovation activities. In this sense, and to overcome these constraints, the open innovation model is a quite successful approach, where the sharing of resources among companies allows the formation of an innovation ecosystem. However, the execution time of these projects can be negatively affected if the performance of each work team is not taken into account. In this work, the application of the agile approach in open innovation projects is proposed as a way to reduce the uncertainty both in the execution time of the projects and in the respective implementation costs. In this sense, a methodology for optimal team assignment for agile teams in open innovation projects according to their performance on each project task is developed to determine the optimal team assignment that leads to the shortest project execution time....
Sustainability
Collaborative networks in the logistics sector have proven to be a solution that both meets envir... more Collaborative networks in the logistics sector have proven to be a solution that both meets environmental footprint reduction goals and addresses the impact of rising fuel prices on logistics companies, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Despite these benefits, these collaborative networks have not received the desired amount of participation due to reputational risk. This paper develops a framework for assessing and managing reputational risk to encourage logistics companies’ participation in collaborative networks. To this end, customer satisfaction factors were correlated with logistics operations, and this correlation was then modeled using the Bowtie method, fault trees, event trees, reliability theory, and the Monte Carlo model. The results show that it is possible to implement a structured model that can be easily put into practice. Using an illustrative case study, it is also possible to prioritize three companies according to their reputational risk as asse...
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Vision, Image and Signal Processing, 2019
Nowadays, with globalization and with the development of emergent economies the Research and Deve... more Nowadays, with globalization and with the development of emergent economies the Research and Development (R&D) Centres in Europe to survive need to achieve high levels of excellence. In this way, the use of a quality management tools, such as European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), can help the managers of such organizations to identify de best practices to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness. Hence, this paper presents a new approach to support managers of R&D centres in the decision-making process in achieving the aims mentioned above, which is based on the EFQM model integrated with Fuzzy Logic. The proposed approach was applied to a Portuguese R&D Centre to assess its overall performance. In order to evaluate the robustness of the proposed approach, the results achieved were compared with the results obtained through a traditional methodology based on RADAR's Logic.
Sustainability, 2021
The success of a construction project is a widely discussed topic, even today, and there exists a... more The success of a construction project is a widely discussed topic, even today, and there exists a difference of opinion. The impact of communication and conflict on project success is an important, but least addressed, issue in literature, especially in the case of underdeveloped countries. Miscommunication and conflict not only hinder the success of a project but also may lead to conflicts. The focus of this paper was to examine the impact of communication on project success with the mediating role of conflict. By using SPSS, demographics, descriptive statistics and correlation were determined. Smart PLS version 3.0 was used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), internal accuracy and validity estimates, hypothesis checking and mediation testing. The results showed that formal communication has a negative impact on the success of a construction project, resulting in conflicts among project team members, whereas informal communication and communication willingness have a positive i...
Sustainability, 2021
Entrepreneurial orientation has become an enormously significant construct in the innovation stud... more Entrepreneurial orientation has become an enormously significant construct in the innovation studies literature. Predominantly for SMEs, its role has been widely recognized in almost all regional contexts across the globe. The present study is aimed at investigating the effects of entrepreneurial orientation, transformational leadership and organizational commitment on innovation performance. The data for the present study were collected from 1095 employees working at various levels in SMEs. The present study used partial least square structural equation modeling to examine the constructed hypotheses. The findings suggested the significantly positive direct relationships among entrepreneurial orientations, organizational commitment and innovation performance. Besides, organizational commitment positively mediated the relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance. Additionally, this study also found the significant moderation of transformational leaders...
PLOS ONE, 2021
The sustainable financial behavior and financial well-being have been a key concern among the dev... more The sustainable financial behavior and financial well-being have been a key concern among the developing societies; thereby encompassing the various psychological factors which play a role in influencing individual’s positive financial behavior and financial well-being, this study is conducted. Research focusing on the psychological aspect of human financial behavior and well-being is scarce, focusing more on the cognitive side such as financial literacy and numeracy. The aim of this research study is to find the role played by the non-cognitive factors such as self-esteem, self-control, optimism and deliberative thinking, in forming the financial behavior and financial well-being of the young adults. A sample of 429 university students from public and private sector was collected via an online and field survey using purposive sampling technique. The survey contained measures for demographics, self-esteem, optimism, deliberative thinking, self-control, general financial behavior and...
Sustainability, 2020
The survival of companies in globalized and highly competitive markets, heavily depends on their ... more The survival of companies in globalized and highly competitive markets, heavily depends on their ability to innovate through the creation of new products and/or services, supported by sustainable processes to prevent business failure. There are many factors regarding the interface company/stakeholders/market at all hierarchical levels, which have a major contribution to sustain innovation in processes regarding the creation of new products and services. A holistic approach of all these factors, as a whole, has not been a subject of scientific research conducting to the necessity of creating a proposal of a framework that can be integrated and systemic. Thus, this paper aims to propose a functional holistic model, which integrates the strategic, organizational and operational levels regarding market business and company interaction, as well as the set of factors to take into account to guarantee assurance that innovative processes are sustained, when new products and/or services are ...
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2010
The characterization and assessment of the social capital of a member in collaborative networks i... more The characterization and assessment of the social capital of a member in collaborative networks is an important element to help promoting the success of collaborative networks. However, models to measure the social capital are lacking. Applying some concepts from social networks theory, this paper discusses some perspectives and criteria to identify and measure the value of social capital of a member in the context of a Virtual organization Breeding Environment (VBE).
Innovation and creativity are fundamental for new product development (NPD). NPD processes are a ... more Innovation and creativity are fundamental for new product development (NPD). NPD processes are a key factor for the survival of firms, in a market that nowadays is very competitive, instable and aggressive. Thus, life cycle of products it is becoming shorter, and that also due to the markets globalization. So, the development of models that can support NPD processes became a real and needed challenge. This paper aims to propose a comprehensive model of functional nature, which integrates the strategic, organizational and procedural levels, as well as the set of factors to take into account in NPD projects. Based on literature review, a comprehensive and integrated conceptual model is obtained through a deductiveinductive pathway. The conceptual model is validated in the industrial environment through four explanatory case studies, regarding the implementation of new products and services, both incremental and disruptive. After validation the conceptual framework becomes functional. ...
Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering
Collaboration in a Data-Rich World, 2017
Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation
Nowadays, enterprises in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiv... more Nowadays, enterprises in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiveness to stay "alive". In order to be competitive enterprises must develop capabilities that will enable them to respond quickly to market needs. According to several authors and as frequently mentioned by reports from practical case studies, one of the most relevant sources of competitive advantage is the involvement of enterprises in collaborative networks. However, in spite of this assumption, it is also frequently mentioned that the lack of operational tools tailored to collaborative networks is not available yet and might be an obstacle for a wider acceptance of this paradigm. In this context, the collaborative networks need new statistical tools, new approaches and concepts of quality improvement. Starting with a brief discussion about the nature and the role of some tools in order to support the development of robust design, this paper introduces some discussion about the application advantages of product design in a collaborative environment as a contribution to a future identification of methodologies, approaches that are suitable for collaborative contexts.
Nowadays, companies to be competitive must develop capabilities that enable them to respond quick... more Nowadays, companies to be competitive must develop capabilities that enable them to respond quickly to market needs. According to some managers, the strategy is the development of dynamic logistics networks based on a collaborative environment. However, the absence of mechanisms to detect and even anticipate potential opportunistic behaviour is an obstacle to the proliferation of this way of working. The article aims to understand the role of trust to sustainability of collaborative processes. The paper begins by discussing the trust properties. It is then discussed how statistical control charts can be used to support the trust monitoring of each member within a collaborative ecosystem. The control charts’ tools suggested in this paper are the Z control charts for trust level monitoring and the Zi capacity index. Finally, it is discussed how this approach can be applied to dynamic logistics networks within the context of a collaborative ecosystem.
2018 13th APCA International Conference on Control and Soft Computing (CONTROLO), 2018
Nowadays, enterprises in global markets must achieve high levels of performance and competitivene... more Nowadays, enterprises in global markets must achieve high levels of performance and competitiveness to stay "alive". According to several authors and as frequently mentioned by reports of practical case studies, one of the most relevant sources of competitive advantage is the innovation capacity. The identification and quantification of the existing or potential innovation risks in a collaborative environment, is an important element for the wide adoption of the innovation ecosystem paradigm. However, models to understand the innovation risks in a collaborative environment are lacking. To address this issue, this paper introduces an approach based on a qualitative assessment, including a quantitative basis, whose development was supported by fuzzy logic for analyzing the level of risk in co-innovation projects. Finally, based on experimental results from a Portuguese collaborative network, a discussion about the benefits and challenges found are discussed.
Revista Produção e Desenvolvimento, 2018
According to the traditional perspective the maintenance function is counted as a secondary activ... more According to the traditional perspective the maintenance function is counted as a secondary activity consuming human and financial resources, which is why many companies, use as maintenance strategy for several years, the subcontracting of maintenance services to specialized companies. However, the need to perform maintenance operations on increasingly complex systems requires access to several distinct types of skills that small and medium-sized firms specialized in maintenance services generally do not have. This paper aims to illustrate the role of the Six Sigma Scorecard approach as a management tool for improving quality in service provided in a collaborative context. The article begins by discussing the principles of the Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard backgrounds. It is then discussed how the two methodologies can be combined as a management tool of maintenance activities. Finally, it is discussed how this approach can be applied in the assessment of maintenance activiti...
Open Engineering, 2016
Nowadays, companies in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiven... more Nowadays, companies in global markets have to achieve high levels of performance and competitiveness to stay “alive”.Within this assumption, the building maintenance cannot be done in a casual and improvised way due to the costs related. Starting with some discussion about lean management and building maintenance, this paper introduces a model to support the Lean Building Maintenance (LBM) approach. Finally based on a real case study from a Portuguese company, the benefits, challenges and difficulties are presented and discussed.
Administrative Sciences
Due to constant change in the marketplace, it can be difficult for companies to secure the materi... more Due to constant change in the marketplace, it can be difficult for companies to secure the material, human, and technological resources necessary for competitive innovation activities. In this sense, and to overcome these constraints, the open innovation model is a quite successful approach, where the sharing of resources among companies allows the formation of an innovation ecosystem. However, the execution time of these projects can be negatively affected if the performance of each work team is not taken into account. In this work, the application of the agile approach in open innovation projects is proposed as a way to reduce the uncertainty both in the execution time of the projects and in the respective implementation costs. In this sense, a methodology for optimal team assignment for agile teams in open innovation projects according to their performance on each project task is developed to determine the optimal team assignment that leads to the shortest project execution time....
Sustainability
Collaborative networks in the logistics sector have proven to be a solution that both meets envir... more Collaborative networks in the logistics sector have proven to be a solution that both meets environmental footprint reduction goals and addresses the impact of rising fuel prices on logistics companies, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Despite these benefits, these collaborative networks have not received the desired amount of participation due to reputational risk. This paper develops a framework for assessing and managing reputational risk to encourage logistics companies’ participation in collaborative networks. To this end, customer satisfaction factors were correlated with logistics operations, and this correlation was then modeled using the Bowtie method, fault trees, event trees, reliability theory, and the Monte Carlo model. The results show that it is possible to implement a structured model that can be easily put into practice. Using an illustrative case study, it is also possible to prioritize three companies according to their reputational risk as asse...
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Vision, Image and Signal Processing, 2019
Nowadays, with globalization and with the development of emergent economies the Research and Deve... more Nowadays, with globalization and with the development of emergent economies the Research and Development (R&D) Centres in Europe to survive need to achieve high levels of excellence. In this way, the use of a quality management tools, such as European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), can help the managers of such organizations to identify de best practices to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness. Hence, this paper presents a new approach to support managers of R&D centres in the decision-making process in achieving the aims mentioned above, which is based on the EFQM model integrated with Fuzzy Logic. The proposed approach was applied to a Portuguese R&D Centre to assess its overall performance. In order to evaluate the robustness of the proposed approach, the results achieved were compared with the results obtained through a traditional methodology based on RADAR's Logic.
Sustainability, 2021
The success of a construction project is a widely discussed topic, even today, and there exists a... more The success of a construction project is a widely discussed topic, even today, and there exists a difference of opinion. The impact of communication and conflict on project success is an important, but least addressed, issue in literature, especially in the case of underdeveloped countries. Miscommunication and conflict not only hinder the success of a project but also may lead to conflicts. The focus of this paper was to examine the impact of communication on project success with the mediating role of conflict. By using SPSS, demographics, descriptive statistics and correlation were determined. Smart PLS version 3.0 was used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), internal accuracy and validity estimates, hypothesis checking and mediation testing. The results showed that formal communication has a negative impact on the success of a construction project, resulting in conflicts among project team members, whereas informal communication and communication willingness have a positive i...
Sustainability, 2021
Entrepreneurial orientation has become an enormously significant construct in the innovation stud... more Entrepreneurial orientation has become an enormously significant construct in the innovation studies literature. Predominantly for SMEs, its role has been widely recognized in almost all regional contexts across the globe. The present study is aimed at investigating the effects of entrepreneurial orientation, transformational leadership and organizational commitment on innovation performance. The data for the present study were collected from 1095 employees working at various levels in SMEs. The present study used partial least square structural equation modeling to examine the constructed hypotheses. The findings suggested the significantly positive direct relationships among entrepreneurial orientations, organizational commitment and innovation performance. Besides, organizational commitment positively mediated the relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance. Additionally, this study also found the significant moderation of transformational leaders...
PLOS ONE, 2021
The sustainable financial behavior and financial well-being have been a key concern among the dev... more The sustainable financial behavior and financial well-being have been a key concern among the developing societies; thereby encompassing the various psychological factors which play a role in influencing individual’s positive financial behavior and financial well-being, this study is conducted. Research focusing on the psychological aspect of human financial behavior and well-being is scarce, focusing more on the cognitive side such as financial literacy and numeracy. The aim of this research study is to find the role played by the non-cognitive factors such as self-esteem, self-control, optimism and deliberative thinking, in forming the financial behavior and financial well-being of the young adults. A sample of 429 university students from public and private sector was collected via an online and field survey using purposive sampling technique. The survey contained measures for demographics, self-esteem, optimism, deliberative thinking, self-control, general financial behavior and...
Sustainability, 2020
The survival of companies in globalized and highly competitive markets, heavily depends on their ... more The survival of companies in globalized and highly competitive markets, heavily depends on their ability to innovate through the creation of new products and/or services, supported by sustainable processes to prevent business failure. There are many factors regarding the interface company/stakeholders/market at all hierarchical levels, which have a major contribution to sustain innovation in processes regarding the creation of new products and services. A holistic approach of all these factors, as a whole, has not been a subject of scientific research conducting to the necessity of creating a proposal of a framework that can be integrated and systemic. Thus, this paper aims to propose a functional holistic model, which integrates the strategic, organizational and operational levels regarding market business and company interaction, as well as the set of factors to take into account to guarantee assurance that innovative processes are sustained, when new products and/or services are ...
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2010
The characterization and assessment of the social capital of a member in collaborative networks i... more The characterization and assessment of the social capital of a member in collaborative networks is an important element to help promoting the success of collaborative networks. However, models to measure the social capital are lacking. Applying some concepts from social networks theory, this paper discusses some perspectives and criteria to identify and measure the value of social capital of a member in the context of a Virtual organization Breeding Environment (VBE).
Innovation and creativity are fundamental for new product development (NPD). NPD processes are a ... more Innovation and creativity are fundamental for new product development (NPD). NPD processes are a key factor for the survival of firms, in a market that nowadays is very competitive, instable and aggressive. Thus, life cycle of products it is becoming shorter, and that also due to the markets globalization. So, the development of models that can support NPD processes became a real and needed challenge. This paper aims to propose a comprehensive model of functional nature, which integrates the strategic, organizational and procedural levels, as well as the set of factors to take into account in NPD projects. Based on literature review, a comprehensive and integrated conceptual model is obtained through a deductiveinductive pathway. The conceptual model is validated in the industrial environment through four explanatory case studies, regarding the implementation of new products and services, both incremental and disruptive. After validation the conceptual framework becomes functional. ...
Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering