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The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze a teleconsultation modality based on a simple telephone call, using either landline or mobile phone, made available to more than two million people. Telecommunication systems are an increasingly common feature in modern healthcare. However, making teleconsultations available to the entire population covered by a public health system is a challenging goal.

This retrospective longitudinal observational study analyzed how this modality was used at the primary care level in Galicia, a region in the Northwest of Spain, in 2014 and 2015, focusing on demand, gender and age preferences, rural vs urban population and efficiency.

Of 28,472,852 consultations requested in this period, 9.0 percent were telephone consultations. Women requested more telephone consultations (9.9 percent of total consultations) than men (7.7 percent of total consultations). The highest demand occurred for the over 85 age group for both men and women. In both years, 2014 and 2015, the number of telephone consultations per inhabitant was higher in urban (0.53 and 0.69) than in rural areas (0.34 and 0.47). In 10.9 percent of cases, the telephone consultations required further face-to-face consultation.

Conventional voice telephone calls can efficiently replace conventional face-to-face consultations in primary healthcare in roughly 10 percent of cases. Women are more likely than men to use primary care services in both face-to-face and telephone consultation modalities. Public healthcare systems should consider implementing telephone consultations to deliver their services.

This case illustrates the differences between customers and the occasions when conditions change and buyer-seller relationships fail. The key issue is to find ways to anticipate this problem with other clients.

It may be used in second-year courses of MBA marketing programs as well as in specific executive education programs dealing with key account management (KAM) systems, business strategy, industrial marketing and/or sales management courses. This case can also be used at undergraduate programs and courses dealing with sales, sales management, international business, and organizational behavior.

In 2003, after Carlos Etcheverry joined San Antonio (SA) as Latin American Region Vice President, the company implanted a KAM System. SA's relationships with its two key clients, Vintage and Chevron, seemed to progress nicely until mid 2004, when Chevron's newly hired Purchasing Manager decided to change the company's commercial structure, rendering its purchasing process more bureaucratic and extremely competitive. In March 2005, Etcheverry was to meet Chevron's purchasing manager, since Chevron had decided to reassign a service contract through a new invitation to bid, leaving San Antonio out. The case puts forth the questions faced by Etcheverry at the time of the meeting: How had San Antonio come to jeopardize a key account? Would SA's organization need a change? Was this the only solution available? What other factors should be considered?

This case may help students to: understand the complexity of key account management (KAM) system implementation, sales force concepts and business-to-business relationships; and analyze the difficulties faced by companies upon implementing a change in their sales strategies and the effects of this change on the sales force, corporate culture and the organization as a whole management system.

Teaching notes and a Technical note are available; also access to audio visual support with an interview to Carlos Etcheverry.

The case focuses on brief elaboration, importance, objectives and components. While there are many ways to elaborate a brief, the overriding goal is to outline the most relevant guidelines for campaign design, and the decisions required to launch an advertising campaign.

This case may be used for the first marketing course in MBA curricula, as well as in executive education programs addressing communications and advertising strategy issues.

On a cold July afternoon in 2005, Matías Ruiz faced a difficult challenge. After months of long presentations and detailed discussions, the budget for a new advertising campaign had been finally approved. Ever since its arrival in Argentina, the company had concentrated all its efforts on positioning its corporate brand. Now with a firm standing in the domestic market, the time had come to advertise Lubrax, Petrobras' lubricant brand. Bearing in mind that the goal was to build a unique and independent brand identity for Lubrax while preserving its links to Petrobras, Ruiz's team, along with Diálogo Publicidad, a local advertising agency, had prepared three TV advertisements. Ruiz had to choose the most suitable campaign with an approved budget of US$ 3 million – 40 percent below the sum he had hoped to raise. At least one of those ads had to be launched in late October 2005, in time for the category's seasonal consumer sales peak. To do that, Ruiz needed to make a decision and to present a complete proposal to Lubrax's Marketing Director. This case study describes the questions confronting Ruiz at that time – Which ad should we pick? What brand image do we want for Lubrax? What is it that we wish to communicate? What is our goal? What segment are we addressing?

The case provides an insight into the use of advertising campaigns as a marketing tool, describing the company's competition, consumers, distribution channels and organizational hurdles. As a result, it may be used to help students: understand communications complexities, delving into each step in the process and taking stock of relevant decisions involved; learn about the research studies and data analyses required to build a communications plan that fits in with a company's strategy; manage a specific marketing budget; gain experience on advertising campaign development and subsequent evaluation; and survey the mix of marketing drivers needed to boost business sustainability. It will enable students to realize both the significance of thorough brief preparation to pursue a company's strategic goals and the importance of ensuring the ad chosen matches that brief.

Teaching notes are available; please contact your librarian for access.

This work presents the results of numerical analyses, both thermal and structural, of a pinned-pinned open cross section of a "U-shaped" cold-formed steel beam in a fire situation. The beam was in physical contact with a concrete slab and a masonry wall. The eventual partial compartmentalisation due to the wall was disregarded. The field of temperatures for the steel-concrete-wall elements was determined using the software programs Super Tempcalc and Ansys. For structural analysis the software Ansys was used. Restrictions due to the lateral displacement, the compatibility of transversal displacements at the points of contact between the slab and the beam, local buckling and restrictions to the thermal strains at the end supports were taken into account. Material and geometrical nonlinearities were considered, as well as the variation of the stressstrain diagrams with temperature, according to Eurocode prescriptions. The variation of the resistance reducer with the time of fire exposure was also evaluated. Based on the adopted model, the structure under standard fire exposure is not adequately safe. More research is under development to consider compartmentalisation and natural fire.

This chapter, drawing on an anthropological perspective, explicates the process of tourism development and its implications for Ilha Grande in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The concept of tourismization, influenced by Norbert Elias’s sociological perspective on the “civilizing process,” is introduced to illustrate how social changes and society-individual relationships within this community can be perceived as a set of configurations and articulations, which are mediated by tourism. It is suggested that tourisimization can be perceived as a process which dictates the rules and new customs to be followed by people influenced by new local configurations mediated by tourism.

The current world is characterized by VUCAT (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, and Technology). These elements provoke in workers a need for leadership that must be addressed continuously (Deepika & Chitranshi, 2021). Companies must dedicate efforts to leading their employees in a homogeneous way for team integration (Contreras et al., 2020; Sandeep & Latasri, 2021). It should be noted that remote work is a permanent feature for more organizations. Despite the difficulties that workers at all levels have had to adapt to remote work, an adaptation has been achieved in general terms based on communication technology. However, in many cases, it has altered the traditional performance of resources in companies, which makes the leading global and local institutions design new rules in favor of the health of workers and, at the same time, contribute to their better performance. For that, managers in the areas of Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology (IT) must be able to propose strategies to take care of the human capital of companies in all their departments. For the process to work efficiently, leadership is necessary. The transition of workers from the Asia Pacific region to teleworking, the influence of leadership, and the impact on job satisfaction, which is a measure that shows the optimal management of this new way of working in companies, are described. The organizational models related to business management, the barriers in the first steps of teleworking, the strategies used, the legislation created, and the results achieved by the company are described.

Integrating tourism and sustainability in achieving an eco-friendlier industry, this chapter highlights current trends in sustainable tourism, both in hospitality and recreational activities. The chapter describes sustainable, tourism, hospitality, and recreation trends. The research analyzes the origin of these trends, the vast majority motivated by the aftermath of the pandemic.

In the academic field of business management, several potential theories were established during the last decades to explain companies' decisions, organizational behavior, consumer patterns, and internationalization, among others. As a result, businesses and scholars were able to analyze and decide based on theoretical approaches to explain the current conditions of the market. Secondary research was conducted to collect more than 36 management theories. This chapter aims to develop the most famous theories related to business applied in the international field. The novelty of this chapter relies on the compilation of recognized previous research studies from the academic literature and evidence in international business.

In recent years, integrated reporting has emerged as a tool to provide environmental information in an interconnected way. However, in the academic literature, the amount of environmental information contained in integrated reports has never been analysed. This study, through the stakeholder-agency theory, aims to fill this important gap by examining the impact of the corporate governance mechanisms on the level of environmental information disseminated by the firms through integrated reports.

A manual content analysis based on an environmental disclosure index consisting of 30 items was performed to measure the amount of environmental information. In addition, a regression analysis was performed on a sample of 129 international firms to examine the impact of the corporate governance mechanisms on the level of environmental information disseminated through integrated reports.

The results show a positive effect of the board size, board gender diversity and corporate social responsibility committee existence on the level of environmental disclosure. Furthermore, they show a non-significant impact of board independence.

This study enriches the literature in several ways. First, it extends the field of application of the stakeholder-agency theory. Second, this study extends the analysis of environmental disclosure to another document – the integrated report – still unexplored by academic literature. Finally, it shed light on the determinants of environmental disclosure.