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This article aims to verify if the Brazilian companies' Capex have any contribution to their performance. The Brazilian companies considered were those part of Ibovespa from 1998 to 2007. It is hard to find in the literature studies that investigate how capex affect the companies' performance (LI, 2004). In Brazil, the researches normally analyze the impact on the stock prices based on the information's disclosure through window events technique (ANTUNES; PROCIANOY, 2003; FAMÁ; LUCCHESI, 2005; LYRA; OLINQUEVICTH, 2007; MCCONNELL; MUSCARELLA, 1985). This could be considered a gap in the financial discipline and this study is to reduce this gap. Thus, we employed the panel data technique with a sample of 508 companies. We also adopted the companies' market value and the earnings before interest and taxes (Ebit) as proxys for their performance. The results indicate that the capex has a positive relation to the companies' performance, however, no relation is found considering operational earnings. This suggests that Lyandres, Sun e Zhang (2008) and Titman, Wei e Xie (2004) results did not fit into Brazilian companies since there is no negative relation between capex and the companies' performance. We expect to give helping information to valuation model as well as guidance of quality on management decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present article is to investigate the impact of organizational values in the perception of incentives and barriers to the creativity in the work place. Organizational creativity results from a complex combination of personal, historical, social and cultural factors. Thus, the latest models of creativity include the interaction of personal and contextual aspects to explain the phenomenon of creative expression. In the specific case of organizational culture, its influence on the manifestation of creativity would happen through the values. However, in spite of this relationship be frequently mentioned in the literature, they were not found empiric studies that relate the organizational values as antecedents of the organizational creativity. For data collection two scales were used: the Profiles of Organizational Values Inventory and the Support and Resistance to New Ideas Scale. The data was obtained from a sample of 2171 employees of a Brazilian bank. The relationship between values and organizational creativity was evaluated through regressions multiple stepwise. The results of this research corroborate the idea that the organizational values are important factors in the prediction of the support and of the resistance to the innovation in organizations. Autonomy, value that sends to the degree of freedom that the employee has to make decisions and to do their own choices, appeared as the best predictor of the support as of the resistance of the organization in accepting new ideas. Tradition and domain, correlated positively with the barriers to creativity in the workplace, appearing as counterpoint to the values that benefit the expression of creativity. This study contributes to a better understanding of the creativity predictors. Also confirming the practical applicability of this line of research -- incentives and barriers to creativity in organizational --, it enables the identification of those elements of the work context that need intervention in order to facilitate the manifestation of creativity in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits of interorganizational cooperation have been studied extensively by organizational theorists, but few studies focus on failure cases. Despite the large number of successful business networks, many also face difficulties in the organization and management of cooperation, closing their activities without achieving the proposed objectives. This paper presents a case of a failed business network in the supermarket sector. The work has been done in light of the studies of Park and Ungson (2001), Jarillo (1988), Khanna, Gulati and Nohria (1998) and Brouthers, Brouthers and Wilkinson (1995) concerning the difficulties in business cooperation. Through in-depth interviews with the network board directors, with entrepreneurs and with the consulting that supported the network creation, we identified the main factors that contributed to the network failure without reaching the expected results. The factors were divided into two groups: pre-formalization factors of the network, such as profile and selection of participants, the number of participants and the definition of the moment to launch the network; post-formalization factors of the network, including aspects such as the emergence of strategic misfits, the loss of support from the public program and the lack of maturity of the group, who struggled to manage the process of cooperation without external support. As a theoretical implication the study shows some factors little explored in the literature and that can lead to failure of cooperation, as the small number of firms, the wrong time to launch the business network and the group immaturity. The set of elements identified also have managerial implications: business managers and network managers should carefully analyze the profile and strategic alignment of firms setting up the network, avoiding any differences become a problem after the network is already established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work provides evidence on how negative correlated is diversification and enterprise value. Following Lang and Stulz (1994) methodology, our aim is to verify the correlation between firms' market value and diversification strategies. The negative relationship is observed for different measures of diversification and holds even if we control the effect of other variables known to be value drivers as investment, debt, profit and firm size. The results indicate that, as the focused companies, the highly diversified ones have also a greater value than the others. Finally, the contribution of this paper is that the negative diversification falls when it appears in more related segments and the effect of diversification on the enterprise value begins to be positive if we consider only the years of crises in our sample. We distinguished two consequences: non defined diversification strategies mean the worst performance and crisis mean better performance by diluting the risks impact. The study has some limitations because most of the Brazilian firms deal with highly correlated business portfolio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to assess the impact of the labor and tax regulations on the internal (gross formation of fixed capital) and external investment (direct foreign investment inward flow). Therefore, empirical evidences for the impacts of the labor and tax legislation on the investments and business strategies in Brazil were collected. Studies in this field are justified by the relevant effect of the regulation on the agents economic activities, since, despite the economic, social, and political reasons are used to justify the regulation, an empirical evidence is seldom applied as a basis or justification for the regulation (ALMEIDA; CARNEIRO, 2005). Focusing on Brazil is significant as it is one of the world's most regulated countries in the labor and tax scope, with low enforcement (BOTERO et al., 2004), the strictness of such legislations may interfere in the companies' poor performance and investments as well as in the country's economic growth. In order to investigate the labor and tax regulation impact on the national and international investments, tests were applied under the Quantile Regression (QR) method. For comparative analysis purposes, the tests were also made under the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method. This is a cross-country study based on pooled cross-section data from 180 countries, gathered from 2003 to 2006 concerning the labor regulation and within the period from 2005 to 2006 concerning the tax regulation. The data with regard to the variables and the national and international investments (dependant variables), as well as the GDP, total inhabitants, and interests rate (control variables), are provided by the World Development Indicators updated in 2008. The results found suggest that the higher the labor regulation strictness, the lower the investment level regarding gross formation of fixed capital and direct foreign investment in Brazil. With regard to the effect of the tax regulation on investments, the results demonstrate that they are statistically relevant and that a reduction in the tax load, measured by the taxation over the business profit, could raise the investment level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]