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COVID-19 caused a worldwide paralysis. An asynchronous study among executive officers was developed, using the qualitative Delphi method, during the confinement stage, by a couple of companies, one from Colombia, another from Spain. Participants were human resources and marketing managers (some of them working in both areas) of large companies, SMEs, non-profit organizations, and professional unions, located in both countries. A forecast of expected changes in interpersonal relationships was the main objective of the study; however, as participants broadened the debate, topics related to administrative functions emerged. This paper focuses in the latter. Administrative planning was the most affected function by the pandemic. Organizational arranges like telecommuting became more common, their interaction and control difficulties raise concerns among directors. Strengthening trust and communication bonds is important. Decision making process was faster during the quarantine period, it is a lesson learned by the participants. Increased empathy to the personal necessities and functionality prevalence in the performance of administrative tasks are both in the future expected by participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from a basic premise: During the last years, there have been multiple corruption cases that affected public administrations credibility, but also the one of the private sectors of the economy. Areas such as urban planning or public contracting have been prolix regarding the occurrence of criminal activities that undermine the proper functioning of the Public Administration and business activity based on ethics and legality. Consequently, it is very important to implement internal complaint mechanisms to improve organizations (public and private ones) by prematurely discovering illicit conduct and, in turn, identifying the individuals responsible for such acts. In the same way, for some companies, the verification of the effectiveness of the complaint channels in court contributes to corporate defenses and in achieving exemption from criminal responsibility. Therefore, from a technical perspective, guidelines and recommendations are offered from different regulations point of view to increase the effectiveness of these channels and to reduce the legal uncertainty that occurs in Spain, given the limited drafting of the Penal Code. Likewise, anonymity, paid denunciation and the protection of the complainant against retaliation are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new version of the Spain-STING (Spain, Short-Term INdicator of Growth), a dynamic factor model used by the Banco de España for the short-term forecasting of the Spanish economy. The extended and revised version of the Spain-STING presented in this document includes a forecast for each of the demand components of the National Accounts. In order to select the indicators that best estimate the Spanish GDP and its demand components, several models are considered. Following this strategy, the selected models are those in which the common factor explains the highest proportion of the variance of the GDP. These models allow us to forecast GDP, private consumption, public expenditure, investment in capital goods, construction investment, exports and imports in a consistent way. We assess the predictive power of the models for GDP and its demand components for the period 2005-2017. With regard to the GDP forecast, we find some improvement of the predictive power compared to the previous version of Spain-STING. As for the demand components, we show that our proposal has better predictive power than other possible time series models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of learning and teaching styles matching at university over the last ten years is presented. For this purpose, a review was carried out of the Dialnet, Redalyc, Scielo and Doaj data bases due to their scope and importance in the Hispanic context. The descriptors used in the search for information were the key words: learning styles, teaching styles and higher education. The data bases consulted produced a total of 53 papers, with only 17 of these complying with all the criteria for inclusion (paper: empirical research; sample: university; object: correspondence learning and teaching styles; time period 2002-2012; Spanish language). The literature review showed that the matching is researched and understanding from two approaches: (1) adaptive instruction or (2) stylistics. Results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, the number of local public utilities has experienced a significant increase in Europe. The provision of public services by means of this type of companies requires municipalities to establish different forms of control and regulation in order to align economic and social interests. This paper analyses the Spanish system of local public utilities from the point of view of the characteristics of the governance style applied by municipalities to steer and monitor the activities. The results evidence that, among other things, the percentage of equity participation influences on the mechanisms adopted by local authorities to apply external control on public utilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aims of the formation, related theoretically to the performance of human resources, self-training, information and effectiveness, have been identified as the amount in which the company goes further from knowledge to learning. In this paper three hypotheses applied to the Spanish aquaculture are proposed to model the differential aim follow-up and the achievements of the formation plans. The empirical analysis has been carried out with the data of 99 representative companies of the aquaculture sector. The SPSS 19 statistical program was used for the data analysis. A factor analysis was made by the method of principal components. Eighteen nonparametric tests of Kruskal-Wallis type were applied, as well as 36 chi-squared tests. As a result, three principal components were identified that explain 80% of the variance of the aims: the first one refers to policies of implication of human resources, the second one is related to objective circumstances and the third one is associated to dynamism. It was confirmed that the relevance of aims is proportional to the percentage of expense in formation and, specifically, it is greater in suppliers. Finally, significant differences in the results of the formation with respect to the reduction of errors were observed, this reduction being greater in fish distribution and production. Significant differences were also observed in the effect of the formation on the motivation of the employee, this being greater in fish suppliers and producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to quantify the socioeconomic importance of seven phonetic characteristics (seseo, yeismo, /s/-aspiration, /x/-aspiration, /j/-assibilation, /r/-assibilation, and /n/-velarization) whose presence or absence allows distinguishing among twenty-four Spanish dialects. In order to accomplish this goal, we perform a least-square regression analysis to calculate "hedonic prices" for the abovementioned characteristics. The result is that the three more significant characteristics, which seem to operate as signs of a lower per-capita income, are seseo, /x/-aspiration and /r/-assibilation. The first of those characteristics keeps its statistical significance as a sociolinguistic marker when we restrict our analysis to the case of Spain, while /r/-assibilation keeps its statistical significance when we restrict our database to Colombian observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most technical terms in the field of Computer Science are English loanwords. English words are frequently preferred to Spanish terms because of different reasons, for instance, because of linguistic economy. In this paper, we reveal the results of an empirical study about the frequency of use of pure anglicisms. It has been carried out among students of Translating and Interpreting at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain). The scope of use of lexical anglicisms by individuals in the analysed sample seems to be relatively high, but slightly lower than that of Computer Science students who participated in another preliminary partial study. Those students who provided more words for definitions also suggested more synonyms for the terms, and also used more English terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the knowledge-based economy, the wealth creation is associated with the development and maintenance of competitive advantages based on intangible elements. Faced with this growing strategic importance of intangibles, it seems necessary that companies disclosure information on those elements. However, although companies disclosure information increasingly on a voluntary basis, they are still many which merely comply with legal requirements, omitting highly relevant information on their intangible resources. The objective of this paper is to have data on what level of interest in providing this information by Spanish companies. Therefore, a review of the most important literature about intangibles disclosure in Spanish companies is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Queries related to environmental degradation, climate changes, quality of life, sustainable development and thermic comfort have brought great interest and worries not only among scientists but within the most diverse social sectors. The objective of this study is to analyze the climate behavior in the city of Cáceres-MT, which is located on the left bank of the Paraguay river, in southwest of State Mato Grosso, central Brazil. To verify the behavior of the climatic elements ( temperature, atmospheric pressure, evaporation, moisture and precipitation) in the city of Cáceres-MT during the 1971-2003 period, there were fulfilled the following steps: (a) data collection; the meteorological data was analyzed in four periods: 1971-1980; 1981-1990; 1991-2000; and 2000-2003; (b) construction of climate graphics and their comparative interpretation which ended in this paper. Annual precipitation mean is of 1200 mm, with a well defined rainy period (from October to April, with major incidence from December to March), and another considered dry from April to September. Temperature analysis in three decades show variations: in the first decade (1971-1980) there was a mean of 24,7 °C; this rose to 25,1 °C in the decade of 1980 (1981-1990), continued rising in the decade of 1990 (1991-2000) to reach 25,4 °C and to 26 °C in the last three years of the period studied (2001-2003). Air pressure varies in general from 997 to 998,5 milibars. This variation keeps relation with the mean temperature changes in the region. Contrary to the evaporation that showed high and low fluctuations, moisture was almost stable and the variation was les than 3,5% in 33 years. As for precipitations, it was found that in the decade of 1970, the pluviometric mean was 1.402,2 mm; it was 1.259,5 in the following decade, rising to 1.358,2 mm in the decade of 1990, and went down to 1.172,1 mm in the last three years analyzed. In correlating the climate variations to the urban expansion of the city of Cáceres we may say that the temperature increase is due to the disappearance of the forest cover and its replacement by constructions and pavement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]