This study proposes a field study, based on a literature review, about the applications and impacts of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in the biopharmaceutical sector. The world is facing a new industrial revolution and the central idea is the integration between the virtual and the real world through elements that will allow for a greater degree of automation and digitization of processes. The production of medicines via biological processes is a booming domain in the pharmaceutical sector, that involves extraordinary technological challenges. The fieldwork, carried out between August 2019 and February 2020, involved semi-structured interviews with managers of pharmaceutical companies and specialists in the I4.0 theme. The interviews allowed for the identification of trends and key benefits and barriers for implementing I4.0 in the biopharmaceutical sector. While the perceptions were considerably diversified, benefits in productivity, competitiveness and quality ranked among the most scored items. The main barriers, highlighted by the interviewees, refer to the need to break organizational cultural standards, the regulatory requirements, the lack of organizational strategies for implementation, and the lack of qualified professionals. This work offers a contribution to the biopharmaceutical sector and reinforces the imminent need for companies to adapt to this new reality.

Planning practitioners have been challenged by the demand for more open, effective, and transparent processes. But the collaborative practices that have tried to materialize these goals often yield unsatisfactory results. While this can partly be attributed to various forms of vertical coordination, achieving these different, and sometimes conflicting, goals also poses inherent methodological challenges. This paper discusses an innovative approach to these issues applied in four strategic plans in Portugal. It focusses on the way in which the methodology tried to give practical meaning to the so-called ‘communicative turn’ in planning, while addressing some of the shortcomings associated with it.

Researchers from multidisciplinary scientific fields have been puzzled by human behaviour in dynamic and complex decision-making contexts. Since the seventeenth century, several theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions have emerged. These contributions evidence the need to critically assess the rational foundations of decision theories, stemming from the cognitive basis for human heuristics and bias. This chapter focuses on how socio-cognitive theories have been introduced as analytic tools to explain individual and collective behaviours, decision rules, and cognitive mechanisms. In particular, the authors advance some arguments explaining its importance and the underlying challenges of social representations as part of the decision-making process. They propose a methodological script that stresses the social representations approach and encounters more functional and operational settings.

Researchers from multidisciplinary scientific fields have been puzzled by human behaviour in dynamic and complex decision-making contexts. Since the seventeenth century, several theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions have emerged. These contributions evidence the need to critically assess the rational foundations of decision theories, stemming from the cognitive basis for human heuristics and bias. This chapter focuses on how socio-cognitive theories have been introduced as analytic tools to explain individual and collective behaviours, decision rules, and cognitive mechanisms. In particular, the authors advance some arguments explaining its importance and the underlying challenges of social representations as part of the decision-making process. They propose a methodological script that stresses the social representations approach and encounters more functional and operational settings.