Purpose: The popularity of social networks has created business opportunities to the electronic commerce environment, being recently named as social commerce. The purpose of this paper is to analyze – from the perspective of the consumer – the main factors and characteristics (personal or related to the products bought) that have influenced consumers to participate in social commerce buying, recommending, comparing and sharing information about products and services in online marketplace and communities. Design/methodology/approach: The study is characterized as an exploratory descriptive research, operationalized through a survey, applied to 229 participants of the social network Facebook. The research involves a qualitative stage for identifying potential variables that influence the participation of consumers in social commerce, followed by a quantitative one, including data collection procedures, validation and data analysis. Findings: The results show trust, perceived usefulness and information quality as the factors that most influence consumer participation in social commerce, being trust in the website the main predictor. Concerning the characteristics, the findings also show that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics use ratings, recommendations and comments online more intensively than books, travel, household appliances and fashion products. Research limitations/implications: As limitations of the study, the authors highlight the small number of interviews conducted during the qualitative stage, which may have left out other relevant factors of the analysis on consumers’ participation in social commerce. Another limitation refers to the selection of the participants of the study; all members of the social network Facebook are identified by the contact net of the authors – though it has been tried to enlarge this contact list by requesting the respondents to share the questionnaire link with their acquaintances, we should be cautious about the generalization of the results. Originality/value: The study proposes an instrument to identify factors and characteristics that are taken into consideration by the consumers when participating in social commerce. Such a tool can be replicated by firms included in this type of commerce, in order to evaluate the behavior and perception of their customers about their performance in the online environment. This study also highlights trust, information quality and perceived usefulness of the website as the most influencing factors of the consumers’ participation in social commerce. In addition, the authors identified that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics seem to use more intensively ratings, recommendations and comments online provided by other people. This fact supports the research literature that (positive or negative) online recommendations influence the consumers purchase behavior, reducing uncertainties about the products and increasing credibility and trust.

The growth of fintechs has exponentially modified the international financial system. These changes affect social mechanisms that regulate the performance of economic agents, generating the need to modify the current role played by institutions. Despite the clear relationship that exists between fintechs and institutions, studies exploring the details of this relationship are still scarce. The objective of this article is to propose a review and analysis of the current state of research on fintechs and institutions. To achieve this goal, a systematic literature review was conducted, with the selection and analysis of 123 documents published which were based on preestablished inclusion and exclusion criteria. The main results show the development of a framework that allows us to increase our understanding of fintechs and institutions; the identification of three propositions that serve as a guide to the institutional landscape in which fintechs operate; and finally the recognition of a research agenda.

This work aims to describe the development stages of a decision support system for evaluating the quality of services provided by outsourced companies that serve organisations in the Brazilian retail sector. It used applied research, implemented through a case study conducted with the outsourced service providers of one of the 158 subsidiaries of a retail company. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), it was possible to develop an evaluation model capable of measuring the performance of the quality indicators and evaluating the performance of the outsourced services provided to the company under study

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationships among four types of sustainable operations practices and sustainable performance in the environmental, economic and social dimensions and identifies significant moderators.Design/methodology/approach: In order to achieve the proposed goal, this study was developed through a systematic review of the literature followed by a meta-analysis of the correlations and by a meta-regression. The sampling criteria were quantitative operations management articles published through 2019.Findings: The results suggest that all 13 analyzed relationships are positive and are affected by moderators.Research limitations/implications: In theoretical terms, this study reinforces the positive relationship between sustainable operations practices and performance and, more importantly, detects moderating effects. One of the study limitations is the composition of the sample, focusing exclusively on quantitative correlational articles published in journals.Practical implications: In practice, the findings of this study imply that managers should be vigilant in implementing sustainable operations practices, observing the conditions in which more of these practices can be implemented into performance.Originality/value: This study differs from others because it includes the social dimension of sustainable performance and the identification of moderators.