Latin America Leadership Program

Author: Ricardo Ernst

This issue of the Journal of Globalization, Competitiveness, and Governability continues with its commitment to our readers, in terms of frequency and quality criteria that are internationally accepted and audited by a number of institutions. GCG is currently indexed in: SCOPUS (Elsevier Bibliographic Databases. Scimago Journal Rank), Categories: Business, Management and Accounting, Economics, Econometrics and Finance; EconLit (American Economic Association's electronic bibliography); EBSCO Publishing databases (Business Source Complete; Business Source Premier; Business Source Elite; Fuente Académica Premier; Fuente Académica Plus); and ABI/INFORM (ProQuest; LATINDEX; REDALYC; Google Scholar Metrics). This drive for quality has seen GCG categorised as an A-level Journal (top category) of all the Spanish Journals dealing with the human and social sciences by Web of Science and/or SCOPUS (ISOC-CSIC).

In the first article, Anderson Betti Frare, Ilse Maria Beuren, and Jordan Williams Neves Cipriano (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina - UFSC, Brazil) seek to analyze the facilitating role of the use of managerial information on organizational mindfulness towards digital transformation and market agility. A sample of Brazilian startups was investigated through a survey. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The results reveal an indirect effect of organizational mindfulness towards digital transformation on market agility, fully mediated by the use of managerial information. The authors conclude that for high (low) market agility, the presence (absence) of organizational mindfulness toward digital transformation and the use of management information is critical.

Small firms account for almost the totality of Spanish and international business firms. Although these agents are essential for job creation, they are also the ones that suffer most from the instability of the economic context, partly due to the moderate financial literacy of their managers. Sara Fernández-López, Marcos Álvarez-Espiño, and Lucía Rey-Ares (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain) make a diagnosis of the level of financial literacy of their owners/managers, through the design of different clusters of a singular nature. In turn, these levels are related to the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents. The results reveal the financial knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that can be strengthened in entrepreneurs.

The objective of the following article is to analyze the relationship between cultural dimensions and banking concentration since culture as a collective programming of a society has the power to influence decision-making. To carry out this work, Hofstede's cultural dimensions - power aloofness, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, long-term versus short-term orientation, and indulgence versus restraint - were used as a cultural variable, and the percentage share of the three largest banks in the countries was used as a bank concentration variable. For Jakeline Patrícia Santos and Danielle Montenegro Salamone Nunes (Universidade de Brasília - UnB, Brazil) the results show that countries that tend to be more restrictive and distanced from power have less banking concentration and that large banks have an extremely strong corporate culture, overlapping the influence of local culture.

Paulo Vitor Souza de Souza, Henrique Carvalho Bezerra Morais, and João Gabriel dos Santos Braga (Universidade Federal do Pará UFPA, Brazil) try to verify whether there is a significant difference in the timeliness of corporate financial reporting in relation to the level of corporate governance and the onset of the pandemic using the nonparametric Wilcoxon rank sum test, due to the absence of normality. The results indicated that companies began to publish more timely reports after the onset of the pandemic and, at different levels of governance, provide more timely reports, and companies with a differential level of governance during the pandemic provided more timely reports. The authors conclude that there was no change in the timing of listed companies at traditional governance levels compared to before and after the onset of the pandemic.

The following article aims to verify changes in the feeling of fear of COVID-19 and in consumer relations, comparing the results of this research with those of other studies conducted at the beginning of the pandemic. For Edgard Monforte Merlo, Janaina de Moura Engracia Giraldi (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil) and Matheus Berto (Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Sul de Minas Gerais, Brazil) the results showed an increase in purchases in virtual stores and in local markets, but no comparable evidence for food and daily use products, contrary to the literature. Behavioral differences were also found between respondents up to 38 years of age (among whom there was a strong perception of fear and intense nervousness with COVID-19 related news) and participants older than this age (among whom there was discomfort with the pandemic, but a low sense of fear). They conclude that the results reflect not only the change in behavior produced by the fear of COVID-19, but also the variation of these habits in a more optimistic scenario and closer to pre-pandemic life.

For Juan Rivera-Mata (University of Maryland Global campus, USA), economic gender differences persist and, according to patriarchy theory, women's political power will bring economic equality. To study this, he analyzes the Global Gender Gap of Spain and Portugal (2006-2022). The author concludes that women ministers or parliamentarians do not correlate with economic equality, workforce participation, equal pay for men and women or equal income. Also, the theory of patriarchy does not seem to be useful for reducing economic inequality. Neither do they find significant differences between PSOE and PP governments nor a positive correlation of economic equality with GDP or competitiveness. For all these reasons, he recommends measuring power (not parity), fiscal redistribution policies, and promoting a gender interchange of providing-caring social roles.

I would once again like to thank all those who have made this journal possible: members of the Advisory Board, the Editorial Board, Editors and Associate Editors, assessors, authors and, last but not least, the readers.