Vol 24, No 56 (2021): Enero-Junio

The rapid environmental deterioration, the growing social inequality, and the frequent economic crisis have made society and especially the companies, change their behaviors and become increasingly aware of their sustainability role, all this without leaving aside their economic interests. Due to the growing academic and professional attention to these issues, this research aims to conduct a literature review based on a scientific mapping of the link between corporate finance and sustainability. To this end, a search was made of the scientific production registered in WoS and Scopus over the last two decades. Using bibliometric tools and network analysis, the subject’s current state and its knowledge structure are presented. Three emerging research currents are identified: Sustainability and Financial Performance, Financial Results of Corporate Social Responsibility, and Sustainability Reports and Assessments. Finally, an agenda for future research is presented.

The objective of this article is to identify good practices for inclusive innovation in creative and cultural industry ventures for inclusive growth. The methodology used is based on a comparative analysis, selecting as references five case studies of inclusive innovation in creative and cultural ventures. The analysis of the results presents a comparative matrix according to seven critical success factors proposed: people (included ways in which these people are included), inclusion activities, value proposition of the enterprise, type of technology or innovation applied, role of government and value proposition of the enterprise. The findings indicate that creative and cultural ventures are characterized by being historically excluded, impact and consumption of an innovation or technology, with simple inclusive businesses that seek the solution to a problematic for its population, where the business can arise both from a state-of-the-art technology and from a pre-existing one and orient its value proposition towards a social objective.

Considering the growth of international business due to the globalization processes of economies, this study aims to evaluate the relationship between exports and the financial efficiency of a set of Colombian firms during the period between 2007 and 2015. For this purpose, linear mixed models and stochastic frontier analysis were used to identify the importance of current assets, the net return on assets and the duration of the companies. Thus, the results showed a positive contribution of current assets to export performance, while net asset profitability and firm duration showed a negative behavior with respect to the latter. The fact that the importance of current assets is positively related to export performance indicates that as the value exported increases, current assets increase, probably through inventory accounts and receivables. Likewise, the fact that the return on assets has a negative relationship shows that companies may be incurring high export costs that decrease their profits and consequently their profitability.

Financial fraud affects the accounting profession, deteriorating society’s confidence in it and public faith. This research seeks to identify components that influence the development of financial fraud by Public Accountants and determine what strategies contribute to its mitigation. The methodology is qualitative with a descriptive scope and deductive method, documentary research and interviews are used to obtain opinions from professionals related to the problem. The results identified that the most common components are opportunity, pressure, and rationality; in addition to the absence of social conscience, power and low work motivation. Finally, it is concluded that the strategies that help to mitigate fraud in organizations are located in the academic, professional and research environment. Therefore, professional ethics and control bodies should be strengthened and more projects on the subject should be promoted.

In December of 2019 in Wuhan, China, a new coronavirus agent of a severe acute respiratory disease was discovered. The educational systems were affected by it, thus forcing them to take actions to the crisis generated by it. THis research had as its main goal the analysis of the digital abilities during the sanitary emergency in teachers of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the administration and economic areas in Mexico and Colombia, regarding their abilities in their teaching processes. The research assessed the technological infrastructure dimensions, their training, their social realms and digital abilities. This research was exploratory, descriptive and quantitative and a conceptualization process for the identification of the indicators were applied. The results show that there are indicators in which the Colombian HEIs show better results than the Mexican ones, indicators such as technological infrastructure and training are highlighted. The correlation analysis displays a significant connection between the age of the teachers and the level of development of their digital abilities, thus determining that the greater the age the lesser the competence level in digital abilities.

The purpose of the article was to determine the behavior of the volatility of the Capitalization Index of the Colombian Stock Exchange (Colcap), in the period from January 17th, 2008 to April 30th, 2020. For the development of this work, the study employed the autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models proposed by Engle (1982) and Bollersev (1986), and the Egarch extension proposed by Nelson (1991) due to its wide application in researches that seek to determine the underlying risks in financial time series. The results suggest that the use of the GARCH (1,1) and Egarch (1,1) specifications are the most efficient to capture sudden changes in the volatility of the returns of the index, which becomes more noticeable in periods with the presence of External shocks such as the 2008 financial crisis, the oil price war and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic, causing higher levels of risk and uncertainty for investors. The Egarch extension has a positive skew coefficient for the present study, which means that unexpected announcements do not generate drastic changes in the variance of the returns.

The article had the objective of selecting the indicators to be used in the process of evaluating business performance in the entities of the Holguin territory, which allow the deepening of the causes that affect their results. The analysis-synthesis was used in a theoretical aspect for the information processing; the inductive-deductive approach for the determination of the most representative causes that influence the business performance of the entities of the Holguin territory. Among the empirical methods, the study employed survey, direct observation and checklists. As the main result, the indicators that facilitate the evaluation of business performance in entities of the Holguin territory are selected. This selection allowed its reduction by 55 % (45 indicators to 25); grouped as follows: management, technical-organizational, organization of processes, and economic-financial. This analysis was carried out from the empirical experiences in the Holguin territory and the theoretical assessment of a group of experts from the academy. The results show that during the period 2010-2019, optimal business performance was not achieved, mainly due to factors related to material resources and work means.

The objective of the research is to establish the incidence of education in the generation of a tax ethics in the areas of armed conflict, in the case of the municipality of Cartagena del Chairá. The methodology used the qualitative approach with a type of descriptive documentary research through the hermeneutical method that allows the understanding of the dynamics of taxes, ethics and tax morality in conflict zones in Colombia. The results indicate that education for peace in the current post-conflict moment, combined with pedagogical strategies for the recovery of trust in State institutions, are decisive for the reconstruction of a tax ethic. It is concluded that it is in the hands of the national government to strengthen the presence of the State in the municipality of Cartagena del Chairá as an initial measure to accompany and protect the population, and to develop relevant educational programs that leads to tax legality.

This article investigates the global effect of inequality upon growth, i.e., both its direct influence as the influence of the channels that connect these variables. The study is performed upon a wide variety of countries during the 1985-2018 period. With the goal of identifying the channels between inequality and growth, the estimations were made through the SURE (Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations) method. The results found by the study indicate that, in general, inequality is prejudicial for growth in the form of corruption as directly, being corruption the main channel responsible for concentrating income and being detrimental for the economy. Thus, the policy recommendation resulting from this study suggests the application of a tax system and a progressive tax policy with strong controls to reduce the global inequality alongside the development of control mechanisms that limit the power of influence in the assignment of resources.

La desigualdad de ingresos en Colombia mostró una reducción promedio de 9.26 % en el período 2008-2018. Sin embargo, el coeficiente de Gini coloca a Colombia como el segundo país más desigual de América Latina, con un gasto público en educación como porcentaje del PIB del 4,5 % (duodécimo puesto), tasas de desempleo en aumento y una oferta de educación secundaria modesta. Es imperativo reflexionar sobre cómo se distribuyen los recursos y sobre los mecanismos para reducir la desigualdad. Probamos la hipótesis de que el gasto en educación reduce la desigualdad, aunque no de manera eficiente, mientras que aumentar la oferta educativa genera efectos diferenciales. Estimamos un modelo de datos de panel que corrige la endogeneidad para veintitrés departamentos de Colombia y Bogotá D.C. Los resultados sugieren que el gasto en educación reduce la desigualdad pero es inelástico (β = -0.05) y está asociado con gasto improductivo. En términos de provisión de educación, la educación de la primera infancia aumenta la desigualdad, la secundaria reduce la desigualdad, mientras que la educación superior es casi perfectamente inelástica (β = -0,004). La estrategia para reducir la desigualdad no es un aumento general del gasto público, sino aumentos focalizados y el fortalecimiento de los mecanismos para mejorar la provisión de educación.

The financial sector is undergoing important transformations that originate from the implementation of new technologies. The word "digital" is gaining more and more importance in this sector and there are many challenges that this new reality generates. The objective of this article is to analyse the challenges of the Colombian financial system in the fourth revolution, in order to strengthen the recognition and understanding of these in organizational management. This study was supported by an analytical review of the literature using scientific databases and unconventional literature (industry documents other than scientific databases). Referring to the fourth revolution, not only implies talking about the technologies that people identify it with such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, process automation or cloud computing, among others, but also about the challenges related to the interaction of a client which is more informed and hyper-connected, with the adoption and transformation of an organizational culture focused on innovation and new skills of employees. Finally, challenges associated with the comprehensive management of risks related to cyber-attacks, model, regulatory and supplier risks.

This writing summarizes the results obtained during the development of an institutional research, which aimed to evaluate territorial sustainability from the business environmental management, taking into account the theoretical foundation of environmental sustainability and territorial sustainability, from which the analysis is developed transversal of the capitals immersed in the departmental business activity and where the weak sustainability principle is established to carry out the discussion of the results. From a non-parametric method called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which starts from linear programming to indicate the level of efficiency and productivity of the decision-making units, in this case factors that are recognized for the evaluation of the territorial sustainability, considering inputs and outputs without prior assumptions about the distribution of the data that are provided by the departmental competitiveness index. Finally, the conclusions show as the main finding the importance of business environmental management initiatives for territorial sustainability in the departments, where the role that companies play to ensure levels of economic development in the short, medium and long term is recognized. and long term, from the improvement of the relationship between the productive activity and the sustainability of the territorial capitals, mainly the natural one.

This article analyzes the regional evolution of formal employment in Brazil between 2002 and 2018 through a regional analysis of multiple scales. The study discusses the main determinations that acted upon the Brazilian regional dynamics and its labor market in the aforesaid period. For that, the study analyzes the movement of the Brazilian economy in its macroeconomic dimension and its regional repercussions. After that, the study assessed the evolution of formal employment in Brazil in the 2002-2014 and 2015-2018 periods according to different scales. The analysis showed that the 2002-2014 period was a positive phase of expansion of the formal labor market in Brazil that broke with the weaknesses of the 90s decade. Nonetheless, between 2015 and 2018 a strong retrogression occurs, resulting in a fall of the formal labor indicators. During this period, the study observed a movement of regional deconcentration of employment to the northern, northwestern and center-western regions; maybe due to the good performance of the regions or maybe due to the most abrupt downturn in the southeastern region caused by the economic crisis.

The purpose of the following study is to measure the credit risks in funds of employees of Higher Education Institutions of Antioquia (hereinafter IES) in the period 2013-2017, through the method called Risicar, this is a useful instrument for identification, qualification and credit risk assessment; as the management of this type of risk according to De Lara (2013) is the most important risk to control for any entity. The research becomes a kind of protective shield against credit risks in the funds of employees of IES de Antioquia and in turn opens academic discussion on whether these protection mechanisms are relevant or not in said entities. Regarding remarkable results in the risk assessment, there were 63,64 % of the total risks studied in the category of serious risks and 9,09 % of risks in the category of unacceptable. It is striking that several employee funds do not have a detailed and established program to manage credit risk, or for example highlights the lack of a good predictor model to correctly classify potential clients between good and bad and quantify the expected loss, nonexistence of real evaluation of guarantees, legal processes are not followed for portfolio recovery, in some neither the complete financial statements of the associate are evaluated, nor their real indebtedness capacity, anti-cyclical provisions are not used; All of this can lead to non-compliance by customers as they do not have this type of filters and mechanisms.

As well defined by the SDG, sustainable consumption and production consist of doing more and better with less to minimize environmental degradation without detriment to people’s quality of life. The purpose of this article is to advance the mapping of global scientific production around sustainable consumption, and in this way, to identify theoretical-conceptual advances, research trends, achievements, proposals, and dynamics of scientific production over time. To do this, we consulted the thematic information published in the Web of Science database, using the search equation “Sustainable Consumption” by title and during the period 1997-2020. The bibliometric analysis was carried out using open source tools such as R-Studio and Bibliometrix, which identified annual scientific production, the most widely recognized authors and sources, and the most cited articles. The VOS viewer software was used to view data on the network. The theoretical aspects of most significant value account for the transit and challenges in which modern societies are, as a whole, making sustainable consumption a daily practice. In this sense, modern trends in adopting self-restrictive behaviors and consumption habits, the second life of products, voluntary simplifiers, changes in production modes, energy efficiency, and sustainable food consumption stand out. The emerging paradigm of sustainable consumption privileges the role of industrial ecology, circular economy, and collaborative economies as mediators of producer-consumer-environment relations and as a last alternative, it suggests economic decline as the only formula towards sustainable consumption and development.