Research Outputs
Systematic Review of Studies Using Confirmatory Factor Analysis for Measuring Management Skills in Sustainable Organizational Development
This systematic review explores the most validated methodologies for measuring managerial skills that contribute to sustainable organizational development, with a focus on confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Using PRISMA guidelines and the PICOS framework, a systematic search in the Web of Science (6810 articles) and Scopus (11,267 articles) identified 27 relevant studies. Our findings emphasize the significance of valid, reliable measurement scales for key managerial competencies, such as leadership, decision-making, communication, and teamwork, which enhance employability and foster sustainable management aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). CFA emerges as a robust technique for ensuring methodological rigor in competency assessment, confirming theoretical models with empirical data. This study identifies gaps in current measurement frameworks, advocating for expanding models to incorporate digital transformation, sustainability leadership, and crisis management skills. Additionally, it underscores the importance of developing context-specific instruments that reflect sectoral and cultural variations. This review contributes to management education and workforce development by providing a validated framework for assessing managerial skills, supporting organizations in aligning leadership training with sustainability-driven business goals. Our findings offer practical implications for designing competency-based curricula and corporate training programs to enhance organizational resilience in an evolving global landscape.
Analyzing managerial skills for employability in graduate students in economics, administration and accounting sciences
The study analyzes how graduate students in economics, administration and accounting perceive their managerial skills for employability, with the aim of determining its associated variables to improve the educational processes of future managerial leaders. It focuses on the importance of developing transferable skills that meet current and future job demands. To measure the perception of skills, a structured and duly validated questionnaire (Employability Skills 2000+) was used, answered by 225 graduate students in Economics, Administrative and Accounting Sciences in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The data obtained from the application were analyzed using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) method with the FACTOR software. The CFA generated an adaptation of the original scale with 21 variables. The resulting scale determined three predominant factors: personal management skills, fundamental skills and teamwork skills, which presented good consistency and validity, allowing us to make conclusions regarding employability skills in the context studied. The findings show the existence of a correlation between fundamental skills and variables such as work experience, employment status and gender, as well as a high correlation between teamwork skills, work experience and employability conditions.
Healthy Behavior and Sports Drinks: A Systematic Review
This review article aims to systematically identify the relationship between sports drinks and healthy behavior. This systematic literature review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline criteria, and eligibility criteria were established using the PICOS tool (population, interventions, comparators, outcomes, and study) from about 1000 records of sports drinks articles identified in the various Web of Science Core Collection databases. The literature review stages determined a reduced set of 15 articles relating these drinkable supplements to healthy behavior. This study concludes that water consumption should be emphasized for non-athletes, sports drinks should be labeled to indicate water consump- tion and carry a warning label, and more randomized clinical trials should be considered to ensure conclusive results for health decision making.
Examining Whistleblowing Intention: The influence of rationalization on wrongdoing and threat of retaliation
Whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing often face several concerns, pressures, and threats of retaliation before reaching a final decision. Specifically, this study examines the effects of perceived seriousness of wrongdoing (PSW) and perceived threat of retaliation (PTR), as well as the impact of rationalization (RNL), comparing perceived seriousness of wrongdoing, perceived threat of retaliation and whistleblowing intention. Furthermore, this study aims to determine the mediating effect of anticipated regret (AR) on the relationship between perceived seriousness of wrongdoing and whistleblowing intention. We validated our model by analyzing data gathered across three stages from employees in the telecom sector in Pakistan. The key findings of our research may be summarized as follows: (i) individuals’ willingness to ‘blow the whistle’ increases as a result of perceived seriousness of wrongdoing; (ii) whistleblowers are more likely to opt to remain silent if they anticipate a greater threat of retaliation, and (iii) our study establishes a positive connection between perceived seriousness of wrongdoing and whistleblowing intention, indicating that perceived seriousness of wrongdoing enhances people’s willingness to blow the whistle, and whistleblowers are more likely to choose to emerge if the behaviour is more serious in nature; (iv) the data we have uncovered indicates a moderating role of rationalization in regulating the connections between perceived seriousness of wrongdoing, perceived threat of retaliation, and whistleblowing intention; and (v) the findings demonstrate that anticipated regret mediates the connection between perceived seriousness of wrongdoing and the intention to report wrongdoing. Additionally, the results are discussed in terms of their significance for corporate ethics researchers and managers, as well as for end-users who are interested in whistleblowing.
Marketing Components and Their Role on Fair Trade in Coffee Agriculture: A Scoping Review
The aim of this study is to conduct a scoping review of the literature on the marketing environment and Fair Trade in the coffee industry, identifying its contribution to organizations and society. Quantitative studies were selected from databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, following a selection process aligned with the PRISMA methodological guidelines and establishing eligibility criteria for articles using the PICOS strategy. To understand the effects of macromarketing, strategic marketing, and operational marketing on the development of the Fair Trade coffee market, the results demonstrate that marketing plays a significant role in the market’s growth. Specifically, marketing is crucial in communicating the value of Fair Trade, raising consumer awareness, and supporting the economic well-being of coffee producers. Ethical consumption and branding strategies are essential for positioning Fair Trade coffee in competitive markets. However, further studies are needed to corroborate these findings and provide more up-to-date perspectives.
Caffeine placebo effect in sport and exercise: A systematic review
The objective of this review article is to systematically identify the caffeine placebo effect in sport and exercise activities. We selected randomized controlled trial studies to better understand the impact of caffeine and its placebo effect on sports performance. We extracted a set of articles that refer strictly to the topics of caffeine and its placebo effect in sport and exercise, considering the databases integrated to the Core Collection Web of Science and Scopus, as well as the registration of the documents in PubMed®, a system with a selection process aligned with the guidelines for the PRISMA methodology, establishing the eligibility criteria of the articles with the PICOS tool, to which a systematic review is applied. Finally, the results show that caffeine improves anaerobic capacity and endurance, while placebo perceived as caffeine can also increase performance by reducing pain and improving concentration. This finding underscores the influence of expectations and placebo on physical performance, suggesting that managing these expectations may be an effective strategy for improving athletic performance.
Bibliometric mapping of school garden studies: A thematic trends analysis
This paper analyzes the thematic trends in school garden studies over the past few decades, using a relational bibliometric methodology on a corpus of 392 articles and review articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. The paper seeks to understand how researchers have studied the concept over the last few decades in various disciplines, spanning approximately eighty Web of Science categories. The results show that there is a critical mass of scientific research studying school gardens. The analysis shows the thematic trends in discussion journals, discussion terminology, and consolidates classic papers and some novel authors and papers. The studies and their theoretical trends lead to refocusing the analysis on the effects of school gardens beyond the educational, thanks to the contribution of authors from more than fifty countries engaged in the study of these activities. This work constitutes new challenges for this line of research, raising interdisciplinary research challenges between horticultural, environmental, technological, educational, social, food, nutritional, and health sciences.
Wearable biosensors for human health: A bibliometric analysis from 2007 to 2022
Objective: This study aimed to determine the status of scientific production on biosensor usage for human health monitoring. Methods: We used bibliometrics based on the data and metadata retrieved from the Web of Science between 2007 and 2022. Articles unrelated to health and medicine were excluded. The databases were processed using the VOSviewer software and auxiliary spreadsheets. Data extraction yielded 275 articles published in 161 journals, mainly concentrated on 13 journals and 881 keywords plus. Results: The keywords plus of high occurrences were estimated at 27, with seven to 30 occurrences. From the 1595 identified authors, 125 were consistently connected in the coauthorship network in the total set and were grouped into nine clusters. Using Lotka's law, we identified 24 prolific authors, and Hirsch index analysis revealed that 45 articles were cited more than 45 times. Crosses were identified between 17 articles in the Hirsch index and 17 prolific authors, highlighting the presence of a large set of prolific authors from various interconnected clusters, a triad, and a solitary prolific author. Conclusion: An exponential trend was observed in biosensor research for health monitoring, identifying areas of innovation, collaboration, and technological challenges that can guide future research on this topic.
Relationship Between Body Composition and Physical Literacy in Chilean Children (10 to 16 Years): An Assessment Using CAPL-2
Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the levels of physical literacy (PL) in school children (10 to 16 years) in Santiago, Chile, and to explore the relationship between PL and body mass index (BMI). In addition, gender and age differences were analyzed in relation to PL levels in a context where childhood obesity remains a public health challenge. Methods: A total of 439 students in grades 5–8 were assessed using the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy-2 (CAPL-2) questionnaire. Demographic variables (sex, age, and BMI) were correlated with levels of motivation to engage in physical activity and physical activity knowledge. Chi-square and effect size were applied. Results: The results revealed a significant correlation between motivation for physical activity and gender, with boys showing higher levels of motivation than girls (χ² = 12.403, p < 0.006). In addition, an inverse relationship was observed between BMI and motivation (effect size = 0.198), suggesting that more motivated children tend to have a healthier BMI. Knowledge about physical activity increased with age (χ² = 60.460, p < 0.001) but did not have a significant influence on BMI. Conclusions: The findings highlight the need to design gender-specific interventions that enhance motivation as a key factor in promoting a healthy lifestyle and physical activity adherence. Public health strategies should include motivation-driven approaches to foster physical literacy and long-term engagement in physical activity, particularly for girls, to address pediatric health challenges in Chile. Public health policies should address these factors to improve pediatric health outcomes.
Bibliometric analysis on ocean literacy studies for marine conservation
The aim of this study is to present an overview of the current scientific literature pertaining to ocean literacy. We applied a bibliometric method to examine relational patterns among publications in a set of 192 papers indexed from 2004 to 2023 in Web of Science Core Collection, applying Price’s, Lotka’s, Bradford’s, and Zipf’s bibliometric laws to add more validation to VOSviewer and processing both data and metadata. The findings indicate a significant exponential growth in scientific output from 2004 to 2022 (R2 = 86%), with a substantial amount of scientific research being focused on ocean literacy. The analysis shows the thematic trends of terminologies such as knowledge and citizen perception of climate change in relation to oceans; the benefits of biodiversity management and ocean conservation; and ocean education and its relation to behavior and attitudes towards and awareness of oceans. The research and its theoretical perspectives prompt an investigation of the impacts of ocean literacy outside of education, thanks to the contributions of authors from more than fifty countries dedicated to the study of these activities.