Competitive projects

• Principal Investigator: Katharina Schmid
• Research group: GLEAD
• Funding body: Royal Society Edinburgh-Saltire / RSE Saltire International Collaboration Awards 2021
• Funding: 12.000,00 £
• Duration: 48 months

As Scotland’s National Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) supports high-quality academic research and public engagement activities. The RSE delivers upon its mission ‘to promote the Advancement of Learning and Useful Knowledge’ by supporting academic researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, and in assisting the development, dissemination, and deployment of research. The RSE’s Saltire Research Excellence Fellowships sit within, and deliver to, this overall mission.

Their purpose is to facilitate international collaboration between researchers based in Scotland with researchers in Europe for up to two years. Applications are invited from Scottish-based researchers to include a European Higher Education Institute (HEI) or Research Institute (RI) of your choice as per eligibility

• Principal Investigator: Janina Grabs
• Research group: IIS-GRRSE
• Funding body: Danida Fellowship Centre-Grants to Research Collaboration Projects supported through Denmark's International Development Cooperation
• Funding: 81.015,97 €
• Duration: 60 months

PACSMAC convenes researchers from CBS, the University of Jimma and the University of Dar es Salaam, to study how climate change and climate-change adaptation and mitigation strategies currently affect Ethiopia and Tanzania’s coffee VCs and might further (re)shape them in the medium and long term. Further, the project will examine how these transformations redistribute value-adding activities, economic benefits and environmental impacts spatially and across VCs. Three main questions guide the research:

1. How might climate change itself, alongside the mitigation and adaptation efforts intended to address it, affect the governance of coffee VCs originating in Ethiopia and Tanzania?
2. How do these changes affect the distribution of value along the chain, upgrading opportunities and farmer livelihoods?
3. How might these changes reshape the geography of coffee production and forest cover?

PACSMAC will contribute to scientific knowledge in several ways. First, it investigates the interaction between climate change, VCs, and farmer livelihoods, a critical but poorly understood sustainability nexus. Second, studying coffee VCs can identify risks that may emerge in other agricultural sectors. Because coffee is a particularly climate-sensitive crop, experience with it can inform scenarios for other sectoral futures. Finally, PACSMAC will develop policy recommendations (on land use, adaptive cultivars, intellectual property management and governmental policy) informed by an improved understanding of producer livelihoods and interactions with broader VC processes.

• Principal Investigator: Elia Marzal
• Research group: Derecho Patrimonial
• Funding body: Embajada de Francia
• Funding: 740,00 €
• Duration: 12 months

The project presented here aims to analyze a structural problem of complex or heterogeneous States (unitary, federal or decentralized), built on a difficult balance between unity and diversity. On the one hand, the affirmation of unity in relation to the titular subject of sovereignty, the people, is based on the premise of the formal equality of all citizens. This allows resorting to the fiction, which legitimizes the democratic system, of imputing to the group of citizens the will of the majority of them. On the other hand, the recognition of the existence of permanent (national) minorities, that is, of groups with an interest perceived as determining their identity or existence as a community and also structurally minority, prevents the functioning of that legitimizing fiction and forces to modulate the majority rule in decision making. But this breaks the formal equality of citizens.

• Principal Investigator: Jonathan Wareham
• Research group: IIK
• Funding body: European Commission Framework Programme (HORIZON) Elevating the scalability potential of European business (2021) (HORIZON-EIE-2021-SCALEUP-01)
• Funding: 163.375,00 €
• Duration: 27 months

The ATTRACT Phase-1(B) project delivers an important new angle to the already established and highly regarded ATTRACT Model which created a European eco-system for breakthrough detection & imaging (D&I) technology development based on coinnovation. The precursor H2020 ATTRACT Phase-1(A) and Phase-2 projects have already proven that - in principle - the development of breakthrough innovation from basic science towards market applications does not need to be a matter of chance. It can lead to much faster results if managed and supported consistently through the creation of an trusted ecosystem between research, academia, industry and public/private investment communities. In neither precursor projects, however, the ATTRACT Consortium specified topics to be funded and opted for a bottom up approach.

In light of the societal challenges that Europe faces, the ATTRACT Consortium now feels compelled to explore whether such approach remains valid, or whether ATTRACT - as an instrument - can work equally well when an element of research pre-determination is introduced. In the ATTRACT Phase-1(B) project, the pre-determining factor is 'D&I for Earth observation and monitoring', as such technologies directly contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of nature-human interaction, environmental changes and Climate Change. The ATTRACT Consortium will fund 30 breakthrough D&I concepts at €100.000 each. Third Party Open Call applicant consortia will have 12 months to investigate the scientific merits, technical feasibility, and potential game-changing applicability potential of their concept up to TRL level 3-5. Technologies should be capable of collecting data (physical, chemical, biological, etc., characteristics) with high specificity and extreme sensitivity whilst offering high spatial and temporal resolution and massive parallelism. They should be suitable for seamless integration into pervasive, low cost, and low-power ICT systems (incl. portable, wearable, IoT).

• Principal Investigator: Martí Guasch
• Research group: GREF
• Funding body: EIT – FOOD, Study of RIS Innovation Grants (KAVA 18265 - 21)
• Funding: 26.875,00 €
• Duration: 3 months

Esade’s Martí Guasch (GREF) carried out an impact study of EIT Food’s RIS Business Creation programmes. This was done through a primary data collection (interview questionnaire) of beneficiaries of RIS Business Creation programs. The analysed data was presented in an impact evaluation report for EIT Food in January 2022.

• Ref.: 2022-1-FR01-KA220-HED-000089236
• Principal Investigator: Lisa Hehenberger
• Research group: Centre for Social Impact
• Funding body: European Commission – Erasmus +
• Funding: 74.600,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

Over the last twenty years climate change has revealed the need for alternatives to the current ways of organising our societal and entrepreneurial models. Social innovation and entrepreneurship are more than ever relevant to take up this challenge and the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE hereafter) has been a growing economy which now represents a large part of EU countries’ workforce (e.g. 16% of jobs in France and 12.5% in Spain) and is being encouraged by the EU and the OECD through the Global Action Promoting the SSE initiative (which ESSEC is part of). By teaching about new models of social enterprises, HEIs will foster more Inclusion and diversity in all fields of education, training and beyond, leading their students to discover different business models for their future organisations. While ‘the global crisis has given rise to critical voices that call for business schools to accept their responsibility as social institutions and become better attuned to public interests’, research in the Journal of Business Ethics has shown ‘the need for introducing more critical thinking and ethical debate in the classroom, as well as training executive leaders to question the current state of affairs’ (extracts from an article by by Esade Professor David Murillo and Steen Vallentin from Copenhagen Business School in DoBetter by ESADE). Andrew J. Hoffman states in a Stanford Social Innovation Review article that research found that 88 percent of business school students think that learning about social and environmental issues in business is a priority, and 67 percent want to incorporate environmental sustainability into their future jobs. To meet this demand, the percentage of business schools that require students to take a course dedicated to business and society increased from 34 percent in 2001 to 79 percent in 2011. ‘Environmental sustainability’ mentioned above and the fight against climate change are also relevant to a large extent to social entrepreneurship insofar as social and environmental issues are closely intertwined, best embodied by the French civil movement of the Gilets Jaunes as the ‘end of the month, end of the world’ slogan. Social X-Change will most notably enable the five consortium partners to promote the internationalisation of teaching and learning on the subject of social entrepreneurship in HEIs through the creation of this network of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centres with a strong connection to practitioners. Indeed, while all HEIs of the consortium have initiated research on the subject in their own countries with local practitioners, there is a gap in international knowledge exchange and transfer of good practice that can be filled by an international network of Centres strongly connected with an international practitioner base.

• Ref.: 2022-1-PL01-KA220-HED-000089791
• Principal Investigator: Lotta Hassi / Nanita Ferrone
• Research group: Fusion Point
• Funding body: European Commission – Erasmus +
• Funding: 54.632,00 €
• Duration: 28 months

The Teach-BEAST project is primarily focused on the priority "Stimulating innovative practices in learning and teaching". Academic institutions have the task of adapting their university offer to the real requirements of the labour markets. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary for academic teachers to continuously improve their professional competences. The key issue here is to constantly search for new teaching methods, improve curricula, effectively reach out to students, arouse their imagination and interests, and make the student's work interesting and attractive. Students expect from a teacher (currently perceived as a person detached from society) not only knowledge, but also look for such personality traits in him/her that will make him/her arouse certain interests. The goal of the project is to develop and implement an innovative approach to teaching STEM subjects in which the teacher develops skills related to STEM subjects in non-technical majors by changing the teaching model:1\Profiling STEM subjects according to the field of study and the real requirements of the labor market, in order to show the practical usefulness of the skills and knowledge transferred in STEM subjects;2\Transforming the forms of classes to a project model created based on the framework of Design Thinking; and3\Implementing the role of a teacher-mentor asking pertinent questions to stimulate reflection, discovery of passions, and thinking about careers in terms of professional identity.

• Ref.: PID2021-128099NA-I00
• Principal Investigator: Kate Barasz / Ioannis Evangelidis
• Research group: JUICE – ESADE D3
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 30.033,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

People constantly and effortlessly acquire information about one another’s decisions. By simply observing a stranger on the street, a colleague in the office, or a consumer in a shop, one can deduce any number of implicit choices others previously made: the cars they apparently decided to drive, the clothes they chose to wear, the food they selected to order. From all of this information, observers form impressions (and judgments) of fellow consumers.

However, it is also true that choice may not reveal preferences or, at least, may obscure a more nuanced and multifaceted reality. As behavioral scientists have well established, decision-making is complex; actors face difficult trade-offs between attributes and options, and are susceptible to any number of contextual factors that influence decisions.

These mistaken inferences can have a range of implications. At the most basic (and perhaps benign) level, they may lead to systematic interpersonal misperceptions and mispredictions with implications for both interpersonal relationships and business contexts. But beyond the benign, mistaken inferences can also have more menacing effects, such as inciting fundamental misinterpretations of the motives underlying others choices with the potential to trigger or exacerbate deep-seated resentment and misunderstanding. Simply put, when predicting others preferences, there are many situations in which people have incentive to be right but are often predictably wrong.

Our research seeks to expand the corpus of knowledge investigating the inferences observers make about other consumers choices. This research project will focus on developing the literature on choice perception, or how people come to make sense of what others choose. We aim to (1) identify the heuristics people use when evaluating others choices, (2) enumerate the ways in which this may lead us to systematically incorrect conclusions, and (3) investigate opportunities for intervention.

• Ref.: ---
• Principal Investigator: Angel Saz
• Research group: EsadeGeo
• Funding body: Ministerio de Asuntos exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación (MAEC)
• Funding: 18.000,00 €
• Duration: 5 months

This project aimed at analyzing and putting forward proposals for the strategic challenges (economic, monetary, technological, industrial, energy, and social) facing Spain and the European Union – prompted by Spain’s presidency of the Council of the EU during the second half of 2023. The project aims to examine the challenges ahead in an academic overview that provides a Spanish perspective for a European conversation. Esade is the ideal academic centre to obtain and then present informative and analytical results in a final report. This project consists of three seminars and a session of presentation of conclusions – and marks the beginning of a process of debate and reflection in which all the seminars share the same objective.

• Ref.: ACM2022_12
• Principal Investigator: Teresa Duplá
• Research group: Conflict Management
• Funding body: Aristos Campus Mundus (ACM)
• Funding: 1.800,00 €
• Duration: 12 months

This project has a multidisciplinary nature: basic and applied research; and is part of the specialization area FA1 of the call. We intend to develop an original and current study of the legal and social challenges emanating from the new disability model accepted by Law 8/2021, on June 2 in Spain. Therefore, a team has been set up made up of six research groups from the three Spanish ACM universities, without prejudice to the inclusion of researchers from US universities. 
The project's main objective is to prepare a monographic collective work on the core topic of the research, and the joint publication of articles in impact scientific journals. Open scientific meetings are planned to reflect on the matter. Secondarily, an attempt will be made to prepare proposals for competitive calls, linked to the research topic.

• Ref.: PID2021-123869NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Carolina Villegas
• Research group: GREF
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 17.460,30 €
• Duration: 36 months

The increase in company markups is broad-based across countries and sectors but the rise has been particularly sharp in the technology and pharmaceutical industries. In recent decades, the weight of the economy has shifted towards high tech, innovative sectors. Hence, understanding the dynamics of these sectors has become ever more important, and we need more evidence on the link between high-markup firms and observed changes in real economic outcomes, including innovation, to fully gauge the importance of this phenomenon for the overall economy, and the potential long-term effects.

This research proposal aims to document the interaction between product market competition and innovation. The first part of the project will explore the characteristics of innovative firms, identified as those firms that patent standard and/or breakthrough innovations, and the second part of the project will delve into the relationship between competition and innovation. To answer key long-standing questions on firm dynamics and aggregate growth, the project will use a new firm-level dataset from 12 advanced and emerging countries having information on over 138 million patents linked to information on about 2.4 million companies. The dataset includes both large and small firms (and importantly, both listed and private firms) that will allow the research team to identify breakthrough innovations, productivity frontier and laggard firms, as well as product market leaders.

• Ref.: PID2021-128762NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Joaquim Castañer / Rebeca Carpi
• Research group: Derecho Patromonial
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 25.410,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

Within the context of the EU, Spain is one of the countries with the lowest rate of start-ups per capita. Among the reasons for this lower volume of emerging companies are the financial difficulties they face, especially in the area of bank financing. Although in recent years alternative financing mechanisms have been developed for start-ups in the form of investment, which have been very useful, these mechanisms do not cover the total needs of the sector. There is evidence that shows the limited use made of other debt financing systems that our legal system allows, and that can complement the set of non-bank financing mechanisms of these emerging companies. In this project we consider that a financing system for start-ups will be more complete and balanced the better it incorporates all the possible ways of obtaining economic resources that our legal system allows, and that to facilitate access to all those financing possibilities outside the banking system requires a complete and comprehensive study of the non-bank financial legal architecture and its potential.

The matter is of undoubted interest for legal science, either from contractual and credit law, with regard to the contractual configuration of legal financing relationships, as well as in relation to the protection and reinforcement mechanisms (guarantees) that these agreements need in order to be accepted by the financial and credit market. The clarification of the entire aforementioned legal framework is essential to specify the financial functionality of each option according to the type of start-up.

Under these premises, the general objective of the project is to review forms of credit other than those usual in banking practice, including both traditional non-bank financing contracts and new credit categories, such as project financing contracts, convertible loans, loan crowdfunding (or crowdlending) and Venture debt. The guarantee rights, typical or atypical, that can reinforce the right of return of the financier and their confidence in the operation will also be analysed.

Investigating these contractual formulas, their characteristic and differential elements, and the disadvantages and advantages (risks and remedies) that they present, will clarify the legal regime of the various options, and will allow the construction of a comprehensive and complete financing system for start-ups that enhances the development of the sector.

• Ref.: PID2021-129026NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Ivanka Visnjic
• Research group: IIK
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 50.820,00 €
• Duration: 48 months

Sustainable business model (SBM) innovation represents inclusion of sustainability objectives in new business model development. This nascent phenomenon promises to help corporations that struggle to become purpose-driven, identify synergies between shareholder and stakeholder objectives. While existing research has focused on the categorization of SBMs, the question of how large corporations can engage in SBM innovation and transform their existing business models towards sustainability remains unanswered. Thankfully, a great deal of the transformation questions have already been considered in the broader business model literature, particularly concerning the transformation to service and digital business models. Combining new empirical research with learnings from the extant literature on business model transformation, we intend to answer the key questions regarding transformation towards SBMs in corporate settings. In doing so, our objective is to advance SBM literature and to help growing number of interested corporations follow the lead of the early corporate adopters of SBM.

The overarching objective of this project is to advance the understanding of transformation towards sustainable business model(s) in corporate settings. This includes:

1. building theory on how companies should (re)organize to promote creation and development of SBMs;
2. building theory on how they should go about SBM development and scaling; and
3. testing these theories.

• Ref.: PID2021-123748NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Ariadna Dumitrescu
• Research group: GREF
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 34.303,50 €
• Duration: 36 months

Information disclosure is a central issue in the recent policy and regulatory debate, as it is generally considered to play a fundamental role in promoting market efficiency. Disclosure represents the extent to which all relevant information regarding the firm is made public and available to all economic agents in a timely manner. The information disclosed can be information impounded in the trading process in the financial market (stock prices, transaction prices, the volume of those transactions and the identity of the order flow) or information about fundamental value of financial assets (financial, accounting and auditing reports, information on shareholders, corporate governance or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) information). Both these types of disclosure are essential in the corporate and financial world because it ensures market transparency, reduces information asymmetry, reduces market manipulation, allows investors to make informed decisions and permits more efficient allocation of capital. The main objective of the project is to provide novel theoretical and empirical evidence on the economic and financial effects of market transparency and firms information disclosure.

Our aim is to provide a better understanding of how information disclosure shapes the structure of financial markets, their efficiency, and the welfare impact on market participants. We explore these problems from a microeconomic perspective looking at different types of information disclosure both from the firms and from the investors point of view. In particular, we plan to structure our analysis into two lines of research: one in which we study the information produced in the trading process and one in which we study the information disclosed by firms. These two lines of research have a common goal of analysing the effects of information disclosure on market performance and welfare of market participants.

• Ref.: PID2021-128460NA-I00
• Principal Investigator: George Chondrakis
• Research group: EEI - GRIE
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 60.066,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

The process of creative destruction is a defining characteristic of market-based economies. This consists of the continuous foundation of entrepreneurial ventures that often challenge incumbent firms by providing novel and better solutions to customer needs. The ever-increasing rate of technological change has accelerated this process and affords a variety of technology-enabled business models. Such innovations contribute to economic growth, employment, and the broader upscaling of production capacity. It is therefore important for managers and policymakers to understand the process of formation and growth of innovative ventures.

Of course, this process is far from straightforward as there is compelling evidence documenting the high failure rates of startups. Startups often fail to attract financial, technological, human, and other types of resources that allow them to test their business model and scale up successfully. Our goal is to develop a coherent framework that documents the frictions startups face when acquiring resources as well as potential solutions to these.

This project will focus on three important aspects that can impact resource acquisition. First, we will focus on the role of entrepreneurial education and training to examine how it influences entrepreneurs in their decisions to target specific types of resources. Related to that, we also want to examine how different types of entrepreneurial decision-making impact firm performance and survival. Second, we will study how different communication strategies, in particular the type and tone of the language entrepreneurs use when promoting their products, influences scaling up and survival. Third, we will focus on a particular type of technological resource, that is artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies. We want to understand how entrepreneurial firms adopt this general-purpose technology and whether it impacts their ability to scale up successfully. Based on these broad questions, we develop a set of interrelated sub-projects that aim to enhance our knowledge of startup resource acquisition strategies and their relationship with firm performance and survival.

• Ref.: PID2021-128333NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Josep Bisbe / Petya Platikanova
• Research group: GREF
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 84.700,00 €
• Duration: 48 months

In recent years, we have witnessed an unprecedented interest in sustainability-related issues: governments, households, regulators, media, and corporations all face an increasing pressure to operate with social and environmental responsibility. Corporations are now required to meet competing demands from stakeholders with diverse sustainability-related needs. Starting from the common belief that corporate sustainability creates long-term value for all stakeholders, in this proposal we argue that sustainability practices, along with information flows regarding such practices, are shaped by internal management systems and by disclosure policies. We seek to develop and integrate inside-out and outside-in accounting perspectives on sustainability (Maas et al., 2016; Grewal and Serafeim, 2020), and so adopt a holistic accounting-based view of ESG management and reporting. Inside-out perspectives consider a performance improvement-oriented management view and focus on internal management processes and decisions regarding ESG practices, as well as on their implications. Outside-in perspectives on sustainability in contrast consider a disclosure-oriented view and focus on the ESG information publicly communicated to external stakeholders and its implications. The integration of both perspectives entails the examination of whether and how internal management processes and decisions regarding ESG practices and ESG public disclosure in corporate communications are associated.

The project is organised in three main parts. In Part 1, we adopt an inside-out perspective that focuses on management accounting practices. More specifically, we examine the conditions under which management control systems can contribute to improve internal decision-making around ESG performance and, hence, contribute to a more effective management of sustainability issues. We examine what are the broader-scope configurations of management control practices that companies use to manage different sustainability strategies. We further examine how top management teams use management control systems to deal with the complex information processing activities that result from the multiple and diverging objectives associated with sustainability.

In Part 2, we adopt an outside-in perspective from a financial accounting angle that focuses on the demand for sustainability information in corporate disclosure to external stakeholders and the effects of such disclosure. In this part, we examine how ESG practices are presented in corporate communication, with a focus on the use of alternative disclosure channels and the real effect of ESG disclosure on the ESG achievements. In this part, we are interested in financial analysts and their expectation regarding sustainability performance, creditors and their willingness to offer better lending conditions to ESG-intensive borrowers, and investors with their effect on compensation contracts.

Finally, in Part 3, we integrate the inside-out and outside-in perspectives with a close examination of the relationships between internal management control practices and external reporting on ESG-related topics. In this part, we explore a unique setting, where Spanish public and private companies disclose ESG indicators as mandated by accounting standards (i.e., non-financial disclosure required since 2018).

• Ref.: PID2021-129002NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Angel Saz
• Research group: EsadeGeo
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 60.500,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

Nationalism is on the rise across the world. Global governance organisations (GGOs), including Treaty-based international organisations, NGOs and transnational networks are not immune to this. Constant contestation by national actors of GGOs is affecting their legitimacy, as perceived by states, individuals and corporations. There is little empirical data on how nationalism is affecting said legitimacy, though.

Through sentiment big data analysis, using the GDELT database of world news, this project intends to fill the vacuum by extracting all media coverage data of over 78 GGOs operating in different policy fields in ten countries (in any language). Given the relatively big sample, our findings will allow us to identify relevant GGO legitimation and de-legitimation trends, providing quantifiable data on how and to what extent nationalists affect a GGOs legitimacy, and whether or how these effects vary by country.

Our results will inform both future research on GGO legitimacy at the managerial and political science levels, as well as provide relevant information to GGOs themselves, many of which have developed in-house communication strategies over the years to combat delegitimation by nationalist leaders and polarising figures. Similarly, these results will also contribute to the mainstreaming of big data analysis in the social sciences, and a gender perspective on GGO legitimation.

• Principal Investigator: Pedro Rey Biel
• Research group: IGDP-ESADEGov-GLIGP
• Funding body: Convocatòria de Recerca Social La Caixa 2021 - SRC2021, LA CAIXA
• Funding: 100.000,00 €
• Duration: TBC

Despite the empirical revolution in social research in the last two decades, this does not seem to be fully reflected in a systematic use of research when deciding, implementing and evaluating public policies. The project will aim to understand the factors stopping the adoption of evidence-based policies. The project team will design randomized control trials (RCT), where a subset of municipalities whose representatives will be informed of a rigorous piece of scientific evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of an uncontroversial and costless strategy to boost local economies, while a similar randomly chosen control group will not receive this information.

The team will use a novel framework, identifying the factors stopping the adoption of evidence-based policies: in particular, it looks at whether the sender of the information, the matching between the send of information and the message itself, influence the adoption of policies. The project aims to be a keystone in understanding and overcoming the challenges we are facing towards the adoption and evaluation of evidence-based policies. Spain spends 1.25% of its GDP on Research and Development. How can we make sure that this research is effectively used to increase the welfare of our societies? The project will provide for the first time, a unique experimental dataset isolating the different factors that may explain why scientific evidence is seldom translated into policy, and it will allow us to measure, in a controlled environment, their relative importance.

• Principal Investigator: Jordi Nin
• Research group: JUICE – ESADE D3
• Research members: Nuria Agel and Irene Unceta
• Funding body: Líneas Estratégicas 2021, MICINN-MCIU - Next Generation
• Funding: 77.510,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

The REMISS project proposes to develop a new methodology that allows granting a trust and credibility score to both social media accounts and messages that may not be truthful. To this end, it proposes the combination of several techniques that, until now, have been developed in independent silos, producing powerful results in terms of detection, although little interpretable. The project proposes a methodology based on propagation models developed with Deep Learning techniques, entering deeply into the characterization of the message. To do this, a multimodal analysis approach is adopted that allows the extraction of a representation that combines the text and image information, and the embedding of the message in a joint multimodal space. The methodology is complemented with a characterization of the text derived from metrics obtained through a laboratory study carried out using sensorics and a specific design of exposure to various messages to a population sample. This analysis will allow us to understand the motivations behind the sharing of information (and misinformation) and the types of characteristics that make a text credible and susceptible of being propagated.

• Ref.: PID2021-126300NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Luca del Viva
• Research group: GREF
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 33.880,00 €
• Duration: 48 months

Many trading strategies that have been used by the asset management industry in general suffers from rare but severe crashes. As an example, between April 2020 and November 2020, as consequence of the COVID pandemic shock, the momentum strategy lost roughly 38% of its portfolio value. More severe losses were reported during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, where momentum lost roughly 80% in just 2 months (March 2009 to April 2009). These figures emphasize the importance of developing wealth management strategies that are less affected by crashes and that incorporate more accurate information about future returns. Motivated by the need to improve current trading strategies, the research team recently developed and tested a new methodology that can be applied to existing trading strategies and might help in improving the return performance as well as reducing the probability of negative returns of the available trading strategies.

The initial empirical evidence showed promising results on the possibility to equip the standard methodologies used in wealth management with a sign indicator that will allows to avoid crashes in the strategy. This project will extend the study to a set of 452 equity return anomalies and improve them in order to reduce the probability of crashes in the applied strategy and increase the stability of the long-term returns in a sample of European and Asian firms. The directional signal strategy could be applied to the set of the other securities available in the market like fixed income and options.

• Ref.: PID2021-124282NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: Jordi Trullén
• Research group: BUNED
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 101.640,00 €
• Duration: 48 months

Talent management (TM), typically understood as the set of activities and processes that involve the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement, retention, and deployment of those talents which are of particular value to an organisation to create sustainable strategic success has become a critical issue in current organizations. Rapid technological change coupled with broader socioeconomic and demographic trends have created an increasing need for companies to face fierce competition in attracting, developing, and retaining the best talent. Despite the internationalization of TM ideas, its main principles and exemplary cases remain Anglo-Saxon, and little is known about how such ideas translate in other contextual settings. As such, this project pursues the following research goals:

1. Improve our understanding of talent management (TM) strategies adopted by large Spanish organizations. Specifically, what practices do these organizations implement to attract, develop, and retain their talent?
2. Analyze in further depth the TM strategies in place in two critical industries of the Spanish economy: hospitality and automotive.
3. Explore the barriers and facilitators, at a workplace level, concerning the effective implementation of TM practices.

In the first stage, the project will collect data from a stratified and representative sample of large Spanish organizations (with more than 250 employees) on the TM policies and practices that are in place in their organizations, as well as how the COVID19 pandemic has impacted them. The second stage of the project will carry out comparative case studies to capture the rich and complex realities about which we are enquiring. Cases will be equally drawn from the hospitality and automotive industries, both critical in the Spanish economy.

Finally, in the last stage of the project, we will design a multi-level model of effective TM practices implementation, which can be tested in a selected number of firms in the hospitality or automotive industries. Data will be collected both at the individual and group level, asking employees and middle managers. Through these actions we intend to map the reality of TM practice in large Spanish firms and critical industries, as well as to understand key success factors in putting TM strategies to work.

• Ref.: ACM2022_11
• Principal Investigator: Ivanka Visnjic 
• Research group: IIK
• Funding body: Aristos Campus Mundus (ACM)
• Funding: 2.500,00 €
• Duration: 12 months

This project will be carried out jointly by researchers from the Esade Institute for Innovation and Knowledge Management and the Management Department at Deusto Business School, in the area of ​​specialization FA2, in the form of a study on business (re)organization, the creation and development of Sustainable Business Models (SBMs). Our goal is to facilitate the understanding of the transformation towards SBMs, help interested companies to follow the example set by the pioneers in adopting SBMs and advance theoretical development. We will contrast recent empirical research on pioneers implementing SBMs with theoretical foundations on business model transformation. Therefore, our objectives are; (1) build a theory on how companies should (re)organize to promote the creation of SBMs, and (2) build a theory on how SBMs should be developed and scaled at the project level.

• Ref.: PID2021-127560NB-I00
• Principal Investigator: François Collet / Daniel Arenas
• Research group: IIS-GRRSE
• Funding body: Generación de Conocimiento 2021 Ministerio Ciencia e Innovación
• Funding: 25.410,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

Environmental management research shows that governance and regulatory organizations can be very slow at engaging with a new biophysical issue, losing precious time to fight key issues such as climate change. This is surprising given that experts working in these organizations are exposed to scientific research and responsible for developing the frameworks and plans that guide the management of natural resources and ecosystems. Deliberations within and around these organizations are a necessary and vital step in the development of strategies and action plans to address environmental problems. Our project aims to explain how and why new biophysical topics emerge in the deliberations of collaborative environmental governance organizations, and extend prior research on environmental governance.

The project will analyse the emergence of environmental topics in river basin governance organizations and society using topic modeling techniques, and investigate the mechanisms that cause changes in river basin governance organizations discourse using econometrics and word embeddings techniques. More specifically, the project, aims at investigating the following questions:

• How and when do new biophysical issues emerge as topics in the deliberations of collaborative governance organizations?
• Does discourse at a broader social level precedes or follow deliberations in river basin organizations?
• What is the role of participants from different constituencies in the emergence of these topics?
• What is the influence of international, national, regional political, economic, social and ecological factors in the evolution of discourse?
• What can explain differences in discourse evolution observed across different collaborative governance organizations and countries?

The research results will advance our knowledge of processes that drive environmental topics emergence in collaborative environmental governance organizations; processes which affect whether society can respond in a timely manner to climate change emergencies.

• Thesis project director: Xavier Ferras
• Beneficiary: Bingjie Ding
• Research group: IIK
• Funding body: Doctorats Industrials DI 2021, AGAUR
• Funding: 33.960,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

The academic community can benefit from this call for research bodies, in particular public and private universities in the university system of Catalonia, as well as research centres, hospital foundations and technology centres based in Catalonia. Business and academic organizations must have signed a collaboration agreement to jointly develop a DI project.

• Thesis project director: Núria Agell and Marc Torrens
• Beneficiary: Pietro Fronte
• Research group: JUICE – ESADE D3
• Funding body: Doctorats Industrials DI 2021, AGAUR
• Funding: 33.960,00 €
• Duration: 36 months

The academic community can benefit from this call for research bodies, in particular public and private universities in the university system of Catalonia, as well as research centres, hospital foundations and technology centres based in Catalonia. Business and academic organizations must have signed a collaboration agreement to jointly develop a DI project.

• Principal Investigator: Josep Alías
• Research group: EEI-GRIE
• Research members: Davide Rovira, Laura Castellucci, Victoria Cochrane and Montse Jimenez
• Funding body: Generalitat de Catalunya-FEDER
• Funding: 229.381,00 €
• Duration: 24 months

This project is part of the Territorial Specialization and Competitiveness (PECT) projects framed in the RIS3CAT (Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization in Catalonia). RIS3CAT promotes the vision of Catalonia as an industrial-based country, which has an open, competitive and sustainable economy, and which combines talent, creativity, a diversified business fabric and its own system of research excellence, within the framework of a dynamic, enterprising and inclusive society. It is home to multinationals and local companies, well-established and internationally leading sectors and emerging technology sectors.