The socioeconomic changes that many countries have been experiencing in recent decades, caused by structural factors or by specific circumstances, where the pandemic crisis of COVID-19 is only the most recent example, have posed challenges to organizations, which present themselves more and more and in various forms as threatened by the possibility of fulfilling their mission. Public and private sectors increasingly present themselves as insufficient to respond effectively to day-to-day requests. This context of instability and the resulting impacts for non-profit organizations pose serious problems to the way in which governance is exercised and served as a motivation for carrying out a study that aimed to understand the influence of strategy and human resources on the governance of these organizations. A review of the literature on the variables under study made it possible to identify the sub-dimensions associated with each one of them and the respective indicators. Thus, for a quantitative study, it was possible to apply a questionnaire to 242 Holy Houses of Mercy in Portugal to understand the direct and indirect influences of strategic management and human resources management on the governance of these institutions. The results obtained show the existence of a positive relationship between the variables under analysis, confirming that not only do these variables influence, by themselves and directly, the governance of the institutions studied, but also the strategy influences human resources policies, which in turn have implications for the way the Holy Houses of Mercy deal with aspects associated with governance. It is concluded that, in general, for these organizations to be more effective in efforts to improve their governance processes, they must focus on strategic management and human resources management instruments.

The economic and social environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has brought additional pressure on supply chains because they now have more pressure to develop and adapt to a context of economic constraint. Delays in the supply chain can bring consequences such as the lack of food products by retailers, transporters and manufacturers. Thus, this study aims to examine the supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic in small- and medium-sized food companies in the central region of Portugal, identifying potential problems and pointing out the respective solutions. For this purpose, the study uses a qualitative methodology through semi-structured interviews. It was found that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do not have a codified supply chain and that generally, these companies have a minimal budget, which requires a constant search for new suppliers that represent a reduction in costs. Moreover, most of the companies surveyed faced unexpected challenges, such as a lack of alternative suppliers. The present paper is original because it studies the supply chain in SMEs in the food sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it allows the ascertainment of practical suggestions for these companies to improve, as well as contributing to the clarification of the literature on the supply chain in times of crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

This research aims to detect the factors that best explain the performance of regional innovation in the European Union (EU), in the year 2019, and compare the obtained results with the factors used to elucidate the performance of regional innovation in the EU during the year 2016. This comparison allowed us to identify the variations that have occurred during these 3 years. The methodology used is quantitative and served to identify the factors that clarify the performance of regional innovation in the EU in 2019. The data collected was treated in the econometric software Eviews10. Estimations used a multiple linear regression method. The attained results show that with the implementation of the Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization (RIS3), the Leader and Strong Regions benefited from its implementation. On the other hand, Moderate and Modest Regions failed to improve their innovative performance with the implementation of RIS3. On the practical contributions, it provides suggestions to the actors of the triple helix (Academy–Government–Industry) to improve the performance of innovation. Furthermore, it contributes to the theory by updating the knowledge of the existing literature with new dimensions from the 2019 RIS database. This research is original as it allows to appraise the evolution of the open innovative performance of the regions, by using comparative data from 2019 and 2016.