The present issue contains four research articles, subjected to the double, blind peer-review process.

Globalization and the Human Factor in the Public Service Organization is written by Demetrios Argyriades. The assumption underpinning the efforts to “shrink the State” may imply that ongoing globalization of markets had made traditional forms of government intervention in economic sphere redundant and possibly harmful. In any case, markets were supposed to be more efficient at allocating resources than either politicians or the professional bureaucrats.

According to Argyriades, this view though not completely unfounded, takes insufficiently into account a subtle, multiple shift which, since the 1980s, has drastically altered the balance of power world-wide: from the South and from the East to the Northwest; from the public sector to private enterprise; and in a number of countries, from organized labour to management. The dominant ideology during the 1980s and 1990s reflected this state of affairs and it continues in the 21st Century, however there is a need for its revision.

The second article is written by Heber Bernardo Magallón González, Evaristo Galeana Figueroa and Camilo Prado-Roman. Its title is Banking innovations and their effect on profitability. The objective is to address these questions by analyzing multiple empirical articles published at different times, in different countries, and with various innovations typologies.

The paper is divided into three sections. First, it presents a chronology of the evolution of banks, their main innovations, and events that have modified the banking business model to adapt it to banking sector today. The second part is based on bibliometric tools to present the primary references of the articles analyzing the relationship between innovation and bank profitability and its conceptual structure. The third section analyzes the concept of branchless banking and its factors. Three findings stand out: 1) according to the empirical literature consulted, it is concluded that innovation does affect profitability, 2) publications have grown in recent years, with China being the most productive country and the United States the mostinfluential one, and 3) The concept of branchless banking is a viable alternative to measure innovation in the Mexican banking sector.

Virtual tourism in the post-pandemic reality: Economic-financial flows is the next article. Its authors are Víctor Fernández Calvo, Alexander Rühl and Renata Kubus. The objective of this research is to analyze how virtual tourism viability is achieved in face of post-pandemic reality stemming from economic and financial flows of companies in the sector.

The analysis is based on surveys from organizations such as MCI Spain and EventoPlus as well as information obtained from ten professional congresses on health, research as well as corporate topics. Five of these congresses are face-to-face (pre-pandemic), four are virtual and one is hybrid (post-pandemic). The results show that virtual events viability is mainly achieved by sustainability, security, audio-visual elements, and types of event formats. The main conclusion is that the post-pandemic reality demands from congress tourism the creation of new, smart, and sustainable ideas to improve the overall satisfaction of value chain participants.

Paola Irene Mayorga Salamanca is the author of the fourth article, titled: Redefining Corporate Social Responsibility and its relation to Sustainable Development Goals. This article's objective is to redefine Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its relation to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) based on organizational performance and competitiveness. It highlights the importance of including a new dimension of sustainability in organizations. The main conclusion is that Corporate Social Responsibility constitutes one of the most relevant global efforts to make sustainable development goals concrete and measurable.

We would like to express our gratitude to authors for their papers. We thank the readers for recommending and citing Mercados y Negocios, and our editorial team for not giving up in times of hard work.