The impacts of leadership in the quality of municipal public services: case study of a portuguese municipal council

[EN]The present research work, based on some of the components of the Common Assessment Framework, sets to analyse the influence held by leadership in specific factors that constitute the organisational climate, and also the impact that these factors have on the quality of municipal public services. For the purposes of this study, we propose Likert’s exploitative autocratic and participative leadership styles to explain the genesis, structure and workflow. As far as the organisational climate is concerned, the variables used are motivation, satisfaction, empowerment, conflict and stress. The main conclusions that arose was that a participative leader confers higher relevance to the quality of service, through motivation, satisfaction, empowerment and human resources positive results, than an exploitative autocratic leader. Performed contributions are based on the empiric research hereby presented, and new research guidelines are proposed. The research methodology used was qualitative, based on the case study.

METAMODELO PARA LA SIMULACIÓN Y OPTIMIZACIÓN DE SECUENCIAS DE ATORNILLADO EN UNIONES DE TORRES DE AEROGENERADOR

Esta Tesis Doctoral presenta un metamodelo para la estimaci�n del fen�meno de interacci�n el�stica en las uniones atornilladas de torres de aerogenerador, cuya principal particularidad geom�trica es la existencia de un hueco entre bridas. El metamodelo permite conocer la p�rdida de carga que cada tornillo de la uni�n experimenta durante la secuencia de atornillado a consecuencia de la interacci�n el�stica ocurrida. El metamodelo consta de cuatro par�metros (resortes lineales) que simulan la respuesta de la uni�n durante la secuencia, y cuyos valores se obtienen a partir de dos an�lisis est�tico-lineales. Se ha creado un algoritmo que, a trav�s del metamodelo, permite llevar a cabo la simulaci�n de secuencias de atornillado; dicho proceso consiste en reproducir una determinada secuencia de atornillado a partir de las cargas introducidas en los tornillos, de forma que, a trav�s de la estimaci�n de las interacciones el�sticas ocurridas durante la secuencia, proporciona como resultado las cargas finales en los tornillos. Tambi�n se ha desarrollado una metodolog�a que, mediante su correspondiente algoritmo, permite optimizar secuencias de atornillado. El proceso de optimizaci�n consiste en calcular las cargas a aplicar a los tornillos a lo largo de una determinada secuencia a fin de obtener en ellos una determinada distribuci�n final de cargas, que generalmente se desea uniforme y se denomina precarga. Combinando los procesos de simulaci�n y optimizaci�n, el metamodelo permite definir la secuencia �ptima para una determinada uni�n. Los resultados obtenidos han sido validados mediante modelos param�tricos de elementos finitos. Por �ltimo, debe remarcarse que, adem�s de proporcionar buenos resultados, tanto el proceso de simulaci�n como el de optimizaci�n se llevan a cabo con un coste computacional muy bajo gracias a la simplicidad del metamodelo.

Linking transformational leadership and organizational trust: has organizational commitment a mediating effect on it?

[EN] The main goal of this study is to analyze how organizational commitment has a mediating effect on the relation between transformational leadership and organizational trust. Therefore we developed an organization analysis based on a survey that was used to collect primary data from a sample of 58 employees. We obtained a 71% response rate and these data were analyzed using quantitative methodological techniques and linear regression. The research was conducted at the Serralves Foundation (Porto, Portugal) to empirically test the proposed research model and its hypotheses. The empirical results confirm that transformational leadership positively enhances organizational trust. However, transformational leadership and organizational trust are not significantly influenced by organizational commitment, thus not having a mediating effect on this relationship. Such results assume particular relevance because they become a basis for comparative studies in similar organizations. This study brings some theoretical contributions to the literature by analyzing the mediating effect of organizational commitment on the relation between transformational leadership and organizational trust in cultural organizations and has also some practical management implications, as it draws attention to the importance of a set of practices, job satisfaction oriented, which can effectively lead to organizational commitment intervention in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational trust.