Total Quality Management and Corporate Social Responsibility. Literature review. The case of Nabeiro Delta Cafés Group

The relationship between the themes of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Social Responsibility (CSR) through the concepts, approaches and models of excellence is a reality of sustainable and stable companies. Being organizations, people, act correctly and rightly do in society go through a quality management and social responsibility thereof. It is based on these two philosophies (Total Quality Management and Corporate Social Responsibility), which developed this literature review work, essentially based on a relational analysis in two papers, namely: "TQM and CSR Nexus" by Ghobadian et al. (2007) and "The Corporate Social Responsibility Audit Within the Quality Management Framework," de Kok et al. (2001) and applied to an organizational situation in concrete: the Nabeiro Delta Cafés Group - SGPS, SA.

Quality Management

The purpose of this chapter is to enable registered health and social care prac - titioners to assume a clinical and/or a professional leadership role in quality management in the health and social care sectors. The contents in this chap - ter will strengthen the management competences of practitioners working in these sectors, including critical thinking, critical reflection, problem solving and decision -making, thus improving the quality in health and social care services.

Soil quality assessment in conservation agriculture systems

Soil is a key resource that provides the basis of food production and sustains and delivers several ecosystems services including regulating and supporting services such as water and climate regulation, soil formation and the cycling of nutrients carbon and water. During the last decades, population growth, dietary changes and the subsequent pressure on food production, have caused severe damages on soil quality as a consequence of intensive, high input-based agriculture. While agriculture is supposed to maintain and steward its most important resource base, it compromises soil quality and fertility through its impact on erosion, soil organic matter and biodiversity decline, compaction, etc., and thus the necessary yield increases for the next decades. New or improved cropping systems and agricultural practices are needed to ensure a sustainable use of this resource and to fully take the advantages of its associated ecosystem services. Also, new and better soil quality indicators are crucial for fast and in-field soil diagnosis to help farmers decide on the best management practices to adopt under specific pedo-climatic conditions. Conservation Agriculture and its fundamental principles: minimum (or no) soil disturbance, permanent organic soil cover and crop rotation /intercropping certainly figure among the possibilities capable to guarantee sustainable soil management. The iSQAPER project – Interactive Soil Quality Assessment in Europe and China for Agricultural Productivity and Environmental Resilience – is tackling this problem with the development of a Soil Quality application (SQAPP) that links soil and agricultural management practices to soil quality indicators and will provide an easy-to-use tool for farmers and land managers to judge their soil status. The University of Évora is the leader of WP6 - Evaluating and demonstrating measures to improve Soil Quality. In this work package, several promising soil and agricultural management practices will be tested at selected sites and evaluated using the set of soil quality indicators defined for the SQAPP tool. The project as a whole and WP6 in specific can contribute to proof and demonstrate under different pedoclimatic conditions the impact of Conservation Agriculture practices on soil quality and function as was named the call under which this project was submitted.

Impacts of crop level, soil and irrigation management in grape berries of cv ‘Trincadeira’ (Vitis vinifera L.)

Berry size and crop yield are widely recognized as important factors that contribute to wine quality. The final berry size indirectly affects the phenolic concentration of the wine due to skin surface-to-berry volume ratio. The effects of different irrigation levels, soil management and plant crop level on growth of ‘Trincadeira’ berries were studied. In order to test the influence of different irrigation levels (rainfed, pre-veraison and post-veraison), different soil management (tillage and natural cover crops) and different plant crop levels (8 and 16 clusters per vine), leaf water potential, skin anthocyanin, polyphenols, berry skin and seed fresh weight were measured in fruits. The segregation of berries into three different berry classes: small, medium and large, allowed to identify different levels of contribution of soil management and irrigation level into berry, skin and seeds ratios. As expected, higher water availability due to irrigation and soil tillage management during berry development induced an increase in berry flesh weight and this was more evident in larger berries; however, berry skin and seed fresh weight remained unchanged. Also, anthocyanins did not show significant differences.

Knowledge Management in the Health Sector

Este artigo consiste numa introdução à importancia de gestão do conhecimento nas organizações de saúde. frmas de gerir o conhecimento; formas e meios de partilha do conhecimento. Aborda igualamente as comunidade e pratica eas respectivas ferramentas utilizadas