Life Design Counseling process and outcome: A case study with an adolescent

This article aims to explore the relationship between clients´ narrative transformation and the promotion of vocational decidedness and career maturity in a mid-adolescent case of Life Design Counseling (LDC). To assess LDC outcomes the Vocational Certainty Scale and the Career Maturity Inventory – Form C were used before and after the intervention. To intensively analyze the process of LDC change two measures of narrative change were used: the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS), as a measure of innovation emergence, and the Return to the Problem Coding System (RPCS), as a measure of ambivalence towards change. The results show that the three LDC sessions produced a significant change in vocational certainty but not in career maturity. Findings confirm that the process of change, according to the IMCS, is similar to the one observed in previous studies with adults. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Estrutura e processo de formação das formas culturais: o caso do cante alentejano

Qualquer sistema de práticas individualizado que se distinga aos olhos dos seus praticantes é caracterizável pela forma que assume e pelo seu conjunto de atributos. A essa forma corresponde uma moldura analítica que encontra o seu equivalente real nos actores e no modo como formulam discursos sobre as suas práticas, do qual emerge um conjunto de normas. Por conseguinte, a forma tanto é uma construção metodológica externa para a descrição do sistema e das suas condições de existência como uma realidade dinâmica, produtora de identidades culturais. Pretendemos substituir uma noção imprecisa de “forma cultural” por um conceito estruturado, definindo-a como sistema de referência que os membros de uma cultura partilham e que define e regula as produções e reproduções culturais e que comporta um elemento estruturante, um sistema normativo e uma dinâmica social. O caminho para essa conceptualização implica a aplicação do conceito a um objecto empírico, operação que realizamos ao analisar o Cante Alentejano – conjunto de maneiras de cantar observadas do Alentejo – enquanto forma cultural; Abstract: Any system of practices that can be individualized and distinguished by its practitioners can be characterized through the form it assumes and the set of its attributes. Such form corresponds to an analytical framework that has its equivalent in the real actors world and in the ways they formulate utterances about their practices, from which emerges a set of rules. Therefore, the form is both an external methodological construction needed for the system’s description and a dynamic “emic” reality that produces cultural identities. We intend to replace an inaccurate notion of "cultural form" by a structured concept. We will define it as the reference system that the members of a given culture share and that guides and regulates the cultural processes of production and reproductions of the system. The concept comprises a structural element, a normative system, and a social dynamic. The path to this conceptualization implies applying the concept to an empirical object, operation that will be held by analyzing Cante Alentejano – a set of ways of singing from Alentejo – as a cultural form.

The Selection Process of Applications to the Portuguese Innovation Incentive System: Who Gets Financial Support?

Public policies to support entrepreneurship and innovation play a vital role when firms have difficulties in accessing external finance. However, some authors have found evidence of long-term inefficiency in subsidized firms (Bernini and Pelligrini, 2011; Cerqua and Pelligrini, 2014) and ineffectiveness of public funds (Jorge and Suárez, 2011). The aim of the paper is to assess the effectiveness in the selection process of applications to public financial support for stimulating innovation. Using a binary choice model, we investigate which factors influence the probability of obtaining public support for an innovative investment. The explanatory variables are connected to firm profile, the characteristics of the project and the macroeconomic environment. The analysis is based on the case study of the Portuguese Innovation.Incentive System (PIIS) and on the applications managed by the Alentejo Regional Operational Program in the period 2007 – 2013. The results show that the selection process is more focused on the expected impact of the project than on the firm’s past performance. Factors that influence the credit risk and the decision to grant a bank loan do not seem to influence the government evaluator regarding the funding of some projects. Past activities in R&D do not significantly affect the probability of having an application approved under the PIIS, whereas an increase in the number of patents and the number of skilled jobs are both relevant factors. Nevertheless, some evidence of firms’ short-term inefficiency was found, in that receiving public financial support is linked to a smaller increase in productivity compared to non-approved firm applications. At the macroeconomic level, periods with a higher cost of capital in financial markets are linked to a greater probability of getting an application for public support approved, which could be associated with the effectiveness of public support in correcting market failings.