IDENTIFYING ETHICAL DILEMMAS OF PORTUGUESE CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS

The way professionals deal with ethical dilemmas and the decisions they make may be guided by a personal and individual ideology, but it is also strongly influenced by their professional group and society. This paper focuses in real situations as they are experienced by individuals in their day-to-day professional life. The data were collected using opened-end interviews. Respondents were asked to identify the ethical dilemmas they had been faced with during their professional life. Qualitative analysis shows that main dilemmas are about how to deal with “informal economy”, “false invoices” and “tax evasion”. This study aims to contribute to the discussion of ethical issues faced by Portuguese Chartered Account (TOC), thus promoting a large debate about the way the TOC can help to create a better society and consequently legitimating their existence as a professional organization of public interest. More than ever, understanding professionals’ behavior in their real context is essential for to build a culture conducive to the ethical development of society, and to ensure, at the same time, the desirable business sustainability. This study gives a broaden description of ethics dilemmas faced by chartered accounts and shows some inefficiency in the ethical control system made by professional bodies.

IDEA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM - AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT IN THE CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT OF QUALITY AND INNOVATION

It is known the power of ideas is tremendous. But there are employees in many companies who have good ideas but not put them into practice. On the other hand, there are many others who have good ideas and are encouraged to contribute their ideas for innovation in the company. This study attempts to identify factors that contribute to success in managing ideas and consequent business innovation. The method used was the case study applied to two companies. During the investigation, factors considered essential for the success of an idea management program were identified, of which we highlight, among others, evidences the results, involvement of the top management, establishment of goals and objectives; recognition; dissemination of good results. Companies with these implemented systems, capture the best ideas from their collaborators and apply them internally. This study intends to contribute to business innovation in enterprises through creation and idea management, mainly through collecting the best ideas of their own employees. The results of this study can be used to help improving deployed suggestions systems, as well as, all managers who wish to implement suggestions systems/ideas management systems.

A Methodology for GUI Layer Redefinition Through Virtualization and Computer Vision

Nowadays despite improvements in usability and intuitiveness users have to adapt to the proposed systems to satisfy their needs. For instance, they must learn how to achieve tasks, how to interact with the system, and fulfill system's specifications. This paper proposes an approach to improve this situation enabling graphical user interface redefinition through virtualization and computer vision with the aim of increasing the system's usability. To achieve this goal the approach is based on enriched task models, virtualization and picture-driven computing.