O Contributo do sistema SAP R/3 no controlo interno na REFER

Dissertação apresentada ao Instituto Superior de Contabilidade para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Auditoria Orientador: Mestre Agostinho Sousa Pinto

Estudo da norma contabilística e de relato financeiro nº 4 – politicas contabilísticas, alterações nas estimativas contabilísticas e erros

Dissertação apresentada ao Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Auditoria Orientador: Professor Doutor José da Silva Fernandes

Family and non-family businesses on internal factors of entrepreneurship

Small firms are a major player in development. Thus, entrepreneurship is frequently attached to these rms and it must be present in daily management of factors such as planning and cooperation. We intend to analyze these factors, comparing familiar and non-familiar businesses. This study was conducted in a Portuguese region in the north of Portugal - Vale do Sousa . The results allow us to conclude that even with some managerial di erences it was not possible to identify distinct patterns between them. The main goal of this paper is to open research lines on important issues to distinguish familiar from non-familiar businesses.

A survey on e-learning content standardization

eLearning has been evolved in a gradual and consistent way. Along with this evolution several specialized and disparate systems appeared to fulfill the needs of teachers and students such as repositories of learning objects, intelligent tutors, or automatic evaluators. This heterogeneity poses issues that are necessary to address in order to promote interoperability among systems. Based on this fact, the standardization of content takes a leading role in the eLearning realm. This article presents a survey on current eLearning content standards. It gathers information on the most emergent standards and categorizes them according three distinct facets: metadata, content packaging and educational design.

A relação entre a acreditação/certificação da qualidade e o controlo interno nas organizações: estudo de caso em 30 unidades hospitalares públicas portuguesas

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Auditoria, sob orientação de: Doutora Alcina Dias e coorientação de: Doutora Ana Paula Lopes

Conceção e implementação de um programa de melhoria da qualidade: estudo de caso na Eurico Ferreira, S.A.

Os programas de melhoria contínua dos processos são cada vez mais a aposta das empresas para fazer face ao mercado. Através da implementação destes programas é possível conferir simplicidade e padronização aos processos e consequentemente reduzir os custos com desperdícios internos relacionados com a qualidade dos mesmos. As ferramentas de melhoria da qualidade e as ferramentas associadas ao Lean Thinking representam um pilar importante no sucesso de qualquer programa de melhoria contínua dos processos. Estas ferramentas constituem meios úteis na análise, controlo, organização de dados importantes para a correta tomada de decisão nas organizações. O presente projeto tem como principal objetivo a conceção e implementação de um programa de melhoria da qualidade na Eurico Ferreira, S.A., tendo por base a avaliação da satisfação do cliente e a aplicação dos 5S. Neste contexto, o trabalho teve como fundamentação teórica a Gestão da Qualidade, Lean Thinking e algumas ferramentas de ambas as matérias. Posteriormente foi selecionada a área de negócio da empresa a abordar. Após a seleção, realizou-se um diagnóstico inicial do processo identificando os diversos pontos de melhoria onde foram aplicadas algumas ferramentas do Lean Thinking, nomeadamente o Value Stream Mapping e a metodologia 5S. Com a primeira foi possível construir um mapa do estado atual do processo, no qual estavam representados todos os intervenientes assim como o fluxo de materiais e de informação ao longo do processo. A metodologia 5S permitiu atuar sobre os desperdícios, identificando e implementando diversas melhorias no processo. Concluiu-se que a implementação das ferramentas contribuiu eficientemente para a melhoria contínua da qualidade nos processos, tendo sido decisão da coordenação alargar o âmbito do projeto aos restantes armazéns do centro logístico da empresa. Pode afirmar-se com recurso à satisfação do cliente expressa através da evolução favorável do Service-level agreement que as ferramentas implementadas têm gerado resultados muito positivos no curto prazo.

Perspectives of the Internal Public in a Cultural Event: the Case of Noc Noc, Guimarães - Portugal

Given the significant impact that cultural events may have in local communities and the inherent organization complexity, it is important to understand their specificities. Most of the times cultural events disregard marketing and often marketing is distant from art. Thus an analysis of an inside perspective might bring significant returns to the organization of such an event. This paper considers the three editions (2011, 2012 and 2013) of a cultural event – Noc Noc – organized by a local association in the city of Guimarães, Portugal. Its format is based in analogous events, as Noc Noc intends to convert everyday spaces (homes, commercial outlets and a number of other buildings) into cultural spaces, processed and transformed by artists, hosts and audiences. By interviewing a sample of people (20) who have hosted this cultural event, sometimes doubling as artists, and by experiencing the three editions of the event, this paper illustrates how the internal public understands this particular cultural event, analyzing specifically their motivations, ways of acting and participating, as well as their relationship with the public, with the organization of the event and with art in general. Results support that artists and hosts motivations must be identified in a timely and appropriate moment, as well as their views of this particular cultural event, in order to keep them participating, since low budget cultural events such as this one may have a key role in small scale cities.

A survey of e-learning content aggregation standards

As e-learning gradually evolved many specialized and disparate systems appeared to fulfil the needs of teachers and students, such as repositories of learning objects, authoring tools, intelligent tutors and automatic evaluators. This heterogeneity raises interoperability issues giving the standardization of content an important role in e-learning. This article presents a survey on current e-learning content aggregation standards focusing on their internal organization and packaging. This study is part of an effort to choose the most suitable specifications and standards for an e-learning framework called Ensemble defined as a conceptual tool to organize a network of e-learning systems and services for domains with complex evaluation.

Foraging at the Edge of Chaos: Internal Clock versus External Forcing

Activity rhythms in animal groups arise both from external changes in the environment, as well as from internal group dynamics. These cycles are reminiscent of physical and chemical systems with quasiperiodic and even chaotic behavior resulting from “autocatalytic” mechanisms. We use nonlinear differential equations to model how the coupling between the self-excitatory interactions of individuals and external forcing can produce four different types of activity rhythms: quasiperiodic, chaotic, phase locked, and displaying over or under shooting. At the transition between quasiperiodic and chaotic regimes, activity cycles are asymmetrical, with rapid activity increases and slower decreases and a phase shift between external forcing and activity. We find similar activity patterns in ant colonies in response to varying temperature during the day. Thus foraging ants operate in a region of quasiperiodicity close to a cascade of transitions leading to chaos. The model suggests that a wide range of temporal structures and irregularities seen in the activity of animal and human groups might be accounted for by the coupling between collectively generated internal clocks and external forcings.

Virtual Power Players Internal Negotiation and Management in MASCEM

Electricity Markets are not only a new reality but an evolving one as the involved players and rules change at a relatively high rate. Multi-agent simulation combined with Artificial Intelligence techniques may result in very helpful sophisticated tools. This paper presents a new methodology for the management of coalitions in electricity markets. This approach is tested using the multi-agent market simulator MASCEM (Multi-Agent Simulator of Competitive Electricity Markets), taking advantage of its ability to provide the means to model and simulate Virtual Power Players (VPP). VPPs are represented as coalitions of agents, with the capability of negotiating both in the market and internally, with their members in order to combine and manage their individual specific characteristics and goals, with the strategy and objectives of the VPP itself. A case study using real data from the Iberian Electricity Market is performed to validate and illustrate the proposed approach.