Preparados para trabalhar?

Este estudo desenvolveu-se no âmbito do Consórcio “Maior Empregabilidade” criado em 2013 e constituído pela Fórum Estudante e por treze instituições de ensino superior: Universidade do Algarve, Universidade de Coimbra, Universidade do Minho, Universidade Portucalense, Escola Superior de Educação de Paula Frassinetti, Instituto de Arte, Design e Empresa - Universitário, Instituto Politécnico de Beja, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra, Instituto Politécnico de Leiria, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal e Instituto Politécnico de Tomar. Amostras e instrumentos do estudo quantitativo A abordagem quantitativa do estudo “Preparados para trabalhar?” incluiu a administração de questionários junto de diplomados e empregadores. Para a análise dos resultados foram considerados 6444 diplomados (62% do sexo feminino), com uma média etária de 29 anos (desvio padrão de ± 7 anos), que concluíram a licenciatura (67%) ou o mestrado (33%) entre 2007-2008 e 2012-2013, numa das treze instituições de ensino superior participantes no estudo (distribuídas de norte a sul de Portugal); e 781 empregadores (54% do sexo feminino) na sua maioria com idades entre os 31 e os 45 anos (58%), maioritariamente distribuídos a nível nacional.

Empreendedorismo socials

Dissertação apresentada ao Instituto Politécnico do Porto para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Gestão das Organizações, Ramo Gestão de Empresas Orientada por: Professor Doutor Eduardo Manuel Lopes de Sá Silva Mestre Maria de Fátima Mendes Monteiro

21st century quality: Looking into the “Crystal ball”

The discussion of possible scenarios for the future of Quality is on the priority list of major Quality Practitioners Societies. EOQ – European Organization for Quality (EOQ, 2014) main team for its 58th EOQ-Congress held June 2014 in Göteborg was “Managing Challenges in Quality Leadership” and ASQ - American Society for Quality (ASQ, 2015) appointed “the Future of Quality” for Quality Progress Magazine November 2015 issue. In addition, the ISO 9001:2008 revision process carried by ISO/TC 176 aims to assure that ISO 9001:2015 International Standard remains stable for the next 10 years (ISO, 2014) contributing to an increased discussion on the future of quality. The purpose of this research is to review available Quality Management approaches and outline, adding an academic perspective, expected developments for Quality within the 21st Century. This paper follows a qualitative approach, although data from international organizations is used. A literature review has been undertaken on quality management past and potential future trends. Based on these findings a model is proposed for organization quality management development and propositions for the future of quality management are advanced. Firstly, a state of the art of existing Quality Management approaches is presented, for example, like Total Quality Management (TQM) and Quality Gurus, ISO 9000 International Standards Series (with an outline of the expected changes for ISO 9001:2015), Six Sigma and Business Excellence Models.Secondly, building on theoretical and managerial approaches, a two dimensional matrix – Quality Engineering (QE - technical aspects of quality) and Quality Management (QM: soft aspects of quality) - is presented, outlining five proposed characterizations of Quality maturity levels and giving insights for applications and future developments. Literature review highlights that QM and QE may be addressing similar quality issues but their approaches are different in terms of scope breadth and intensity and they ought to complement and reciprocally reinforce one another. The challenges organizations face within the 21st century have stronger uncertainty, complexity, and differentiation. Two main propositions are advanced as relevant for 21st Century Quality: - QM importance for the sustainable success of organizations will increase and they should be aware of the larger ecosystem to be managed for improvement, possibly leading to the emergence of a new Quality paradigm, The Civilizacional Excellence paradigm. - QE should get more attention from QM and the Quality professionals will have to: a) Master and apply in wider contexts and in additional depth the Quality Tools (basic, intermediate and advanced); b) Have the soft skills needed for its success; c) Be results oriented and better understand and demonstrate the relationships between approaches and results These propositions challenge both scholars and practitioners for a sustained and supported discussion on the future of Quality. “All things are ready, if our mind be so.” (Shakespeare, Henry V, circa 1599).

The European challenge of KMN and innovation: a skills and competence portfolio for knowledge worker in SME's

Versão editor: http://www.isegi.unl.pt/docentes/acorreia/documentos/European_Challenge_KM_Innovation_2004.pdf

Citrate selective electrodes for the flow injection analysis of soft drinks, beers and pharmaceutical products

Aiming the establishment of simple and accurate readings of citric acid (CA) in complex samples, citrate (CIT) selective electrodes with tubular configuration and polymeric membranes plus a quaternary ammonium ion exchanger were constructed. Several selective membranes were prepared for this purpose, having distinct mediator solvents (with quite different polarities) and, in some cases, p-tert-octylphenol (TOP) as additive. The latter was used regarding a possible increase in selectivity. The general working characteristics of all prepared electrodes were evaluated in a low dispersion flow injection analysis (FIA) manifold by injecting 500µl of citrate standard solutions into an ionic strength (IS) adjuster carrier (10−2 mol l−1) flowing at 3ml min−1. Good potentiometric response, with an average slope and a repeatability of 61.9mV per decade and ±0.8%, respectively, resulted from selective membranes comprising additive and bis(2-ethylhexyl)sebacate (bEHS) as mediator solvent. The same membranes conducted as well to the best selectivity characteristics, assessed by the separated solutions method and for several chemical species, such as chloride, nitrate, ascorbate, glucose, fructose and sucrose. Pharmaceutical preparations, soft drinks and beers were analyzed under conditions that enabled simultaneous pH and ionic strength adjustment (pH = 3.2; ionic strength = 10−2 mol l−1), and the attained results agreed well with the used reference method (relative error < 4%). The above experimental conditions promoted a significant increase in sensitivity of the potentiometric response, with a supra-Nernstian slope of 80.2mV per decade, and allowed the analysis of about 90 samples per hour, with a relative standard deviation <1.0%.

Convex optimization framework for intermediate deadline assignment in soft and hard real-time distributed systems

It is generally challenging to determine end-to-end delays of applications for maximizing the aggregate system utility subject to timing constraints. Many practical approaches suggest the use of intermediate deadline of tasks in order to control and upper-bound their end-to-end delays. This paper proposes a unified framework for different time-sensitive, global optimization problems, and solves them in a distributed manner using Lagrangian duality. The framework uses global viewpoints to assign intermediate deadlines, taking resource contention among tasks into consideration. For soft real-time tasks, the proposed framework effectively addresses the deadline assignment problem while maximizing the aggregate quality of service. For hard real-time tasks, we show that existing heuristic solutions to the deadline assignment problem can be incorporated into the proposed framework, enriching their mathematical interpretation.

The European Project Semester at ISEP: Learning to Learn Engineering

The European Project Semester at ISEP (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme addressed to engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities. The students, organized in multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real world multidisciplinary problems, accounting for 30 ECTU. The EPS package, although focused on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). This paper presents the study plan, resources, operation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering education practices and promote the internationalization of ISEP. The results show that the EPS@ISEP students acquire during one semester the scientific, technical and soft competences necessary to propose, design and implement a solution for a multidisciplinary problem.

The European Project Semester at ISEP: the challenge of educating global engineers

Current engineering education challenges require approaches that promote scientific, technical, design and complementary skills while fostering autonomy, innovation and responsibility. The European Project Semester (EPS) at Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme (30 European Credit Transfer Units (ECTU)) for engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities that intends to address these goals. The students, organised in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real multidisciplinary problems during one semester. The EPS package, although on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). Hence, the students enrolled in this programme improve their transversal skills and learn, together and with the team of supervisors, subjects distinct from their core training. This paper presents the structure, implementation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering practices and promote internationalisation and engineering education innovation at ISEP.

Information professionals in business context: new professionals, old skills

This communication aims to present some reflections regarding the importance of information in organizational context, especially in business context. The ability to produce and to share expertise and knowledge among its employees is now a key factor in the success of any organization. However, it’s also true that workers are increasingly feeling that too much information can hurt their performance. The existence of skilled professionals able to organize, evaluate, select and disseminate information in organizations appears to be a prerequisite for success. The skills necessary for the formation of a professional devoted to the management of information and knowledge in the context of business organizations will be analysed. Then data collected in two focus group discussion with students from a graduate course in Business Information, from Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal, a will be examined.