Budgeting and resource allocation in universities, a public choice approach

The calls urging colleges and universities to improve their productivity are coming thick and fast in Brazil. Many studies are suggesting evaluation systems and external criteria to control universities production in qualitative terms. Since universities and colleges are not profit-oriented organizations (considering just the fair and serious researching and teaching organizations, of course) the traditional microeconomics and administrative variables used to measure efficiency do not have any direct function. In this sense, It could be created a as if market control system to evaluate universities and colleges production. The budget and the allocation resources mechanism inside it can be used as an incentive instrument to improve quality and productivity. It will be the main issue of this paper.

Decision making process: a comparison between the public and private sector

The problem of decision making, its mechanisms and consequences is the very core of management, it is virtually impossible to separate the act of manage from this knowledge area. As defined by Herbert Simon – "decision making" as though it were synonymous with "managing". A decision is a selection made by an individual regarding a choice of a conclusion about a situation. This represents a course of behavior pertaining to what must be done or what must not be done. A decision is the point at which plans, policies and objectives are translated into concrete actions. Our behavior during decisive moments is closely linked with our brain dominance profile. Over the years, our decision-making processes develop a consistent pattern, which can be described as a decision-making style. Our style is grounded in our preferences, which arise from our brain dominance characteristics […]. The importance of understanding the impact of our thinking preferences and how to improve the effectiveness as a leader of organizations are the main justifications for this thesis; the main problem addressed is the behavioral profile diversity in a selective Master’s cohort formed by students from several different countries. The research methodology approach has been quantitative, through questionnaire administration using the HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument), a validated framework developed by William "Ned" Herrmann when he was the leader of General Electric's Crotonville facility. This questionnaire has been administered in hundreds of thousands professional, enabling the possibility to establish correlations between a certain group and several historical databases. The selected group of analysis is the first cohort (23 students) from the CIM (Corporate International Master's), a joint program between Georgetown University (USA), ESADE (Spain) and FGV (Brazil). Besides decision preferences, the obtained profile enables the discussion on leadership style, heuristic's pitfalls and a base to compare with future cohorts. The fundamental research question is: how diverse is the dominant decision-making profile for the CIM students?