A Produção mais Limpa como ferramenta em busca da sustentabilidade empresarial: um estudo de múltiplos casos em empresas do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte

This study aimed to assess the Cleaner Production CP as corporate sustainable tool, through the multiple case studies within companies from Rio Grande do Norte State. In order to achieve this goal a research methodology approach was set. The initial stage of the research methodology was based on a literature review on which it was observed that the CP can be linked with corporate sustainable once it prevents pollution and reduces the operational risks among employees, community and environment. In addition, CP can useful for companies position within competitive position as well as being applied to process, products and services. In order to observe these factors, CP was used within food industry (Company 1), textile industry (Company 2) and in a car dealer (Company 3). Regarding the results, Company 1 changed its raw material as well as implementing housekeeping (control use of water, energy and condensed milk). In Company 2, it was observed the three levels of CP. In other words, housekeeping (e.g. cutting process and manipulation of chemical products), changing technology (high pressure washing machine) and internal and external recycling. In addition, Company 3 considered only level 3 external recycling. As consequence, it was observed that can be applied either within industry as well as service sector. Unfortunately, it was not possible to observe any social gains on a monetary basis. This is due to limitations of the CP methodology and study complexity. Therefore, it was observed improvements regarding to social, environmental and economic areas. Nevertheless, it is necessary more commitment from top level management in order to consider CP like effective sustainable tool

A representação social de educação tecnológica de docentes da Rede Federal de Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: CEFETs do Rio Grande do Norte

The aim of this study was to investigate the social representation of technological education teachers at the Federal Technological Education Network. The survey was conducted from 2007 to 2010, and the respondents were 275 teachers, 135 of the Federal Center for Technological Education (CEFET in portuguese) in the state of Amazonas, in Manaus unit headquarters; 140 of the CEFET in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, a unit based in Natal. We adopt the concept of technological education as the top level of professional education, that is to say, the undergraduate programs of short duration called technological courses. The Federal Technological Education Network gathers hundreds of related institutions, coordinated and supervised by the Office of Vocational and Technological Education of the Ministry of Education. Although many of these institutions offer courses in technology education, no research addressing this subject from the perspective of Social Representations Theory (SRT) was found in the literature. We seek to unravel the social representation of technological education of the teachers by adopting the procedural approach of SRT. This is a qualitative approach, focusing on significant aspects of the representative activity and the formation mechanisms of the representation. Therefore, we search the socio-genesis of the representation in the articulations between discourses, social institutions and practices. We initiated the research through applying critical reading and an analytical perspective on the historical and regulatory documents of technological education in Brazil, from the early twentieth century to the present day. We adopt the Procedure for Multiple Classifications (PMC) from the Free Words Association Technique (FWAT) to access the elements of representational content. For the analysis of the data obtained with FWAT and selection of major words / phrases pertinent to the semantic field of education technology, we used Hamlet II software. For the data analysis of PMC and Free Classification (FC) we used the SPSS ® (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) version 17.0 and used the method of multidimensional scaling - Multidimensional scaling - (MDS). The output from the central MDS takes the form of a set of scatterplots - "perceptual maps" - of which the points are the elements of the representational content. For the FC data analysis we used the Scalogram Multidimensional Analysis (SMA) - which makes use of the original data in its raw form and allows categorical data to be interpreted in the map as measures of (di)similarity. In order to help with the understanding of the settings of the perceptual maps of FC, we used the Content Analysis of the discourse fragments of the teachers interviewed. The results confirm our initial hypothesis regarding the presence of a single plot among the socio-cognitive study subjects, which is the basis for a social representation of technological education in line with the historic assumption of the dichotomy between mental and manual labor. In spite of the three merging representational elements of the representational content, the perceptual maps compiled from the MSA statistics corroborates the dichotomy, with the exception of the map relating to the subgroup of teachers belonging to the humanities