Ativos intangíveis (modelo RBV) como recurso estratégico e competitivo: um estudo em hotéis de pequeno porte (zona sul, Natal/RN)

The study aims to analyze the perception of managers on intangible assets as strategic and competitive resources in small hotels in Natal/RN, through the theory of the Resource Based View (RBV). This is a qualitative study of exploratory and descriptive, conducted with managers of the means of hosting small the capital of Rio Grande do Norte through semi-structured interviews, which was applied later, the technique content analysis based on the results of the information obtained in the interviews. Thus, research has shown that managers of small hotels visited (A, B, C) are not sufficient and satisfactory knowledge to set as their unique intangible assets of the company and makes use of them, on an occasional basis, without understanding or in essence understand its true value as a resource that can be used strategically for sustainable competitive advantage in the hotel market in Natal/RN. This means that managers do not know how to create new attributes and use them strategically. And they need to expand their partnerships with stakeholders. Given the importance of the subject of the present research, the information achieved by this analysis may contribute to the provision of information to establish a current situation with regard to the attributed to the knowledge and use of resources (intangible assets) importance as a strategic source and competitive for the internal management of the company by managers and thus, enabling a differential and greater economic profit over time in this segment

Desempenho internacional de empresas exportadoras: um modelo estrutural baseado em capacidades organizacionais e ambiente

The internationalization as an organizational phenomenon fundamentally strategic had as theoretical contributions some Schools that throughout the decades 60, 70, and 80 developed behavioral and economic approaches in order to explain the process. The behavioral approach deals with the perception of phenomenon as a gradual process from the perspective of the executives behavior (JOHANSON and VAHLNE, 1977; HALLÉN and WIEDERSHEIM - PAUL, 1979; CZINKOTA, 1985). This phenomenon in permanent theoretical and managerial evolution made an opportunity to build this investigation, whose goal is to analyse the impact comes from organizational capabilities and the external environment on the international performance of exporting firms. For both, were used as theoretical basis two types of analysis for the comprehension of international performance: Strategic Management - Industrial Organization and Resource-Based View and International Businesses - Current Economic and Behavioral. It was made a cross-sectional survey-based explanatory research, including 150 exporting companies with operations in the Northeast of Brazil. A conceptual model was made with eight constructs and eight research hypotheses, representative of the effects of external factors on international performance. The data were processed using the Exploratory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. The structural equations model was reespecified and estimated through the use of the maximum-likelihood method up to achieve adequated values of indexes of adjustment. As the main theoretical contribution, were identified organizational and physical resources which shows the importance of the management skills development, of the learning capability and capability to establish strategic alliances abroad. That because the knowledge, as the operational point of view as in its strategic application, offers to organization conditions of market positioning which can create opportunities sustainable competitive advantages and which impact the performance of international companies

Desempenho internacional de empresas exportadoras: um modelo estrutural baseado em capacidades organizacionais e ambiente

The internationalization as an organizational phenomenon fundamentally strategic had as theoretical contributions some Schools that throughout the decades 60, 70, and 80 developed behavioral and economic approaches in order to explain the process. The behavioral approach deals with the perception of phenomenon as a gradual process from the perspective of the executives behavior (JOHANSON and VAHLNE, 1977; HALLÉN and WIEDERSHEIM - PAUL, 1979; CZINKOTA, 1985). This phenomenon in permanent theoretical and managerial evolution made an opportunity to build this investigation, whose goal is to analyse the impact comes from organizational capabilities and the external environment on the international performance of exporting firms. For both, were used as theoretical basis two types of analysis for the comprehension of international performance: Strategic Management - Industrial Organization and Resource-Based View and International Businesses - Current Economic and Behavioral. It was made a cross-sectional survey-based explanatory research, including 150 exporting companies with operations in the Northeast of Brazil. A conceptual model was made with eight constructs and eight research hypotheses, representative of the effects of external factors on international performance. The data were processed using the Exploratory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. The structural equations model was reespecified and estimated through the use of the maximum-likelihood method up to achieve adequated values of indexes of adjustment. As the main theoretical contribution, were identified organizational and physical resources which shows the importance of the management skills development, of the learning capability and capability to establish strategic alliances abroad. That because the knowledge, as the operational point of view as in its strategic application, offers to organization conditions of market positioning which can create opportunities sustainable competitive advantages and which impact the performance of international companies

Gestão por Competências em Organizações Públicas: O Processo de Transformação Organizacional e seus Impactos Junto aos Servidores na Secretaria Estadual de Administração e Recursos Humanos (SEARH/RN)

The state has changed over time in order to meet a society with increasingly stringent demands. Techniques of private means begin to be employed in an attempt to overcome the dysfunctions entrenched bureaucracy, making the machine faster. By federal law by the People Management Skills was established as a reference for the administration of Human Resources of the public sector in an attempt to develop professionally servers, based mainly on the three pillars of the model: the knowledge, skills and attitudes. This thesis aims at understanding, in the view of employees, the perceived impacts on the organizational changes occurring in the Department of Administration and Human Resources of the State of Rio Grande do Norte in order to implement a People Management Skills-based. It is a simple case study, characterized by the research during a certain period of time, collecting data in a real environment of an organization, in this case SEARH/RN. The procedures used in collecting data were the literature review, documental research and field research. We used a qualitative approach with exploratory and descriptive approach. Every reform was implemented in the institution and reported from there analyzed the impacts observed by the servers. As a result we observed a considerable advance in institutional activities, mainly relating to physical structure / organizational and human resource policies, with minor advances on labor policies, in much the result of the guiding focus of the reform on SEARH/RN. The impacts in total were more positive than negative and direct paths to improvement in public organizations. Making a general analysis of the modernization program implemented in SEARH/RN, we can conclude that there was a distinct change in all dimensions studied, mostly pointing out positive aspects, and contrary to the opinion of some authors, who claim to be very difficult to implement reforms in public organizations, since they are highly institutionalized environments. What was found was a big organization, with gaps and weaknesses, but with a much larger number of hits and recognition from institutional actors

Gestão da cadeia de suprimento e vantagem competitiva: uma análise em setores industriais a partir da visão relacional

This work has as its main purpose to investigate the contribution of supply chain management in order to obtain competitive advantage by companies from the textile industry and from Ceará footwear industry, focusing its analysis mainly in the interorganizational relations (dyadic). For this, the theoretical referential contemplates different explanatory streams of the competitive advantage, detaching the relational perception of the resources theory, as well as, the main presuppositions of the supply chain management which culminates with the development of an analysis sample that runs the empirical study; the one which considers an expanded purpose of the supply chain which includes the government and the abetment institutions as institutional environment representatives. Besides supply chain management consideration as a competitive advantage source, the work also tried to identify other possible competitive advantage sources for the companies of the investigated sectors. It represents a study of multiple interpretive cases, having four cases as a total; meaning two cases in each one of the sectors, which used as a primary data collecting instrument a semi-structured interview schedule. Different methods were used for the data analysis, the content analysis and the constant comparison methods, the analytical procedure originated from the grounded theory research strategy, which were applied the Atlas/ti software recourse. Considering the theoretical referential and the used analysis sample, four basic categories of the work were defined, including its respective proprieties and dimensions: (1) characteristics concerning to the relationship with the supplier; (2) the company relations with the government; (3) the company relations with the abetment institutions and; (4) obtaining sources of competitive advantage. In general, the applied research in the footwear sector revealed that in the relationships of the researched companies related to its suppliers, there is a predominance of the partnership system and the main presuppositions of the supply chain management are applied which contributes for the acquisition of the relational competitive advantage; while in the textile sector, only some of these presuppositions are applied, with little contribution for the relational competitive advantage. The main resource which was accessed by the companies in both sectors through its relationships with the government and the abetment institutions are the tax incentives which, for the footwear companies, contribute for the acquisition of the temporary competitive advantage in relation to the contestants who do not own productive installations in the Northeast region, it also conducts to a competitive parity situation in relation to the contestants who own productive installations in the Northeast region and to the external market contestants; while for the companies of the textile sector, the tax incentives run the companies to a competitive parity situation in relation to its contestants. Furthermore, the investigated companies from the two sectors possess acquisition sources of the competitive advantage which collimate with different explanatory streams (industrial analysis, resources theory, Austrian school and the dynamic capabilities theory), although there is a predominance of the product innovation as a competitive advantage source in both sectors, due to the bond of these with the fashion tendencies

Marketing de relacionamento em um provedor de internet: um estudo comparativo que considera a visão gerencial e a percepção dos clientes

The current paper aims at analyzing customer retention in Internet provider services. For this study, we sought to understand what are the client's expectations regarding the services available and compare them with management perception in relation to the use of those services. Identifying the coherence level between the two points of view, management and client, it is possible to pinpoint how service is assessed in real conditions. Then, from this point on, a new vision can be implemented on available services, and new customer service strategies aiming at best serving to their expectation and need, can be rethought. The exploratory research was utilized. It was based on case study, and quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The quantitative method was done by applying the cluster technique with six variables of control derived from the six main services, whose definition was done through qualitative survey of the internal management team. Then, an structured interview with 443 clients, from a probabilistic sample of 800 costumers. The total number of active clients of the internet provider is of 10.677. Client perception in relation to services varied, if compared with the four services that were under the managerial metric method, this comparison showed a more positive evaluation than the real use of the service. Thus, it was observed that the value of each service available for the client depends on his/her perception of it, regardless of using or not the offered service. As a result, it is possible to understand which services offered by the company under study effectively contribute to a good client-company relationship, and the upkeep of those clients

A formação do pedagogo-professor no curso de pedagogia: limites e possibilidades na visão de professores formados no campus avançado de Patu da UERN

The inconclusive policies regarding the teaching background, specifically the Pedagogy Course, whose National Curricular Directives DCN were ratified by the Ministry of Education on April 4th 2006, have been causing protest from the various forces within the scope of the university, specifically in the Pedagogy Departments in which, through their professionals, express the several stands about the pedagogue profile, his/her professional acting field and a curriculum that meets the background needs of this professional. This paper tried to assess, from the viewpoint of the student who graduated from the Pedagogy Course and who acts in classroom in the first years of the Elementary School, to what extent this course meets the background needs of the professional who works as teacher. In specific terms it was this paper's objective to identify the most important background needs of teachers who graduated in Pedagogy, who act in the first years of the Elementary School; To list the contributions and limitations of the Pedagogy Course of CAJIM/UERN in the teachers' background, outlined by the graduates of the course; to raise suggestions for the improvement of the teachers' background in the Pedagogy Course of the CAJIM/UERN. In order to turn these objectives viable we opted for the qualitative approach in research, more precisely for the case study methodology, from which we used as instruments for the execution of the field work the observation in classrooms, semi-structured interviews which became the main instrument used for the data construction and analysis. The data analysis process took place through the content analysis technique based in Bardin (2000). The theoretical line is based on the studies from Schön (2000), Nóvoa (1997), Perrenoud (1993), Alarcão (2003), Ramalho (2003) we also used the National Curricular Directives which serve as current Parameter for the Pedagogy courses. The study indicated that the Pedagogy Course contributed for the personal and professional enrichment, however, difficulties in the theory-practice articulation are still present in the everyday life. The theoretical knowledge assimilated, though represent increments to the professional practice, are not enough to enable a pedagogical practice with excellence. There is a need to consider a curriculum in a dialectic perspective, configurator of social and cultural practices sustained by the reasoning as praxis, thus it must not be seen solely in a theoretical plan, mas as a process that builds itself between the acting and the reasoning.

Avaliação de um programa de educação ambiental não formal: a Caravana Ecológica na visão dos participantes

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior

Trânsito de saberes e campo representacional na visão dos profissionais da saúde da família e do programa de educação pelo trabalho e para a saúde

The Family Health Strategy (ESF) is emerging as a possible restructuring of services and new practices of intervention in health care; it requires skilled professionals to work with that framework. Within this purpose, we established the Education Programme for Work and Health (PET-Saúde), in order to integrate teaching and service activities, focusing on primary care. On this basis, the aim of this work is to apprehend the social representation of nurse, doctor and dentist (Project PET-Natal Health RN preceptors) on the ESF, while practice field of them. It is a descriptive and exploratory study, with a qualitative approach, carried out in 07 Family Health Units (USF) included in the PET-Saúde Natal (RN). The population was composed of 35 professional components of the primary care team with bachelor's degree of the USF linked to this project. The sample was composed of 05 nurses, 05 physicians and 05 dentists, for a total of 15 subjects. Data were collected through three instruments: the drawing-themed story, a semi-structured individual interviews and field diary. The data relating to the identification of the subjects were entered and tabulated by the Microsoft Excel software 2007 version. The drawing analysis and interpretation is given by the significance attributed to the resource chart from title and keywords assigned by the subjects, considering the ESF as an inductive term. The stories and interviews were transcribed and typed and then subjected to read/listen the material and a lexical analysis through Alceste. After this process, the discursive material was analyzed and discussed by theoretical and methodological feature of the Social Representations theory. The majority of health professionals were female, aged between 46 and 52 years old, married, income less than six minimum wage, time since graduation ranged from 22 to 29 years and working time in the ESF range from 02 to 11 years. From the classification system ALCESTE were selected categories identified by: Category 1 - ESF: relations and territory; Category 2 - Training and bond profile; Category 3 - Working process in the ESF; Category 4 - Articulation between teaching and service; Category 5 - Health care and disease prevention. The representational field construction, while a process, followed the logic of structural cores in existing categories. In this sense, it is clear that the ESF is an environment rich in diversity, experience and relationships with potential such as the relationship "very subject-subject" and the link established between professional-community, but also has some weaknesses such as poor working conditions, lack of popular participation and management support, thus difficulties in the achievement of teamwork. Being essential to that end, the teaching-service aimed at the formation of a new health professional able to work in the ESF. In this research, the training of the representational field encountered a diversity of structural cores, or thoughts on training, about the ESF because of the greater emphasis on the here and now of the interaction between health professionals, the ESF, the community, PET Health-UFRN and students, emphasizing that such proposals are still considered as concepts in the context of recent health and that, therefore, are not fully realized in the social imaginary

As ações de controle da tuberculose na atenção primária à saúde: a visão do doente

Tuberculosis is a disease of great impact on the world context today. In Brazil, the disease management was directed to the Primary Health Care, due to the determination of the Ministry of Health to decentralize health actions for primary care. Thus, since the actions of diagnosis, treatment and control of the disease should happen in this context, however, there are still many barriers that may hinder the realization of these determinations. This study aims to analyze the development of tuberculosis control activities conducted in the services of primary health care from the patient's vision. This is a descriptive, cross-sectional and quantitative study. The population consists of 517 tuberculosis patients treated in units of Primary Health Care in the city of Natal-RN; the sample consists of 93 TB patients. The collect instrument is structured, based in The Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCAT), validated in Brazil and adapted to assess attention to TB in Brazil, with modifications. This instrument was divided into blocks: the first one describes the socio-demographic information of patients with TB and the second one describes the health services working in control, diagnosis and treatment of TB, and includes issues related to the dimensions of primary care: access, bond, services, coordination of care, guidance to the community and family focus. For quantitative analysis, were built indicators for each item of the instrument. The response patterns are followed according to the Likert scale, which was assigned a value between one and five meant that the degree of preference relation (or agreement) of the statements. Values between 1 and 3 were considered unsatisfactory for the indicator, between 3 and less than 4, regular, and between 4 and 5, satisfactory. The results indicate that 62.37% of patients are male, 27.96% aged 41 to 50 years old, and 34.41% unemployed, with low education and low family income. It was found that the reference hospital services are the front door to the patient (59.14%), and are also the local diagnosis of the disease (72.04%). On access, the conditions satisfactory found are: the number of times the patients need to pick up the health care issue, the marking and the facility to get a consultancy in the HS, assistance provided without harm to the individual's attendance labor and facilities related to the proximity between the residence and services; were considered unsatisfactory conditions related to travel to the HS, and on hours and days of operation of services. As for the cast of services were satisfactory and regular actions related to the request for examination to become viable in the first HS, the availability of pot to perform smear and medicines for the treatment, as well as consultations control and receiving information about the disease and the treatment performed; it is considered unsatisfactory the performance of the home care for patients with TB by the HS that acts as a front door, for implementation of the Directly Observed Treatment (DOT), home visits during treatment, the provision of transportation allowance to the patient and the existence of groups for TB patients. Regarding the coordination of care, resulted in regular the action of referring the patient to other HS to obtain examinations, and as unsatisfactory referral to obtain medications. The relationship bond between patient and health team were considered satisfactory in the majority or regular. As for the family and community focus, is satisfactory only the indicator relating to questions from professionals to the patient about the existence of respiratory symptoms in the family. It is considered that there is need for greater commitment from government entities to the incentives required to TB control, as well as the availability of necessary inputs and training of human resources working in the PHC in the ongoing quest to strengthen primary care, as a place of broader host needs to contact the user with the actions and health professionals. It is recommended the adoption of management mechanisms possible to expand the capacity of the health PHC, promoting the service delivery to the user and ensuring attention to population health.

Mapa de Conteúdos e Mapa de Dependências:Ferramentas Pedagógicas para uma Metodologia de Planejamento baseada em Objetivos Educacionais e sua Implementação em um Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem

Furthered mainly by new technologies, the expansion of distance education has created a demand for tools and methodologies to enhance teaching techniques based on proven pedagogical theories. Such methodologies must also be applied in the so-called Virtual Learning Environments. The aim of this work is to present a planning methodology based on known pedagogical theories which contributes to the incorporation of assessment in the process of teaching and learning. With this in mind, the pertinent literature was reviewed in order to identify the key pedagogical concepts needed to the definition of this methodology and a descriptive approach was used to establish current relations between this conceptual framework and distance education. As a result of this procedure, the Contents Map and the Dependence Map were specified and implemented, two teaching tools that promote the planning of a course by taking into account assessment still in this early stage. Inserted on Moodle, the developed tools were tested in a course of distance learning for practical observation of the involved concepts. It could be verified that the methodology proposed by the above-mentioned tools is in fact helpful in course planning and in strengthening educational assessment, placing the student as central element in the process of teaching and learning

Uma arquitetura P2P baseada na hierarquia do endereçamento IP com roteamento unificado

There are some approaches that take advantage of unused computational resources in the Internet nodes - users´ machines. In the last years , the peer-to-peer networks (P2P) have gaining a momentum mainly due to its support for scalability and fault tolerance. However, current P2P architectures present some problems such as nodes overhead due to messages routing, a great amount of nodes reconfigurations when the network topology changes, routing traffic inside a specific network even when the traffic is not directed to a machine of this network, and the lack of a proximity relationship among the P2P nodes and the proximity of these nodes in the IP network. Although some architectures use the information about the nodes distance in the IP network, they use methods that require dynamic information. In this work we propose a P2P architecture to fix the problems afore mentioned. It is composed of three parts. The first part consists of a basic P2P architecture, called SGrid, which maintains a relationship of nodes in the P2P network with their position in the IP network. Its assigns adjacent key regions to nodes of a same organization. The second part is a protocol called NATal (Routing and NAT application layer) that extends the basic architecture in order to remove from the nodes the responsibility of routing messages. The third part consists of a special kind of node, called LSP (Lightware Super-Peer), which is responsible for maintaining the P2P routing table. In addition, this work also presents a simulator that validates the architecture and a module of the Natal protocol to be used in Linux routers

Localização de robôs móveis autônomos utilizando fusão sensorial de odometria e visão monocular

The development and refinement of techniques that make simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) for an autonomous mobile robot and the building of local 3-D maps from a sequence of images, is widely studied in scientific circles. This work presents a monocular visual SLAM technique based on extended Kalman filter, which uses features found in a sequence of images using the SURF descriptor (Speeded Up Robust Features) and determines which features can be used as marks by a technique based on delayed initialization from 3-D straight lines. For this, only the coordinates of the features found in the image and the intrinsic and extrinsic camera parameters are avaliable. Its possible to determine the position of the marks only on the availability of information of depth. Tests have shown that during the route, the mobile robot detects the presence of characteristics in the images and through a proposed technique for delayed initialization of marks, adds new marks to the state vector of the extended Kalman filter (EKF), after estimating the depth of features. With the estimated position of the marks, it was possible to estimate the updated position of the robot at each step, obtaining good results that demonstrate the effectiveness of monocular visual SLAM system proposed in this paper

Odometria visual baseada em técnicas de structure from motion

Visual Odometry is the process that estimates camera position and orientation based solely on images and in features (projections of visual landmarks present in the scene) extraced from them. With the increasing advance of Computer Vision algorithms and computer processing power, the subarea known as Structure from Motion (SFM) started to supply mathematical tools composing localization systems for robotics and Augmented Reality applications, in contrast with its initial purpose of being used in inherently offline solutions aiming 3D reconstruction and image based modelling. In that way, this work proposes a pipeline to obtain relative position featuring a previously calibrated camera as positional sensor and based entirely on models and algorithms from SFM. Techniques usually applied in camera localization systems such as Kalman filters and particle filters are not used, making unnecessary additional information like probabilistic models for camera state transition. Experiments assessing both 3D reconstruction quality and camera position estimated by the system were performed, in which image sequences captured in reallistic scenarios were processed and compared to localization data gathered from a mobile robotic platform

Acelerando algoritmos de baixo nível em visão robótica com hardware reconfigurável

A challenge that remains in the robotics field is how to make a robot to react in real time to visual stimulus. Traditional computer vision algorithms used to overcome this problem are still very expensive taking too long when using common computer processors. Very simple algorithms like image filtering or even mathematical morphology operations may take too long. Researchers have implemented image processing algorithms in high parallelism hardware devices in order to cut down the time spent in the algorithms processing, with good results. By using hardware implemented image processing techniques and a platform oriented system that uses the Nios II Processor we propose an approach that uses the hardware processing and event based programming to simplify the vision based systems while at the same time accelerating some parts of the used algorithms