Strategic alliances between companies and non-governmental organizations pursuing the creation of shared value: an exploratory study at the base of the pyramid in Brazil

Na última década, uma crescente atenção tem sido dedicada ao desenvolvimento de estratégias que permitem uma empresa de atender os mercados de baixa renda de uma forma rentável e ao mesmo tempo enfrentar os desafios sociais. Uma das ferramentas estratégicas identificados para operar com sucesso na base da pirâmide ( BoP ), consiste no estabelecimento de alianças com organizações não governamentais (ONGs). Isso, no entanto, é um desafio, especialmente porque os atores do setor empresarial e da sociedade civil são movidos por um propósito diferente e adotam uma abordagem diferente na condução das suas atividades. O objetivo desta pesquisa é, portanto, investigar precisamente como ONGs e empresas podem alavancar os seus respectivos recursos e capacidades para criar valor econômico e social , servindo este segmento. Um estudo de casos múltiplos, com foco na base da pirâmide brasileira é utilizado, a fim de entender as dificuldades e fatores de sucesso para a criação e gestão de tais alianças e identificar os recursos e capacidades que são mobilizados por cada parceiro. Os resultados sugerem que as principais dificuldades estão em encontrar um parceiro adequado; superar percepções estereotipadas negativos e falta de confiança e, finalmente, na diferente estrutura, cultura e processos. Por sua vez, os fatores mais importantes que levam ao sucesso incluem a escolha do parceiro certo; compatibilidade em termos de missão, estratégia e valores; estabelecimento de confiança e comprometimento; comunicação eficaz e, finalmente, a capacidade da aliança de gerar valor para ambos os parceiros. Além disso, os resultados demostram que o papel das ONGs é na maior parte limitado a agir como uma ponte entre a empresa e as comunidades de baixa renda, enquanto as capacidades operacionais e os recursos financeiros são fornecidos pelas empresas.

Firms?: heterogeneity, organizations, power and trade

This paper develops a theory which investigates the two-way relationship between the internaI organization of the firm and market competition.We introduce heterogenous firms with internal hierarchies in a Knlgman (1980) monopolistic competition model of trade. The model simultanously determines firms' organizational choices anel heterogeneity across firms in size and proeluctivity.Ve show that intenlational trade, market size and the toughness of competition in international markets incluce a power struggle in firms which eventually leads to a reorganization of firms towards more decentralized corporate hierarchies.We show further that trade triggers produetivity growth through inter-firm reallocations towards more produetive firms in whieh CEOs have power in firms. At the same time, however trade- induced organizational changes towards fiattened corporate hierarchies lead to a softening of lnternat.ional competition which may contribute a eountervailing negative effect on seetoral productivity.

Generalists versus specialists in organizations

In this paper, we discuss the trade-o¤ between specialization and coordination in an organizational design problem. Most papers on the assignment of heterogeneous managers to di¤erent hierarchic levels emphasize the role of talent: better managers should be on top of hierarchies. However, this requires talent to be measured on an one-dimensional scale. In this paper, we explore the implications of allowing talent to have two dimensions: breadth and depth. Specialists have deep knowledge of few areas while generalists have narrow knowledge of many areas. When perfect communication is impossible, hierarchies arise in which generalists are at the top and specialists are at the bottom. We propose a model of imperfect communication and discuss its implications for organizational design, the optimal degree of centralization and the depth of hierarchies. We show that our model also implies plausible organizational structures, like balanced hierarchies and pyramidal structures.

Stage level measurement of information and communication technology in organizations

Na moderna Economia do Conhecimento, na Era do Big Data, entender corretamente o uso e a gestão da Tecnologia de Informação e Comunicação (TIC) tendo como base o campo acadêmico de estudos de Sistemas de Informação (SI), torna-se cada vez mais relevante e estratégico para as organizações que pretendem: permanecer em atividade, estar aptas para atender novas demandas (internas e externas) e enfrentar as complexas mudanças na competição de mercado. Esta pesquisa utiliza a teoria dos estágios de crescimento, fundamentada pelos estudos de Richard L. Nolan nos anos 70. A literatura acadêmica relacionada com modelos de estágios de crescimento e o contexto do campo de estudo de SI, fornecem as bases conceituais deste estudo. A pesquisa identifica um modelo com seus construtos relacionados aos estágios de crescimento das iniciativas da TIC/SI organizacional, partindo das variáveis de benchmark de segundo nível de Nolan, e propõe sua operacionalização com a criação e desenvolvimento de uma escala. De caráter exploratório e descritivo, a pesquisa traz contribuição teórica ao paradigma da teoria dos estágios de crescimento, adicionando um novo processo de crescimento em sua estrutura conceitual. Como resultado, é disponibilizado além de um instrumento de escala bilíngue (português e inglês), recomendações e regras para aplicação de um instrumento de pesquisa do tipo survey, na continuidade deste estudo. Como implicação geral desta pesquisa, é esperado que seu uso e aplicação ao mensurar a avaliação do nível de estágio da TIC/SI em organizações, possam auxiliar dois perfis de indivíduos: acadêmicos que estudam essa temática, assim como, profissionais que buscam respostas de suas ações práticas nas organizações onde trabalham.

Main problems with the taxation of civil society organizations in Brazil: certifications and impact on payroll

The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the main problems in the taxation—regarding both taxes themselves and compliance costs of taxation—of civil society organizations in Brazil. This study is qualitative descriptive research. A multiple case study with 26 organizations was performed. The results show that the problems mainly affect organizations with lower revenue and that do not work in the areas of education, health or social care. The main problems involve the taxation of the payroll and the difficulties related to obtaining and maintaining certifications. The study concludes with suggestions for the improvement of the regulatory framework.

Social entrepreneurship practices and social change In Brazil: a qualitative study in three non-governmental organizations

Social Entrepreneurship (SE) has attracted growing interest from a wide variety of actors over the last 30 years, especially due to a general agreement that it could be an important tool for tackling many of the world’s social ills. In the academic sphere, this growing interest did not translate into a matured field of study. Quite the opposite, a quick look at this literature makes it evident that: SE has been consistently subjected to numerous theoretical discussions and disagreements, especially over the definition of the concept of SE which is often based on a taken-for-granted notion of social change; it has been more systematically investigated in restricted contexts, often leaving aside so called developing/emerging countries like Brazil and especially lacking in-depth qualitative studies; SE literature lags behind SE practices and few studies focus on how SE actually occurs in a daily and bottom-up manner. In order to address such gaps, this thesis examines how social entrepreneurship practices accomplish social change in the context of Brazil. In this investigation I conducted an inductive practice-based, qualitative/ethnographic study in three Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) located in different cities in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. Data collection lasted from February 2014 until March 2015 and was mainly done through participant observations and through in-depth unstructured conversations with research participants. Secondary data and documents were also collected whenever available. The participants of this study included a variety of the studied organizations��� stakeholders: two founders, volunteers, employees, donors and beneficiaries. Observation data was kept in fieldnotes, conversations were recorded whenever possible and were later transcribed. Data was analyzed through an iterative thematic analysis. Through this I identified eight recurrent themes in the data: (1) structure; (2) relationship with other organizational actors (sub-themes: relationship with state, relationship with businesses and relationship with other NGOs); (3) beliefs, spirituality and moral authority; (4) social position of participants, (5) stakeholders’ mobilization and participation; (6) feelings; (7) social purpose; and (8) social change. These findings were later discussed under the lens of practice theory, and in this discussion I argue and show that, in the context studied: (a) even though SE embraces a wide variety of different social purposes, they are intertwined with a common notion of social change based on a general understanding and aspiration for social equality; (b) this social change is accomplished in a processual and ongoing manner as stakeholders from antagonistic social groups felt compelled to and participated in SE practices. In answering the proposed research question the contributions of this thesis are: (i) the elaboration a working definition for SE based on its relationship with social change; (ii) providing in-depth empirical evidence which accounts for and explains this relationship; (iii) characterizing SE in the Brazilian context and reflecting upon its transferability to other contexts. This thesis also makes a methodological contribution, for it demonstrates how thematic analysis can be used in practice-based studies.

Analysis an development of a prototype based on media wiki and semantic media wiki integrated with a design modeling that allows modeling of organizations based on demo

In a world where organizations are ever more complex the need for the knowledge of the organizational self is a growing necessity. The DEMO methodology sets a goal in achieving the specification of the organizational self capturing the essence of the organization in way independent of its implementation and also coherent, consistent, complete, modular and objective. But having such organization self notion is of little meaning if this notion is not shared by the organization actors. To achieve this goal in a society that has grown attached to technology and where time is of utmost importance, using a tool such as a semantic Wikipedia may be the perfect way of making the information accessible. However, to establish DEMO methodology in such platform there is a need to create bridges between its modeling components and semantic Wikipedia. It’s in that aspect that our thesis focuses, trying to establish and implement, using a study case, the principles of a way of transforming the DEMO methodology diagrams in comprehensive pages on semantic Wikipedia but keeping them as abstract as possible to allow expansibility and generalization to all diagrams without losing any valuable information so that, if that is the wish, those diagrams may be recreated from the semantic pages and make this process a full cycle.

Authentic leadership in school organizations

This research study, descriptive and exploratory in nature, had as objectives to know the perceptions of the teacher/students of a graduation course in Educational Sciences about their leaders, measured and evaluated through the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) and to verify if existed differences between the public and private school organizations in the four characteristics defined for the ALQ: a) self-conscious; b) transparency; c) moral/ethics; d) balanced processing. A non-probabilistic sample by convenience consisted of 86 participants from Brazil. The results of this research study show that the level of authenticity of the leader, in the four characteristics defined for the ALQ, in the perception of the subjects inquired, is above of the moderate level. Having in account the type of school organization (public or private), the differences found in the levels of the four characteristics defined for the ALQ were not statistically significant even though, the leaders of the private schools demonstrated to possess slightly higher values in the four analysed sub areas.

Organizations redesign and building of information systems

Develop software is still a risky business. After 60 years of experience, this community is still not able to consistently build Information Systems (IS) for organizations with predictable quality, within previously agreed budget and time constraints. Although software is changeable we are still unable to cope with the amount and complexity of change that organizations demand for their IS. To improve results, developers followed two alternatives: Frameworks that increase productivity but constrain the flexibility of possible solutions; Agile ways of developing software that keep flexibility with less upfront commitments. With strict frameworks, specific hacks have to be put in place to get around the framework construction options. In time this leads to inconsistent architectures that are harder to maintain due to incomplete documentation and human resources turnover. The main goals of this work is to create a new way to develop flexible IS for organizations, using web technologies, in a faster, better and cheaper way that is more suited to handle organizational change. To do so we propose an adaptive object model that uses a new ontology for data and action with strict normalizing rules. These rules should bound the effects of changes that can be better tested and therefore corrected. Interfaces are built with templates of resources that can be reused and extended in a flexible way. The “state of the world” for each IS is determined by all production and coordination acts that agents performed over time, even those performed by external systems. When bugs are found during maintenance, their past cascading effects can be checked through simulation, re-running the log of transaction acts over time and checking results with previous records. This work implements a prototype with part of the proposed system in order to have a preliminary assessment its feasibility and limitations.

Modifications induced by acetylacetone in properties of sol-gel derived Y3Al5O12:Tb3+ - I: Structural and morphological organizations

Acetylacetone has been used as a chemical modifier for the synthesis of undoped and Tb3+-doped Y3Al5O12 powders. A systematic investigation concerning its influence on the structural and morphological properties of amorphous and crystallized samples has been carried out. These properties have been comparatively studied by means of X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, SEM, XAS and SAXS. 27Al NMR and EPR experiments have been performed to complete the study. The combined results have evidenced that acetylacetone promotes organic groups departure during calcination, entailing a better structural organization at lower temperatures compared with unmodified powders. Structuration has been proven to occur at short-scale range until a 600°C heating treatment before being extended by coalescence at higher temperatures. Finally, the presence of acac ligands on the alkoxides leads to a monomer-cluster aggregation process, and thus to a more open network. © 2010 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Managing environmental training in organizations: Theoretical review and proposal of a model

Purpose: The aim of this work is to address the issue of environmental training in organizations, presenting a theoretical review on the subject and proposing a model that highlights the importance of this type of training for organizations. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a thorough, updated literature review, discusses typology and the best practices of environmental training, and presents a framework integrating environmental training and organizational results. Findings: A careful consideration allows identifying a significant theoretical gap related to the lack of theoretical references, best practices, and an alignment between environmental training and organizational results. To overcome this gap, a model was proposed that helps to manage the environmental training process in organizations. Research limitations/implications: The paper needs to be complemented with empirical research on the topic. Originality/value: Environmental training is considered to be an essential element for organizations seeking to mitigate their environmental impacts. ISO 14001 states that environmental management is a duty of certified organizations. However, there have been few published articles that suggest models and insights to improve the environmental training in organizations. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Diversity management: Challenges, benefits, and the role of human resource management in Brazilian organizations

Purpose The objective of this study was to analyze the major challenges and benefits of diversity management in Brazilian companies by assessing the role of human resources. Design/methodology/approach A total of 15 case studies were carried out on companies that operate in Brazil. Brazil is a country with considerable diversity and multiracial backgrounds. Findings It was found that diversity management in Brazilian companies is still an emerging issue, and the major challenges are related to discriminatory actions taken by coworkers. Among the 15 companies studied, only four had adopted a consistent set of diversity management and human resources practices. These four companies were the only companies to affirm that diversity management requires the strong support of top management and continuous organization to sustain efforts toward incorporating diversity. Originality/value Research studies on diversity management in Brazil are scarce. The findings of this study, however, can be useful to academic professionals and company directors in countries that exhibit similar characteristics to those of Brazil, or to those who are interested in learning more about Brazil. © 2011 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Report of civil society organizations and final panel with participation of guest speakers from civil society organizations

Includes bibliography

Building sustainable values in organizations with the support of human resource management: Evidence from one firm considered as the 'best place to work' in Brazil

Researchers and other professionals unanimously agree that companies should become more sustainable, but this will not happen without the support of human resource management. Paradoxically, there is a lack of information on the support human resource management offers to organizational sustainability applied to real cases. Therefore, this research presents a case study on this topic that was carried out in a leading Brazilian company, which is considered as a model and has been selected as 'the best place to work in the country'. The results provide practical examples of how this family company has been working to guarantee an increasingly sustainable performance with the support of human resources, highlighting the achievements and challenges the company has faced. One of the main results indicates that companies seeking to achieve sustainability need the assistance of the human resource field in order to design a communication system which bridges the gap between practices and sustainable values. © 2012 Management Centre for Human Values.