Human motivation and professional practice: of knights, knaves and social workers

Efforts to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of public services by harnessing the self-interest of professionals in state agencies have been widely debated in the recent literature on welfare state reform. In the context of social services, one way in which British policy-makers have sought to effect such changes has been through the "new community care" of the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. Key to this is the concept of care management, in which the identification of needs and the provision of services are separated, purportedly with a view to improving advocacy, choice and quality for service users. This paper uses data from a wide-ranging qualitative study of access to social care for older people to examine the success of the policy in these terms, with specific reference to its attempts to harness the rational self-interest of professionals. While care management removes one potential conflict of interests by separating commissioning and provision, the responsibility of social care professionals to comply with organizational priorities conflicts with their role of advocacy for their clients, a tension rendered all the more problematic by the perceived inadequacy of funding. Moreover, the bureaucracy of the care management process itself further negates the approach's supposedly client-centred ethos. The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com

GESTIÓN DE LA INFORMACIÓN EN LAS ORGANIZACIONES

Las grandes tendencias que marcan la gestión de empresas u organizaciones llevan implícito un aspecto fundamental, que en muchas ocasiones no se considera o se deja de lado, como lo es la información, sus sistemas y proceso de gestión.Este artículo busca presentar el modelo de gestión de información en las organizaciones, su interacción con los distintos recursos empresariales, los entes que se involucran en esta gestión y sus responsables, para finalmente presentar cuál debe ser el rol de los profesionales en gestión de información en los procesos que se mencionan.Con ello no se pretende profundizar o delimitar cada una de las funciones que conllevan ese proceso de gestión, como tampoco definir los tópicos que deben ser incorporados, pero sí se pretende propiciar una rica discusión en fundamentos y teorías en lo que respecta a la gestión de la información en las organizaciones, considerando la evolución histórica de este tema.

Redes sociais no processo de gestão coletiva : o caso dos projetos de assentamento do programa nacional de crédito fundiário no município de Unaí – MG

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Agronomia e Medicina Veterinária, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Agronegócios, 2015.

Gestão da informação: um estudo de caso em um instituto de pesquisa tecnológica

Each two years the amount of available information in the world double. This is the Information Age, where the success depends on what one knows, not on what one has. A new economy appears with the capacity to generate, to store, to process and to apply effectively the knowledge, based on information, determining the companies productivity and competitiveness.The objective of this work is to understand the information management model of a technological research institute - CTGÁS (Gas Technology Center). The research has been done focused on the 5 main processes and the 15 support processes of the organization value chain , aiming to understand the information management in the organization based on Davenport´s Information Management model (1998). Therefore, it was necessary to identify how the necessary information for the organizational processes accomplishment are determined, obtained, distributed and used by the organization. The research can be classified as descriptive, regarding to its aims, and as a case study, related to the research ways. Interviews with the managers of the organization value chain processes have been carried through, with the objective to identify how they perceive the Information Management process that circulates in the organizational processes. Complementarily, a documentary research has been carried through, associated to the direct observation and procedures and actions follow up, involving the Information Management. The data treatment and analysis have been done from the authors theoretical support and from the managers interviews analysis, documents and processes observed by the researcher in the organization. It was noticed that the organization has raised its level of information needs that are not difficult to be determined and are satisfactorily obtained and distributed, although the majority of them are not structuralized, automatized or even classified regarding to its confidence. These peaces of information have good quality and are important, however they reflect a medium dependence on external and informal information, besides being used only in its great majority for people to know what and how to do something

Aspectos do gerenciamento de riscos de tecnologia da informação nas empresas: um estudo de caso múltiplos

The information technology - IT- benefits have been more perceived during the last decades. Both IT and business managers are dealing with subjects like governance, IT-Business alignment, information security and others on their top priorities. Talking about governance, specifically, managers are facing it with a technical approach, that gives emphasis on protection against invasions, antivirus systems, access controls and others technical issues. The IT risk management, commonly, is faced under this approach, that means, has its importance reduced and delegated to IT Departments. On the last two decades, a new IT risk management perspective raised, bringing an holistic view of IT risk to the organization. According to this new perspective, the strategies formulation process should take into account the IT risks. With the growing of IT dependence on most of organizations, the necessity of a better comprehension about the subject becomes more clear. This work shows a study in three public organizations of the Pernambuco State that investigates how those organizations manage their IT risks. Structured interviews were made with IT managers, and later, analyzed and compared with conceptual categories found in the literature. The results shows that the IT risks culture and IT governance are weakly understood and implemented on those organizations, where there are not such an IT risk methodology formally defined, neither executed. In addition, most of practices suggested in the literature were found, even without an alignment with an IT risks management process

Processo de planejamento estratégico em universidade pública: o caso da Universidade Federal do Pará

The goal of this research is to check if the strategic planning developed between 2001 and 2009 into the State University of Para (Universidade Federal do Pará - UFPA) was consolidated into its Academic Centers as a management practice. To this end, we identified the planning formalization degree of the Academic Centers, the conceived tools for the planning, the conception and the methodological process used in the tools elaboration, as also its implementation. The research used a qualitative approach: it is descriptive and it uses the case study technique. The data were gathered from primary and secondary sources, through bibliography, documents, and field researches through semi-structure interviews. The analysis and data interpretation were done by each investigated Academic Center from the analytics categories guided by the specifics goals. We used theoretic fundamental based principles and the university as a study empiric reference based on its structure analysis, organizational processes and institutional strategic plan. We inspected how the strategic planning process was developed throughout the fixed period and how the investigated Academic Centers are from the collected documents and interviews. The theoretical foundation was built from three axis: the Brazilian undergraduate and posgraduate education system; the university itself including its singularity and complexity as an organization; and the planning as a strategic management process. The main results show us that the UFPA has updated regulatory milestones, presenting organizational structure, laws, instructions, manuals and deployed management model that give the strategic planning development conditions beyond its administration, i. e., into its Academic Centers. The centers also present those established milestones and develop the basic planning processes of the institution. Those processes are conceived based on the institutional strategic planning and the managers mainly use the procedural orientation defined by the university management, from where the conceptual foundation is originated and propagated. According to the literature and to the research done in this work, we can conclude that the Academic Centers from the UFPA developed the strategic planning practice. This planning is organized and founded and guided the plans and decisions which avoided the disordered management and, according to the managers, allowed the advances and performance improvement. We can conclude that the UFPA built an important foundation with respect to the management professionalization. On the other hand, we can not conclude that the management practice is consolidated since there are weaknesses into the structuring of the technical teams and there is not any management tool for the implementation of the elaborated plans

Método de análise de vulnerabilidade utilizando redes complexas : aplicação na rede de transporte aéreo brasileira

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Civil e Ambiental, 2016.

Building an Ontology of Product/Service-Systems: Using a Maritime Case Study to Elicit Classifications and Characteristics

Part 4: Transition Towards Product-Service Systems

Avaliação do desempenho numa organização desportiva : o balanced scorecard adaptado às piscinas da Associação Humanitária de Bombeiros Voluntários de Colares

A gestão de uma organização, independentemente da sua natureza, representa na atualidade um grande desafio. Inicialmente, o sucesso no desenvolvimento do processo de gestão de uma organização depende, essencialmente, de uma estratégia bem formulada e implementada, mas no entanto, a longo prazo, este êxito só será possível se existir um mecanismo de monitorização que permita realizar ao longo do tempo uma avaliação do desempenho. O Balanced Scorecard (BSC), da autoria de Robert Kaplan e David Norton, na década de 90, surgiu inicialmente como uma metodologia de avaliação do desempenho e rapidamente começou a ser utlizado também como um sistema de gestão estratégica. Esta ferramenta pode ser utilizada nos mais variados tipos de organizações visto que pode ser adaptada às características e especificidades de cada uma. O presente estudo tem como objetivo adaptar o Balanced Scorecard a uma organização desportiva, as Piscinas da Associação Humanitária de Bombeiros Voluntários de Colares, de modo que, relativamente à metodologia empregue, este consiste num estudo de caso. Com o objetivo de suportar o estudo de uma forma coerente, foram utilizados como instrumentos de recolha de dados um conjunto de entrevistas e a análise documental. Como principal conclusão deste estudo retiramos que o BSC é de facto uma ferramenta muito útil para desenvolver a estratégia de uma organização e avaliar o seu desempenho.

Sistemas de medição de desempenho para projetos de PD&I no Setor de Petróleo e Gás Natural

Organizations are seeking new ideas, tools and methods aiming to improve management process and performance. On the other hand, system performance measurement needs to portray organizational changes and provide managers with a set of true and more appropriate information for the decision-making process. This work aims to propose a performance measurement system in the academic field regarding Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) in the oil and gas industry. The research performed a bibliographic review in a descriptive exploratory manner. A field research was conducted with an expert focus group in order to gather new indicators. As for the validation of these indicators, a survey with experienced professional was also realized. The research surveyed four segments in and outside of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte-Brazil such as oil and gas project coordinators, staff at Academic Planning Offices, FUNPEC employees as well as coordinators from Petrobrás. The performance measuring system created from this study features three interrelated performance indicators pointed out as: process indicators, outcome indicators and global indicators. The proposal includes performance indicators that seek to establish more appropriate strategies for effective institution management. It might help policy making of university-industry interaction policies

Förändringar i informationshanteringen med användandet av molntjänster : Förändringsanalys hos ett företag inom retailbranschen

Den här studien, som har bedrivits i samarbete med konsultföretaget Pipe, har studerat informationshanteringsprocessen hos småföretag inom retailbranschen. Företaget som ägnar sig åt butiksplanering med hjälp av CAD-program har idag ingen koppling mellan CAD-programmet och den molndatabas som lagrar information. Syftet med arbetet är att beskriva hur ett åtgärdsförslag skulle kunna se ut för att företaget ska kunna förbättra sin informationshantering genom användandet utav en molndatabas. Vi har även beskrivit problemområdet kring kopplingar mellanmolndatabaser och designprogram. För att besvara studiens syfte har vi genomfört en fallstudie, och svaret på forskningsfrågorna, 1. Hur ser informationshanteringsprocessen ut idag? 2. Hur kan informationshanteringsprocessen förbättras? 2. Vilka arbetssteg skulle kunna tas bort om företaget inför en koppling mellanmolndatabasen och designprogrammet? 3. Är en molnbaserad lösning ett möjligt alternativ för att använda för småföretag i retailbranschen? 4. Hur ser det ut i andra branscher som använder sig av CAD-program? Har vi hittat genom att genomföra intervjuer. Intervjuerna har hjälpt oss att genomföra en förändringsanalys där vi genom handlingsgrafer och mål- och problemlistor har kommit fram till ett antal åtgärdsförslag som företaget bör genomföra för att förbättra sin informationshanteringsprocess. Utifrån förändringsanalysen har vi kunnat dra slutsatsen att informationshanteringsprocessen skulle kunna förbättras och snabbas upp genom att införa en koppling mellan designprogrammet och en molndatabas. Detta skulle innebära att material automatiskt laddas upp från designprogrammet tillmolndatabasen, som även kunden har tillgång till. På så sätt samlas all information på ett och samma ställe. Genom litteraturstudier har vi också kommit fram till att en molnbaserad lösning vore möjligt för företaget, då det är en billig och smidig lösning för företag som inte har så stora resurser.

Digital 3D reconstruction as a research environment in art and architecture history: uncertainty classification and visualisation

The dissertation addresses the still not solved challenges concerned with the source-based digital 3D reconstruction, visualisation and documentation in the domain of archaeology, art and architecture history. The emerging BIM methodology and the exchange data format IFC are changing the way of collaboration, visualisation and documentation in the planning, construction and facility management process. The introduction and development of the Semantic Web (Web 3.0), spreading the idea of structured, formalised and linked data, offers semantically enriched human- and machine-readable data. In contrast to civil engineering and cultural heritage, academic object-oriented disciplines, like archaeology, art and architecture history, are acting as outside spectators. Since the 1990s, it has been argued that a 3D model is not likely to be considered a scientific reconstruction unless it is grounded on accurate documentation and visualisation. However, these standards are still missing and the validation of the outcomes is not fulfilled. Meanwhile, the digital research data remain ephemeral and continue to fill the growing digital cemeteries. This study focuses, therefore, on the evaluation of the source-based digital 3D reconstructions and, especially, on uncertainty assessment in the case of hypothetical reconstructions of destroyed or never built artefacts according to scientific principles, making the models shareable and reusable by a potentially wide audience. The work initially focuses on terminology and on the definition of a workflow especially related to the classification and visualisation of uncertainty. The workflow is then applied to specific cases of 3D models uploaded to the DFG repository of the AI Mainz. In this way, the available methods of documenting, visualising and communicating uncertainty are analysed. In the end, this process will lead to a validation or a correction of the workflow and the initial assumptions, but also (dealing with different hypotheses) to a better definition of the levels of uncertainty.

Improvement of radiology services based on the process management approach

The health sector requires continuous investments to ensure the improvement of products and services from a technological standpoint, the use of new materials, equipment and tools, and the application of process management methods. Methods associated with the process management approach, such as the development of reference models of business processes, can provide significant innovations in the health sector and respond to the current market trend for modern management in this sector (Gunderman et al. (2008) [4]). This article proposes a process model for diagnostic medical X-ray imaging, from which it derives a primary reference model and describes how this information leads to gains in quality and improvements. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Major Issues in Business Process Management: An Expert Perspective

The results presented in this report form a part of a larger global study on the major issues in BPM. Only one part of the larger study is reported here, viz. interviews with BPM experts. Interviews of BPM tool vendors together with focus groups involving user organizations, are continuing in parallel and will set the groundwork for the identification of BPM issues on a global scale via a survey (including a Delphi study). Through this multi-method approach, we identify four distinct sets of outcomes. First, as is the focus of this report, we identify the BPM issues as perceived by BPM experts. Second, the research design allows us to gain insight into the opinions of organisations deploying BPM solutions. Third, an understanding of organizations’ misconceptions of BPM technologies, as confronted by BPM tool vendors is obtained. Last, we seek to gain an understanding of BPM issues on a global scale, together with knowledge of matters of concern. This final outcome is aimed to produce an industry driven research agenda which will inform practitioners and in particular, the research community world-wide on issues and challenges that are prevalent or emerging in BPM and related areas.