LITURGIA E ECOLOGIA: APONTAMENTOS PARA UMA PRÁXIS PASTORAL ECOLITÚRGICA NA IGREJA METODISTA.

Esta pesquisa propõe-se a analisar a práxis pastoral litúrgica ecológica na Igreja Metodista. A práxis é a atividade reflexiva e material do ser humano, é ação transformadora, para uma pastoral ecoliturgica na dimensão pública da fé. A pesquisa consiste em estudar a interrelação que deve existir entre Liturgia e Ecologia, a partir dos conceitos bilbicos e a forma como a práxis pode influir e se articular para o desenvolvimento de uma ecoliturgia na realidade atual, tendo como espaço de referência a Igreja Metodista. A pesquisa se desenvolve em três etapas: Na primeira analisa conceitos teóricos de liturgia, sua história, mudanças e experiências do ser humano nas celebrações ligadas aos elementos da natureza; Na segunda, os conceitos de ecologia, sua crise e suas inter-relações com o Todo. Na terceira, os apontamentos para uma práxis pastoral ecolitúrgica na Igreja Metodista, como referencial para criar ações que conscientizem, mobilizem, para o reencantamento da espiritualidade, do sentido da vida e da ecologia, a fim de produzir esperança, diante das causas sociais que dizem respeito à vida integral do ser humano. O resultado será um conjunto de referenciais históricos e teóricos capazes de desconstruir, construir e reconstruir, a fim de sustentar uma práxis pastoral ecolitúrgica. Com o objetivo de realizar uma nova hermenêutica do tema num novo paradigma para as questões da realidade, tendo em vista a dimensão publica da fé na relação de Deus na criação e a práxis da igreja na sociedade. Na necessidade que o ser humano tem de se reencantar, reconhecer, saber cuidar, reconstruir tudo que nos garante a possibilidade da vida e a sustentabilidade no planeta.

Constructions of active womanhood and new femininities: from a feminist linguistic perspective, is Sex and the City a modernist or a post-modernist TV text?

Sex and the City has been the subject of close scrutiny within feminist scholarship in terms of whether it is considered to be a reactionary or progressive text. While this debate is valuable within a modernist feminist paradigm, it makes less sense from a post-modernist feminist perspective. Alternately using semiotic and feminist post-structuralist methods of textual analysis, this paper shows that Sex and the City can be viewed as reactionary according to a modernist reading, but is altogether more challenging and complex according to a post-modernist reading.

Industrial new product planning:a study of the sources of new product ideas and the development of new product proposals in the UK computer industry

This thesis presents a study of the sources of new product ideas and the development of new product proposals in an organisation in the UK Computer Industry. The thesis extends the work of von Hippel by showing how the phenomenon which he describes as "the Customer Active Paradigm for new product idea generation" can be observed to operate in this Industry. Furthermore, this thesis contrasts his Customer Active Paradigm with the more usually encountered Manufacturer Active Paradigm. In a second area, the thesis draws a number of conclusions relating to methods of market research, confirming existing observations and demonstrating the suitability of flexible interview strategies in certain circumstances. The thesis goes on to demonstrate the importance of free information flow within the organisation, making it more likely that sought and unsought opportunities can be exploited. It is shown that formal information flows and documents are a necessary but not sufficient means of influencing the formation of the organisation's dominant ideas on new product areas. The findings also link the work of Tushman and Katz on the role of "Gatekeepers" with the work of von Hippel by showing that the role of gatekeeper is particularly appropriate and useful to an organisation changing from Customer Active to Manufacturer Active methods of idea generation. Finally, the thesis provides conclusions relating to the exploitation of specific new product opportunities facing the sponsoring organisation.

eHabitat, a multi-purpose Web Processing Service for ecological modeling

The number of interoperable research infrastructures has increased significantly with the growing awareness of the efforts made by the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). One of the Societal Benefit Areas (SBA) that is benefiting most from GEOSS is biodiversity, given the costs of monitoring the environment and managing complex information, from space observations to species records including their genetic characteristics. But GEOSS goes beyond simple data sharing to encourage the publishing and combination of models, an approach which can ease the handling of complex multi-disciplinary questions. It is the purpose of this paper to illustrate these concepts by presenting eHabitat, a basic Web Processing Service (WPS) for computing the likelihood of finding ecosystems with equal properties to those specified by a user. When chained with other services providing data on climate change, eHabitat can be used for ecological forecasting and becomes a useful tool for decision-makers assessing different strategies when selecting new areas to protect. eHabitat can use virtually any kind of thematic data that can be considered as useful when defining ecosystems and their future persistence under different climatic or development scenarios. The paper will present the architecture and illustrate the concepts through case studies which forecast the impact of climate change on protected areas or on the ecological niche of an African bird.

Strategic HRM:transforming its responsibilities toward ecological sustainability - the greatest global challenge facing organizations

If we are to move to a more sustainable world, all actorsÑincluding governments, organizations, communities, and individualsÑneed to play their part in committing to a shift in the way we live our lives. This conceptual article explores the challenges that face the human resource management (HRM) profession in moving to a strategic position that supports the requirements of the biophysical environment. We argue that this is becoming an imperative for the future survival and success of organizations large and small, and thus is likely to be a key "modus operandi" for HRM professionals in the future who are looking to embed ecological sustainability into their organizations. This article offers new insights into developing business strategies for ecological sustainability, highlighting the implications for strategic HRM activity through organizational effectiveness, leadership, values, and, ultimately, HRM processes and systems.

Agile or adaptable? Finding a paradigm for an uncertain world

This paper looks at the way in which, over recent years, paradigms for manufacturing management have evolved as a result of changing economic and environmental circumstances. The lean production concept, devised during the 1980s, proved robust only until the end of the bubble economy in Japan caused firms to re-examine the underlying principles of the lean production paradigm and redesign their production systems to suit the changing circumstances they were facing. Since that time a plethora of new concepts have emerged, most of which have been based on improving the way that firms are able to respond to the uncertainties of the new environment in which they have found themselves operating. The main question today is whether firms should be agile or adaptable. Both concepts imply a measure of responsiveness, but recent changes in the nature of the uncertainties have heightened the debate about what strategies should be adopted in the future.

A new dynamic framework for managing ERP development and enterprise strategy

The enterprise management (EM) approach provides a holistic view of organizations and their related information systems. In order to align information technology (IT) innovation with global markets and volatile virtualization, traditional firms are seeking to reconstruct their enterprise structures alongside repositioning strategy and establish new information system (IS) architectures to transform from single autonomous entities into more open enterprises supported by new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. This chapter shows how ERP engage-abilities cater to three distinctive EM patterns and resultant strategies. The purpose is to examine the presumptions and importance of combing ERP and inter-firm relations relying on the virtual value chain concept. From a review of the literature on ERP development and enterprise strategy, exploratory inductive research studies in Zoomlion and Lanye have been conducted. In addition, the authors propose a dynamic conceptual framework to demonstrate the adoption and governance of ERP in the three enterprise management forms and points to a new architectural type (ERPIII) for operating in the virtual enterprise paradigm. © 2012, IGI Global.

Modelling sustainability performance to achieve absolute reductions in socio-ecological systems

As the world’s natural resources dwindle and critical levels of environmental pollution are approached, sustainability becomes a key issue for governments, organisations and individuals. With the consequences of such an issue in mind, this paper introduces a unifying approach to measure the sustainability performance of socio-economic systems based on the interplay between two key variables: essentiality of consumption and environmental impact. This measure attributes to every system a ‘fitness’ value i.e. a quantity that reflects its ability to remain resilient/healthy by avoiding ecological, social and economic collapse as it consumes the available resources. This new measure is tested on a system where there is a limited supply of resources and four basic consumption types. The analysis has theoretical implications as well as practical importance as it can help countries, organisations or even individuals, in finding better ways to measure sustainability performance.

A new dynamic framework for managing ERP development and enterprise strategy

The enterprise management (EM) approach provides a holistic view of organizations and their related information systems. In order to align information technology (IT) innovation with global markets and volatile virtualization, traditional firms are seeking to reconstruct their enterprise structures alongside repositioning strategy and establish new information system (IS) architectures to transform from single autonomous entities into more open enterprises supported by new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. This chapter shows how ERP engage-abilities cater to three distinctive EM patterns and resultant strategies. The purpose is to examine the presumptions and importance of combing ERP and inter-firm relations relying on the virtual value chain concept. From a review of the literature on ERP development and enterprise strategy, exploratory inductive research studies in Zoomlion and Lanye have been conducted. In addition, the authors propose a dynamic conceptual framework to demonstrate the adoption and governance of ERP in the three enterprise management forms and points to a new architectural type (ERPIII) for operating in the virtual enterprise paradigm.

The calculation of dynamic ecological footprint on the basis of the dynamic input-output model

The Leontief input-output model is widely used to determine the ecological footprint of consumption in a region or a country. It is able to capture spillover environmental effects along the supply change, thus its popularity is increasing in ecology related economic research. These studies are static and the dynamic investigations are neglected. The dynamic Leontief model makes it possible to involve the capital and inventory investment in the footprint calculation that projects future growth of GDP and environmental impacts. We show a new calculation method to determine the effect of capital accumulation on ecological footprint. Keywords: Dynamic Leontief model, Dynamic ecological footprint, Environmental management, Allocation method

A rendszerparadigma. Fogalmi tisztázás = The system paradigm

Tanulmányomban, amint azt a cím is jelzi, használni szeretném a paradigma fogalmát. Ezt Kuhn vezette be a tudományelméletbe klasszikus művében (Kuhn [1962]). Kuhn nem adott egyértelmű definíciót, s maga a fogalom sok vitára adott okot. A konferenciára készülve, újraolvastam számos művet az általános tudományelmélet és speciálisan a közgazdaságtani metodológia köréből. Ha más nem, már ez a meghökkentő olvasmányélmény is óvatosságra int. Nyoma sincsen konszenzusnak, még az alapfogalmak értelmezésében sem. Ingerült konfrontatív vita zajlik. A szűkebben vett tudományelmélet és tudománytörténet alternatív iskolái közötti egyet nem értés mélyen gyökeredzik híveiknek egymástól eltérő filozófiai felfogásában. Szeretném elkerülni ezt az aknamezőt. Ez késztet arra, hogy fogalmi tisztázással kezdjem a fejtegetést, az esetleges félreértések elkerülésére. Nem kívánok hozzászólni ahhoz, hogy mennyiben volt Poppernek, Kuhnnak, Lakatosnak vagy másnak igaza a tudomány történetének elemzésében. A korrekt tárgyalásA szerző a cikk bevezetőjében ismerteti, milyen értelmezésben használja a társadalomtudományokra vonatkozóan a paradigma fogalmát, amelyet T. S. Kuhn eredetileg a természettudományok történetétől ihletve alkotott meg. Az új paradigma nem okvetlenül váltja fel a korábbit; több paradigma munkaképesen működhet egymás mellett. A rendszerparadigma kialakulásának mérföldkövei: Marx, Mises, Hayek, Polányi, Schumpeter és Eucken munkái. Noha filozófiájukat és politikai állásfoglalásukat tekintve igen heterogén a névsor, közös bennük a rendszerszemlélet\". Nemcsak a gazdaság egy-egy részletével foglalkoznak, hanem a rendszer egészével; nemcsak a gazdasággal, hanem a politikai, ideológiai és a társadalmi dimenziókkal is, s különös figyelmet fordítanak valamennyi szféra interakcióira. A rendszerparadigma nagy vizsgafeladata a posztszocialista átmenet kutatása. Ehhez nélkülözhetetlen; a magyarázó erőt tekintve semmilyen más paradigmával nem pótolható. Viszont a rendszerparadigma alkalmazói előrejelzéseikben (akárcsak más paradigmák művelői) sokszor súlyosan tévedtek. A rendszerparadigma prediktív ereje korlátozott, s ez szerénységre inti felhasználóit. / === / The notion of paradigm was originally created by T. S. Kuhn and inspired by the history of natural sciences. The introduction of the article explains the interpreation of the notion as used in social sciences. In this context a new paradigm does not necessarily replace the earlier one, several paradigms can operate beside each other. The milestones of the system paradigm are the works of Marx, Mises, Hayek, Polányi, Schumpeter and Eucken. Although the list is rather heterogeneous as regards the philosophies and political stand of the authors, common to them is the \"systemic approach\". They discuss not some detail of the economy, but the system as a whole; not only the economy, but the political, ideological and societal dimensions as well, and they pay particular attention to the interactions among all spheres. It is a great examination task of the system paradigm to research the post-socialist transition. It is indispensable for that; as regards explanatory power, it cannot be replaced by any other paradigm. On the other hand, the users of the system paradigm frequently made grave errors in their forecasts (similarly to those using other paradigms). The predictive power of the system paradigm is restricted and this warns its users to caution.