MBA – Finanças 1995/97 working paper

O principal objectivo deste estudo centra-se no estudo da influência do capital de risco na performance das empresas que já beneficiaram deste instrumento, procurando assim enriquecer o campo de investigação, ainda incipiente, neste domínio. Tendo como enquadramento o papel daquele instrumento na intermediação financeira, a evolução do sector ao nível internacional e doméstico e sobretudo atendendo aos resultados de análises de estatística multivariada e de clusters efectuadas sobre uma amostra de empresas participadas por capital de risco em Portugal, conclui-se neste estudo que existe efectivamente um impacto relevante da sua intervenção na rentabilidade económica das empresas alvo (ROI), sendo ainda traçado o perfil destas empresa e sugeridas recomendações, não só aos operadores de capital de risco, como também às entidades intervenientes no sector, com especial destaque para o Estado, estas últimas baseadas em posições de entidades nacionais e europeias ligadas ao sector de capital de risco como a APCRI, a EVCA e a própria Comissão Europeia.

A ética protestante do trabalho e o commitment organizacional : um estudo comparativo entre protestantes e não protestantes

O commitment é um conceito que tem sido desenvolvido e estudado nas últimas décadas. Só, ou com outras variáveis, o commitment tem sido objecto de estudo em várias culturas. Partindo do princípio que o commitment é afectado pelos valores de cada indivíduo, este estudo procura verificar a sua relação com um sistema de valores de trabalho específico: a Ética Protestante do Trabalho. O estudo tem como contexto a classe trabalhadora, composta por protestantes e não protestantes. Os resultados permitiram concluir que a Ética Protestante do Trabalho não é um construto unidimensional. Contudo, algumas das componentes criadas apresentaram uma relação com as componentes do commitment.

Valores de trabalho, satisfação global com o trabalho e satisfação com a vida : um estudo exploratório das diferenças sócio-demográficas em institutos de saúde

Foram objetivos do presente estudo proceder à análise das relações entre Valores de trabalho, Satisfação no trabalho e Satisfação com a vida em profissionais do sector da saúde e perceber se dimensões como antiguidade na empresa, os anos de experiência e o número de organizações, função, definição de objetivos, avaliação do desempenho, idade, escolaridade, sexo e estado civil tinham um papel nas dimensões principais do estudo. Foi recolhida uma amostra de 214 profissionais da saúde, sendo 24% do sexo masculino e com idades entre 21 e 71 anos (M=40.06; DP=10.93). Foram utilizados os instrumentos WVS (Schwartz, 1994), QSGT (Hackman & Oldham, 1975) e SWLS (Diener, 1984). Os resultados mostraram que existe uma relação positiva entre a satisfação na vida e a satisfação no trabalho; que quanto mais elevados eram os valores de trabalho Poder, Realização, Hedonismo, Estimulação, Auto direção, Benevolência, Conformismo e Segurança, maior era a Satisfação no trabalho; que quanto mais elevados são os valores de trabalho Poder, Realização, Hedonismo, Estimulação, Auto direção, Universalismo, Benevolência, Tradição, Conformismo e Segurança maior era a Satisfação com a vida; e que existem diferenças entre sexos, idade, estado civil e escolaridade ao nível dos valores de trabalho. Contudo, apesar da satisfação com a vida ser influenciada pela satisfação no trabalho e pelos valores de trabalho, estas dimensões, por si só, não explicam fortemente a satisfação com a vida.

Working in partnership with the Museum Training Institute providing in service training for museum personnel

The South Eastern Museums Service is one of ten Area Museums Councils in Great Britain. They are partnerships; membership organizations to which the 2 000 + museums belong. They provide advice, support, technical services, information and training for their members. They are the principal channel of government grant-in-aid to local government, university and independent museums. This funding comes from the Department of National Heritage via the Museums & Galleries Commission. At the South Eastern Museums Service I am responsible for the development and delivery of training for 600 museums in our region and the provision of information about museums and of interest to museums. This paper explains how we approach in-service training and the value of the definition of national standards for our work. It will pose some questions: What is training? What is a training need? and describe a new initiative, the development of training materials and their delivery.

Give or take: thoughts on museum collections as working tools and their connection with human beings

This paper proposes a look at museums from the perspective of sociomuseology, an area of research and practice under development in countries such as Portugal, Brazil and Spain. Sociomuseology was born from the Latin new museology tradition and is closely connected with the International Movement for a New Museology (MINOM/ICOM). The Lusofona University in Lisbon offers MA and PhD programmes in Sociomuseology. The University supports a research centre in Sociomuseology and publishes the journals Cadernos de Sociomuseologia, in Portuguese, and Sociomuseology, in English (for more information see http://tercud.ulusofona.pt.). Sociomuseology concerns the study of the social role of museums and of the continuous changes in society that frame their trajectories. The practice of sociomuseologists is based on their work with the different dimensions of social and community development from ecomuseums to networking and other ways of organizing social action in the 21st century in which heritage plays a strategic role.

Identification of issues encountered by deaf educators working with multiply involved children and the related emotional affects that go along with intervention

This paper discusses common issues deaf educators face that are not directly related to a child’s hearing impairment and thus often outside the educators’ area of expertise. The study also identifies a range of emotions early interventionists experience while working with children with multiple impairments.

School counselors in the mainstream setting: a tool for working with students with hearing impairments in the public school environment

This study looks at public school counselors who work with hearing impaired students and the counselor’s awareness of specific issues of problems of these students.

A review of research on working memory and its importance in education of the deaf

This independent study provides an overview of working memory as it pertains to deaf and hard of hearing students.

What kind of European Banking Union? Bruegel Policy Contribution [2012/12?]June 25, 2012

This paper discusses the creation of a European Banking Union. First, we discuss questions of design. We highlight seven fundamental choices that decision makers will need to make: Which EU countries should participate in the banking union? To which categories of banks should it apply? Which institution should be tasked with supervision? Which one should deal with resolution? How centralised should the deposit insurance system be? What kind of fiscal backing would be required? What governance framework and political institutions would be needed? In terms of geographical scope, we see the coverage of the banking union of the euro area as necessary and of additional countries as desirable, even though this would entail important additional economic difficulties. The system should ideally cover all banks within the countries included, in order to prevent major competitive and distributional distortions. Supervisory authority should be granted either to both the ECB and a new agency, or to a new agency alone. National supervisors, acting under the authority of the European supervisor, would be tasked with the supervision of smaller banks in accordance with the subsidiarity principle. A European resolution authority should be established, with the possibility of drawing on ESM resources. A fully centralized deposit insurance system would eventually be desirable, but a system of partial reinsurance may also be envisaged at least in a first phase. A banking union would require at least implicit European fiscal backing, with significant political authority and legitimacy. Thus, banking union cannot be considered entirely separately from fiscal union and political union. The most difficult challenge of creating a European banking union lies with the short-term steps towards its eventual implementation. Many banks in the euro area, and especially in the crisis countries, are currently under stress and the move towards banking union almost certainly has significant distributional implications. Yet it is precisely because banks are under such stress that early and concrete action is needed. An overarching principle for such action is to minimize the cost to the tax payers. The first step should be to create a European supervisor that will anchor the development of the future banking union. In parallel, a capability to quickly assess the true capital position of the system’s most important banks should be created, for which we suggest establishing a temporary European Banking Sector Task Force working together with the European supervisor and other authorities. Ideally, problems identified by this process should be resolved by national authorities; in case fiscal capacities would prove insufficient, the European level would take over in the country concerned with some national financial participation, or in an even less likely adverse scenario, in all participating countries at once. This approach would require the passing of emergency legislation in the concerned countries that would give the Task Force the required access to information and, if necessary, further intervention rights. Thus, the principle of fiscal responsibility of respective member states for legacy costs would be preserved to the maximum extent possible, and at the same time, market participants and the public would be reassured that adequate tools are in place to address any eventuality.

Germany as viewed by other Member States. EPIN Working Paper No. 33, 21 June 2012

Germany’s problem is not so much that it is generally right about the need for fiscal discipline but that it has to learn how to be right: this is the most difficult issue to manage from a political standpoint. This EPIN (European Policy Institutes Network) paper brings together contributions from a cross-section of EU member states and the Gallup World Poll survey on the question of how Germany is being viewed at this time of economic and political crisis. The conclusions, subtitled: The Narcissism of Small Differences is a refreshingly candid and insightful analysis of current European relations, noting that Germany’s current weight reflects only the conjuncture of extraordinary domestic and international economic factors. How Germany and the other member states behave towards one another now will have implications for all long after this moment has passed.

The creation of euro area financial safety nets. Bruegel Working Paper 2012/09, July 2012

The financial crisis has exposed the need to devise stronger and broader international and regional safety nets in order to deal with economic and financial shocks and allow for countries to adjust. The euro area has developed several such mechanisms over the last couple of years through a process of trial and error and gradual enhancement and expansion. Their overall architecture remains imperfect and leaves areas of vulnerabilities. This paper provides an overview of the recent financial stability mechanisms and their various shortcomings and tries to brush the outline of a more comprehensive safety net architecture that would coherently address the banking, sovereign and external imbalances crises against both transitory and more permanent shocks. It aims to provide a roadmap for further improvements of the current mechanism and the creation of new devices including a banking resolution mechanism and amore powerfulmechanismto provide financial assistance addressing both the sovereign and external dimensions of the shocks thereby reducing the need for the ECB to fill the current void.

Path to eurobonds. Bruegel Working Paper 2012/10, July 2012

This paper discusses proposals for common euro area sovereign securities. Such instruments can potentially serve two functions: in the short-term, stabilize financialmarkets and banks and, in the medium-term, help improve the euro area economic governance framework through enhanced fiscal discipline and risk-sharing. Many questions remain onwhether financial instruments can ever accomplish such goals without bold institutional and political decisions, and,whether, in the absence of such decisions, they can create new distortions. The proposals discussed are also not necessarily competing substitutes; rather, they can be complements to be sequenced along alternative paths that possibly culminate in a fully-fledged Eurobond. The specific path chosen by policymakers should allow for learning and secure the necessary evolution of institutional infrastructures and political safeguards.