La construcción de sentido del inicio de un cambio estratégico en las organizaciones: el caso de la Universidad del Rosario

A través de un caso de estudio se explora cómo la construcción de sentido de un grupo de directivos, bajo una misma inspiración, generó el inicio de un cambio estratégico en una prestigiosa y reconocida universidad colombiana, la Universidad del Rosario. Una institución que en un momento determinado notó que estaba siendo percibida dentro del sector de la educación superior como pequeña, estática en el avance de algunas disciplinas del conocimiento y conservadora; en otras palabras, que estaba perdiendo el reconocimiento que usualmente la había acompañado. A través del estudio de este caso se utilizó la técnica de análisis de discurso para comprender la construcción de sentido del inicio de un cambio estratégico en las organizaciones. Esta técnica permitió analizar la información cualitativa derivada de las entrevistas que se realizaron en profundidad a la cúpula de directivos de la institución y a algunos destacados representantes del sector de la Educación Superior en Colombia. Los resultados sugieren que se hicieron presentes, efectivamente, algunas condiciones específicas que marcaron el inicio de un cambio estratégico en la institución y un viraje en su identidad e imagen. Hechos que se sustentaron en los miembros de un equipo que procuró interpretar y comprender los cambios existentes en el entorno global y local, y asimilar, igualmente, algunos destacados retos que se planteaban por aquella época, al interior de la propia Universidad

Caracterización de la cultura organizacional y lineamientos de intervención para la implementación de procesos de cambio en las organizaciones. Caso empresa sector financiero

El presente Trabajo de Grado busca caracterizar la cultura organizacional de una empresa del sector Financiero en Colombia y realizar orientaciones de acciones para el cambio organizacional de acuerdo con la estrategia de perdurabilidad establecida por la Alta Dirección de dicha empresa. Para este fin, se realiza una cuidadosa revisión y actualización del estado del arte de los conceptos clave ¨Cultura Organizacional¨ y ¨Cambio Organizacional¨. Es de resaltar que para el primero de ellos, se toma como punto de partida el estado del arte sobre Cultura Organizacional realizado por el profesor Carlos Eduardo Méndez Álvarez y cuyo marco temporal abarca desde los orígenes del concepto en el siglo XIX hasta el año 2006. Asimismo, luego de una cuidadosa revisión de los Modelos de Cambio Organizacional existentes y de la realidad de la empresa objeto de estudio, se adopta el Modelo ADKAR que consta de cinco fases: Conciencia del Cambio, Deseo, Conocimiento, Capacidad – Habilidad y Refuerzo. Asimismo, a partir de la construcción de un fundamento teórico sólido y a través de la aplicación de la metodología para describir la Cultura Organizacional en Colombia MEDECO se busca una aproximación a la Cultura Organizacional de la empresa objeto de estudio con el fin de describir e identificar los rasgos predominantes de su cultura organizacional y entregar una propuesta final con los rasgos necesarios que alientan la consecución exitosa de los procesos de cambio.

Identificación y descripción de las características de un líder global

El liderazgo ha sido definido de diferentes maneras por cientos de autores debido al contexto en el que estudian este concepto. Ninguna de estas definiciones es errónea pero algunas han tomado mayor importancia debido a los diferentes factores que enfrenta la sociedad. Desde hace unos años los países se han abierto a diferentes mercados lo cual les ha permitido eliminar las barreras políticas, económicas y culturales existentes. Esto ha llevado a que los líderes deban evaluar la nueva forma de dirigir y direccionar las organizaciones. Este es tan solo uno de los ejemplos que han llevado a modificar el concepto de liderazgo, añadiendo los nuevos retos a los que se ven enfrentados los líderes. En este trabajo de grado se estudia el que se considera uno de los mayores retos de los siglos XX y XXI: la globalización. Este fenómeno ha acercado al mundo a través del intercambio de información, de bienes, de servicios, de conocimientos y sobre todo de cultura. Esto se ha logrado a través de nuevas tecnologías, nuevos servicios de comunicación y transporte, de la ciencia y los avances de la industria. El nuevo líder debe romper la barrera nacional y abrirse a mercados extranjeros, para esto debe contar con ciertas características que le permitirán entender los diferentes mercados y a las personas que se encuentran en este. En este trabajo se identifican las que se consideran las principales características de un líder global; estas son el resultado de la investigación de diferentes autores y estudios.

Framing the local and the global in the anti-nuclear movement: Law and the politics of place

This article examines the politics of place in relation to legal mobilization by the anti-nuclear movement. It examines two case examples - citizens' weapons inspections and civil disobedience strategies - which have involved the movement drawing upon the law in particular spatial contexts. The article begins by examining a number of factors which have been employed in recent social movement literature to explain strategy choice, including ideology, resources, political and legal opportunity, and framing. It then proceeds to argue that the issues of scale, space, and place play an important role in relation to framing by the movement in the two case examples. Both can be seen to involve scalar reframing, with the movement attempting to resist localizing tendencies and to replace them with a global frame. Both also involve an attempt to reframe the issue of nuclear weapons away from the contested frame of the past (unilateral disarmament) towards the more universal and widely accepted frame of international law.

Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation.

Revolution blues: the reconstruction of Health and Safety as a ‘common-sense’ form of regulation

This paper provides a review of the last five years of policymaking in the area of health and safety law; this includes multiple reviews, legislative reform, and the reframing of rhetoric around the issue. It characterises this as a process of social construction of a new ‘universe of meaning’ around health and safety regulation, which provides a basis for a particular, narrow, neoliberal conception of regulation and responsibility to permeate the mainstream. Deliberative and public-facing policymaking processes have been utilised as a key element of this process.

Resilience as transformative capacity: exploring the quadripartite cycle of structuration in a Mozambican resettlement programme

The concept of resilience has emerged out of a complex literature that has sought to make sense of an increasingly interconnected world that appears ever more beset by crises. Resilience’s appeal is reflected by the burgeoning mass of literature that has appeared on the subject in the past five years. However, there is ongoing debate surrounding its usage, with some commentators claiming that the term is inherently too conservative a one to be usefully applied to situations of vulnerability in which more radical social change is required. This article extends existing efforts to formulate more transformative notions of resilience by reframing it as a double-edged outcome of the pre-reflective and critical ways in which actors draw upon their internal structures following the occurrence of a negative event, thus reproducing or changing the external structural context that gave rise to the event in the first place. By employing a structuration-inspired analysis to the study of small-scale farmer responses to a flood-induced resettlement programme in central Mozambique, the article presents a systematic approach to the examination of resilience in light of this reframing. The case study findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the facilitative, as well as constraining, nature of structures if vulnerable populations are to be assisted in their efforts to exert transformative capacity over the wider conditions that give rise to their difficulties.

The multidimensional character of accounting numbers

This paper takes as its motivation debates surrounding the multiplicity of functions of accounting information. We are in particular interested in the existential function of accounting numbers and argue that numerical signs having discursive possibilities may acquire new meanings through reframing. Drawing on Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis and Vollmer’s (2007) work on three-dimensional character of numerical signs, we explore the ways in which numbers can go through instantaneous transformations and tell a new kind of story. In our analysis, we look at the main historical developments and current controversies surrounding accounting practice with a specific focus on scandals involving numerical signs as moments where our understandings and the discursive function of previously inoffensive signs shifts through a collective involvement. We map the purpose and usefulness of Vollmer’s three-dimensional framework in the analysis of selected financial accounting practices and scandals as examples of instances where numbers are reframed to suddenly perform a different existential function in context of their calculative and symptomatic dimensions.

Os desafios de comunicação da empresa com posicionamento mais premium frente a classe média emergente

Sob o acrônimo BOP (Bottom of Pyramid), muito se tem discutido sobre as vantagens empresariais de atender a uma classe emergente de aproximadamente 4 bilhões de pessoas ao redor do mundo (Prahalad 2005), como uma das formas de se defender da estagnação do consumo nos países mais desenvolvidos. Se hoje a discussão já está mais bem delineada, é muito em função de artigos de estudiosos como Prahalad, Hammond e Yunus que colocaram a base da pirâmide no centro do debate. Há empresas referência mundial nessa transição de atendimento para o BOP, como a GE na China ou a Unilever na Índia. Mas para o caso brasileiro, parece ainda não haver igual expressão, sendo a emergência do BOP mais recente. Algumas dessas empresas orientadas para as classes emergentes têm mudado seu modelo de negócios. Outras criam submarcas voltadas às classes emergentes e sofrem os impactos dessas decisões sobre a arquitetura de marcas. E, finalmente, há empresas que utilizam um conjunto de signos e códigos de comunicação na oferta de seus produtos e serviços que acreditam ser bem aceitos transversalmente nas classes sociais. O objetivo geral da dissertação foi avaliar quais códigos e signos de comunicação as empresas com posicionamento premium devem utilizar numa comunicação com essa classe emergente, sem correr o risco de afastar seu público-alvo original (das classes AB). O método inclui a ferramenta denominada Value Reframing (Reenquadramento de Valor), para a busca de novos valores para um produto ou serviço em um novo contexto de mercado. Tal ferramenta não prevê teste de rejeição dentro do público original. Então foram coletados: 1) os valores mais bem aceitos pela nova classe média; 2) os valores avaliados e não rejeitados por consumidores da classe AB. Em conclusão, é possível utilizar signos e códigos com aceitação nas duas classes (como uso do humor nas mensagens ou a sensação de que a mensagem foi direcionada para a pessoa). A adoção desses elementos podem ser mais bem sucedidos se acompanhados de uma discussão sobre o modelo de negócios vigente, para atender melhor a nova classe média.

Structural challenges in a multipolar and multicultural global legal era : BRICS’ global legal politics beyond cultural and economic partnerships

New emerging international dynamics introduce a global poly-axiological polycentric disorder which undermines the tradition of a unique global legal order in international law. Modern Era was characterized by Western European civilizational model – from which human rights is a byproduct. This consensus had its legitimacy tested by XXst century’s scenario – and the ‘BRICS factor/actor’ is a symptom of this reality. Its empowerment in world politics lead to the rise of distinct groups of States/civilizations provided with different legal, political, economic and social traditions – promoting an unexpected uprise of otherness in international legal order and inviting it to a complete and unforeseeable reframing process. Beyond Washington or Brussels Consensus, other custom-originated discourses (Brasília, Moscow, New Delhi, Peking or Cape Town Consensus, among other unfolded possibilities) will probably henceforth attempt shaping international law in present global legal disorder.

Espaço público e sociabilidade urbana: apropriações e significados dos espaços públicos na cidade contemporânea

Study public space is studying the city and its dynamics through a representation point. The changes that are observed in these spaces and in the relations established there, or with it, are related to changes that occurred in the city as a whole, in the urban way of living. Study public space allied to urban sociability permits an even better focus on this relation between people in these spaces and with the spaces and in the consequences and fragile aspects this relation can impose to people and cities. This work is aimed towards this relation between public space and urban sociability. Through a conceptual/theoretical discussion aims, specifically, comprehend how to establish and what is the relation between urban space and urban sociability (appropriation/perception of place, tendencies of seclusion), from an isolated analysis of each one of these themes in the contemporaneous city. The Brazilian public space has peculiar characteristics, arising from its historical process of construction, also influenced by the public sphere fragile construction that permeates it, as well as more recent variables such as the sensation of insecurity and commodification of these places. The urban sociability influences and is influenced along all this process of significance and reframing of the public space. The conceptual discussion about each isolate variable provides the necessary coverage for discussion and analysis of the relation between them and the consequence of this relation in the city, such as the notation of relevant experiences of this process of revaluation of the public space. The hereby search is not through a path to reestablish the relation as it already existed, but also for an understanding of the dynamic as is established today and for existing possibilities for maintenance and appreciation of the relation between people and the city by believing in its importance to urban life

Reestruturação produtiva e terceirização : o caso dos trabalhadores das empresas contratadas pela Petrobrás no RN

This thesis is inserted on the discussion about the productive reframing and its reflexes concerning the world of work, in the current crisis stage in the capitalist way of production. This study deals with the impacts of outsourcing in relation to workers of companies subhired by Petrobras, in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, since decade of 1990. It is demonstrated that outsourcing in the oil sector, used mainly as a way to reduce costs of production, contributed to the raising of precarious conditions and relations of work. The transformation to the way of organization in the production, has intensified with the outsourcing, represented to the companies a bigger gain in productivity and a better control over the workers. These changings, that reconfigure the profile of the oil work force, allowed, among other things, reduction in numbers of the effective workers in the table of employees of Petrobras, the raising of relation concercing instable works, the raising in numbers of young workers, with a little or none qualification, reduction in the salary pattern of the professional class, illegal withholdment of labourite rights and the raising of risks to the health and security of the workers

Memórias midiatizadas: percepções sobre ciência reconfiguradas a partir do consumo midiático

This piece focuses on the issue of media in the contemporary context, taking for its object the sociocultural phenomenon of mediatization‟, understood as the dilution of media culture in the everyday life, according to the perspective from Fausto Neto (2008) e Sodré (2002). This phenomenon is viewed from the angle of reception, that is, one that considers the individuals as pro-actives in this dynamic. The media culture is perceived as a fundamental element in the process of social structuring, and also is taken as a symbolic arm of great importance for the elaboration of the notion of reality as it interferes with the flow of information. Thus, we emphasize the process of symbolic consumption that we do with media content (Canclini, 1999), through a dynamic of appropriation and reframing, given from the interweaving of the meanings proposed with extra-media elements, recaptured from the perspective of mediations, by Barbero (2006), which concerns the articulation of the contents we appropriate from media with interactions from other social practices. We also consider the dimension of memory according to Sarlo (2007) and Halbwachs (2004) in order to, through speeches made in its scope, reach empirically the phenomenon of mediatization‟, and overlapping it, the media consumption on a specific theme, "science". Nevertheless, in terms of field work, we use the technique of in-depth interviews, so that the speech of our interviewers was our corpus. Through their narratives, speeches considered by us as memory-related, we visualize the dynamics of media consumption on given topic. At the level of conclusions, we realize that mediatization‟ as a phenomenon occurred, but its flows and orders showed discontinuities and pluralities not initially conceived; regarding the consumption of science through media, we see hybrid perceptions by our respondents, that is, one that include both elements aligned with the positivist conception of science - which we consider to be the view of science proposed by the media and elements that would contradict this view