As duas faces das técnicas de gestão: aprendizagem e inovação evidências de empresa do setor siderúrgico no Brasil

Ao longo dos últimos 20 anos tem havido uma profusão de estudos que examinam, no âmbito de empresas, a contribuição dos mecanismos de aprendizagem e da adoção de técnicas de gestão para o processo de acumulação tecnológica. No entanto, ainda são escassos os estudos que examinem, de maneira conjunta e sob uma perspectiva dinâmica, o relacionamento entre a adoção de técnicas de gestão, mecanismos de aprendizagem e trajetórias de acumulação de capacidades tecnológicas. Mais que isto, faltam estudos que examinem o duplo papel das técnicas de gestão, ora como parte do estoque de capacidades tecnológicas, ora como um processo de aprendizagem tecnológica em si. Esta dissertação objetiva oferecer uma contribuição para preencher esta lacuna neste campo de estudo. O enfoque desta dissertação deriva de observações empíricas, realizadas em empresas, e inspira-se no clássico estudo Innovation and Learning: the two faces of R&D, de Cohen e Levinthal (1989). Assim a dissertação baseia-se em um estudo de caso individual, realizado em uma empresa do setor siderúrgico no Brasil, no período de 1984 a 2008, examinando estas questões à luz de modelos analíticos disponíveis na literatura internacional. Neste sentido, adotou-se o entendimento de capacidade tecnológica como o conjunto de recursos necessários para gerar e gerir mudanças tecnológicas, sendo construída e acumulada de forma gradual, a partir do engajamento em processos de aprendizagem e da coordenação de bases de conhecimentos acumulados em diferentes dimensões, simbioticamente relacionadas. As métricas utilizadas identificam tipos e níveis de capacidade tecnológica para diferentes funções e identifica quatro tipos de processos de aprendizagem tecnológica e os avalia em termos de suas características-chave. Tomando-se por base evidências empíricas qualitativas e quantitativas, colhidas em primeira mão, a base de trabalho de campo, este estudo verificou que: 1. A empresa acumulou níveis inovativos de capacidades tecnológicas em todas as funções examinadas, sendo o nível Inovativo Intermediário (Nível 5) nas funções Engenharia de Projetos (de forma incompleta) e Equipamentos e o nível Intermediário Avançado (Nível 6) nas funções Processos e Organização da Produção e Produtos. 2. Os mecanismos de aprendizagem subjacentes à acumulação destes níveis de capacidade tecnológica apresentaram resultados relevantes em termos de suas características-chave, principalmente no que diz respeito à variedade e intensidade: de 24 mecanismos em 1984 para um total de 59 em 2008, com uma variação de 145,8%, e com 56 dos 59 mecanismos (94,92%) utilizados atualmente de forma sistemática. 3. O período compreendido entre os anos de 1990 e 2004, no qual foram implementadas as técnicas de gestão estudadas, exceto o Plano de Sugestões, se caracteriza por apresentar a maior taxa de acumulação de capacidades tecnológicas e por dar início à utilização da quase totalidade dos 35 novos mecanismos de aprendizagem incorporados pela empresa após o início de suas operações (1984). E que as técnicas de gestão estudadas: 1. Colaboraram para o processo de aprendizagem tecnológica da AMBJF, principalmente pela necessidade de se: (i) incorporar novos mecanismos de aprendizagem que lhe permitissem acumular, antecipadamente, a base de conhecimentos necessária à implementação das técnicas de gestão estudadas; (ii) coordenar um número maior de mecanismos que dessem o adequado suporte ao aumento da complexidade de seu Sistema de Gestão Integrada (SOl). 2. Ampliaram, por si, o estoque de capacidades tecnológicas da empresa, maIS especificamente em sua dimensão organizacional, a partir da acumulação de conhecimento em procedimentos, instruções de trabalho, manuais, processos e fluxos de gestão e de produção, dentre outros. Desta forma, os resultados aqui encontrados confirmam que a adoção e a implementação das técnicas de gestão estudadas contribuíram com e influenciaram o processo de aprendizagem tecnológica e a trajetória de acumulação tecnológica da empresa, ao mesmo tempo, exercendo, portanto, um duplo papel na organização. Esta conclusão nos leva a um melhor entendimento do tema e pode contribuir para a compreensão de ações políticas e gerenciais que possam acelerar a acumulação de capacidades tecnológicas, entendendo a relevância das técnicas de gestão menos em termos de sua "mera" adoção e mais do seu processo de implementação.

Enforcing international financial standards in Brazil: limits and possibilities for adoption of IOSCO principles

Foreign capital and institutional investors play a key role in the Brazilian capital and financial markets. Internationally promoted regulatory patterns, especially IOSCO principles, have been increasingly influencing administrative rule making by the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) as well as the adoption of transnational rules in Brazil by means of self-regulatory activity. Even though there is a certain level of convergence of market regulatory standards at the transnational level, implementation and enforcement of rules remains essentially domestic. We analyze two case studies regarding the transposition of international standards into the Brazilian legal system, which illustrate this tension between the transnational and domestic dimensions of financial markets regulation. The first case concerns a CVM rule on disclosure of executive compensation and the its interpretation by local courts. The second case refers to the adoption of suitability rules.

Rent dissipation, political viability and the strategic adoption of free trade agreements

This paper studies the political viability of free trade agreements (FTAs). The key element of the analysis is the “rent dissipation” that these arrangements induce: by eliminating intra-bloc trade barriers, an FTA reduces the incentives of the local firms to lobby for higher external tariffs, thereby causing a reduction of the rents created in the lobbying process. The prospect of rent dissipation moderates the governments’ willingness to participate in FTAs; they will support only arrangements that are “substantially” welfare improving, and no FTA that reduces welfare. Rent dissipation also implies that the prospects of political turnover may create strategic reasons for the formation of FTAs. Specifically, a government facing a high enough probability of losing power may want to form a trade bloc simply to “tie the hands” of its successor. An FTA can affect the likelihood of political turnover as well. If the incumbent party has a known bias toward special interests, it may want to commit to less distortionary policies in order to reduce its electoral disadvantage; the rent dissipation effect ensures that an FTA can serve as the vehicle for such a commitment. In nascent/unstable democracies, the incumbent government can use a free trade agreement also to reduce the likelihood of a dictatorial takeover and to “consolidate” democracy – a finding that is consistent with the timing of numerous accessions to and formations of preferential arrangements.

Assessing the maturity levei of an organization in its adoption of collaboration technologies

Nowadays there are many information technologies that can make a significant difference to support collaborative efforts in the workspace. The role of IT is to support group collaboration by empowering team members with the right capabilities. One way to assess capabilities is through a maturity model. This paper proposes a first version of the Collaboration-Technology Maturity model (CTMM), aiming to serve as a strategic instrument for IT managers to control and manage the adoption of Collaboration Technologies (CITs) among their organizations. Our contribution is both theoretical and practical as we propose a descriptive maturity model. Nevertheless, it is also an application method and assessment instruments. We also completed an empirical evaluation by conducting 89 assessments at Latin American companies of all sizes and industries. This extensive field exercise allowed us to not only evaluate the usefulness of the model and instruments but also investigate CIT adoption patterns in Latin America in an attempt to collect historical data to further evolve CTMM into a comparative model. Responses were used to provide conclusions on CIT adoption in Latin America with respect to three specific backgrounds: the country of origin (region), size (in number of employees) and industry type. The implications of our findings are discussed for practitioners and researchers.

Gestão compartilhada de P&D em petróleo:a interação entre a Petrobrás e a Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte

This work addresses the relationship between University-Firm aims to understand the model of shared management of R&D in petroleum of Petrobras with UFRN. This is a case study which sought to investigate whether the model of cooperation established by the two institutions brings innovation to generate technical-scientific knowledge and contribute to the coordination with other actors in the promotion of technological innovation. In addition to desk research the necessary data for analysis were obtained by sending questionnaires to the coordinators of projects in R&D at the company and university. Also, interviews were conducted with subjects who participated in the study since its inception to the present day. This case study were analysed through the Resource-Based View and Interorganizational Networks theory. The sample data also stands that: searches were aligned to the strategic planning and that 29% of R&D projects have been successful on the scope of the proposed objectives (of which 11% were incorporated into business processes); which was produced technical and scientific knowledge caracterized by hundreds of national and international publications; thesis, dissertations, eleven patents, and radical and incremental innovations; the partnership has also brought benefits to the academic processes induced by the improved infrastructure UFRN and changing the "attitude" of the university (currently with national prominence in research and staff training for the oil sector). As for the model, the technical point of view, although it has some problems, it follows that it is appropriate. From the viewpoint of the management model is criticized for containing an excess of bureaucracy. From the standpoint of strategic allocation of resources from the legal framework needs to be reassessed, because it is focused only on the college level and it is understood that should also reach the high school given the new reality of the oil sector in Brazil. For this it is desirable to add the local government to this partnership. The set of information leads to the conclusion that the model is identified and named as a innovation of organizational arrangement here known as Shared Management of R&D in petroleum of Petrobras with UFRN. It is said that the shared management model it is possible to exist, which is a simple and effective way to manage partnerships between firms and Science and Technology Institutions. It was created by contingencies arising from regulatory stand points and resource dependence. The partnership is the result of a process of Convergence, Construction and Evaluation supported by the tripod Simplicity, Systematization and Continuity, important factors for its consolidation. In practice an organizational arrangement was built to manage innovative university-industry partnership that is defined by a dyadic relationship on two levels (institutional and technical, therefore governance is hybrid), by measuring the quarterly meetings of systematic and standardized financial contribution proportional to the advancement of research. These details have led to the establishment of a point of interaction between the scientific and technological-business dimension, demystifying they are two worlds apart

Multidimensional polynomial powers of sigmoid (PPS) Wavelet neural networks

Wavelet functions have been used as the activation function in feedforward neural networks. An abundance of R&D has been produced on wavelet neural network area. Some successful algorithms and applications in wavelet neural network have been developed and reported in the literature. However, most of the aforementioned reports impose many restrictions in the classical backpropagation algorithm, such as low dimensionality, tensor product of wavelets, parameters initialization, and, in general, the output is one dimensional, etc. In order to remove some of these restrictions, a family of polynomial wavelets generated from powers of sigmoid functions is presented. We described how a multidimensional wavelet neural networks based on these functions can be constructed, trained and applied in pattern recognition tasks. As an example of application for the method proposed, it is studied the exclusive-or (XOR) problem.

High Incidence of Enterotoxin D Producing Staphylococcus spp. in Brazilian Cow's Raw Milk and Its Relation with Coagulase and Thermonuclease Enzymes

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Mixing of superconducting d(x2-y2) state with s-wave states for different filling and temperature

We study the order parameter for mixed-symmetry states involving a major d(x2-y2) state and various minor s-wave states (s, s(xy), and Sx2+y2) for different filling and temperature for mixing angles 0 and pi /2. We employ a two-dimensional tight-binding model incorporating second-neighbor hopping for tetragonal and orthorhombic lattice. There is mixing for the symmetric s state both on tetragonal and orthorhombic lattice. The s(xy) state mixes with the d(x2-y2) state only on orthorhombic lattice. The s(x2+y2) state never mixes with the d(x2-y2) state. The temperature dependence of the order parameters is also studied. (C) 2001 Elsevier B.V. B.V. All rights reserved.

Prediction of R plus R-2 gravity for the deflection of a photon passing close to the Sun

The cross-section for the scattering of a photon by the Sun's gravitational field, treated as an external field, is computed in the framework of R + R-2 gravity. Using this result, we found that for a photon just grazing the Sun's surface the deflection is 1.75 which is exactly the same as that given by Einstein's theory. An explanation for this pseudo-paradox is provided.