A reason to believe : beliefs as an influence on students task solving

Upper secondary students’ task solving reasoning was analysed, with a focus on what grounds they had for different strategy choices and conclusions. Beliefs were identified and connected with the reasoning that took place. The results indicate that beliefs have an impact on the central decisions made during task solving. Three themes stand out: safety, expectation and motivation.

Barriers and facilitators in the provision of post-abortion care at district level in central Uganda : a qualitative study focusing on task sharing between physicians and midwives

Background: Abortion is restricted in Uganda, and poor access to contraceptive methods result in unwanted pregnancies. This leaves women no other choice than unsafe abortion, thus placing a great burden on the Ugandan health system and making unsafe abortion one of the major contributors to maternal mortality and morbidity in Uganda. The existing sexual and reproductive health policy in Uganda supports the sharing of tasks in post-abortion care. This task sharing is taking place as a pragmatic response to the increased workload. This study aims to explore physicians' and midwives' perception of post-abortion care with regard to professional competences, methods, contraceptive counselling and task shifting/sharing in post-abortion care. Methods: In-depth interviews (n = 27) with health care providers of post-abortion care were conducted in seven health facilities in the Central Region of Uganda. The data were organized using thematic analysis with an inductive approach. Results: Post-abortion care was perceived as necessary, albeit controversial and sometimes difficult to provide. Together with poor conditions post-abortion care provoked frustration especially among midwives. Task sharing was generally taking place and midwives were identified as the main providers, although they would rarely have the proper training in post-abortion care. Additionally, midwives were sometimes forced to provide services outside their defined task area, due to the absence of doctors. Different uterine evacuation skills were recognized although few providers knew of misoprostol as a method for post-abortion care. An overall need for further training in post-abortion care was identified. Conclusions: Task sharing is taking place, but providers lack the relevant skills for the provision of quality care. For post-abortion care to improve, task sharing needs to be scaled up and in-service training for both doctors and midwives needs to be provided. Post-abortion care should further be included in the educational curricula of nurses and midwives. Scaled-up task sharing in post-abortion care, along with misoprostol use for uterine evacuation would provide a systematic approach to improving the quality of care and accessibility of services, with the aim of reducing abortion-related mortality and morbidity in Uganda.

Manager's task to support integrated autonomy at the workplace : Results from an intervention

A new managerial task arises in today’s working life: to provide conditions for and influence interaction between actors and thus to enable the emergence of organizing structure in tune with a changing environment. We call this the enabling managerial task. The goal of this paper is to study whether training first line managers in the enabling managerial task could lead to changes in the work for the subordinates. This paper presents results from questionnaires answered by the subordinates of the managers before and after the training. The training was organized as a learning network and consisted of eight workshops carried out over a period of one year (September 2009–June 2010), where the managers met with each other and the researchers once a month. Each workshop consisted of three parts, during three and a half hours. The first hour was devoted to joint reflection on a task that had been undertaken since the last workshop; some results were presented from the employee pre-assessments, followed by relevant theory and illuminating practices, finally the managers created new tasks for themselves to undertake during the following month. The subordinates’ answers show positive change in all of the seventeen scales used to assess it. The improvements are significant in scales measuring the relationship between the manager and the employees, as well as in those measuring interaction between employees. It is concluded that the result was a success for all managers that had the possibility of using the training in their management work.

Diferenças sexuais na alocação de recursos : sujeitos, experimentadores, personagens e tarefas

O intuito deste trabalho 1ho foi investigar" as possíveis influências de tarefas socialmente convencionadas como vinculadas ao sexo sobre a utilização de princípios de Justiça Distributiva em alocações de recursos numa situação hipotética. Foram entrevistadas 686 crianças, de ambos os sexos, com idade média de 12,2 anos, cursando as quintas e sextas séries do I grau de escolas da rede pública estadual e de níveis sócioeconômicos médio e médio-baixo. A amostra foi dividida entre dois entrevistadores de sexos diferentes. Foi usado uma história ilustrada por uma série de 21 desenhos.Cada desenho representou uma situação experimental aonde foram manipuladas as variáveis sexo dos personagens, tarefas vinculadas ao sexo e quantidade de trabalho produzido. Foram encontrados efeitos significativos do Sexo do Experimentador sobre o comportamento de alocação do sujeitos. Além disso, apareceram indicativos sugestivos de maior valorização da tarefa masculina e de tendência de sujeitos do sexo masculino para distribuir recompensas de maneira eqüitativa e sujeitos do sexo feminino, de maneira igualitária.

Intrahousehold allocation in an unintentional random experiment

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Risco operacional - modelos de alocação de capital aplicados aos bancos no Brasil

Nos últimos tempos, mensurar o Risco Operacional (RO) tornou-se o grande desafio para instituições financeiras no mundo todo, principalmente com a implementação das regras de alocação de capital regulatório do Novo Acordo de Capital da Basiléia (NACB). No Brasil, ao final de 2004, o Banco Central (BACEN) estabeleceu um cronograma de metas e disponibilizou uma equipe responsável pela adaptação e implementação dessas regras no sistema financeiro nacional. A Federação de Bancos Brasileiros (FEBRABAN) também divulgou recente pesquisa de gestão de RO envolvendo vários bancos. Todo esse processo trouxe uma vasta e crescente pesquisa e atividades voltadas para a modelagem de RO no Brasil. Em nosso trabalho, medimos o impacto geral nos banco brasileiros, motivado pelas novas regras de alocação de capital de RO envolvendo os modelos mais básicos do NACB. Também introduzimos um modelo avançado de mensuração de risco, chamado Loss Data Distribution (LDA), que alguns especialistas, provenientes do Risco de Mercado, convencionaram chamar de Value-at-Risk Operacional (VaR Operacional.). Ao final desse trabalho apresentamos um caso prático baseado na implementação do LDA ou VaR

Budgeting and resource allocation in universities, a public choice approach

The calls urging colleges and universities to improve their productivity are coming thick and fast in Brazil. Many studies are suggesting evaluation systems and external criteria to control universities production in qualitative terms. Since universities and colleges are not profit-oriented organizations (considering just the fair and serious researching and teaching organizations, of course) the traditional microeconomics and administrative variables used to measure efficiency do not have any direct function. In this sense, It could be created a as if market control system to evaluate universities and colleges production. The budget and the allocation resources mechanism inside it can be used as an incentive instrument to improve quality and productivity. It will be the main issue of this paper.

What is the role of bookbuilding in bond allocation ? : evidence from Brazil

A dissertação tem como objetivo analisar dois aspectos do processo de bookbuilding nas emissões de debêntures no mercado brasileiro. O primeiro aspecto é verificar se o underwriter utiliza, a exemplo do que ocorre no Initial Public Offering (IPO) de ações, o poder discricionário nas alocações das debêntures entre os investidores. O segundo consiste em encontrar as características, tanto do emissor quanto do investidor, que influenciam na eficiência do bidder no processo de bookbuilding. Para realizar os testes empíricos foi utilizada uma base de dados composta por 40 books1 (totalizando 727 bids) fornecidos por um banco de investimento.Verifica-se que o underwriter não beneficia nenhum investidor na alocação final das debêntures. Essa afirmação fica evidenciada quando se calcula a diferença entre alocação final (efetivamente recebida pelo investidor) e alocação teórica (estimada com base no método pro-rata) para os 27 books (totalizando 557 bids) que apresentam demanda superior a oferta. A diferença é nula para 96.6% da amostra, sendo que das 19 observações não nulas, 15 possuem diferença absoluta de uma debênture entre a alocação teórica e a final, resultado explicado em função do arredondamento das alocações.Contrariando a teoria de leilão de titulos públicos, onde autores, como Scott and Wolf (1979), defendem que os investidores devem utilizar o step bid como estratégia ótima de bid, este trabalho verificou que no caso de bookbuilding de debêntures no mercado brasileiro, os investidores usuários de step bid posssuem menos chances de ter seu bid atendido plenamente pelo underwriter. Quando o investidor é um gestor de recursos de terceiros (asset management), aumenta-se a possibilidade de ter sua demanda atendida. O maior sucesso do asset management no bookbuilding deve-se às peculiaridades do mercado brasileiro: (i) somente investidores locais participam dos bookbuilding, já que investidores estrangeiros possuem preferência e incentivos por títulos públicos; (ii) gestores de recursos de terceiros representam 75% da demanda por debêntures; (iii) o mercado de gestão de recursos é concentrado: os 5 maiores gestores concentram 60% da indústria. Com isso os gestores de recursos podem desenvolver uma expertise própria, já que são os principais demandadores e frequentemente participam dos bookbuilding. As características do emissor também influenciam no desempenho dos bidders: as debêntures de baixo e médio risco aumentam a possibilidade do bidder ter seu pedido atendido na íntegra. Além disso, como era esperado, quanto maior for a demanda do título, mais dificil é para o investor conseguir a quantidade desejável.

Allocation of authority in franchise chains

This article investigates the level of delegation in franchise chains, distinguishing the two most relevant franchising models: Business Format Franchising and Learning Network Franchising. The two models basically differ on the level of real authority (effective control over decisions) exercised by the franchisors. Differences in business features, such as the required standardization, monitoring costs and consumer sensitivity to variations in product attributes (consumer measurement costs), explain the adoption of the different models of franchising. These variables affect the trade-off between the risk of brand name loss and the gains in knowledge sharing and learning within the network. The higher the need for standardization, the higher is the risk of brand name loss, and, consequently, the more likely the franchisor will adopt an organizational design that confers more control over franchisees’ decisions, such as business format franchising. This paper presents two case studies with Brazilian food franchise chains that illustrate the main argument and suggest additional propositions. Moreover, an empirical analysis of 223 franchise chains provides additional support to the hypothesis of a negative the effect of required standardization on the level of delegation.

Retail competition and shelf space allocation

We develop a model to study shelf space allocation in retail. Retailers compete for consumers not only choosing prices but also by the space allocated to each product on shelves. Our approach depart from the existing literature on shelf allocation, as we model the problem of price setting and shelf allocation in an oligopolistic retail market. We present a simple model of retail competition in which prices are dispersed in the crosssection of stores but shelf allocation is not.