Diseño de un sistema de benchmarking de prácticas de recursos humanos en redes interorganizacionales

Hoy en día en el mundo empresarial, son cada vez más las compañías que forman parte de redes interorganizacionales, debido a que al hacer parte de estas se genera un apoyo mutuo entre organizaciones sin que ninguna de ellas imponga acciones a realizar sobre la otra (Sulbrandt, Lira, Ibarra, 2001). En años anteriores se han realizado diversas investigaciones acerca de redes interorganizacionales, estudiando factores económicos, financieros y de mercado, pero poco se ha estudiado acerca del campo de recursos humanos y sus prácticas. Es por esto que esta investigación busca describir, explicar, analizar, y comparar, entre otras actividades intelectuales, conceptos de redes interorganizacionales, prácticas de recursos humanos y benchmarking, para finalmente proponer el diseño de un sistema de benchmarking que logre reunir y evaluar las mejores prácticas de recursos humanos de cada empresa dentro de una red interorganizacional.

Errores gerenciales en empresas multinacionales del sector farmacéutico en Colombia

La presente investigación brinda una explicación, a partir de una metodología basándose en aportes de la administración, a la longevidad de las empresas nacionales y multinacionales en Colombia, partiendo de un análisis de los errores gerenciales que las llevan a la quiebra o al no cumplimiento de los objetivos organizacionales a partir de analizar en diferentes situaciones el comportamiento de sus gerentes y/o dirigentes. Actualmente en Colombia existen 1’683.079 empresas clasificadas de la siguiente manera: 1’609.015 microempresas, 62.274 pequeñas empresas, 10.098 medianas empresas y 1.683 grandes empresas y alrededor de 700 multinacionales.

Education and literacy. 'Educación y alfabetización'.

Resumen tomado de la publicación.Monográfico : las condiciones de aprendizaje de la lengua escrita

Relation between temperature and mortality in thirteen Spanish cities

In this study we examined the shape of the association between temperature and mortality in 13 Spanish cities representing a wide range of climatic and socio demographic conditions. The temperature value linked with minimum mortality (MMT) and the slopes before and after the turning point (MMT) were calculated. Most cities showed a V-shaped temperature-mortality relationship. MMTs were generally higher in cities with warmer climates. Cold and heat effects also depended on climate: effects were greater in hotter cities but lesser in cities with higher variability. The effect of heat was greater than the effect of cold. The effect of cold and MMT was, in general, greater for cardio-respiratory mortality than for total mortality, while the effect of heat was, in general, greater among the elderly

Heimat, Fremdheit, Zugehörigkeit : Zur Konjunktur des Diaspora-Begriffs in der Ära Internationaler Migration

In the era of international migration, the experience of homelessness, deriving from the loss of the myth of cultural and ethno-linguistically singularity in contemporary societies, seems to become an universal phenomenon. Questions of home and belonging are key issues in the current discourses on Diaspora which, since the turning point of 1989, developed beyond those academic disciplines concerned with religion. At taking a critical perspective on the loss of analytical categories, this article discusses the enormous proliferation of Diasporaconcepts in social sciences at large, and in particular with regard to discourses on Muslims in Europe.

Mobile Internet : perspectives from the Stakeholders

Mobile internet represents a major new trend in communication technologies use and consumption, but few evidence exists that confirms claims of novelty and social change in association with this technology use. This paper characterizes the use of mobile internet in a southern European country and associated patterns of use, focusing both on users’ profiles, forms of access, motivations to use and most popular activities undertaken via this technology, from a diffusion of innovations and social adoption of technologies perspectives, and tries to compare mobile it with fixed access to the internet in order to validate possible transformations that point to new social configurations. We seek to understand the way stakeholders perceive and characterize the European context of mobile internet. The depicted study involved a qualitative stage consisting of a set of interviews with mobile communications industry representatives and market research community in the country. These interviews were analysed in Nvivo, leading to the following eleven main categories that are explored throughout the paper: smartphones in Europe, mobile internet in Europe, users profiles, obstacles to the spread, forms of access, forms of use, motivations to use mobile internet, limitations of smartphones, apps, digital divide VS digital union and predictions for the future, as well as several subcategories forming a tree categorization. According to the data collected, mobile phones’ sales are decreasing in Europe and worldwide but on the other hand smartphones are having an exponential growth which leads to the democratization of internet access via mobile devices. As a consequence of this, it is believed that mobile internet access will soon exceed the fixed one. Mobile internet users are multiplatform, they exploit all the possibilities of mobility and they are spending less time on computers. The main obstacles to the spread of mobile internet are the high prices of price plans and there is still a lack of information and knowledge regarding the service. Mobile internet users are developing new online surfing behaviours based on apps and less in browsers and social networks represent a very high share of internet traffic through mobile phones. With mobility, “dead time” is turning into useful time and users are more likely to be available to try new services and analyze products. Innovative services concerning geolocation, consumerism, share and relationships are growing and it is necessary to highlight that mobile internet allows calling and texting, which can turn telecommunications companies into the role of Dump Pipes. This exploratory design raises questions in relation with mobile internet access and its social consequences, and provides interesting indicative research results relevant for future research in this area.

Empires, Religion & Trade

The Indian Ocean became the meeting point of two emerging empires in the early 16th century: the Mughal and the Portuguese empires, both different in their nature and objectives. While the Mughals were the dominant land power in the Indian subcontinent, the Portuguese dominated the coastal waters and the sea lanes They influenced each other’s fortunes, and of the region as a whole.

Argumento e dossier de produção “KM 27”

Márcia, Vasco, Débora e Rui vão passar férias a uma quinta alentejana. Movidos pelos ciúmes e pela curiosidade, os quatro amigos vêem-se presos nas mãos de uma família psicopata. Um segredo bem guardado por décadas é desvendado, transformando as férias numa luta pela sobrevivência.

Simón Rodríguez: un pensamiento americano (Dossier: Bicentenario, rastros y revelaciones de la Independencia)

El autor sostiene que Simón Rodríguez se propuso crear un pensamiento americano, que conociera y llegara a resolver los problemas de la región. Estos últimos tenían que ver con la vida social, las instituciones, las conductas e ideas, las perspectivas del pasado y del futuro. Era importante crear una conciencia del “ser social” en América por medio de la Razón, y no basarse en proyectos civilizatorios inspirados en ideas importadas y en la política del exterminio, como los de Andrés Bello y Faustino Sarmiento. Guzmán enfatiza que Rodríguez fue defensor de la república, inspirado en la Revolución francesa y en las utopías sociales europeas, que sus ideas pedagógicas planteaban una instrucción social general, basada en la Razón que proviene del estudio de las cosas, y en una valoración por el trabajo útil. El autor resalta dos nociones de Rodríguez: que sin luces, no habría proyectos propios y los políticos estarían condenados a imitar, y que la realidad podía cambiarse con la unión, el desarrollo de las industrias y el derecho de propiedad, junto a la enseñanza de oficios útiles.

A Filter for Visual Tracking Based on a Stochastic Model for Driver Behaviour

A driver controls a car by turning the steering wheel or by pressing on the accelerator or the brake. These actions are modelled by Gaussian processes, leading to a stochastic model for the motion of the car. The stochastic model is the basis of a new filter for tracking and predicting the motion of the car, using measurements obtained by fitting a rigid 3D model to a monocular sequence of video images. Experiments show that the filter easily outperforms traditional filters.

Did farming arise from a misapplication of social intelligence?

The origins of farming is the defining event of human history-the one turning point that has resulted in modern humans having a quite different type of lifestyle and cognition to all other animals and past types of humans. With the economic basis provided by farming, human individuals and societies have developed types of material culture that greatly augment powers of memory and computation, extending the human mental capacity far beyond that which the brain alone can provide. Archaeologists have long debated and discussed why people began living in settled communities and became dependent on cultivated plants and animals, which soon evolved into domesticated forms. One of the most intriguing explanations was proposed more than 20 years ago not by an archaeologist but by a psychologist: Nicholas Humphrey suggested that farming arose from the 'misapplication of social intelligence'. I explore this idea in relation to recent discoveries and archaeological interpretations in the Near East, arguing that social intelligence has indeed played a key role in the origin of farming and hence the emergence of the modern world.

Changing times, changing places: urban development and the politics of space - time

Much of the writing on urban regeneration in the UK has been focused on the types of urban spaces that have been created in city centres. Less has been written about the issue of when the benefits of regeneration could and should be delivered to a range of different interests, and the different time frames that exist in any development area. Different perceptions of time have been reflected in dominant development philosophies in the UK and elsewhere. The trickle-down agendas of the 1980s, for example, were criticised for their focus on the short-term time frames and needs of developers, often at the expense of those of local communities. The recent emergence of sustainability discourses, however, ostensibly changes the time focus of development and promotes a broader concern with new imagined futures. This paper draws on the example of development in Salford Quays, in the North West of England, to argue that more attention needs to be given to the politics of space-time in urban development processes. It begins by discussing the importance and relevance of this approach before turning to the case study and the ways in which the local politics of space-time has influenced development agendas and outcomes. The paper argues that such an approach harbours the potential for more progressive, far-reaching, and sustainable development agendas to be developed and implemented.

The standardization of contracts for construction

Contracts are put to a wide variety of uses. Those who draft construction contracts in the UK rarely consider all of the potential uses and therefore may produce documents that are less than ideal. The various uses are considered in their theoretical background before turning to the practical difficulties often encountered in trying to fulfil such diverse aims. The question of standardisation is examined within this context. Existing standard forms of contract in the UK are found to do little to overcome these difficulties, and this encourages either a significant level of amendment to the standards or experienced clients to draft their own forms. The solution is an approach to contract drafting which is designed to offer a compromise; better standard forms, based on the lessons learned from the drafting of non-standard forms and a pooling of experience, including that of lawyers, in the drafting process. Although this paper is based upon the experience of the UK, these conclusions are relevant for contract-drafting practice in general.

Vibrational Renner-Teller effects in the infrared spectrum of carbonsuboxide

The infrared spectrum of carbon suboxide has been recorded with a resolution of 0•01cm-1 from 400 to 700 cm-1. The region from 530 to 570 cm-1 shows intense absorption due to the v6(Πu) band system, of which the fundamental band only has been assigned and analysed, giving v6=540•221 cm-1. The region 590 to 660 cm-1 shows weaker absorption due to the v5(Πg) band system appearing in combination with odd quanta of the v7(Πu) fundamental at 18 cm-1. The v5 + v7 band and several hot bands have been assigned and analysed, and the effective v7 bending potential in the v5 state has been deduced. This potential shows a splitting as the large amplitude bending coordinate q7 is displaced due to interaction between v5 and v7 analogous to the Renner-Teller effect in electronic spectroscopy. This splitting is about 4 cm-1 for the classical turning points in q7 and the mean q7 bending potential is closely similar to that in the ground state.

How could construction supply chain benefit from RFID/GPS integration: a knowledge management perspective

Construction materials and equipment are essential building blocks of every construction project and may account for 50-60 per cent of the total cost of construction. The rate of their utilization, on the other hand, is the element that most directly relates to a project progress. A growing concern in the industry that inadequate efficiency hinders its success could thus be accommodated by turning construction into a logistic process. Although mostly limited, recent attempts and studies show that Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) applications have significant potentials in construction. However, the aim of this research is to show that the technology itself should not only be used for automation and tracking to overcome the supply chain complexity but also as a tool to generate, record and exchange process-related knowledge among the supply chain stakeholders. This would enable all involved parties to identify and understand consequences of any forthcoming difficulties and react accordingly before they cause major disruptions in the construction process. In order to achieve this aim the study focuses on a number of methods. First of all it develops a generic understanding of how RFID technology has been used in logistic processes in industrial supply chain management. Secondly, it investigates recent applications of RFID as an information and communication technology support facility in construction logistics for the management of construction supply chain. Based on these the study develops an improved concept of a construction logistics architecture that explicitly relies on integrating RFID with the Global Positioning System (GPS). The developed conceptual model architecture shows that categorisation provided through RFID and traceability as a result of RFID/GPS integration could be used as a tool to identify, record and share potential problems and thus vastly improve knowledge management processes within the entire supply chain. The findings thus clearly show a need for future research in this area.