A satisfação profissional e a cultura organizacional : uma análise a partir do modelo ASH no Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica do Rio Grande do Norte

With the need of the companies in becoming more competitive within the market, it arises an incessant search for selective human potential, with a high level of capacity and low rotativity, which motivation results in production raise, quality optimization and waste reduction. This scenario requires a strategy development which advantages the Human Resources Quality Management. This way, the model of the Human System Audit (HSA), developed by the Spanish researchers Ouijano and Navarro, presents itself as an important tool to diagnosis and evaluation, contemplating the environment where the organization is inserted, its strategies, its organizational design, its processes and its organizational effectiveness. In this sense, the present study has identified the existent relation between the professional satisfaction and the Organizational Culture, based in the model HSA. The research has been a quantitative-descriptive one and has had as population the technical-administrative workers from the Federal Center of Technical Education of Rio Grande do Norte (CEFET RN). The data collection has occurred during May, 2008, by means of the application of a questionnaire in the HSA model. The sample was composed by 167 subjects, distributed among the Five units of the institution. It was used the factorial analysis, with the extraction method of main components and orthogonal rotation varimax, in order to extract the dimensions of the satisfaction and of the organizational culture and the calculation of Cronbach s Alpha coefficient, to evaluate the reliability of these dimensions. The factorial analysis of the satisfaction indicators has identified four factors,, all of them showing significance: gratefulness and relationship , self-realization , stability and security and physical conditions and social benefits . The result of the factorial analysis with the indicators of the organizational culture has extracted four factors and among them, three of them have obtained significance: Personal Satisfaction Style , Competitive-Denial-Power Style and the Conventional-Dependent Style . After identifying the dimensions of the satisfaction and culture found at CEFET-RN, it has been notice the existence or not of relation among them, through the application of Pearson s coefficient. It has been verified that all of the dimensions of the Professional satisfaction are correlated with some dimension of the organizational culture, having in outstand position, with higher intensity, the relation between the culture style of Personal Satisfaction and the satisfaction factor referring to the self-realization

The “social” aspect of social-ecological systems: a critique of analytical frameworks and findings from a multisite study of coastal sustainability

We evaluate whether society can adequately be conceptualized as a component of social-ecological systems, given social theory and the current outputs of systems-based research. A mounting critique from the social sciences posits that resilience theory has undertheorized social entities with the concept of social-ecological systems. We trace the way that use of the term has evolved, relating to social science theory. Scientometic and network analysis provide a wide range of empirical data about the origin, growth, and use of this term in academic literature. A content analysis of papers in Ecology and Society demonstrates a marked emphasis in research on institutions, economic incentives, land use, population, social networks, and social learning. These findings are supported by a review of systems science in 18 coastal assessments. This reveals that a systems-based conceptualization tends to limit the kinds of social science research favoring quantitative couplings of social and ecological components and downplaying interpretive traditions of social research. However, the concept of social-ecological systems remains relevant because of the central insights concerning the dynamic coupling between humans and the environment, and its salient critique about the need for multidisciplinary approaches to solve real world problems, drawing on heuristic devices. The findings of this study should lead to more circumspection about whether a systems approach warrants such claims to comprehensiveness. Further methodological advances are required for interdisciplinarity. Yet there is evidence that systems approaches remain highly productive and useful for considering certain social components such as land use and hybrid ecological networks. We clarify advantages and restrictions of utilizing such a concept, and propose a reformulation that supports engagement with wider traditions of research in the social sciences.

Creating value, not wasting resources: sustainable innovation strategies

It is well-accepted in academic and public debate that society has overused natural resources. Business managers in consequence face a normative framework where products need to become more ‘sustainable’. The paper characterises the mechanisms and logic that make ‘[environmentally] sustainable innovation strategies’. Those mechanisms highlight multiple value creation and sustaining value beyond the original new product lifecycle. They yield as much utility as possible from the embedded natural resources. And they avoid creating waste. ‘Multiple value creation’ asks managers to revaluate the attrite product or to make customers change their use patterns. The paper then demonstrates how to extend the ‘old’ logic of innovation with a phase of revaluation: a phase promoting further use of the product and/or material. Our concept is empirically illustrated by two industry case examples. Namely, the copier industry and the emerging automotive lithium-ion batteries industry. We provide a patent analysis in order to demonstrate the assessment of extended life cycles, for the case of ‘recovery of raw materials from disposed products’.

Modelo de estimativa de valores nutricionais, calóricos e glicêmicos por meio de reconhecimento de alimentos em imagens digitais

Atualmente, a disponibilização de informações alimentares e nutricionais em estabelecimentos da área de alimentação não é obrigatória. Porém, os consumidores podem, fácil e rapidamente, obter informações precisas em sites confiáveis ou por meio de aplicativos sobre a composição nutricional e calórica de alimentos. Estudos recentes mostram a importância não só do controle da ingestão diária de calorias, mas também do consumo de carboidratos, que são os nutrientes mais responsáveis por elevar o nível de glicose no sangue. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor um modelo para reconhecimento de alimentos em imagens de refeições por meio de técnicas de Processamento Digital de Imagens, possibilitando assim, a estimativa dos valores nutricionais, calóricos e glicêmicos dos alimentos identificados. Serão analisadas imagens de refeições e mediante reconhecimento, serão estimados os valores calóricos, nutricionais e glicêmicos de cada alimento identificado e da refeição. O procedimento de construção do artefato será conduzido pelo método Design Science Research. O resultado esperado com a finalização do trabalho é o modelo de reconhecimento de alimentos em imagens de refeições e de disponibilização de informações nutricionais, calóricas e glicêmicas validado. 

Evaluating the use of mobile collaborative augmented reality within field service networks: the case of Océ Italia – Canon Group

The adoption of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies can make the provision of field services to industrial equipment more effective. In these situations, the cost of deploying skilled technicians in geographically dispersed locations must be accurately traded off with the risks of not respecting the service level agreements with the customers. This paper, through the case study of a leading OEM in the production printing industry, presents the challenges that have to be faced in order to favour the adoption of a particular kind of AR named Mobile Collaborative Augmented Reality (MCAR). In particular, this study uses both qualitative and quantitative research. Firstly, a demonstration to show how MCAR can support field service was settled in order to achieve information about the use experience of the people involved. Then, the entire field force of Océ Italia – Canon Group was surveyed in order to investigate quantitatively the technicians’ perceptions about the usefulness and ease of use of MCAR, as well as their intentions to use this technology.

Visitors' engagement and authenticity: Japanese heritage consumption

Understanding the sense of authenticity of heritage attractions is important for tourism management and marketing because presentation, interpretation and verification has a direct bearing on motivations to visit and engage with heritage tourism sites. This paper establishes relationships among the concepts of culturally specific motivation, perception of authenticity, engagement and attendant behavioral consequences based on domestic visitors' experiences at Japanese heritage sites. It further extends Kolar and Zabkar's (2010) model of authenticity by including concepts of serious leisure, heritage related behaviors, self-connection and their effects over engagement using Partial Least Square, whereby both formative and reflective scales are included. The structural model is tested with a sample of 768 visitors in a culturally specific setting of Japanese heritage sites. The empirical validation of the conceptual model supports the research hypotheses. These findings contribute to a better understanding of visitors' perceptions and valuation of authenticity in Japanese tourist attractions. Several implications can be drawn from the study findings and interesting directions for future research are provided.

Approximate ab initio calculations and the method of molecular fragments

A two stage approach to performing ab initio calculations on medium and large sized molecules is described. The first step is to perform SCF calculations on small molecules or molecular fragments using the OPIT Program. This employs a small basis set of spherical and p-type Gaussian functions. The Gaussian functions can be identified very closely with atomic cores, bond pairs, lone pairs, etc. The position and exponent of any of the Gaussian functions can be varied by OPIT to produce a small but fully optimised basis set. The second stage is the molecular fragments method. As an example of this, Gaussian exponents and distances are taken from an OPIT calculation on ethylene and used unchanged in a single SCF calculation on benzene. Approximate ab initio calculations of this type give much useful information and are often preferable to semi-empirical approaches, since the nature of the approximations involved is much better defined.

Big data: appearance and disappearance

The mainstay of Big Data is prediction in that it allows practitioners, researchers, and policy analysts to predict trends based upon the analysis of large and varied sources of data. These can range from changing social and political opinions, patterns in crimes, and consumer behaviour. Big Data has therefore shifted the criterion of success in science from causal explanations to predictive modelling and simulation. The 19th-century science sought to capture phenomena and seek to show the appearance of it through causal mechanisms while 20th-century science attempted to save the appearance and relinquish causal explanations. Now 21st-century science in the form of Big Data is concerned with the prediction of appearances and nothing more. However, this pulls social science back in the direction of a more rule- or law-governed reality model of science and away from a consideration of the internal nature of rules in relation to various practices. In effect Big Data offers us no more than a world of surface appearance and in doing so it makes disappear any context-specific conceptual sensitivity.

Stratigraphic Architecture of Deep Sea Depositional Systems in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea: Some Examples in the Ischia and Stromboli Volcanic Islands (Southern Italy)

The stratigraphic architecture of deep sea depositional systems has been discussed in detail. Some examples in Ischia and Stromboli volcanic islands (Southern Tyrrhenian sea, Italy) are here shown and discussed. The submarine slope and base of slope depositional systems represent a major component of marine and lacustrine basin fills, constituting primary targets for hydrocarbon exploration and development. The slope systems are characterized by seven seismic facies building blocks, including the turbiditic channel fills, the turbidite lobes, the sheet turbidites, the slide, slump and debris flow sheets, lobes and tongues, the fine-grained turbidite fills and sheets, the contourite drifts and finally, the hemipelagic drapes and fills. Sparker profiles offshore Ischia are presented. New seismo-stratigraphic evidence on buried volcanic structures and overlying Quaternary deposits of the eastern offshore of the Ischia Island are here discussed to highlight the implications on marine geophysics and volcanology. Regional seismic sections in the Ischia offshore across buried volcanic structures and debris avalanche and debris flow deposits are here presented and discussed. Deep sea depositional systems in the Ischia Island are well developed in correspondence to the Southern Ischia canyon system. The canyon system engraves a narrow continental shelf from Punta Imperatore to Punta San Pancrazio, being limited southwestwards from the relict volcanic edifice of the Ischia bank. While the eastern boundary of the canyon system is controlled by extensional tectonics, being limited from a NE-SW trending (counter-Apenninic) normal fault, its western boundary is controlled by volcanism, due to the growth of the Ischia volcanic bank. Submarine gravitational instabilities also acted in relationships to the canyon system, allowing for the individuation of large scale creeping at the sea bottom and hummocky deposits already interpreted as debris avalanche deposits. High resolution seismic data (Subbottom Chirp) coupled to high resolution Multibeam bathymetry collected in the frame of the Stromboli geophysical experiment aimed at recording seismic active data and tomography of the Stromboli Island are here presented. A new detailed swath bathymetry of Stromboli Island is here shown and discussed to reconstruct an up-to-date morpho-bathymetry and marine geology of the area, compared to volcanologic setting of the Aeolian volcanic complex. The Stromboli DEM gives information about the submerged structure of the volcano, particularly about the volcano-tectonic and gravitational processes involving the submarine flanks of the edifice. Several seismic units have been identified around the volcanic edifice and interpreted as volcanic acoustic basement pertaining to the volcano and overlying slide chaotic bodies emplaced during its complex volcano-tectonic evolution. They are related to the eruptive activity of Stromboli, mainly poliphasic and to regional geological processes involving the geology of the Aeolian Arc.

Estudo empírico de antecedentes do sucesso de sistemas de informação: análise de um sistema de apoio à decisão em uma universidade pública

Universities are institutions that generate and manipulate large amounts of data as a result of the multiple functions they perform, of the amount of involved professionals and students they attend. Information gathered from these data is used, for example, for operational activities and to support decision-making by managers. To assist managers in accomplishing their tasks, the Information Systems (IS) are presented as tools that offer features aiming to improve the performance of its users, assist with routine tasks and provide support to decision-making. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the influence of the users features and of the task in the success of IS. The study is of a descriptive-exploratory nature, therefore, the constructs used to define the conceptual model of the research are known and previously validated. However, individual features of users and of the task are IS success antecedents. In order to test the influence of these antecedents, it was developed a decision support IS that uses the Multicriteria Decision Aid Constructivist (MCDA-C) methodology with the participation and involvement of users. The sample consisted of managers and former managers of UTFPR Campus Pato Branco who work or have worked in teaching activities, research, extension and management. For data collection an experiment was conducted in the computer lab of the Campus Pato Branco in order to verify the hypotheses of the research. The experiment consisted of performing a distribution task of teaching positions between the academic departments using the IS developed. The task involved decision-making related to management activities. The data that fed the system used were real, from the Campus itself. A questionnaire was answered by the participants of the experiment in order to obtain data to verify the research hypotheses. The results obtained from the data analysis partially confirmed the influence of the individual features in IS success and fully confirmed the influence of task features. The data collected failed to support significant ratio between the individual features and the individual impact. For many of the participants the first contact with the IS was during the experiment, which indicates the lack of experience with the system. Regarding the success of IS, the data revealed that there is no significance in the relationship between Information Quality (IQ) and Individual Impact (II). It is noteworthy that the IS used in the experiment is to support decision-making and the information provided by this system are strictly quantitative, which may have caused some conflict in the analysis of the criteria involved in the decision-making process. This is because the criteria of teaching, research, extension and management are interconnected such that one reflects on another. Thus, the opinion of the managers does not depend exclusively on quantitative data, but also of knowledge and value judgment that each manager has about the problem to be solved.

The Effect of Attentional Focus on Singing Voice Quality: Towards the Interdisciplinary Experimental Investigation of Singing Pedagogy

Instructional methods employed by teachers of singing are mostly drawn from personal experience, personal reflections, and methods encountered in their own voice training (Welch & Howard, 2005). Even in Academia, singing pedagogy is one of the few disciplines in which research of teaching/learning practice efficacy has not been established (Crocco, et al., 2016). This dissertation argues the reason for this deficit is a lack of operationalization of constructs in singing, which, to date has not been undertaken. The researcher addresses issues of paradigm, epistemology, and methodology to suggest an appropriate model of experimental research towards the assessment of teaching/learning practice efficacy. A study was conducted adapting attentional focus research methodologies to test the effect of attentional focus on singing voice quality in adult novice singers. Based on previous attentional focus studies, it was hypothesized that external focus conditions would result in superior singing voice quality than internal focus conditions. While the hypothesis was partially supported by the data, the researcher welcomed refinement of the suggested research model. It is hoped that new research methodologies will emerge to investigate singing phenomena, yielding data that may be used towards the development of evidence-based frameworks for singing training.

High Quality Acoustic Time History Measurements of Rotor Harmonic Noise in Confined Spaces

A methodology has been developed and presented to enable the use of small to medium scale acoustic hover facilities for the quantitative measurement of rotor impulsive noise. The methodology was applied to the University of Maryland Acoustic Chamber resulting in accurate measurements of High Speed Impulsive (HSI) noise for rotors running at tip Mach numbers between 0.65 and 0.85 – with accuracy increasing as the tip Mach number was increased. Several factors contributed to the success of this methodology including: • High Speed Impulsive (HSI) noise is characterized by very distinct pulses radiated from the rotor. The pulses radiate high frequency energy – but the energy is contained in short duration time pulses. • The first reflections from these pulses can be tracked (using ray theory) and, through adjustment of the microphone position and suitably applied acoustic treatment at the reflected surface, reduced to small levels. A computer code was developed that automates this process. The code also tracks first bounce reflection timing, making it possible to position the first bounce reflections outside of a measurement window. • Using a rotor with a small number of blades (preferably one) reduces the number of interfering first bounce reflections and generally improves the measured signal fidelity. The methodology will help the gathering of quantitative hovering rotor noise data in less than optimal acoustic facilities and thus enable basic rotorcraft research and rotor blade acoustic design.

As inovações organizacionais do PROCANA

Nos países ocidentais, a pesquisa científica financiada com recursos públicos vem sofrendo reformas dramáticas nas últimas duas décadas (Simpson, 2003). Considerando os resultados dessas reformas, este artigo investiga como as mesmas aconteceram no Brasil, como os programas de pesquisa foram afetados e qual estilo de organização emergiu das reformas. Pretende-se analisar essas questões empiricamente, usando um estudo de caso. Então, o objetivo específico desse artigo é analisar as inovações organizacionais criadas dentro de um programa de pesquisa público brasileiro – o Programa de melhoraento genético da cana-de-açúcar do IAC (PROCANA) – para enfrentar as reformas nos modelos de atuação do Estado na área de C&T, superar os limites geográficos da pesquisa agrícola, dar mais eficiência à P&D e gerar produtos adaptados às necessidades dos usuários.

Inteligência coletiva e gestão do conhecimento: uma aplicação na rede social Facebook

Social networks rely on concepts such as collaboration, cooperation, replication, flow, speed, interaction, engagement, and aim the continuous sharing and resharing of information in support of the permanent social interaction. Facebook, the largest social network in the world, reached, in May 2016, the mark of 1.09 billion active users daily, draining 161.7 million hours of users’ attention to the website every day. These users share 4.75 billion units of content daily. The research presented in this dissertation aims to investigate the management of knowledge and collective intelligence, from the introduction of mechanisms that aim to enable users to manage and organize current information in the feeds from Facebook groups in which they participate, turning Facebook into a collective knowledge and information management device that goes far beyond mere interaction and communication among people. The adoption of Design Science Research methodology is intended to instill the "genes" of collective intelligence, as presented in the literature, in the computational artifact being developed, so that intelligence can be managed and used to create even more knowledge and intelligence to and by the group. The main theoretical contribution of this dissertation is to discuss knowledge management and collective intelligence in a complementary and integrated manner, showing how efforts to obtain one also contribute to leveraging the other.