Liderança virtuosa, comprometimento organizacional e desempenho individual

Num mundo hipercompetitivo, a afirmação da virtuosidade tem enfrentado consideráveis resistências, sendo mesmo considerada como sinónimo de fraqueza ou ingenuidade. Todavia, e perante evidências dos potenciais perigos do exercício da liderança desprovido de valores, ética e moralidade, elevam-se as vozes em defesa de uma liderança virtuosa, capaz de aportar contributos significativamente positivos às organizações e seus colaboradores. Partindo desta premissa, esta investigação teve como objetivo analisar, com base nas perceções dos liderados, o impacto da liderança virtuosa no comprometimento organizacional, assim como o contributo deste último no desempenho individual. Sustentados numa metodologia quantitativa, inquirimos, numa primeira fase, 113 liderados provenientes de organizações localizadas no território português, com vista a apurar quais as virtudes que mais valorizavam num líder. Os dados para o teste de hipóteses foram recolhidos através da aplicação de uma bateria de testes junto de 351 liderados, também a exercer funções em organizações a operar em Portugal. Os resultados sugerem que as perceções dos liderados em torno de três dimensões de virtuosidade da liderança (liderança baseada em valores, perseverança e maturidade) contribuem para o comprometimento organizacional, sobretudo nas suas vertentes afetiva e normativa e, que este último, por sua vez, é capaz de influenciar positivamente o desempenho individual.

The Dark Side of Organizational Change: The Moderating Role of Political Behavior and Organizational Cynicism

Workplace aggression is a factor that shapes the interaction between individuals and their work environment and produces many undesirable outcomes, sometimes introducing heavy costs for organizations. Only through a comprehensive understanding of the genesis of workplace aggression is possible to develop strategies and interventions to minimize its nefarious effects. The existent body of knowledge has already identified several individual, situational and contextual antecedents of workplace aggression, although this is a research area where significant gaps occur and many issues were still not addressed Dupré and Barling (2006). According to Baron and Neuman (1998) one of these predictors is organizational change, since certain changes in the work environment (e.g., changes in management) can lead to increased aggression. This paper intends to contribute to workplace aggression research by studying its relationship with organizational change, considering a moderating role of political behaviors and organizational cynicism (Ammeter et al., 2002, Ferris et al., 2002). The literature review suggests that mediators and moderators that intervene in the relationships between workplace aggression and its antecedents are understudied topics. James (2005) sustains that organizational politics is related to cynicism and the empirical research of Miranda (2008) has identified leadership political behavior as an antecedent of cynicism but these two variables were not yet investigated regarding their relationship with workplace aggression. This investigation was operationalized using several scales including the Organizational Change Questionnaire-climate of change, processes, and readiness (Bouckenooghe, Devos and Broeck, 2009), a Workplace Aggression Scale (Vicente and D’Oliveira, 2008, 2009, 2010), an Organizational Cynicism Scale (Wanous, Reichers and Austin, 1994) and a Political Behavior Questionnaire (Yukl and Falbe, 1990). Participants representing a wide variety of jobs across many organizations were surveyed. The results of the study and its implications will be presented and discussed. This study contribution is also discussed in what concerns organizational change practices in organizations.

Workplace aggression in organizational changing processes: The mediation role of leader political (soft and hard) behavior

One of the main trends in workplace aggression research is studying its antecedents. But the literature also reveals that some predictors remain understudied, like organizational change [1]. Additionally, possible mediators of this relationship were not investigated. The main objective of this research is studding the mediating effect of the leader political behavior (soft and hard version) on the relationship between organizational change and workplace aggression. Participants representing a wide variety of jobs across many organizations were surveyed. The measures used in this research are an Organizational Change Questionnaire climate of change, processes, and readiness [2], a Workplace Aggression Scale [e.g. 3, 4] and a Political Behavior Questionnaire [5]. The results of the study and its theoretical and practical implications will be presented and discussed.

Association between birth weight and neuromotor performance: a twin study

The development of neonatal intensive care has led to an increase in the prevalence of children with low birth weight and associated morbidity. The objectives of this study are to verify (1) The association between birth weight (BW) and neuromotor performance? (2) Is the neuromotor performance of twins within the normal range? (3) Are intra-pair similarities in neuromotor development of Monozygotic (MZ) and Disygotic (DZ) twins of unequal magnitude? The sample consisted of 191 children (78 MZ and 113 DZ), 8.9+3.1 years of age and with an average BW of 2246.3+485.4g. In addition to gestational characteristics, sports participation and Zurich Neuromotor Assessment (ZNA) were observed at childhood age. The statistical analysis was carried out with software SPSS 18.0, the STATA 10 and the ZNA performance scores. The level of significance was 0.05. For the neuromotor items high intra and inter-investigator reliabilities were obtained (0.793performance performance.

Criação de valor - O Cash Value Added como métrica de avaliação da Performance empresarial

Mestrado em Contabilidade e Gestão das Instituições Financeiras

Dependência entre a performance de baterias VRLA e as características físico-químicas da matéria activa positiva

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Química e Biológica

Evaluation of distinct input methods of an intelligent wheelchair in simulated and real environments: a performance and usability study

This paper focuses on evaluating the usability of an Intelligent Wheelchair (IW) in both real and simulated environments. The wheelchair is controlled at a high-level by a flexible multimodal interface, using voice commands, facial expressions, head movements and joystick as its main inputs. A Quasi-experimental design was applied including a deterministic sample with a questionnaire that enabled to apply the System Usability Scale. The subjects were divided in two independent samples: 46 individuals performing the experiment with an Intelligent Wheelchair in a simulated environment (28 using different commands in a sequential way and 18 with the liberty to choose the command); 12 individuals performing the experiment with a real IW. The main conclusion achieved by this study is that the usability of the Intelligent Wheelchair in a real environment is higher than in the simulated environment. However there were not statistical evidences to affirm that there are differences between the real and simulated wheelchairs in terms of safety and control. Also, most of users considered the multimodal way of driving the wheelchair very practical and satisfactory. Thus, it may be concluded that the multimodal interfaces enables very easy and safe control of the IW both in simulated and real environments.

Payment for performance in the Family Health Programme: lessons from the UK Quality and Outcomes Framework

OBJECTIVE: Payment for performance financial incentive schemes reward doctors based on the quality and the outcomes of their treatment. In Brazil, the Ministry of Health is looking to scale up its use in public hospitals and some municipalities are developing payment for performance schemes even for the Family Health Programme. In this article the Quality and Outcomes Framework used in the UK since 2004 is discussed, as well as its experience to elaborate some important lessons that Brazilian municipalities should consider before embarking on payment for performance scheme in primary care settings.

Avaliação do efeito de um probiótico na performance zootécnica e microbiota entérica em coelhos (Oryctolagus cuniculus) de produção

A cunicultura é uma atividade pecuária em crescente desenvolvimento e isso traduz-se em novos desafios. Durante muitos anos a criação de coelhos recorreu em demasia ao uso de antimicrobianos com o objetivo de tratar e prevenir o aparecimento de diversas doenças. Paralelamente, estes compostos foram também usados como “promotores de crescimento”, visando essencialmente uma melhoria da eficiência digestiva. Porém, o uso indiscriminado destas substâncias levantou questões de saúde pública, como a emergência de estirpes bacterianas multirresistentes e a inerente disseminação de genes de resistência, possivelmente transferíveis ao Homem através da cadeia alimentar. No presente, existe uma enorme pressão para a adoção de estratégias que possibilitem uma redução massiva na quantidade de antimicrobianos administrados a espécies pecuárias. Este trabalho visou contribuir para o estudo de uma alternativa ao uso de antimicrobianos - os probióticos – enquanto suplementos alimentares constituídos por microrganismos vivos capazes de equilibrar a microbiota intestinal do hospedeiro. Para tal, foram constituídos dois grupos de coelhos com base na alimentação: i) grupo antibiótico, com acesso a um alimento composto suplementado com antibióticos e ii) o grupo probiótico alimentado com a mesma dieta, mas sem antibióticos e inoculado com um probiótico constituído por Escherichia coli e Enterococcus spp.. Ao longo de 22 dias de estudo foram monitorizados alguns indicadores produtivos e efetuadas recolhas periódicas de fezes para estudo microbiológico. A análise dos resultados zootécnicos permitiram verificar que o uso de probióticos em detrimento de antibióticos parece promover o crescimento de coelhos, tornando-se um método mais rentável na produção cunícula. Através de genotipagem por ERIC-PCR e PFGE, pretendeu-se verificar se as estirpes estranhas ao trato gastrointestinal dos coelhos seriam capazes de coloniza-lo, permanecendo ao longo do tempo de estudo. O facto de as estirpes inoculadas no probiótico terem sido encontradas ao longo dos dias de estudo nos coelhos aos quais foram administradas, sugere que os efeitos observados na performance zootécnica estejam relacionados com as estirpes administradas no probiótico, pelo que este poderá ser um sistema viável na substituição de antibióticos na alimentação de coelhos de produção.

Ambientes favoráveis à prática de cuidados de enfermagem: factores determinantes

Mestrado em Intervenção Sócio-Organizacional na Saúde - Ramo de especialização: Políticas de Administração e Gestão de Serviços de Saúde

A high performance wireless fieldbus in industrial multimedia-related environment

This paper summarises the most important solutions that have emerged from the work carried out by our team within the framework of the EU (IST-1999-11316) project RFieldbus - High Performance Wireless Fieldbus in Industrial Multimedia-Related Environment. Within this project, Profibus was chosen as the fieldbus platform. Essentially, extensions to the current Profibus standard are being developed in order to provide Profibus with wireless, mobility and industrialmultimedia capabilities. In fact, providing these extensions means fulfilling strong requirements, namely to encompass the communication between wired (currently available) and wireless/mobile devices and to support real-time control traffic and multimedia traffic in the same network.