Personnel management practices in the co-operative sector in Kerala

A study on the personnel management practices in the co+operative sector in the Kerala State is carried out during the years 1989-91, with the overall objective of assessing the extent of application of modern personnel management concepts in the cooperative organizations in the Kerala State. The specific objectives of the study are to assess the effectiveness of the various personnel management practices followed in the cooperative sector, to analyse the nature and extent of compensating the employees in co—operatives, to measure the level of job satisfaction derived by the employees, to evaluate the industrial relations existing in the co-operative organizations and to suggest, if found necessary, ways and means of toning up the personnel management practices followed in the co-operative sector in Kerala

Autonomes Performance-Management in dienstorientierten Architekturen

Die Bedeutung des Dienstgüte-Managements (SLM) im Bereich von Unternehmensanwendungen steigt mit der zunehmenden Kritikalität von IT-gestützten Prozessen für den Erfolg einzelner Unternehmen. Traditionell werden zur Implementierung eines wirksamen SLMs Monitoringprozesse in hierarchischen Managementumgebungen etabliert, die einen Administrator bei der notwendigen Rekonfiguration von Systemen unterstützen. Auf aktuelle, hochdynamische Softwarearchitekturen sind diese hierarchischen Ansätze jedoch nur sehr eingeschränkt anwendbar. Ein Beispiel dafür sind dienstorientierte Architekturen (SOA), bei denen die Geschäftsfunktionalität durch das Zusammenspiel einzelner, voneinander unabhängiger Dienste auf Basis deskriptiver Workflow-Beschreibungen modelliert wird. Dadurch ergibt sich eine hohe Laufzeitdynamik der gesamten Architektur. Für das SLM ist insbesondere die dezentrale Struktur einer SOA mit unterschiedlichen administrativen Zuständigkeiten für einzelne Teilsysteme problematisch, da regelnde Eingriffe zum einen durch die Kapselung der Implementierung einzelner Dienste und zum anderen durch das Fehlen einer zentralen Kontrollinstanz nur sehr eingeschränkt möglich sind. Die vorliegende Arbeit definiert die Architektur eines SLM-Systems für SOA-Umgebungen, in dem autonome Management-Komponenten kooperieren, um übergeordnete Dienstgüteziele zu erfüllen: Mithilfe von Selbst-Management-Technologien wird zunächst eine Automatisierung des Dienstgüte-Managements auf Ebene einzelner Dienste erreicht. Die autonomen Management-Komponenten dieser Dienste können dann mithilfe von Selbstorganisationsmechanismen übergreifende Ziele zur Optimierung von Dienstgüteverhalten und Ressourcennutzung verfolgen. Für das SLM auf Ebene von SOA Workflows müssen temporär dienstübergreifende Kooperationen zur Erfüllung von Dienstgüteanforderungen etabliert werden, die sich damit auch über mehrere administrative Domänen erstrecken können. Eine solche zeitlich begrenzte Kooperation autonomer Teilsysteme kann sinnvoll nur dezentral erfolgen, da die jeweiligen Kooperationspartner im Vorfeld nicht bekannt sind und – je nach Lebensdauer einzelner Workflows – zur Laufzeit beteiligte Komponenten ausgetauscht werden können. In der Arbeit wird ein Verfahren zur Koordination autonomer Management-Komponenten mit dem Ziel der Optimierung von Antwortzeiten auf Workflow-Ebene entwickelt: Management-Komponenten können durch Übertragung von Antwortzeitanteilen untereinander ihre individuellen Ziele straffen oder lockern, ohne dass das Gesamtantwortzeitziel dadurch verändert wird. Die Übertragung von Antwortzeitanteilen wird mithilfe eines Auktionsverfahrens realisiert. Technische Grundlage der Kooperation bildet ein Gruppenkommunikationsmechanismus. Weiterhin werden in Bezug auf die Nutzung geteilter, virtualisierter Ressourcen konkurrierende Dienste entsprechend geschäftlicher Ziele priorisiert. Im Rahmen der praktischen Umsetzung wird die Realisierung zentraler Architekturelemente und der entwickelten Verfahren zur Selbstorganisation beispielhaft für das SLM konkreter Komponenten vorgestellt. Zur Untersuchung der Management-Kooperation in größeren Szenarien wird ein hybrider Simulationsansatz verwendet. Im Rahmen der Evaluation werden Untersuchungen zur Skalierbarkeit des Ansatzes durchgeführt. Schwerpunkt ist hierbei die Betrachtung eines Systems aus kooperierenden Management-Komponenten, insbesondere im Hinblick auf den Kommunikationsaufwand. Die Evaluation zeigt, dass ein dienstübergreifendes, autonomes Performance-Management in SOA-Umgebungen möglich ist. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass der entwickelte Ansatz auch in großen Umgebungen erfolgreich angewendet werden kann.

Las TIC en la administración de la cadena de suministro y su incidencia en el desempeño operacional

Las tecnologías de la información han empezado a ser un factor importante a tener en cuenta en cada uno de los procesos que se llevan a cabo en la cadena de suministro. Su implementación y correcto uso otorgan a las empresas ventajas que favorecen el desempeño operacional a lo largo de la cadena. El desarrollo y aplicación de software han contribuido a la integración de los diferentes miembros de la cadena, de tal forma que desde los proveedores hasta el cliente final, perciben beneficios en las variables de desempeño operacional y nivel de satisfacción respectivamente. Por otra parte es importante considerar que su implementación no siempre presenta resultados positivos, por el contrario dicho proceso de implementación puede verse afectado seriamente por barreras que impiden maximizar los beneficios que otorgan las TIC.

Attribution analysis of property portfolios

This paper aims to clarify the potential confusion about the application of attribution analysis to real estate portfolios. Its three primary objectives are: · To review, and as far as possible reconcile, the varying approaches to attribution analysis evident in the literature. · To give a clear statement of the purposes of attribution analysis, and its meaning for real-world property managers. · To show, using real portfolio data from IPD's UK performance measurement service, the practical implications of applying different attribution methods.

Driving service agility: a longitudinal case in Yell

Organizations require effective service management in order to meet business service levels and reduce costs in the operation of information systems. There is a growing body of knowledge that describes the rationale and the outcome of these experiences. These cases indicate that the capabilities and processes of the organization are important factors in achieving success. Our review of the literature considers both the hard and soft factors such as service processes and trust in service partners. These factors are explored through a longitudinal case study designed to provide insights into how the environment sets the parameters for service management. The selected case analyses the organization changes to its service management approaches during a period of several years. Results are discussed from both practitioner and theoretical viewpoints with proposals for further research.

Key drivers of frontline employee generation of ideas for customer service improvement

Anchored in the service-dominant logic and service innovation literature, this study investigates the drivers of employee generation of ideas for service improvement (GISI). Employee GISI focuses on customer needs and providing the exact service wanted by customers. GISI should enhance competitive advantage and organizational success (cf. Berry et al. 2006; Wang and Netemeyer 2004). Despite its importance, there is little research on the idea generation stage of the service development process (Chai, Zhang, and Tan 2005). This study contributes to the service field by providing the first empirical evaluation of the drivers of GISI. It also investigates a new explanatory determinant of reading of customer needs, namely, perceived organizational support (POS), and an outcome of POS, in the form of emotional exhaustion. Results show that the major driver of GISI is reading of customer needs by employees followed by affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction. This research provides several new and important insights for service management practice by suggesting that special care should be put into selecting and recruiting employees who have the ability to read customer needs. Additionally, organizations should invest in creating work environments that encourage and reward the flow of ideas for service improvement

Avoiding a bad apple: insect pollination enhances fruit quality and economic value

Insect pollination is important for food production globally and apples are one of the major fruit crops which are reliant on this ecosystem service. It is fundamentally important that the full range of benefits of insect pollination to crop production are understood, if the costs of interventions aiming to enhance pollination are to be compared against the costs of the interventions themselves. Most previous studies have simply assessed the benefits of pollination to crop yield and ignored quality benefits and how these translate through to economic values. In the present study we examine the influence of insect pollination services on farmgate output of two important UK apple varieties; Gala and Cox. Using field experiments, we quantify the influence of insect pollination on yield and importantly quality and whether either may be limited by sub-optimal insect pollination. Using an expanded bioeconomic model we value insect pollination to UK apple production and establish the potential for improvement through pollination service management. We show that insects are essential in the production of both varieties of apple in the UK and contribute a total of £36.7 million per annum, over £6 million more than the value calculated using more conventional dependence ratio methods. Insect pollination not only affects the quantity of production but can also have marked impacts on the quality of apples, influencing size, shape and effecting their classification for market. These effects are variety specific however. Due to the influence of pollination on both yield and quality in Gala, there is potential for insect pollination services to improve UK output by up to £5.7 million per annum. Our research shows that continued pollinator decline could have serious financial implications for the apple industry but there is considerable scope through management of wild pollinators or using managed pollinator augmentation, to improve the quality of production. Furthermore, we show that it is critically important to consider all production parameters including quality, varietal differences and management costs when valuing the pollination service of any crop so investment in pollinator management can be proportional to its contribution.

Att leva och sälja sin dröm : Livsstilsföretagaren mellan familjeliv, marknadoch politisk retorik

Living and selling a dream: Lifestyle entrepreneurship in the intersection between family, market and political rhetoric The article focuses on lifestyle entrepreneurship, characterised by a balancing work between personal lifestyle motives and economic motives. It builds on a qualitative study of business owners who have realized a life dream of starting a countryside business in the tourism and hospitality industry in Sweden. Through the notion of ”balancing work”, the analysis focuses on the tension between a personal life sphere and a market. In particular, the analysis highlights how the notion of ”the life dream” emerges as a narrative practice of self-realization, simultaneously as it is offered as an experience product. The analysis demonstrates how the entrepreneurs balance between personal stories of togetherness and marketing practices, between images of right and wrong commodification, and between constraining working conditions and a popular image of the successful entrepreneur, reinforced by a political discourse on rural entrepreneurship. It is concluded that balancing work between personal identities and economic practices is a practice of valuation, offering new insights into working conditions and markets situated in the intersection between markets and personal life spheres.

Gestão verde de tecnologia da informação e comunicação: fatores que influenciam a sua adoção em grandes empresas usuárias no Brasil

A crescente utilização de recursos de informática e comunicação nas empresas, visando modernização, agilidade, redução de custos e outros, tem trazido diversos benefícios, mas tem também se tornado um enorme problema para o planeta. A quantidade de lixo eletrônico (e-waste) gerada pelos equipamentos de informática e comunicação tem dobrado a cada cinco anos, se tornando um dos principais focos de atenção nos últimos anos. O volume de lixo eletrônico gerado pelo descarte de equipamentos de informática e comunicação (TIC), já ultrapassa a marca de 50 milhões de toneladas por ano, o que equivale a oito vezes a produção total de resíduos da cidade de São Paulo. O mercado brasileiro total de eletrônicos é considerado o quinto do mundo, depois da China, Estados Unidos, Japão e Rússia. A produção total de lixo eletrônico no Brasil em 2011 foi de um milhão de toneladas e a parte referente a equipamentos de TIC foi estimada em 98 mil toneladas. Frente a este contexto este estudo visa contribuir para a expansão do conhecimento na gestão verde da cadeia de suprimentos (GSCM) aplicado à realidade empresarial brasileira de TIC. Especificamente pretende-se identificar quais fatores influenciam o processo de adoção e aplicação da gestão verde de TIC, em grandes empresas usuárias de TIC no Brasil, a partir dos modelos propostos por Molla (2008) e Molla e Coopers (2008). Desta forma buscou-se responder ao seguinte problema de pesquisa: quais fatores influenciam grandes empresas usuárias de tecnologia da informação e comunicação (TIC) no Brasil na adoção de conceitos de gestão de verde? Para isto, foi realizado estudo de caso em seis grandes empresas, todas lideres em seus setores, representando grandes áreas de serviços e manufatura. Como resultado final, foi proposto um novo modelo analítico, que pareceu mais adequado ao setor de serviços. O estudo também identificou que na gestão verde de TIC empresas manufatureiras tem prioridades diferentes das de serviço. Muitas vezes seus desafios operacionais são mais críticos em relação à sustentabilidade, que a gestão verde de TIC em si. Por outro lado, o estudo dos serviços prestados pelo setor público apesar dos grandes orçamentos anuais, apontou restrições quanto aos aspectos legais e deficiência de qualificação e capacitação de seus colaboradores como fatores limitantes para a implantação de programas de gestão verde mais abrangentes.

O gerenciamento de impressões e a qualidade dos serviços nos hotéis da Paraíba

The present study has got as its aim to show how the impressions management is being used by the hotels in Paraiba State. For that, the dramma or role play perspective has been adopted as a model for service management. From the theater metaphor, the physical environment and its components can be seen as a scenery of the service show. We conduct the reader to notice the importance of the consummer about the service quality demand and its influence on his satisfaction. A methodology with exploring and qualifying nature has been adopted by using the analyses of content technique in interviews applied to hotel managers lebeled as having 4 and 5 stars in the State, trying to check how impression management takes place, identifying impression management tools used in relation to the physical evidences and to contacting people, as well as checking managers views in the survey about the use of impression management for client satisfaction make. The information revealed that managers, maybe for being unaware about impression management theory, haven t considered neither the physical evidences yet, nor contacting people as marketing tools. About the physical evidences, we could see that hotels take actions in a pulverized way referring to environment decoration and colors, however there isn t a global usage of physical evidences to highlight the service. Contacting people by their turn, receive better importance and attention. It was possible to make sure that managers are aware about the influence of the employee over the attendance quality. This way, we may come into a conclusion that impression management at Paraiba hotels has been under used, as long as managers seem to be, most times, turned to actions related to contacting people, not having realized the planning importance and national-wide use of service scenery in a genaral way yet

PROEJA FIC/Fundamental no IFRN-Campus Mossoró: das intenções declaradas ao funcionamento de um curso em espaço prisional

This research aims to analyze the FIC Course of Assistant Technician in Service Management and Quality, integrated to elementary education / EJA form developed by IFRN MO Campus between 2011 and 2013 in the form of a PROEJA FIC / AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEVEL. We seek to understand the adhesion between the national guidelines postulated for the Program, established in PPC and mediations with the process conceived in the run of the course. Guiding by the socio-critical approach and the dialogical paradigm, the theoretical-epistemological mark is especially buoyed by the theoretical contributions of Ciavatta (2005) , Rock (2011) , Haddad and Di Pierro (2000), Freire (2005), Marx (1982), Ramos (2005), Frigotto; Ciavatta; Ramos (2005), Moura (2012), and also on education in prisons by Onofre (2007, 2011), Bueno (2007), Julião (2011) and Foucault (2001). We assume that an action that enables professional qualification as FIC courses articulated to the EJA in the context of education in prisons have conceptual, methodological, political and pedagogical implications for it focuses challenges, weaknesses and opportunities on the same area of education., We have developed four techniques of data collection based on procedures and tools of qualitative research, such as document analysis, a student survey, the conduction of focus groups with teachers and administrators of the course and on-site observation. Mediated by the investigated context, results showed that the consolidation of PROEJA FIC / AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEVEL goes beyond the intentions officially declared. It is inferred that after seven years of its creation, even though it keeps some potential, this program is not being satisfactorily developed and it shows weaknesses national and locally, it is set at low capillarity, it has a limited scope, and dissolved essential public commitments to the course development. The effectiveness of PROEJA FIC / AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEVEL as part of an emancipatory inclusion social policy, according to official statement, entails approximating the legal logic with social logic, so as not only to propagate discourses and enforce worship to specific and successful experiences that reach only a minority, but to provide actual and necessary conditions to promote the breadth and social quality of the offered deals in this program format

Saúde da família: uma estratégia de mudança no processo de produção dos serviços de saúde

The purpose of this study is to analyze, from the point of view of nurses, changes that took place in the process of providing health services after the introduction of the Family Health Program (FHP). It is na investigation of qualitative nature that uses semi-structured interviews as a main empirical approach tool. Six nurses from the city of Caicó, Rio Grande do Norte, who were working with basic care before the introduction of the FHP, within basic care, were: adscription and ties with the community; hospitality and the humanizacion of care-giving; decrease in cases of inpatient treatment; strengthening of the prevention of injuries and health promotion; improvemente of health indicatiors, finally, actions that point towads meeting the principles of wholeness, equity and universality as a declaration of the Brazilian National Health Care System (SUS). Nevertheless, in spite of all recognizable positive aspects, the FHP has some weaknesses, such as: the difficulty posed by colletive work; the mismatch between professional education and the demands of the current health standard; a poor physical infrastructure of the Basic Health Units; a high heath staff turnover and precarious work conditions. In addition to this, some strategies that can be used to help improve the process of providing health services have been pointed out, such as, coordination between sectors, continuous education, making work conditions less precarious and improving the means whereby heathy service management is conveyed,Tthus, finally, we understand that the FHP does bring forward meaningful changes to the process of provinding health services to strengthen the Brasilian National Health Care System (SUS), in spite of the fact that it lies within a scenario of adversities that can be overcome through the collective endeavor of the several social actors

Sistema de gestão da qualidade na hotelaria :um estudo comparativo da ISO 9000 com os modelos de classificação no Brasil

Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar os sistemas de Classificações existentes para a garantia da gestão da qualidade no setor hoteleiro, tendo como foco principal a Matriz de Classificação para os Meios de Hospedagem da EMBRATUR e a ISO 9000, observando os benefícios que esses sistemas e/ou processos de gestão poderão vir a proporcionar para o setor hoteleiro no que se refere à qualidade de seus serviços. Para a obtenção dessas informações foi realizada uma análise comparativa dos sistemas de gestão da qualidade através de pesquisas bibliográficas e de questionários enviados para empreendimentos hoteleiros certificados e classificados, onde os principais resultados fornecidos pela pesquisa foram trabalhados de forma a apresentar, de maneira clara, a superioridade de um sistema em relação ao outro

Analysing green supply chain management practices in Brazil's electrical/electronics industry using interpretive structural modelling

Industries need to adopt the environmental management concepts in the traditional supply chain management. The green supply chain management (GSCM) is an established concept to ensure environment-friendly activities in industry. This paper identifies the relationship of driving and dependence that exists between GSCM practices with regard to their adoption within Brazilian electrical/electronic industry with the help of interpretive structural modelling (ISM). From the results, we infer that cooperation with customers for eco-design practice is driving other practices, and this practice acts as a vital role among other practices. Commitment to GSCM from senior managers and cooperation with customers for cleaner production occupy the highest level. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Uma análise sobre o suporte dos fatores de recursos humanos à gestão ambiental: estudo de caso em um hotel do interior do Estado de São Paulo

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)