RCAAP Repository

The aim of this paper is to show, through the analysis of an actual international virtual team, the growing importance of collective work in the global economy, as well as the virtualization of cooperation using ICT’s as material providers of communication. Concerning the methodology, a descriptive and exploratory approach was adopted, in which quantitative and qualitative research instruments were applied, highlighting in this context the use of primary source material, namely the collection of electronic messages exchanged between team members during the process of team formation and consolidation. The data analysis suggest that the team failed to establish formal rules of communication, which negatively influenced work efficiency, but simultaneously it was able to partially overcome the problem through the progressive building of affinity and trust.

At a time in which the integration of the elderly in formal social responses is often unavoidable in order to respond positively to their physical, psychological and social needs, it becomes pertinent to study the social support perceived by elder in institutional context. After developing the framework, in theoretical terms, of aging and institutionalization, as well as the significance of social support and its operability and characteristics, the methodological framework is defined, based on the characterization of the studied population, method of sample selection, to presentation of the objectives and hypotheses to analyze and the data collection instrument appropriate to achieve those objectives. The collected data analysis allows to determine the differences between the perception of institutionalized elderly on the dimensions of social support, as well as the relationship between socio-demographic variables, duration of institutionalization, elderly adaptation to the institution, their health and religion, with social support and its different dimensions.

The exclusion from school, the origin of social exclusion, has the dimension of a true world calamity, also assuming unacceptable proportions at a national level. The consequences are unemployment, hunger, misery, organized robbery and violent crime. Millions of unproductive citizens are paying no taxes and surviving under the protection of social systems that we all pay. In our country, with the exception of the higher education, access to school is guaranteed but we still have hundreds of thousands of pupils interrupting their school progression, with huge financial losses and social problems that do not benefit anyone. There are several ways throughout the world in which people can be excluded from school: children and adults are deprived of access to school, pupils are excluded early from school, people with special education needs (disabled or not) are excluded because the school has not learned to teach them, and all the students that are victims of a school model organized for the systematic exclusion of an important part of their pupils. A world movement has emerged trying to respond to this calamity and prevent the uncalculated losses. This movement aims to guarantee the education of all citizens, without exception, generating conditions to access school in the undeveloped countries and conceiving new education and school models in the developed communities, able to educate all without exclusion and leaving no child behind. This movement is being carried under the coordination of the United Nations Organization and their Agencies, with a significant contribution from some countries and the commitment of the community of nations.

This article presents an approach to the relationship between schools and families and its correlation with school success, in a multifocal perspective, that is, in the generalized conviction of the urgency of establishing and developing a cooperative relationship, while awareness of vicissitudes, entropies and negative biases that have hindered the attainment a true involvement of family with school, towards fulfilling a mission that is recognized and arguably common to both institutions - success in school and personal development of children, adolescents and young. From an optimistic perspective, the potential of the positive development of this collaborative relationship is presented, as well as some strategies that have been pointed in literature.

Early Intervention and Special Eduaction stand side by side, in what concerns the caring of children with special educational needs and their families. The result is the emphasis given by the recent law 3/2008, January 7, to the Early Intervention, and the own legislation which created the National System of Early Intervention – SNIPI, the law 281/2009, October 6. The birth of a child with special educational needs causes a series of changes, in terms of, the families‟ needs and priorities. This way, our study was mainly based on the families„ opinion in identifying their needs and also in understanding their expectactions towards the use of a formal resource, which is available in the community – the Kindergarten. We reflected on the quantitative needs assessment of 25 inquired families, who already benefit of Early Intervention, and we concluded that their more common needs are felt at the level of access to logistical resources and specialized tecnicians. As Early Intervention tecnicians we could also conclude that Kindergarten is a formal resource that the inquired families prospect as a pedagogical response, where they want their childrens' integration.

Currently, the business environment complexity makes difficult that only one manager could perform the several which roles demanding to him. Due to this a shared leadership is emerging. The present research has the objective to develop a specific model in which is established a relationship between leadership – management competencies and shared leadership – and the perceived organizational performance, measured through the culture and the trust. A quasi-experimental method was applied in a restricted sample in which the participants come from the same company. The data was collected in two different moments. The hypotheses were formulated in order to test the proposed model. The results suggest the model validation.

Alongside the economic and financial difficulties that dominate the international scene, Portugal is no exception, seeing its economy plunged into deep crisis, marked by the high prices of commodities, with negative repercussions in terms of business competitiveness and levels of employability. Given these economic and social vicissitudes, it urges to rediscover new business models in areas strategic for the development of the country, particularly in the poorest regions. Tourism emerges thus as a strategic element in the development of national economy, combined with a variety of products identified under the National Strategic Plan for Tourism. Analyzing the evolution of the global population aging, with special emphasis on European territory, Iberian and national, it matters to know to explore this social phenomenon as a source of opportunities to consider in the design of new business models, associating it with the new consumer trends as manifested by potential customers. It is this sense that the different sections in the field of tourism, which includes the health tourism and wellness, medical tourism, accommodation, tourism and touring business and cultural landscape, the business model proposed identifies a investment solution, taking place in a depressed region of our country - the region of central border area in Malcata, Sabugal province.

In the vast literature on Web site evaluation and / or portals, quality, usability and web design are the most used dimensions in the creation of evaluation models, however, we found evidence of the importance of strategy as a dimension that all the others depend on. As we haven’t found any record of the union of the four dimensions in a single model, we present a proposal for an integrated vision, for an external evaluation of e-commerce environments, since the probability of success of a website depends on the integration of these dimensions and external factors that can add value to the consumer.

Capitalist society led, on the one hand, to the democratization of consumption and, by another, to the constant emergence of new and complex necessities. Therefore, the act of consumption is used not only to satisfy an individual necessity but also to answer a social necessity: to show the others the social group or social class to which someone belongs. This growth in consumption led to the increase of the use of credit to fund it. This article discusses the concept of consumption, both in economic and social terms, and shows how credit has allowed individuals to adjust their incomes to their expenditure by financing them the acquisition of a wide range of goods and services. Credit has improved the comfort and the quality of life, when allowing the satisfaction of personal and social necessity of the individuals.

In this paper the main aim is to reflect about families from a systemic and communicative perspective, and about human experience of family members, bearing in mind that each member is interacting with all others. The systemic view of communication seeks to understand the interactions that occur within the family system. This systemic view considers the family as a whole. Family members interact and communicate to establish relationships that serve to keep the system in balance. The system imbalance may cause imbalance in the individual and vice versa. Since the family is a system of interconnected and continuous relations, when there is change in one family member, there's change in other members. Knowing that a person lives in different systems, they influence each other. Thus by looking at family systems perspective in considering the process of communication in the family system, we wanted to examine the dynamics that led to the change of the system, the limits of the concept of family, family systems approach and the communication process within the family system.

The Portuguese public schools governance has, nowadays, a "regimen of autonomy, administration and management". However, the heavy interference of the centralizing State and the scarce alterations that have been occurring in the administration of the Portuguese public schools has turned the autonomy into a wide dealt subject within academic discussion, in spite of its reduced practical application. We have revisited the course that the schools had to go through in order to be able to establish a contract of autonomy with the ward, ever since the external evaluation up to the celebration of an autonomy contract. In other words: a "contracted" will. We have proceeded to the empirical study, resorting to a qualitative inquiry methodology and we have carried out a study in a secondary school, situated in the north of Portugal, that had celebrated in 2007 an autonomy contract, in order to try to understand the impact of the governance per contract in schools and the conceptions of the educational performers on contracted autonomy.

Once the failure of the universal access to education was recognized, in the promotion of equal opportunities, we are witnessing a shift from the quantitative paradigm to the qualitative paradigm. This change seems to fit a broader movement that affects the State, in most countries. This paper proposes a possible route for a hermeneutics of the concept of Quality in Education in the context of change experienced at the beginning of the XXI Century. To this end, several approaches are mobilized, in particular, the sociological, the economical, the political, and the educational research perspectives. The conceptual model, resulting from the various perspectives, reflects the complexity and the polysemy of the concept.

Social discrimination against women, carried out along centuries, still echoes today in modern societies. Changes in the social status of women, who now have access to education and employment, have not been enough to put an end to the construction of assumptions of social inequality between men and women. Although the principle of equality is legally established, women are still subrepresented in posts where decisions are to be taken. The phenomenon reaches a greater meaning when we consider jobs highly feminized, as it is the case of teaching. As well as it happens in the domestic sphere, the woman ends up by having a secondary role, in contrast with the man’s protagonism. The research work that has been developed intends to know some of the representations and conceptions that teachers have about gender and how this influences the election of School Direction Boards, which are the school organs elected by members of the educational community. The approach based on the social condition of women, going through the historical course of women’s relationship with family and work, has allowed a general view about the way public and private areas interfere in the access of women to management jobs at school. In an area that is said, and people wish it to be, democratic, it is relevant that we understand the factors that perpetuate the social hierarchy between men and women. Our approach was focused on the dimensions of this set of questions in school context, namely organization, gender and leadership, with which we have drawn the theoretical frame that has supported the research. The study was carried out with teachers under a qualitative and quantitative methodology. Through this methodology we tried to understand the way teachers perceive gender and to what extent gender is preponderant in the choice of those who are at the frontline in school management.

Knowing the way families of students who have development and intellectual difficulties (DID) see the interaction between special needs teachers and regular teachers and the way they respond to their needs, adequate procedures, give answer to the educational needs, having the growth and the development of these students in mind, has been the main purpose of this study. The changes that take place are, most of all, because of political, social, economic, judicial, scientific and humanitarian reasons. This is a pertinent problem because the evolution of the support given to students with learning disabilities and their families, in less restricted environments, places new challenges to regular schools in what concerns new ways of interacting and collaborating with them. Nevertheless, this change will only be productive and successful if we see it as a shared process of an inclusive school with a flexible organization. Through a qualitative study, we interviewed nine families that are responsible for students with DID, in the centre of Portugal, more specifically in Viseu, Coimbra and Aveiro. We concluded, in general, that the interactions between the two education professionals with the families showed a relevant contrast in procedures and actions.

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O artigo pretende demonstrar como o desenvolvimento económico, sendo, embora, importante para a paz dos povos, não é uma condição suficiente. E, como tal, se a paz não se reduz à ausência de guerra, também o desenvolvimento capaz de gerar a paz verdadeira está longe de se identificar apenas com a sua vertente material.

A Grande Área Metropolitana de Viseu (GAMVIS) foi uma realidade, criada no final de 2004, integrando 21 concelhos de dois distritos e de três NUTS lll. Após uma introdução ao método de análise de clusters, procede-se ao estudo da forma como se posicionam os vários concelhos da GAMVIS, no que diz respeito a cerca de duzentos indicadores estatísticos, disponíveis no JNE, repartidos pelas mais diversas áreas: território e ambiente, população e condições sociais, economia e finanças, comércio externo, silvicultura, construção e energia e, finalmente, transportes. A caracterização assim efectuada permite identificar as diferenças e as semelhanças entre os concelhos que constituem a GAMVIS, de forma a que possam servir de base aos diversos actores responsáveis pela definição de linhas de orientação estratégica desta região do interior do país, que apresenta indicadores desfavoráveis, quando comparados com outras zonas de Portugal. Uma análise global, em que se conjugam análise de clusters e a análise factorial, permite agrupar os concelhos da GAMVIS em sete clusters que, curiosamente, além das semelhanças, em termos de indicadores, apresentam também afinidades geográficas.