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BAR - Brazilian Administration Review, Volume: 4, Número: 1, Publicado: 2007
  • Editorial

    Machado-da-Silva, Clóvis L.
  • The means-end approach to understanding customer values of a on-line newspaper Articles

    Leão, André Luiz M. de Souza; Mello, Sérgio C. Benício de

    Resumo em Inglês:

    Customer value is understood as one of the constructs that best explains consumer decision making. Its proposal is to understand how consumers translate product or service characteristics and consequences of use into personal self-relevant values. The means-end theory is a way of systematically thinking in this hierarchical representation. The most commonly used method to achieve means-end chains is laddering. This theory and method were used to understand customer values of an important on-line Brazilian newspaper, which is an innovative approach, since on-line laddering is uncommon. The findings indicate that values related to goals of a personal nature are the most important ones. However, other values indicate the increase of the public man pointing to an alternative vision of what is commonly thought of as the contemporary isolated and selfish human. Academic research could benefit from a broader understanding and use of the means-end theory and laddering on the Web. Future research for managerial practices is warranted in areas such as segmentation, satisfaction measuring and customer value reevaluation, in addition to copy tests.
  • Creativity and innovation in the context of team-work: an evaluation in the self-management cells and quality control circles of Ambev S.C. Branch Articles

    Monaco, Felipe de Faria; Guimarães, Valeska Nahas

    Resumo em Inglês:

    This paper is about changes in the business world. The main goal is to study the implications related to people's creativity expression owing to work organization in small groups in the Ambev S.C. branch. This is a qualitative study based on a case study. 21 self-management circles and 18 quality control circles in the organization were found. The self management circles are responsible for achieving the organizational main goals and the quality control circles to bring best practices and new ideas. The result shows that quality control circles are more powerful than the self management circles as a space to develop people creativity and organizational innovation. It is relevant to stress that in the CCQs there are more multidisciplinary and common purpose guided to a collective objective desired by all the members of the team. On the other hand, in the CGA´s there are more discipline to accept the common tactics to people reach the objectives of the group and the corporative aims. The conclusion is that the changes in the business environment make the small work group very important to a company's creativity and a fundamental strategy differentiation in the process of work organization in the context of the business world.
  • Isomorphism, institutionalization and legitimacy: operational auditing at the court of auditors Especial Forum On The Institucional Theory On Brazilian Organizational Studies

    Freitas, Carlos Alberto Sampaio de; Guimarães, Tomás de Aquino

    Resumo em Inglês:

    The aim of this paper is to verify the nature of the relationship between the concept of legitimacy and the phenomenon of institutionalization of operational auditing at the Court of Auditors in a context of institutional isomorphism. A documental examination was conducted covering the period of 1987 to 2004 and 18 people involved in the aforementioned activity at the Court of Auditors were interviewed. The results suggest that there is a relationship between isomorphism and legitimacy but only concerning one type of legitimacy. The phenomenon of isomorphism acts in the sense of checking cognitive legitimacy while other factors are at work which are connected to the culture and institutional environment of the country, which interfere in the dimension of moral legitimacy, resulting in institutionalization of the activity at a secondary level in the analyzed organization. It was seen that the process of institutionalization, in this case, has a circular characteristic, in which the phases of innovation, diffusion, partial saturation and partial deinstitutionalization follow one another cyclically, modifying the activity of operational auditing over time at the Court of Auditors.
  • Economic rents and legitimacy: incorporating elements of organizational analysis institutional theory to the field of business strategy Especial Forum On The Institucional Theory On Brazilian Organizational Studies

    Queiroz, Marco Aurélio Lima de; Vasconcelos, Flávio Carvalho de; Goldszmidt, Rafael Guilherme Burstein

    Resumo em Inglês:

    Are sources of economic rent, as defined by the prevalent business strategy paradigm, sufficient to attain and maintain superior returns? The perspective developed within the conceptual framework of the Institutional Theory may offer managers a contribution towards understanding the strategy process and its potentialities, particularly by stressing the leading role played by legitimacy, the influence of many institutional spheres, the isomorphic pressures, ceremonial behavior and decoupling, among other elements, that mainstream business strategy fails to address directly, but which may have a significant effect on firm performance. We advance that these elements must be accounted for in the pursuit and acquisition of economic rents, even if the ability to articulate them purposefully is constrained by rationality, agency conditions and the manager's social embeddedness.
  • Three neofunctionalist conceptual contributions to the institutional theory in organizations Especial Forum On The Institucional Theory On Brazilian Organizational Studies

    Crubellate, João Marcelo

    Resumo em Inglês:

    The most recent efforts in institutional theory applied to organization studies search for ways to overcome consequences of traditional dichotomies based on levels of analysis, social structures versus agency as source of practices, and so on. If in other social sciences that debate has received fundamental contributions in the last three or four decades, this is not the case for Organization Theory, where discussions are much more recent and based especially on Sociology authors. The main purpose of this theoretical essay is to describe some neofunctionalist concepts - system openness and closeness, double contingency and expectation of expectations - proposed by Niklas Luhmann, discussing their impact on those dichotomies, in the realm of the Luhmannian theory of institutions. This effort is expected to contribute alternatives to that theoretical discussion that mark institutional organization theory for at least the past two decades.
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