Software como um Serviço: uma plataforma eficaz para oferta de sistemas holísticos de gestão da performance

This study main objective was to assess the viability of development of a Performance Management (PM) system, delivered in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS), specific for the hospitality industry and to evaluate the benefits of its use. Software deployed in the cloud, delivered and licensed as a service, is becoming increasingly common and accepted in a business context. Although, Business Intelligence (BI) solutions are not usually distributed in the SaaS model, there are some examples that this is changing. To achieve the study objective, design science research methodology was employed in the development of a prototype. This prototype was deployed in four hotels and its results evaluated. Evaluation of the prototype was focused both on the system technical characteristics and business benefits. Results shown that hotels were very satisfied with the system and that building a prototype and making it available in the form of SaaS is a good solution to assess BI systems contribution to improve management performance.O objetivo principal deste estudo é avaliar a viabilidade de desenvolvimento de um sistema de Gestão da Performance, entregue sob a forma de “Software como Serviço” (SaaS), específico para o setor hoteleiro, e também avaliar os benefícios de seu uso. O software implantado na cloud, entregue e licenciado como um serviço, é cada vez mais aceite num contexto de negócios. Todavia, não é comum que soluções de Business Intelligence (BI) sejam distribuídas neste modelo SaaS. No entanto, existem alguns exemplos de que isso se está a alterar. Para atingir o objetivo do estudo, foi utilizada Design Science Research como metodologia de pesquisa científica para desenvolvimento de um protótipo. Este protótipo foi implementado em quatro hotéis para que os seus resultados pudessem ser avaliados. A avaliação foi focada tanto nas características técnicas do sistema como nos benefícios para o negócio. Os resultados mostraram que os hotéis estavam muito satisfeitos com o sistema e que construir um protótipo e disponibilizá-lo sob a forma de SaaS é uma boa solução para avaliar a contribuição dos sistemas de BI para melhorar o desempenho da gestão.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Research and development expenditure in the business sector as indicator of knowledge economy: the Portuguese experience

The objective of the paper is to help to understand recent changes in the structure of R&D activities, by analyzing data on the expenditure of the business sector in research and development (R&D). The results are framed in an international context, through comparison with indicators from the most developed countries, divided by technological intensity and economic activity. The study reveals that the indicators of Portuguese R&D expenditure in the business sector are closely linked both to fiscal policy and to high foreign direct investment in knowledge-intensive industries. It also links these indicators to phenomena such as the abundance of skilled labor in pharmaceutical industries and the government intervention in some sectors of the economy (namely health and rail transportation)

UNIDADES DE IMAGIOLOGIA: GESTÃO E PROSPECTIVA ESTRATÉGICA; Um Estudo de Caso

A presente reflexão insere-se num trabalho de investigação que conduziu à elaboração de uma dissertação de mestrado que nasceu do interesse em avaliar a gestão e o posicionamento estratégico do Centro de Imagiologia do Hospital da Luz. Tendo como objectivo principal caracterizar as tendências, as necessidades e as perspectivas futuras deste centro clínico, o trabalho centrou-se na exploração da sua estrutura de funcionamento e dos seus processos organizativos. Para isso, foi concebido um quadro metodológico, assente no método de estudo de caso, utilizando técnicas de recolha de dados como a Observação, a Entrevista e o Questionário. É ainda utilizado o método de análise prospectiva, centrado na aplicação do método MACTOR, para a estratégia e relação dos actores do centro clínico, conforme sugerido por Godet (1993). Os resultados finais consubstanciam desafios, objectivos e abordagens estratégicas específicas que devem ser ponderados pelos actuais actores da organização

Portugal

UIDB/04647/2020 UIDP/04647/2020publishersversionpublishe

Sovereign debt crisis in Portugal and Spain

The 2007-2008 financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis effects rippled through the financial system, banks and sovereign states. We analyze these events, focusing on the Portuguese and Spanish case after providing an insight into the Eurozone. We assessed the pricing of sovereign risk by performing an OLS/2SLS fixed effects panel analysis on a pool of Eurozone countries and a SUR regression with Portugal and Spain covering the period 1999:11 until 2019:6. Our results show that the pricing of sovereign risk changed with the crisis and the “whatever it takes” speech of Mario Draghi. Specifically, market pricing of the Eurozone credit risk, liquidity risk and the risk appetite increased after the crisis and it relaxed afterwards. We did not find evidence of specific pricing regime changes after the speech in the Portuguese and Spanish case.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Promotion of inclusive tourism by national destination management organizations

Rita, P., & António, N. (2020). Promotion of inclusive tourism by national destination management organizations. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 12(6), 701-714. https://doi.org/10.1108/WHATT-07-2020-0068Purpose: Inclusive tourism has the potential to counter balance some of the disadvantages relating to tourism development and effectively exert positive impacts on society at large and specifically on tourist destinations. However, there is a research gap in studies on inclusiveness related to the promotional efforts of national destination management organizations. Design/methodology/approach: Data science-based methods, mainly text mining and image mining, were used to analyze both the explicit and implicit content in text and images in the English brochures published by nine European official destination management organizations. Findings: Results highlighted that the countries' attitudes towards inclusion were aligned with what the countries’ destination management organizations were promoting, especially in the case of highly ranked countries on an inclusiveness index. However, there were differences between their explicit content (what they write in text) and their implicit content (what they show in images). Originality/value: The combined analysis of text and image content allowed for a complete understanding as to how national’s destination management organizations are promoting inclusion, showing that destination management organizations should make an effort in improving their promotional material and above all the images they use.authorsversionpublishe

Automatic generation of a Portuguese land cover map with machine learning

The application of machine learning techniques to satellite imagery has been the subject of interest in recent years. The increase in quality and quantity of images, made available by Earth observation programs, such as the Copernicus program, led to the generation of large amounts of data. Among the various applications of this data is the creation of land cover maps. The present work aimed to create machine learning models capable of accurately segmenting and classifying satellite images to automatically generate a land cover map of the Portuguese territory. Several experiments were carried out with the spectral bands of the Sentinel-2 satellite, with vegetation indices, and with several sets of land cover classes. Three machine learning architectures were evaluated, which adopt two different techniques for image classification. One of the classification techniques follows an object-oriented approach, and in this case the architecture adopted in our models was a U-Net artificial neural network. The other classification technique is pixel-oriented, and the machine learning models tested were random forest and support vector machine. The overall accuracy of the results obtained ranged from 68.6% to 94.75%, depending strongly on the number of classes into which the land cover is classified. The result of 94.75% was obtained when classifying the land cover only into five classes. However, a very interesting accuracy of 92.37% was achieved by the model when trained to classify eight classes. These results are superior to those reported in the related bibliography.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020