Flexicurity: Core Features of Portuguese Debate

According to the OECD, Portugal is an example of a country with a very high rigidity in the labour market. At the same time, Portugal is an example of a country with a high percentage or workers with short-term contracts. These conditions have led to an ongoing public discussion concerning the nee to introduce more flexibility while maintaining work security. In this paper we analyze the current situation concerning security and rigidity in the labour market and discuss the flexicurity in the Portuguese context.flexibility; security; social protection; Portugal

Communication, Literacy and Citizenship: a conceptual orientation in a portuguese children’s television thematic channel, K SIC

This paper highlights the consequential nature of communication, literacy and citizenship and the meta-pattern that connects everything together – the ecology of the human spirit. It argues that, just like human communication, literacy is consequential in nature for humankind. Through each of our different worlds of experience and processes of communication, we manifest both of these human conditions and co-construct everyday practices that engender a plurality of effects. Literacy is a concept common to all humankind. Thus, it forms an indivisible whole with communication. This viewpoint is at odds with that which confines literacy to being understood as the acquisition of certain competences. It is arguable that, just like communication, the human condition of literacy needs to be both encouraged and developed. We suggest here that the idea of borders in literacy should be questioned. The work of Gregory Bateson on the ecology of the human spirit – an imminent characteristic of the human species that is based on the physiological structure of the living being and is in permanent interaction and reconnection with both the biosphere and our ways of seeing the world – supports the viewpoint put forward here. From the communication mediatised by a children’s television channel, from SIC K and from the results of studies carried out into children’s use of television we draw the examples that shall illustrate the theoretical approach taken here. They also underpin two premises of an ongoing project. Firstly, television is part of the solution in that it encourages and develops communication-literacy- citizenship-education-connectivity. Secondly, human rights form a shared platform from which to orient the use of Technologies and define connection strategies for the active participation of the children

The Aveiro charter of rights for human beings: a milestone for the second decade of the 21st century

BEING HUMAN is an extraordinary privilege. Every woman and every man that is born has something to learn and a project to build throughout their lives. Designing futures in the present and affirming what makes them BE HUMAN requires work, study and fun. Since the first decade of the 21st century, the Human Rights in Action project, by Civitas Aveiro, has helped, through its work with children, young people and teachers, to construct answers to the question: what makes us truly human? What are the effects of technologies’ in our life? The Aveiro charter of rights of the Human Being is one of the results of the 10th edition of the project developed in partnership with the University of Aveiro, with the backing of the Municipality and local Businesses. Twenty-five education and teaching institutions, from Nursery School to University, and a total of eight hundred Children and Young People, joined by around fifty teachers, from various subject areas, were involved in the development of the one hundred and twenty six rights inscribed in the Charter of Rights of the Human Being, which has been turned into an agenda for 2010. The dissemination of the charter by Civitas Aveiro aims to make a contribution in order that the citizens of the city of Aveiro, upon hearing the voices that speak out in this charter, may take steps toward making Aveiro a city blessed + dreamed with the Rights of the Human Being. The purpose of this presentation is to lay out and encourage discussion on the process of collective participation in the construction of the Charter of Rights of the Human Being, in various contexts, the methodology used and the analysis of the rights inscribed in it

From the ecology of the human spirit to the development of the orchestral theory of communication: the inclusion of the medium-message axiom

The contributions of the biologist, anthropologist and communication theorist Gregory Bateson (1904- 1980) form the nucleus of the cross-disciplinary theoretical principles which led to the founding of the web of thought spun by Watzlawick, Weakland, Beavin, Fish, Jackson, Erickson, Foster, Haley and Satir, amongst others. These authors were united by a common theoretical standpoint which foregrounded the ecology of the human spirit and saw communication as process, a system of transactional interaction. They were also similarly influenced by cybernetics, systems theory and constructivism. Energised by the clash of the ideas in their exchanges, they constructed the orchestral theory of communication, formalised by Paul Watzlawick, Donald Jackson and Janet Beavin. Today, Watzlawick (1967) is regarded as a seminal publication in the annals of interpersonal communication studies. Moving beyond the confines of the original object of study – face-to-face communication – this theory has been increasingly applied to the analysis of institutionally mediated communication and to the understanding of the construction of learning and change in organisations. However, in current circumstances, its set of axiomatic principles would benefit from the inclusion of a medium-message axiom to allow a fuller understanding of the realities of the mediated communication process that the process contains. This paper proposes the inclusion of this new axiom, medium-message; a proposal which is based on the work of Gregory Bateson, the ecology of the human spirit, the orchestral theory of communication and the thinking of the Media Ecology Association. It aims to help build a more profound insight into the realities of the process of human communication

Locally Provided Public Schooling in Brazilian Municipalities

The objective of this paper is to assess the demand for public schooling in the Brazilian municipalities within a median voter framework. The quantile regression and spatial techniques proved to be useful to account for the spatial and marginal effects associated with educational services. The coefficients attached to the main variables – price, income and population – were significant and had the expected sign. The relatively high values for those parameters attest the status for these merit goods as “luxuries”. Last, but no least, the municipal school system in Brazil seems to present increasing returns to scale both, at the school and the municipality level.Public Schooling, Demand, Brazilian municipalities, Median voter

The role of cost accounting in the university performance measurement in Portugal

Cost accounting is aimed at emphasising those elements of costs and profits of original importance to the management board of an organizational unit. Therefore, cost accounting was initially understood as mere collector of costs and profits, using the traditional system of costing everything, a budget with a limited base. Originally, it was designed to calculate real costs with the aim to determine the results. In public organizations, the aim of cost accounting, costs or management, can be summarized as follows: o Obtain information of how costs are found, both the ones corresponding to the internal activities as well as those for external services rendered and the cost realized investments; o Obtain information for cost and control management, with efficiency indicators of how the planned objectives were achieved and the efficient use of available resources. This paper aims at knowing the role of cost accounting in the public sector of higher education, and checks its contribution for the establishment of the management indicators in public institutions of higher education.Cost Accounting, management, indicators, education

Job quality in Europe: the North-South divide

This paper examines the job quality in Europe. It is based on the results of the Fourth European Foundation Survey on working conditions covering different dimensions including work organisation, job content, autonomy at work, aspects of worker dignity, working time and work-life balance, working conditions and safety in the workplace. The results point to the existence of great diversity in the job quality across Europe and the north-south divide. The job quality differences are related to the variety of social and institutional contexts. The countries of Southern Europe, with their social and institutional contexts falling within the scope of the Mediterranean model, generally present indicators below the European average contrasting Nordic countries having the best job quality indicators.Job Quality, North and South European Countries, Social and Institutional Context

NATIONAL STORIES SCENARIO / PORTUGAL

Continuum Naturale was founded in order to coordinate and develop technical, scientific and entrepreneurial efforts oriented toward an improvement of nature integration in urban and rural environments; to encourage, coordinate and facilitate the investigation, teaching, advice and diffusion of all aspects related to the improvement of nature integration in urban and rural areas; and to promote the development and improvement of techniques and practices used in the improvement of nature integration in urban and rural areas