Knowledge management : critical perspectives on e-business activities

This article is both a review and an agenda-setting piece. It argues that knowledge management suffers from conceptual and definitional ambiguity, oversimplification of its development processes, and methodological limitations. Nevertheless, there is a consensus in business and academia that knowledge is a key component of success and allows firms to achieve and sustains competitive advantages. In a digital era, these advantages arise from the potential of data and information that can be gathered, processed, shared, and used to improve e-business activities. Thus, this research bridges the gap in the assessment of knowledge management and e-business relationship, by applying an SEM to a large database sample of KM activities performed by European firms.N/

Estándares territoriales de innovación : análisis de las regiones de Portugal

Competitiveness among regions and innovation dynamics are intimately related and depend on a solid and effective innovation system. This study aims to measure innovativeness in different Portuguese regions and to evaluate the nature of the innovation process and the relationship between innovativeness and its region of origin. To characterize the territorial innovation processes and to identify innovation patterns by regions, it analyzes their main distinctive factors, based on the Community Innovation Survey results for each region. Thus, it compares the Portuguese regions by verifying the existence of subjacent clusters and finding out the characteristics that distinguish the different groups of regions. The results point to the existence of four groups of regions, and the factors identified are related to the innovation process, namely objectives of innovation, sources of innovation, collaborative networks, triple helix performance, and obstacles to innovation.RESUMEN: La competitividad entre las regiones y la dinámica de la innovación están íntimamente relacionadas y dependen de un sistema de innovación sólida y eficaz. Este estudio tiene como objetivo medir la capacidad de innovación en diferentes regiones portuguesas y evaluar la naturaleza del proceso de innovación y la relación entre la capacidad de innovación y su región de origen. Para la caracterización de los procesos de innovación territoriales y identificar estándares de innovación en las regiones, este artículo analiza sus factores distintivos principales, con base en los resultados de las encuestas comunitarias sobre innovación para cada región. Por lo tanto, se comparan las regiones portuguesas mediante la verificación de la existencia de agrupaciones subyacentes y descubrir las características que distinguen a los diferentes grupos de regiones. Los resultados apuntan a la existencia de cuatro grupos de regiones, y los factores identificados están relacionados con el proceso de innovación, es decir, los objetivos de la innovación, las fuentes de innovación, redes de colaboración, el funcionamiento de la triple hélice, y los obstáculos a la innovación.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Desafios ao desenvolvimento profissional : do trabalho colaborativo ao nível da escola a um grupo sobre a escrita

Tese de doutoramento, Educação (Formação de Professores), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Educação, 2012O mundo actual coloca desafios constantes a todos os cidadãos como resultado da alteração da realidade em que vivemos. Estes desafios, no caso da formação de professores, apelam a um questionamento constante da sua profissionalidade docente. Investigações recentes nesta área têm vindo a reforçar a importância de modalidades de formação colaborativa, realizadas em contexto. A grande finalidade deste estudo foi tentar compreender os factores que potenciam ou inibem o trabalho colaborativo, numa escola da cidade de Lisboa. Com esse propósito, desenvolvemos um projecto de dinamização de uma modalidade de formação, em contexto colaborativo, na comunidade educativa dessa escola, onde se constituíram vários grupos de trabalho. Num dos grupos, sobre a composição escrita, desenvolveu-se um processo de investigação-formação colaborativa, focado na indagação das práticas dos professores. Tentámos compreender as potencialidades e constrangimentos que podem surgir, com esta modalidade de formação e, ainda, se esta contribuía para a consciencialização dos processos de escrita dos professores e alterava as suas concepções e práticas. Para tal, colocámo-nos na situação de aprendentes/ensinantes da escrita de textos. Utilizámos uma metodologia qualitativa. Os dados foram recolhidos através de várias técnicas e instrumentos, como: questionário, observação, estimulação da recordação, análise de artefactos dos professores, textos escritos pelos mesmos e respectiva reflexão. Para análise de alguns dados, utilizámos a análise de conteúdo. Nas conclusões deste estudo, salientamos, ao nível da escola, que não podemos referir-nos a uma formação colaborativa consistente, mas, antes, confortável. No grupo colaborativo, os professores reconheceram que partilharam experiências e ideias e que aumentaram a auto – avaliação sobre suas as práticas. Neste caso, a colaboração situou-se ao nível da partilha. Relativamente à escrita, os professores referiram uma compreensão mais profunda do processo de escrita e, nos alunos, uma melhoria na construção dos textos. Será essencial promover a formação colaborativa de professores, quer a inicial, quer a contínua, e criar condições, nas escolas, potenciadoras desta modalidade de formação. Será importante, também, criar estratégias de apoio a comunidades de aprendizagem colaborativa, entre diferentes escolas e entre as escolas e as entidades formadoras de professores.Citizens of today are constantly challenged as a result of the change in reality we face. These challenges regarding teachers´ training, constantly question teaching professionalism. Recent investigation in this area has reinforced the importance of collaborative training modalities, taken place in context. The great objective of this study is the understanding of factors that enhance or inhibit collaborative work in a school, in the city of Lisbon. With this purpose we have developed a project to encourage a model of training in a collaborative context in the educational community of this school, where many colleagues were put in groups to work together. In one group, regarding written composition, we developed a process of collaborative research-training focused on the questioning of teacher’s practices. We tried to understand the potential and constraints which may arise through this modal of training, including whether it contributed towards the teachers´ awareness of the process of writing and if it changed their concepts and practices. In order to do so, we placed ourselves in the position of learners/teachers writing texts. We chose a qualitative methodology as being the best and most suited for the study. Data was collected through several techniques and instruments such as: questionnaires, observation, memory stimulation, analyses of teachers´ artifacts, texts written by the teachers themselves and their respective reflection. To analyze certain data we used content analyses. In the conclusions of the study we can’t refer to a consistent collaborative training, but to a comfortable collaboration. In the collaborative group, teachers recognized that they shared experiences and ideas and enhanced their self-evaluation about their practices. In this case, the collaboration is similar to sharing. Regarding written composition teachers refer a deeper understanding of the writing process and the improvement of the student´s text construction. It will be essential to promote the initial or continuous collaborative training of teachers. In order for this to happen, conditions must be created in schools that enhance this modal of training. It should also be important to create supporting strategies for communities of collaborative learning, within different schools and between schools and the teacher training organizations

Exact disclosure prevention in two-dimensional statistical tables

We propose new formulations for the exact disclosure problem and develop Lagrangian schemes, that rely on shortest path problems, to generate near optimal solutions. Computational experience is reported for 550 tables with up to 40,000 cells. A proven optimal solution was obtained for 95% of the instances and a near optimal solution was computed for each remaining instance as well as an upper bound on the deviation from the optimum.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Radiation damage in flexible TFTs and organic detectors

In this thesis was investigated the radiation hardness of the building blocks of a future flexible X-ray sensor system. The characterized building blocks for the pixel addressing and signal amplification electronics are high mobility semiconducting oxide transistors (HMSO-TFTs) and organic transistors (OTFTs), whereas the photonic detection system is based on organic semiconducting single crystals (OSSCs). TFT parameters such as mobility, threshold voltage and subthreshold slope were measured as function of cumulative X-ray dose. Instead for OSSCs conductivity and X-ray sensitivity were analysed after various radiation steps. The results show that ionizing radiation does not lead to degradation in HMSO-TFTs. Instead OTFTs show instability in mobility which is reduced up to 73% for doses of 1 kGy. OSSC demonstrate stable detector properties for the tested total dose range. As conclusion, HMSO-TFTs and OSSCs can be readily employed in the X-ray detector system allowing operation for total doses exceeding 1 kGy of ionizing radiation

An analytical comparison of the LP relaxations of integer models for the k-club problem

Given an undirected graph G = (V,E), a k-club is a subset of nodes that induces a subgraph with diameter at most k. The k-club problem is to find a maximum cardinality k-club. In this study, we use a linear programming relaxation standpoint to compare integer formulations for the k-club problem. The comparisons involve formulations known from the literature and new formulations, built in different variable spaces. For the case k = 3, we propose two enhanced compact formulations. From the LP relaxation standpoint these formulations dominate all other compact formulations in the literature and are equivalent to a formulation with a non-polynomial number of constraints. Also for k = 3, we compare the relative strength of LP relaxations for all formulations examined in the study (new and known from the literature). Based on insights obtained from the comparative study, we devise a strengthened version of a recursive compact formulation in the literature for the k-club problem (k > 1) and show how to modify one of the new formulations for the case k = 3 in order to accommodate additional constraints recently proposed in the literature.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

D.R. horton rides the housing boom

This work project "Equity Research -Valuation of D.R. Horton's (DHI)" depicts DHI's business within the US homebuilding industry. Given a current 5.3 million shortage of homes in the US market (driven by the emergence of the Millennials demographic group in the housing market and the rapid growth of US "Sun Belt" region where DHI has a strong position), we expect homebuilding revenues to have an average annual growth rate of 8% until 2030. However, an uncertain mortgage rates environment and the possibility of additional inflationary pressure of house prices can pose some risks to DHI. Our DCF valuation yields a price target of $139.30 for FY22, resulting in a 31$0.9 dividend and hence, a BUY recommendation

A three-phase algorithm for the cell suppression problem in two-dimensional statistical tables

To obtain full cooperation from respondents, statistical offices must guarantee that confidential data will not be disclosed when their reports are published. For tabular data, cell suppression is one of the preferred techniques to control statistical disclosure. When suppressing only confidential values does not guarantee the desired data protection, it is also necessary to suppress the values in some non-confidential cells. The problem of finding an optimal set of complementary suppressions—the cell suppression problem (CSP)—is NP-hard. We present a three-phase algorithm for the CSP based on a binary relaxation derived from row and column protection conditions. To enforce violated single cell conditions, integer cuts are added to the CSP relaxation. The numerical results obtained in 1410 instances with up to more than 250 000 cells, which were generated to reproduce two classes of real-world data, indicate that the algorithm is quite effective for both classes of instances and that it outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms for one of them.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Two-phase heuristics for the k-club problem

Given an undirected graph G and an integer k, a k-club is a subset of nodes that induces a subgraph with diameter at most k. The k-club problem consists of identifying a maximum cardinality k-club in G. It is an NP-hard problem. The problem of checking if a given k-club is maximal or if it is a subset of a larger k-club is also NP-hard, due to the non-hereditary nature of the k-club structure. This non-hereditary nature is adverse for heuristic strategies that rely on single-element add and delete operations. In this work we propose two-phase algorithms which combine simple construction schemes with exact optimization of restricted integer models to generate near optimal solutions for the k-club problem. Numerical experiments on sets of uniform random graphs with edge densities known to be very challenging and test instances available in the literature indicate that the new algorithms are quite effective, both in terms of solution quality and running times.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Testing the portuguese version of ANPS-s and its utility for professional selection processes

JEL Codes: M12, L84Personality assessment allows us to collect important data for contextual performance prediction. Therefore personality measures are seen as useful tools in professional selection processes. Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) is able to assess personality considering six basic emotional systems: PLAY, SEEK, CARE, SADNESS, FEAR, and ANGER. During the first stage of this research we have analysed factorial and convergent validities to ensure the psychometric quality of the scale. Then, in a second stage, we have continued studying ANPS with concurrent and incremental validities for contextual performance. We have built an online questionnaire combining 4 instruments: ANPS-s, 11-item short version of Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Mini-IPIP, and the Portuguese scale of organization citizenship behaviour (OCB), a proxy measure for contextual performance. For the first research stage, we have considered 442 valid respondents. For concurrent and incremental validity we kept 341 elements because professional experience was required to answer about organizational citizenship behaviour. Our results corroborate ANPS-s validation. However, it was necessary to discard some ANPS-s items. As regards concurrent validity, SEEK system can be seen as a valid predictor of organizational citizenship behaviour. Considering incremental validity, there is evidence to consider the existence of specific ANPS-s variance for organization citizenship behaviour prediction. Our study intends to be a first contribution to the study of basic personality characteristics in professional selection processes. We suggest some important modifications to be introduced in future researches. We also present the relevance of considering the interaction between these basic processes and emotion regulation processes in future researches.A avaliação da personalidade permite recolher informação relevante na predição do desempenho contextual. Assim, os instrumentos que medem esta dimensão surgem como ferramentas importantes em seleção profissional. Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) avalia a personalidade considerando seis sistemas emocionais básicos: PLAY, SEEK, CARE, SADNESS, FEAR e ANGER. Na primeira fase desta investigação foram estudadas as validades fatorial e convergente por forma a garantir a qualidade psicométrica da escala. Numa segunda fase prosseguiu-se o estudo do ANPS-s através da análise das validades concorrente e incremental para o desempenho contextual. Construiu-se um questionário online com 4 instrumentos: ANPS-s, versão reduzida da Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (11 itens), Mini-IPIP e a escala portuguesa de cidadania organizacional, medida proxy de desempenho contextual. Na primeira etapa consideraram-se 442 respostas válidas. Para a validade concorrente e incremental, a amostra reduziu para 341 elementos por ser necessária experiência profissional para responder à escala de cidadania organizacional. Os resultados corroboraram a validade do ANPS-s tendo sido, no entanto, necessário eliminar alguns itens. Relativamente à validade concorrente, os resultados sugerem que o sistema SEEK é um preditor de cidadania organizacional. Quanto à validade incremental, existe evidência para considerar a existência de alguma variância específica para o ANPS-s na explicação de cidadania organizacional. Esta investigação pretende ser um primeiro contributo para o estudo da avaliação de características básicas de personalidade em processos de seleção profissional. São sugeridas alterações para estudos futuros e identificada a pertinência do estudo da interação destes processos com sistemas de regulação emocional