Office In Brazil Research Articles

Institutionalisation, Reform and Independence of the Public Defender’s Office in Brazil

The aim of this article is to investigate the institutionalisation of the state Public Defender’s Offices before and after the reform that granted independence and new functions to the Public Defender’s Offices in Brazil. We attempt to understand these processes based on theories of judicial empowerment (ideational and governance perspectives), analyse them in the Brazilian states by means of an analysis of two indicators in three different time periods (before, during and after the reform) and verify to what extent the formal (de jure) advances were involved in the exercise of autonomy in the states. The analysis reveals that in spite of the formal achievement of independence, the majority of state Public Defender’s Offices are not actually independent and there is a great gap between what the laws stipulate and what actually happens in the public provision of access to justice in Brazil.

The Institutionalization of Family Offices in Brazil

This study identifies identify the organizational characteristics of family offices (FOs) in Brazil. This article was developed through a content analysis of 22 interviews conducted with persons involved in 13 different FOs, two family enterprise executives, and one private banker. The study’s relevance relates to changes in Brazil’s economic structure, which have principally been caused by an increase in companies going public and in merger and acquisition transactions. These changes have contributed to increasing the volume of resources available for investment by families that retain control of the affected organizations. These families have begun to search for mechanisms to preserve their private property within the structure of FOs. This study also revealed that MFOs seek to provide multiple business families with differentiated services within their areas of activity. However, one must question the extent to which these organizations simply take advantage of the FO concept for marketing purposes. In contrast, SFOs are primarily established by Brazilian business families to separate company affairs from family matters, thereby increasing the professionalization of the family business. Moreover, because of the complexity of tax-related issues in Brazil, certain families create SFOs because they wish to optimize their tax statuses. The desires to resolve questions of succession and to implement financial resource management also motivate the creation of FOs in Brazil.

A representação social do escritório de gerenciamento de projetos na percepção de profissionais da área

Diversas organizações têm implantado escritórios de gerenciamento de projetos (PMO) em suas estruturas. Desta forma, o objetivo do presente artigo é investigar a percepção que profissionais da área de gerenciamento de projetos possuem sobre os escritórios de gerenciamento de projetos. O levantamento dessa percepção foi efetuado tendo como base a teoria das representações sociais. Assim, este trabalho identificou, por meio do método de evocação de palavras associado à teoria das representações sociais, as percepções de 716 profissionais de gerenciamento de projetos, relacionadas ao conceito de escritório de gerenciamento de projetos. Por intermédio da análise das percepções manifestas nesse levantamento, a pesquisa concluiu que a representação social que os profissionais de gerenciamento de projetos fazem acerca do escritório de gerenciamento de projetos é similar à conceituação do papel do escritório de gerenciamento de projetos segundo os guias consagrados de boas práticas de gerenciamento de projetos, o que demonstra um alinhamento entre teoria e prática no que tange ao papel dos escritórios de projeto no Brasil. No entanto, o artigo também identificou uma grande diversidade de expressões caracterizando a representação social do PMO, o que poderia demonstrar uma falta de consenso acerca do real papel dessa estrutura organizacional.

Telegrafia e modernização da imprensa nas crônicas de Machado de Assis

O artigo analisa as críticas de Machado de Assis (1839-1908) à telegrafia e sua resistência à informação telegráfica como novo paradigma do discurso jornalístico. Em 1875, um ano apenas após a inauguração do cabo submarino transatlântico, a agência Havas-Reuter abria seus escritórios no Brasil, marcando o início da incorporação do país a uma rede global de comunicações telegráficas. As crônicas do escritor, publicadas entre 1870- 1890, mostram que a modernização tecnológica da imprensa gerou tensões e controvérsias, ameaçando desestabilizar os fortes vínculos entre a literatura e o jornalismo. As invectivas irônicas de Machado de Assis contra a agência Havas revelam seu engajamento nas políticas da imprensa local, por oposição à acelerada internacionalização do mercado de notícias na segunda metade do século XIX.

Ergonomic analysis of the use of open-plan offices in Brazilian public sector offices

The open-plan office is a layout used in government offices in Brazil aimed at saving on space occupied and integrating employees. However, the design of these work-stations must follow the characteristics of tasks and their interrelationships, since adverse physical and organizational conditions may have a negative impact on work productivity. From this perspective, this study sought to identify, from the viewpoint of the ergonomics of the built environment, the adequacy of the open-plan government offices for financial auditing accounts and analyzing documents. Use was made of the Ergonomic Methodology for Evaluating the Built Environment--MEAC (in Portuguese) which systematically analyzes the physical space, by using a mix of physical-spatial assessments and tools for identifying how the environment is perceived. The MEAC was employed in three analytical phases of the physical aspects, namely: an analytical phase of the user's perception; a diagnostic phase; and a final phase of propositions.

O perfil Brasileiro de propriedade intelectual em radiologia e diagnóstico por imagem em um contexto internacional, nos anos 2000-2009

OBJETIVO: Analisar a inovação tecnológica brasileira na área de radiologia e diagnóstico por imagem, em termos de indicadores de patentes. MATERIAIS E MÉTODOS: Este é um estudo analítico-exploratório de informações recuperadas por meio de consultas cruzadas nas bases de dados dos escritórios de propriedade intelectual do Brasil (Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial - INPI), dos Estados Unidos (United States Patent and Trademark Office - USPTO) e da Europa (European Patent Office - EPO). RESULTADOS: Foram encontradas 277.057 patentes. Desse total, 7.800 foram registradas no INPI (3%), 65.428 (24%) registradas no EPO e 203.829 (73%) emitidas no USPTO. O Brasil é o país signatário em 1.732 patentes publicadas no INPI, 80 no EPO e 26 no escritório USPTO. Globalmente, 219.993 (79%) patentes referiam-se a dispositivos eletrônicos ligados a informática em saúde, ultrassonografia, ressonância magnética, tomografia computadorizada e procedimentos de geração, comunicação e arquivamento de imagens, e 57.064 (21%) das patentes tratavam das tecnologias relacionadas a radioproteção e dosimetria, física nuclear, eletroterapia, terapia magnética e radioterapia. CONCLUSÃO: Os resultados obtidos apontam para a fragilidade da produção nacional de inovação tecnológica registrada em patentes, no campo de radiologia e diagnóstico por Imagem.

Private equity and venture capital in an emerging economy: evidence from Brazil

The Private Equity and Venture Capital (PE/VC) financial model was initially developed in the US and, therefore, designed for the US institutional environment. The degree to which the US PE/VC model can perform in other institutional environments is an interesting question. This article is based on data supplied by all of the 65 PE/VC organizations with offices in Brazil in 2004. Comparing Brazil and the US, we found that the main similarities are: an industry composed mostly of independent organizations, managing capital coming mostly from institutional investors; capital is heavily concentrated regionally and in few organizations; investments are made within a close geographical distance; and software and IT are preferred sectors. The main differences are that for Brazil: investments are concentrated in more advanced stages of corporate development; since credit is scarce, few LBOs take place; low levels of sector specialization (PE/VC investing in a broad variety of industrial sectors); firm concentration in Sao Paulo's financial district suggests a quest for commercial partners and strategic buyers for portfolio companies; and Brazilian PE/VC regulation recognizes the inefficiency of the legal system and forces the use of arbitration. We also discuss possible reasons for these adaptations.

Autonomia e discricionariedade do Ministério Público no Brasil

This article deals with the autonomy, discretionary power, and wide range of attributions allotted to the Public Prosecutor's Office in Brazil by the 1988 Constitution. One of the objectives is to analyze whether this combination is not alien to the democratic principle that state institutions, and even those that do not choose their members by direct elections, should be accountable to the public for their acts. The author draws on the neo-institutionalist literature on bureaucracy to analyze the Public Prosecutor's Office in Brazil. The conclusion is that there has been a quasi-abdication by politicians in relation to the institution in question, a rare occurrence in Brazil and in other democracies.

Knowledge management strategies: creating and testing a measurement scale

Some well-known researchers have supported the position that leading companies in their industries should have a knowledge management strategy focused either on 'Personalisation' or 'Codification'. According to this claim, any company that has adopted a knowledge management strategy based on both of the above, does not have the means to become a major player within its industry. This article seeks to verify this hypothesis, through the creation of a measurement scale to assess an organisation's knowledge management strategy. A nomological network based on indicators drawn from the theoretical reference material adopted is also developed, whereby confirmatory factor analysis is performed and factor scores are further calculated in order to test this measurement scale in a leading intellectual property office in Brazil. The results obtained reveal that the combination of different knowledge management approaches would appear to be more appropriate for a company in a competitive environment.

Private Equity and Venture Capital in an Emerging Economy: Evidence from Brazil

This article, based on the Brazilian experience, examines how Private Equity and Venture Capital (PE/VC) adapts to an emerging economy. Our dataset is based on two extensive questionnaires answered by each of the 65 PE/VC organizations with offices in Brazil. The results reveal that a lack of infrastructure and security create investment opportunities. However, institutional idiosyncrasies represent a major barrier and force PE/VC - a U.S. investment model - to adapt by investing in different stages of business development, avoiding LBOs, taking a generalist industry approach, geographically concentrating in the financial cluster and relying on arbitration for dispute resolution.

Marketing Modernity: The J. Walter Thompson Company and North American Advertising in Brazil, 1929–1939

Marketing Modernity: The J. Walter Thompson Company and North American Advertising in Brazil, 1929–1939

Environmental reform in Brazil: advances and reversals

It is now two years since the Government of President Fernando Collor de Mello took office in Brazil. This article assesses its effectiveness in implementing its environmental policies and resolving social conflicts in the Amazon in the run-up to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development. It examines some of the political and economic problems which have beset the new environmental programme, and gives an account of the response of Brazilian NGOs to some of the Government's main initiatives.

The social and structural dimensions of a syntactic change

THE SOCIAL AND STRUCTURAL DIMENSIONS OF A SYNTACTIC CHANGE Anthony J. Naro Pontificia Universidade Católica and Universidade Federal, Rio de Janeiro This paper proposes a model of syntactic change based on a quantitative study of the rule of subject/verb agreement in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Among speakers of the lower socio-economic levels, this rule is currently undergoing a process of elimination from the grammar. The model postulates that syntactic change starts at a point where surface differentiation between the old and new systems is zero (or nearly so); later it spreads throughout the language in inverse proportion to the degree of saliency of the surface differences between these systems in each particular environment. Thus 'natural' clusters of linguistic features arise only gradually. 1. Introduction. Since syntactic change produces a finite number of discrete variants, it cannot be a process of gradual replacement of minutely differing forms, operating unobserved over time.1 In general, there is no surface continuum of realizations to be dealt with; rather, a certain (usually small) number of non-overlapping distinguishable variants can be identified and categorized . This circumstance, which makes syntactic change an ideal site for observation of linguistic change-in-progress, has not been utilized in diachronic research. Even in recent times, historical syntax has been heavily inclined to a change-over-the-centuries methodology which makes it impossible to study the social and structural dimensions that shape the initiation and diffusion of a change; this has led to a distorted view of the process, in which only the endpoints are seen. Furthermore, since the usual endpoints are relatively sta- ' The central notion of syntactic diffusion along the axis of saliency, upon which the structural portion of this paper is based, was sketched in Naro & Lemle 1976. In that work, only three speakers, with a total of less than ten hours of recorded speech, were studied. Later, much more extensive tests, involving twenty speakers and 140 hours of speech, were made as part of the 'Competencias Básicas do Portugués' research project (sponsored jointly by the Fundaçâo Movimento Brasileiro de Alfabetizaçâo and the Ford Foundation office in Brazil, administered by Miriam Lemle of the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro). The results of these tests appear in the final report of the project (Lemle & Naro 1977:17-50). In the present paper, I use the same data base as in earlier versions, with only minor corrections and additions; but I report somewhat different results because of the inclusion here of social variables and some changes in the morphological categorization. I am grateful to Lemle for allowing me to use the data gathered during her project, as well as for many insightful discussions during the course of the work; without her keen intuitions into the workings of Portuguese, this research would not have been possible. I am likewise grateful to Gregory Guy, to whom I owe my initiation into the use of statistical techniques in linguistics, as well as many hours of fruitful collaboration; and to Shana Poplack and David Sankoff for comments and suggestions that have profoundly affected the final form of this paper. Michael Stanton of the Departamento de Informática of PUC/RJ has patiently helped me learn how to communicate with a computer in a manner to which it will respond more or less appropriately, even if not always willingly and quickly. All calculations reported here were carried out on the IBM/370-165 installed at the Rio Datacentro, to which PUC/ RJ generously provided me free and unlimited access. Differences between this and previous versions reflect what I consider to be improvements or corrections. 63 64LANGUAGE, VOLUME 57, NUMBER 1 (1981) bilized standard languages, a deceptive appearance of categorical regularity is produced. The goal of this article is to present a detailed quantitative study of one particular on-going syntactic change—the loss of 3rd person subject/verb concord in modern Brazilian Portuguese—and to suggest (on the basis of this and other evidence) a general hypothesis about syntactic change. 2. Subject/verb concord. In standard Portuguese, a finite verb must agree with its subject, whether this latter element be present or deleted, preposed or postposed...

The Giant Awakes: Brazil

Brazil stands at the threshold of what may be a new epoch in her history. A high tide of nationalism char acterized the November 1960 presidential elections, and in quietude prevails in many quarters in Brazil and the United States with respect to the national and international policies of the new president who took office in Brazil early in 1961. Many momentous social changes underlie the social ferment and demand for change currently prevailing throughout the Brazilian half of the South American continent. First, popu lation is increasing at the rate of 2.5 per cent per annum, and the rate itself is rising. Each year there are about 1,700,000 more Brazilians on December 31 than there were on January 1. Second, this population is concentrating in cities and towns to an unprecedented degree, due largely to the migration of people from the rural districts. All the cities literally are bursting at their seams. Third, the problems of living in inadequately supplied urban centers weigh heavily on large segments of the Brazilian population. Fourth, for many reasons, the aspira tions of Brazil's people are rising more rapidly than their levels of achievement, thus the gap between the standard of living and the level or plane of living is increasing. This means that the area of frustration is broadening. Fifth, shortages exist in Brazil of almost everything needed in a modern, urban, and industrialized society.