Volume IX - Number II

JISTEM JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT REVISTA DE GESTÃO DA TECNOLOGIA E SISTEMAS DE INFORMAÇÃO

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ISSN: 1807-1775

Volume 9 : Number 2: 2012

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JISTEM Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol.9, No.2, May/Aug, 2012, pp. 193-194 ISSN online: 1807-1775

Volume 9: Number 2 / Volume 9: Número 2

2012

Content / Índice

193-194

Editorial

195-196

1

Fuzzy Clustering: Application on organizational metaphors in Brazilian companies Angel Cobo Ortega, Rocío Rocha, University of Cantabria, Spain Adolfo Alberto Vanti, Gustavo Schneider, University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, RS, Brazil

197-212

2

Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors Edson Marchetti da Silva, Federal University of Minas Gerais, MG, Brazil Renato Rocha Souza, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, RJ, Brazil

213-234

3

The 3C cooperation model applied to the classical requirement analysis Vagner Luiz Gava, IPT – Institute for Technological Research of the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil Mauro de Mesquita Spinola, Antonio Carlos Tonini, José Cardenas Medina, University of São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

235-264

4

Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services Angélica ToffanoSeidel Calazans, Ricardo Ajax Dias Kosloski, Luiz Carlos Miyadaira Ribeiro Junior, University of Brasilia, UNB, Brazil

265-284

5

Telecommuting and HRM: a case study of an information technology service provider André Fernandes Bernardino, Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil, Karina De Déa Roglio, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brasil, Jansen Maia Del Corso, Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil

285-306

6

Scientific production of entropy and information theory in Brazilian Journals Irani Rocha, Rita Buzzi Rausch, Nelson Hein, Regional University of Blumenau – FURB, Brazil

307-322

7

Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies Arnaldo Morozini de Lira, Santo Andre Foundation CFO, São Paulo, Brazil, Cláudio Parisi, FECAP, São Paulo, Brazil, Ivam Ricardo Peleias, FECAP and Pontifical Catholic University - PUC-SP, São Paulo, Brazil, Marcos Reinaldo Severino Peters, FECAP, São Paulo, Brazil

323-352

8

Os Sistemas de recomendações na web como determinantes prescritivos

353-368

JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 193-194

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2 Content / Indice

na tomada de decisão Website recommender systems as prescriptive determiners in the decision making process Fernando Colmenero-Ferreira, University of Madeira, Madeira, Portugal Adicinéia Aparecida Oliveira, Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil

9

Infoinclusão em Piraí Digital: Evidência empíricas a partir da teoria ator-rede Digital inclusion (infoinclusion) in Piraí digital: empirical evidence based on the actor-network theory Adonai Teles, Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, RJ, Brazil Luiz Antonio Joia, Getulio Varga Foundation/ State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

10 Resultados do 9º. CONTECSI – International Conference on

369-390

391-436

Information Systems and Technology Management Outcomes of the 9th CONTECSI – International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management Edson Luiz Riccio, University of São Paulo, Brazil Marici Gramacho Sakata, TECSI, University of São Paulo, Brazil 437

Events / Eventos

438-439

Contributions / Submissão de Artigos

JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 193-194

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JISTEM Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista da Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação ISSN online: 1807–1775

Every four months/Quadrimestral

Universidade de São Paulo – FEA USP Prof. Dr. João Grandino Rodas – USP Reitor/Rector Prof. Dr. Hélio Nogueira da Cruz – USP Vice-Reitor/Vice-Rector Prof. Dr. Reinaldo Guerreiro - Diretor da FEA/Dean of FEA Editor Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio, University of São Paulo – FEA, Brazil Assistant Editor Marici Gramacho Sakata, TECSI University of São Paulo – FEA, Brazil Editorial Board – Comitê de Política Editorial Armando Malheiro da Silva, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal Christophe Benavent, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense, Paris, France Henrique Freitas, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil JaeJon Kim, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea Luc Marie Quoniam, University Paris 8, Paris, France Michael D. Myers, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Miklos Vasarhelyi, Rutgers Business School, New Jersey, USA Rejane Maria da Costa, University of Brasilia, DF, Brazil Robert D. Galliers, Bentley College, Massachusetts, USA Editorial Review Board – Comitê Científico Editorial Adam Mazurkiewicz, Instytut Technologii Eksploatacji, Poland Adalberto A. Fischmann, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Antonio Carlos dos Santos, Federal University of Sao Carlos, São Carlos, Brazil Birger Hjorland, Royal School of Lis, Copenhagen, Denmark Burak Arzova, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turquia Dennis F. Galletta, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA Emerson Maccari, Uninove, Sao Paulo, Brazil Fabio Frezatti, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Fernando Colmenero Ferreira, University of Madeira, Madeira, Portugal Geraldo Lino de Campos, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil Gilson Schwartz, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil Guilherme Ari Plonski, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Jan Capek, Univerzita Pardubice, Pardubice, Czech Republic Jose Dutra de Oliveira Neto, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil José Rodrigues Filho, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Paraíba, Brazil Miguel Juan Bacic, University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil Napoleão Verardi Galegale, Centro Paula Souza and Galegale Associados, Sao Paulo, Brazil Rosana Grillo Gonçalves, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil Salvador Ruiz-de-Chavez, APCAM, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico Published by TECSI - Laboratório de Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação - Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação - EAC FEA USP Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 908 FEA 3, Cidade Universitária - São Paulo/SP 05508-900 Brasil Fone: 55-11-3091 5820 r.190 Fax: 55-11-3091 5820 jistem@usp.br Indexation/Directories SciELO, Latindex, Proquest, Ulrich's Periodical Directory, DOAJ, The Index of Information Systems Journals, ACPHIS, Dialnet, Ebsco, Gale Infotrac, Portal de Periódicos USP, CAPES Webmaster jistem@usp.br Technical Support Equipe TECSI pesquisatecsi@usp.br Terms and Conditions The license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials. Direitos e Permissão Os artigos são de total responsabilidade dos autores e todos os direitos reservados ao TECSI. Esta licença permite que outros distribuam remixem e construam sobre a sua obra, mesmo comercialmente, desde que lhe deem crédito pela criação original.

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JISTEM Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol.9, No.2, May/Aug, 2012, pp. 195-196 ISSN online: 1807-1775

Editorial Edson Luiz Riccio Editor

Este segundo número do volume 9 da JISTEM traz artigos de grande interesse para a comunidade, dentre eles, os três melhores trabalhos apresentados no 9th CONTECSI International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management ocorrido em 30 de Maio a 01 de Junho de 2012 na FEA USP, SP/Brasil: -Fuzzy Clustering: Application on organizational metaphors in Brazilian companies de Angel Cobo Ortega, Rocío Rocha, Adolfo Alberto Vanti e Gustavo Schneider; - Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors de Edson Marchetti da Silva e Renato Rocha Souza; - The 3C cooperation model applied to the classical requirement analysis de Vagner Luiz Gava, Mauro de Mesquita Spinola, Antonio Carlos Tonini e José Cardenas Medina.

Os artigos desta edição abrangem as diversas áreas da Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação. São eles: 

Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services



Telecommuting and HRM: a case study of an information technology service provider



Scientific production of entropy and information theory in Brazilian Journals



Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies



Os Sistemas de recomendações na web como determinantes prescritivos na tomada de decisão



Infoinclusão em Piraí Digital: Evidência empíricas a partir da teoria ator-rede

A JISTEM mantem sua abrangência internacional e nacional. As pesquisas publicadas neste número são de pesquisadores do exterior, a saber: Espanha e Portugal, além de diversos Estados do Brasil: Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Sergipe e também do Distrito Federal.

Por fim, como fazemos tradicionalmente, publicamos o documento com os detalhes e resultados do 9th CONTECSI. A todos, desejamos uma boa leitura.

ISSN online: 1807-1775 Publicado por/Published by: TECSI FEA USP – 2012

Editorial, Vol. 09 No. 02, 2012

196

Editorial Edson Luiz Riccio Editor

This second number of JISTEM issue 9 has articles of great interest for the community; among them, the 3 best papers presented in 9th. CONTECSI International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management held in USP Sao Paulo, Brazil from May 30 to June 1st 2012: -Fuzzy Clustering: Application on organizational metaphors in Brazilian companies by Angel Cobo Ortega, Rocío Rocha, Adolfo Alberto Vanti and Gustavo Schneider; - Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors by Edson Marchetti da Silva and Renato Rocha Souza; - The 3C cooperation model applied to the classical requirement analysis by Vagner Luiz Gava, Mauro de Mesquita Spinola, Antonio Carlos Tonini and José Cardenas Medina.

The articles of this second number are: 

Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services



Telecommuting and HRM: a case study of an information technology service provider



Scientific production of entropy and information theory in Brazilian Journals



Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies



Website recommender systems as prescriptive determiners in the decision making process Digital inclusion (infoinclusion) in Piraí digital: empirical evidence based on the actor-network theory



JISTEM maintains the high quality and visibility in both national and international sectors. In addition to authors from Spain and Portugal, we also present Brazilian authors from Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, Curitiba, Santa Catarina, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Sergipe and Federal District.

Finally, as we traditionally do, we published the document with the outcomes of the 9th CONTECSI International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management.

We wish everyone a good reading.

JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 195-196 www.jistem.fea.usp.br

JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 197-212 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200001

FUZZY CLUSTERING: APPLICATION ON ORGANIZATIONAL METAPHORS IN BRAZILIAN COMPANIES Angel Cobo Rocío Rocha Universidad de Cantabria, Spain Adolfo Alberto Vanti Gustavo Schneider Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brasil _____________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT Different theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors. Nevertheless, a quantitative approach is needed to minimize human subjectivity or bias on metaphors studies. Hence, this paper analyzed the presence of metaphors and clustered them using fuzzy data mining techniques in a sample of 61 Brazilian companies that operate in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. For this purpose the results of a questionnaire answered by 198 employees of companies in the sample were analyzed by R free software. The results show that it is difficult to find a clear image in most organizations. In most cases characteristics of different images or metaphors are observed, so soft computing techniques are particularly appropriate for this type of analysis. However, according to these results, it is noted that the most present image in the organizations studied is that of “organisms” and the least present image is that of a “political system” and of an “instrument of domination”.

Keywords: organizational images, soft clustering, data mining.

_____________________________________________________________________________________ Manuscript first received/Recebido em 15/01/2012 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 01/06/2012 Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência

Angel Cobo, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Universidad de Cantabria, Av. De Los Castros, s/n – Santander, Spain +34 942 20 18 30 E-mail: acobo@unican.es Rocío Rocha, Department of Business Universidad de Cantabria, Spain Av. De Los Castros, s/n – Santander, Spain +34 942 20 39 24 E-mail: eliana.rocha@unican.es Adolfo Alberto Vanti, Accounting Graduate Program Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos Av. Unisinos, 950 – São Leopoldo, Brazil, +55 51 3591 8186 E-mail: avanti@unisinos.br Gustavo Schneider, Accounting Graduate Program Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos Av. Unisinos, 950 – São Leopoldo, Brazil +55 51 3591 8185 E-mail: gus.schneider@hotmail.com Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

198

Ortega, A. C., Rocha, R., Vanti, A. A., Schneider, G.

1. INTRODUCTION Images are metaphors that permit an interpretation of what is happening to the organizational culture (Morgan, 1986). It allows to better understand the behavior of employees in order to adhere or not to organizational compliance, as stated in the study performed by Spears and Barki (2010) which analyzed their awareness on information security. In Bulgurcu, Cavusoglu and Benbasat (2010) employees` behavior on compliance matters were also analyzed, in this case involving rationality-based beliefs and information security awareness.

The study of organizational images is widely used in management courses because they provide a very detailed view from organizational studies. However, when it is narrowed to a sector or regional study, this kind of approach becomes limited. To overcome this limitation this study presents an approach using Data Mining and Soft Clustering techniques to understand what can happen in an organizational culture environment through images in a large number of companies.

The developed application reached 61 enterprises but using this method it can be extended to a significant number of companies, coming to a complete study applied to a whole country. The sections in this paper are divided into a theoretical basis, methodological aspects, a case study and finally discussions on the results.

2. IMAGES OF ORGANIZATIONS Morgan (1986) believes that one can better understand organizations by recognizing metaphors that prompt one to view organizations through a certain angle.

Metaphors play a paradoxical role: they are vital to understand and highlight certain aspects of organizations, while they restrict understanding by back grounding or ignoring others. Morgan illustrates his ideas by exploring eight archetypical metaphors of organization: Machines, Organisms, Brains, Cultures, Political Systems, Psychic Prisons, Flux and Transformation, Instruments of Domination. In this work and based on (Knorst, Vanti, Andrade, & Johann, 2011), brains and culture metaphors are considered as a single image, so 7 metaphors or images are analyzed.

Mechanistic (M): Organizations that impose rigid routines and patterns, hierarchically distributed. Dealings are impersonal and control of the organization is bureaucratic. Because it is very predictable, it is no longer regarded as ideal, even in stable and authoritarian institutions. This style also presents difficulties for innovation.

Psychic Prisons (PP): Inflexibility is a characteristic of this image, becoming a prisoner of past events, allied to fundamental attitudes by their idealizers. Some of their traps are false assumptions, rules without questioning and fanaticism around the charisma of the leader.

Political Systems (PS): This view is not often in the interest of the group and often favors authoritarian executives. This includes companies with participatory management that is encompassed in political systems because although there is a certain distribution of power, the central objective will be executed by both subordinates and the owners of the capital.

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199 Fuzzy Clustering: Application on Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies

Instruments of Domination (ID): In organizations viewed as instruments of domination, the employees and managers need to completely dedicate themselves to the company. They feel insecure about their employment and experience a lot stress on the job.

Organisms (O): The fundamental principal of organisms is that it is based on the employees’ intellectual capital. Motivation is a substantial factor. Because of constant innovation and deadlines, employees tend to obey a biological clock because there are targets to reach and constantly innovations to develop.

Brain/Cybernetic (C): Intellectual capital is highly valued and is constantly being stimulated to improve. Decision-making needs to be done “through formal or temporary processes, producing policies and plans that offer a point of reference or a structure for information processing” (Johann, 2008, p. 33). The definition of cybernetic is given due to the fact that information technology is permanently present, which ensures better conditions in the review of political norms and procedures, in addition to learning how to absorb changes in the environment.

Flux and Transformation (FT): Organizations that best mirror flux and transformation are those that modify and evolve to conform to change and evolution in the environment. Their survival depends on their internal and external environments These images represent the employees` behavior as Morgan (1986) stated.

Analysis can be performed properly with this approach considering organizational case studies but has some limitations in sector and regional studies using the same criteria.

To balance it this paper proposes the application of Data Mining (DM) and Soft Clustering techniques that are presented below. Organizational identity can also reside in metaphorical images internalized in the members of the organization (Taber, 2007).

Each employee`s perception about the image projected by the organization can even be quite different, so that the use of a fuzzy approach is particularly appropriate.

3. DATA MINING AND SOFT CLUSTERING Simply stated, data mining refers to extracting or “mining” knowledge from large amounts of data (Han & Kamber, 2006). This area has attracted a great deal of attention in the information industry and in society as a whole in recent years and data mining techniques have been applied to a wide variety of areas. Data mining techniques have been used for trying to predict behavioral patterns, generate forecasts, identify trends or changes thereto, as well as to discover relationships between information pieces in order to optimize decision making. Thus, there is no doubt as to the practical application in those processes where a large amount of data must be handled. This explains, therefore, why this area of knowledge has drawn the attention of different sectors of the information industry in recent years.

Cluster analysis or clustering is a main task of explorative data mining, and a common technique for statistical data analysis used in many fields (Kaufman & Rousseeuw, 2008). Data clustering is the process of dividing data elements into classes or clusters so that items in the same class are as similar as possible, and items in different classes are as dissimilar as possible (Witten & Frank, 2005). The potential of clustering algorithms is to reveal the underlying structures in data and it can be exploited in a wide variety of applications, including classification, image processing

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Ortega, A. C., Rocha, R., Vanti, A. A., Schneider, G.

and pattern recognition, modeling and identification. In particular, data mining techniques can be used to identify categories or behavioral patterns in organizations.

Many clustering algorithms have been introduced in the literature (Pedrycz, 2005). A widespread accepted classification scheme subdivides these techniques into two main groups: hard (crisp) or soft (fuzzy) clustering. In hard clustering, data is divided into distinct clusters, where each data element belongs to exactly one cluster, however in fuzzy clustering, data elements can belong to more than one cluster, and associated with each element is a set of membership levels that indicate the strength of the association between that data element and a particular cluster. Due to the fuzzy nature of many practical problems, a number of fuzzy clustering methods have been developed following the general fuzzy set theory strategies outlined by (Zadeh, 1965).

Fuzzy set theory deals with the representation of classes whose boundaries are not well defined. The key idea is to associate a membership function that takes values in the interval [0,1], with 0 corresponding to non membership in the class and 1 corresponding to full membership. Thus, membership is a notion intrinsically gradual instead of abrupt as in conventional Boolean logic.

The concept of fuzzy partition is essential for cluster analysis and identification techniques that are based on fuzzy clustering. The most known method of fuzzy clustering is the Fuzzy c-Means method (FCM), initially proposed by Dunn (1973) and generalized by Bezdek (1981) and other authors; in Kruse, Hoppner, Klawonn and Runkler (1999) an overview is presented. The FCM is based on an optimization problem which objective function is defined as: ∑∑

‖

‖

where {x1,x2,…,xn} is the input sample set, that is, the objects that have to be clustered, c is the number of clusters, {c1,c2,…,cn} the centroids of the clusters, which can be defined by a given matrix or randomly chosen, and uij is the degree of membership of xi in the cluster j. Finally, the parameter m is a real number greater than 1 that is a weighting factor called fuzzifier. Normally the Euclidean distance is used, but any norm ||*|| expressing the dissimilarity between any measured data and the center can be used.

One of the drawbacks of FCM is the requirement for the number of clusters, c, to be specified before the algorithm is applied. In the literature, methods for selecting the number of clusters for the algorithm can be found (Pham, Dimov, & Nguyen, 2005).

Fuzzy partitioning is carried out through an iterative minimization of the objective function under the following fuzzy constraints:

∑

In the approach proposed by Bezdek (1981) in each iteration membership levels uij and centroid positions cj are updated applying the technique of Lagrange multipliers.

The algorithm stops when a maximum number of iterations is reached, or when the algorithm is unable to reduce the current value of the objective function.

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201 Fuzzy Clustering: Application on Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies

Given the fact that different organizational images can often be linked to an organization, in this work a soft clustering approach is considered more appropriate.

Using the FCM technique, each organization is allowed to belong to many clusters with different degrees of membership and therefore they have multiple images or metaphors linked. In the paper the results of the analysis are presented.

Any data mining process is composed of the following basic phases or stages: data compilation; data processing (in which it is cleaned, transformed and reduced); application of data mining (determining the model to use, carrying out statistical analysis, and graphically visualizing data to obtain a first approximation); and finally, interpretation and evaluation of results obtained. Following the previous stages, in the next sections we will show the practical application of data mining techniques to identify behavioral features in a sample of Brazilian companies.

4. DATA COMPILATION AND PROCESSING: INSTRUMENT FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL IMAGES IN A SAMPLE OF BRAZILIAN COMPANIES For the identification of images, an instrument developed by Johann (2004) was used. This instrument is a questionnaire with 35 questions on organizational aspects that are grouped into 7 blocks; each block is associated with one of the images considered.

In order to identify characteristics of the images in an organization, a set of employees can make a quantitative assessment on each of the 35 questions of the questionnaire.

The evaluation uses a discrete scale with values between 1 and 4, according to the following criteria: 4 if there is a strong presence, 3 if there is a reasonable presence, 2 if there is little impact and 1 if there is virtually no presence.

The Appendix shows the 35 questions selected and Table 1 shows the relationship of each question with one of the 7 images defined by Morgan.

Image

Question

M

O

SP

B/C

ID

FT

PP

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

14

13

12

11

10

9

8

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

28

27

26

25

24

23

22

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

Table 1. Relationships between questions and organizational images.

With the answers to 35 questions, 7 numerical values can be generated with the sum of the scores for each of the 5 questions related to each of the 7 images. These 7 values can be taken into account in determining the most relevant image in the company, according to the opinions of the employee interviewed. An example of the tabulation of answers to the questionnaire is shown in Table 2. The sums of the scores associated with each of the images are shown in the last row, for example, in the case

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presented in Table 2, the most visible organizational images are those of the "political system (SP)”, but images M, C and ID also obtain high scores.

Company name:

COMPANY_1

Sector of activity:

FINANCIAL

Main activity:

SERVICES

Size of company:

LARGE

Location:

ESTEIO

Position of respondent:

SERVICE COORDINATOR

Date:

20/03/2011 Test tabulation M=Machine O=Organism SP=Politic System C=Brain and Culture ID=Instruments of Domination FT=Flux and Transformation PP=Psychic Prisons

M

O

SP

B/C

ID

FT

PP

01:

4

02:

3

03:

3

04:

2

05:

2

06:

3

07:

2

14:

3

13:

3

12:

3

11:

4

10:

4

09:

4

08:

4

15:

4

16:

2

17:

3

18:

4

19:

4

20:

2

21:

3

28:

2

27:

2

26:

4

25:

2

24:

2

23:

3

22:

3

29:

3

30:

3

31:

4

32:

4

33:

4

34:

3

35:

3

Total

16

13

17

16

16

15

15

Table 2. Example of answers to the questionnaire.

To analyze the organizational images with greater presence in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), a sample of 61 companies from various sectors and sizes was selected. In each company a group of up to 4 employees were interviewed, resulting in a total of 198 responses to the questionnaire (mean of 3.25 responses per company). All data were pre-processed for analysis with data mining techniques.

5. APPLICATION OF DATA MINING: FUZZY CLUSTERS IDENTIFICATION Clustering algorithms were applied to try to identify groups of companies responding, according to their employees, to similar images. We used a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics; this software is R and can be downloaded from the following site http://www.r-project.org/. This software implements a great variety of clustering algorithms; the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm, implemented in package ‘e1071’, was selected.

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203 Fuzzy Clustering: Application on Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies

The cmeans command needs several parameters to run:  The data matrix where columns correspond to variables and rows to observations. In our case 7 variables were considered with the average values corresponding to the sum of the scores of the 5 questions from each of the 7 blocks given by each employee in the company. The data matrix has 61 rows (companies).  Number of clusters or initial values for cluster centers. In our case we decided to give 7 initial cluster centers. The center of cluster i was initially defined as: (

)

{

Note that 5 is the minimum value and 20 the maximum in a block of 5 questions.  Maximum number of iterations, the value 500 was used.  Distance measure to use; we used the "euclidean" distance.  Degree of fuzzification (m). We used m=2.

The algorithm needed a total number of 218 iterations to converge, and the final error was 3,8954. After the execution of the 218 iterations, the cluster centers were updated as shown in Table 3. Bold identifies the highest values in each centroid, that is, the images obtained higher scores in each group.

Table 4 shows a ranking of the images with the greatest presence in each group.

As can be seen, image O is clearly the most relevant in most groups. Another image with a high presence in the groups is FT. In relation to the images of smaller presence in the sample, they are those corresponding to PP and SP. Image M

Image O

Image SP

Image B/ C

Image ID

Image FT

Image PP

More relevant images in the cluster

1 14.06969 14.14340 10.75342 12.25663 12.81599 13.73587 10.68910

O, M, FT

2 13.43621 14.91055 11.87856 13.15049 12.30009 13.90021 10.71262

O, FT, M

3 13.87489 13.30586 14.32899 12.72550 14.97622 14.11905 13.77686

ID, SP, FT

4 14.89808 16.73978 12.87971 15.28379 14.23304 16.49389 12.38194

O, FT, C

5 14.21077 14.71124 13.08771 13.61664 14.26382 14.52736 12.50887 O, FT, ID 6 15.03585 15.98669 12.03754 14.72027 13.31240 14.95138 11.05963

O, M, FT

7 14.31467 14.60668 13.31190 13.63852 14.39336 14.56143 12.62568 O, FT, ID Table 3. Cluster centers and more relevant images after the execution of the FCM algorithm.

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As a result of the algorithm we obtained a matrix with the degrees of membership of each company for each of the 7 groups identified. Table 5 shows this matrix; the membership levels can also be shown using a density plot, as in Figure 1. A graphical representation of relationships between variables in the clusters is also shown in Figure 2. Figure 1 shows the companies in the vertical axis and membership levels on the horizontal axis. The darker shades in that graph correspond to higher membership values. As shown, in some companies there is a clear association with one of the groups, but in most cases the association with a single group is not as clear. The same conclusion can be reached by observing Figure 2, which shows the pairwise relationships between the variables used for performing the process of clustering.

Cluster

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Image 6

Image 7

1

O

M

FT

ID

B/C

SP

PP

2

O

FT

M

C

ID

SP

PP

3

ID

SP

FT

M

PP

O

C

4

O

FT

C

M

ID

SP

PP

5

O

FT

ID

M

C

SP

PP

6

O

M

FT

C

ID

SP

PP

7

O

FT

ID

M

C

SP

PP

Table 4. Ranking of the images

Companies

1

2

Membership levels 3 4

5

6

7

61

61

56

56

51

51

46

46

41

41

36

36

31

31

26

26

21

21

16

16

11

11

6

6

1

1 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Clusters

Figure 1. Density plot of membership levels in the fuzzy clustering process.

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205 Fuzzy Clustering: Application on Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies

14

18

8

12

16

12

16

18

10

18

10

14

P_M

12 16

10

14

P_O

16

8

P_SP

18

8

12

P_C

16

10

14

P_ID

8

P_PP

12

16

12

P_FT

10

14

18

8

12 16

10

14

18

8

12

16

Figure 2. Graphic clustering.

Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Cluster 3

Cluster 4

Cluster 5

Cluster 6

Cluster 7

1

0.07066084

0.08658671

0.10323928

0.21063065

0.18665701

0.15041535

0.19181016

2

0.07312988

0.08607538

0.15161303

0.20526897

0.17179575

0.13193341

0.18018358

3

0.06859525

0.07444648

0.19060567

0.17475744

0.18399386

0.10722599

0.20037532

4

0.03169135

0.04403128

0.04741090

0.57385733

0.09821968

0.10476523

0.10002422

5

0.08308866

0.09396503

0.06310459

0.26138938

0.11674858

0.26730794

0.11439583

6

0.12172084

0.15924327

0.10787176

0.13952651

0.16655198

0.14846257

0.15662307

7

0.12279663

0.15318111

0.06888526

0.20865810

0.11651387

0.21916242

0.11080261

8

0.04220773

0.07790881

0.01870347

0.07060410

0.05522701

0.68612636

0.04922252

9

0.08219092

0.10195635

0.06719794

0.25448306

0.13011700

0.23951137

0.12454337

10

0.05546326

0.06238707

0.11696803

0.04217665

0.36042338

0.05174491

0.31083671

11

0.28728923

0.24772864

0.08701666

0.05989234

0.11032077

0.10274618

0.10500617

12

0.22593052

0.15658323

0.08749638

0.11131703

0.13027708

0.16301567

0.12538010

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Ortega, A. C., Rocha, R., Vanti, A. A., Schneider, G.

13

0.06920147

0.07903842

0.12510591

0.19929293

0.18164698

0.14795461

0.19775967

14

0.08285978

0.11859962

0.15931363

0.12035732

0.19264877

0.12761317

0.19860771

15

0.12177958

0.13361607

0.04982584

0.10184959

0.12635401

0.35147288

0.11510203

16

0.14045734

0.26530835

0.09467698

0.08950505

0.14555268

0.13023758

0.13426202

17

0.08681304

0.09328667

0.19122849

0.16892750

0.16149141

0.12522848

0.17302441

18

0.07497735

0.08073145

0.30462401

0.09105763

0.17141417

0.08550092

0.19169448

19

0.08341590

0.08578571

0.35908959

0.07812405

0.15503223

0.07478851

0.16376401

20

0.17479429

0.30830196

0.04631832

0.07003819

0.10548488

0.20155637

0.09350599

21

0.09634673

0.10469832

0.15798910

0.11641307

0.18966021

0.13881451

0.19607807

22

0.17231070

0.18867734

0.08467363

0.10917158

0.13054105

0.18768695

0.12693876

23

0.13553735

0.65585995

0.02651960

0.02495840

0.05331346

0.05677979

0.04703145

24

0.26976889

0.29072870

0.05170888

0.07291884

0.09093024

0.14135547

0.08258898

25

0.13949925

0.26258352

0.06216253

0.11056620

0.11528520

0.20376653

0.10613677

26

0.12697591

0.11798789

0.30413710

0.06087029

0.15423258

0.07650053

0.15929570

27

0.06342657

0.08722344

0.19070266

0.13850639

0.19781697

0.10569781

0.21662616

28

0.06385745

0.08590340

0.03551134

0.14001793

0.08742439

0.50523607

0.08204943

29

0.07901129

0.09561119

0.07833999

0.32820361

0.12081321

0.17904222

0.11897848

30

0.05739890

0.06748329

0.10023415

0.26933224

0.16538393

0.16067014

0.17949735

31

0.28326301

0.20365793

0.05764492

0.07854032

0.11426179

0.15872703

0.10390500

32

0.28461438

0.24248080

0.07755410

0.06658642

0.10871574

0.11847521

0.10157336

33

0.06903735

0.08165823

0.06779278

0.38233559

0.11484726

0.17214823

0.11218056

34

0.01807095

0.01896151

0.74341633

0.01876586

0.08306922

0.01836714

0.09934898

35

0.11663941

0.11931074

0.29643997

0.07474561

0.15255682

0.08365965

0.15664780

36

0.07817857

0.08536278

0.34888223

0.04989400

0.18663021

0.06024328

0.19080894

37

0.10714989

0.11048183

0.32739166

0.06609067

0.15243308

0.07717875

0.15927413

38

0.69337887

0.11684761

0.02909171

0.02083147

0.05103369

0.04323923

0.04557743

39

0.17273715

0.25856266

0.08966250

0.09588023

0.12877008

0.13496245

0.11942493

40

0.03241751

0.04420640

0.04902702

0.57711622

0.09526600

0.10528039

0.09668645

41

0.22437489

0.21413734

0.06785018

0.09530541

0.11097166

0.18305758

0.10430293

42

0.10765563

0.21007287

0.11086404

0.10154859

0.16660240

0.14315675

0.16009971

43

0.11133460

0.18090745

0.16155856

0.06774603

0.20270129

0.08630506

0.18944702

44

0.13048799

0.14819301

0.20418735

0.09798384

0.15786594

0.10286958

0.15841229

45

0.05764661

0.05624164

0.28681837

0.08039807

0.20725059

0.07240928

0.23923545

46

0.25750525

0.19386599

0.09092025

0.08955001

0.11618149

0.14053572

0.11144130

47

0.04572654

0.06161214

0.03807164

0.52587451

0.08298042

0.16708356

0.07865120

48

0.05939674

0.06714226

0.38750100

0.08041471

0.15888866

0.06972908

0.17692754

49

0.08586828

0.11065564

0.08367132

0.26059800

0.13202895

0.19531702

0.13186079

50

0.16231335

0.11824507

0.13174813

0.05896488

0.22471806

0.09544003

0.20857048

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207 Fuzzy Clustering: Application on Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies 51

0.06117608

0.06424937

0.17273495

0.07234683

0.25039101

0.09209677

0.28700499

52

0.09123197

0.11071931

0.16669303

0.12941725

0.18977795

0.11894709

0.19321339

53

0.59796974

0.18279490

0.03202861

0.02766130

0.05408170

0.05685057

0.04861317

54

0.43332432

0.15658670

0.06662395

0.04240830

0.11423622

0.08300395

0.10381654

55

0.11348891

0.11319047

0.07704351

0.24432758

0.12596022

0.20477560

0.12121372

56

0.26191311

0.19090609

0.12260103

0.07201902

0.12645872

0.10397421

0.12212780

57

0.17894663

0.12674166

0.09227940

0.12114093

0.16112533

0.16691343

0.15285262

58

0.07228857

0.11036817

0.05615977

0.08543059

0.29143982

0.16136069

0.22295239

59

0.08730678

0.10696052

0.10468709

0.16331970

0.19488071

0.15817972

0.18466549

60

0.07500784

0.07422026

0.39973367

0.07578448

0.14605454

0.07041335

0.15878586

61

0.23432493

0.13894778

0.09988333

0.10115031

0.14476995

0.14358131

0.13734238

Table 5. Membership levels in the fuzzy clustering process.

6. EVALUATION OF RESULTS As shown in Table 3, after executing the algorithm the centroids of each group are not clearly related to a single image. Instead, each group has values assigned to each feature (image) which are very different from those initially chosen. Although in most cases the image initially linked to the centroid is among those most present in the final centroid, in one case, that corresponding to group 7, the initial image (PP) does not have a strong presence in the final centroid. In fact, its value is the lowest value obtained in the centroid of the group. This seems to confirm that this image does not have a strong presence in the sample analyzed. In addition, these final centroids show that most of the companies seem to fit a mixed image, with a combination of characteristics from different images or organizational metaphors.

The membership levels allow us to analyze the presence of organizational images for the companies in the sample. For example, the FCM algorithm has assigned the following levels of group membership to company 1: (

)

As can be seen, in this case no single cluster can be clearly linked to this company. Instead, there are four clusters with similar degrees of membership and quite different from the rest; specifically clusters 4, 5, 6 and 7. According to the centroids of these groups (see Table 3), the most relevant organizational images in these clusters are O and FT. Specifically, if an image k is considered, the membership levels (uij) and the final centroids (cij) could be used to obtain a quantitative assessment eval(k,p) of the presence of the image k in the company p, using the following expression: 7

eval (k , p) 

u

pj

c jk

j 1

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In the case of company 1, the maximum values for eval(k,1) are reached in k=2 (associated to image O) and k=6 (associated to image FT), with values 15.14 and 14.86, respectively.

In some cases, the FCM algorithm is able to allocate a cluster for a particular company more clearly. For example, for company 34, the membership levels obtained by the algorithm are: u34 = (0.0181, 0.0190, 0.7434, 0.0188, 0.0831, 0.0184, 0.0993) In this case, we can see a clear link between the company and group 3. Figure 3 shows the difference with the previous case. If the evaluation of function eval() is carried out, the most relevant images in company 34 are ID and FT. These results confirm that this company seems to also have characteristics common in different images.

Cluster 7 19%

Cluster 1 7%

Company 1

Cluster 6 15%

Cluster 7 Cluster 1 2% 10% Cluster 2 Cluster 6 2% 2% Cluster 5 8%

Cluster 2 9% Cluster 3 10%

Cluster 4 2%

Company 34

Cluster 5 19%

Cluster 3 74%

Cluster 4 21%

Figure 3. Image levels for companies 1 and 34 in the sample.

The R cmeans command also generates the closest hard clustering solution. This information is also useful for identifying significant groups. Table 6 shows the number of companies in the 7 hard clusters after the execution of the algorithm.

Cluster Number of companies 1 12 2 8 3 12 4 12 5 6 6 5 7 6 Table 6. Cluster sizes in the closest hard clustering.

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209 Fuzzy Clustering: Application on Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies

As Table 6 shows, three groups have more frequency than the rest; they are clusters 1, 3 and 4. Cluster 6 is the one with the least number of companies. The next section will discuss the results reached and possible lines for future work.

7. DISCUSSIONS In conclusion, this paper analyzed the potential of data mining techniques to extract knowledge about organizational aspects in a sample of Brazilian companies. In addition, soft computing has shown itself to be a very suitable tool for identifying organizational patterns, where the difference between some patterns and others is not so clear.

The results of applying the techniques of soft clustering confirm the difficulty associating a single image or metaphor to a company, as features of the other images are also present. However, according to these results, it is noted that the most visible image in the organizations studied is that of “organisms”. This image is the most relevant in 6 out of the 7 groups identified. This metaphor means seeing the businesses as behaving in similar ways to our own biological mechanisms; successful businesses are often adaptable and open to change and the structures and procedures are less rigid. Central to this metaphor is the theory of open systems which are “open” to their environment and have to achieve appropriate relationships with their environment in order to survive.

Also, it is remarkable the fact that the "flux and transformation" image appears in all groups with a high value. So, characteristics as constant change, dynamic equilibrium, flow, self-organization, systemic wisdom, attractors, chaos, complexity, butterfly effect, emergent properties, dialectics, and paradox are also present in most of companies.

All groups obtained seem to have a very similar structure, with the most similar and relevant images, but one of them (cluster 3) is clearly different from the rest, with a high degree of association with images that are less present in the other groups, such as “political system” and “instrument of domination” images.

In summary, this work confirms the difficulty linking a company with a single image, but it has allowed seeing images that have a greater presence in companies operating in Rio Grande do Sul. With respect to obtaining organizational patterns, it is necessary to point out that the valuations must be carried out in the context of the specific experience analyzed.

Thus, it is important to remember that the data analyzed correspond to a small sample of companies. The sample includes companies from various sectors and sizes, making it difficult to draw conclusions that can be generalized. It is necessary to extend the study with a larger sample size. It would also be interesting to carry out sector analysis to try to identify organizational features which are typical of companies in certain sectors, as well as geographically comparative studies.

In each company a group of up to 4 employees were interviewed; in some cases significant differences in the perception of different employees were observed. It would therefore be interesting to try to analyze these differences in perception, depending on the type of company and the employee profile.

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From the point of view of applying soft clustering techniques, another line of research that opens from this work is the application of other soft clustering algorithms, in particular the use of algorithms that do not require the previous definition of the number of groups to be created.

In any case, the study has served to demonstrate the usefulness of the methodology proposed and to draw some conclusions about organizational images that seem to have a presence in Brazilian companies.

REFERENCES BULGURCU, B.; CAVUSOGLU, H. BENBASAT, I. Information Security Policy Compliance: An Empirical Study of Rationality-Based Beliefs and Information Security Awareness. MIS Quarterly. Vol.34, no.3, pp.523-548, set, 2010.

BEZDEK, J. C. Pattern recognition with fuzzy objective function algorithms.

Plenum Press, New York: 1981.

DUNN, J. C. A fuzzy relative of the ISODATA process and its use in detecting compact well-separated clusters, Journal of Cybernetics 3, pages 32-57. 1973.

HAN, J.; KAMBER, M. Data Mining. Concepts and Techniques (2nd Edition).

Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: 2006.

JOHANN, S. L. Gestão da cultura corporativa – como as organizações de alto desempenho gerenciam a sua cultura organizacional. São Paulo: Editora Saraiva.

2004. ___________. Gestão da cultura organizacional. Working in paper - SIGA - Sistema de Informação e Gestão, Rio de Janeiro: Acadêmica, da Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), 2008.

KAUFMAN, L.; ROUSSEEUW, P. J. Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, USA: 2008.

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KRUSE, R.; HOPPNER, F.; KLAWONN, F.; RUNKLER, T. Fuzzy Cluster Analysis.

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211 Fuzzy Clustering: Application on Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies

TABER, T.D. Using metaphors to teach organization theory. Journal of Management Education, vol. 31(4), pag. 541-545. 2007.

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Appendix: Questionnaire for the identification of organizational images 1) Procedures, operations and processes are standardized.

2) Changes in the organization are normally a reaction to changes that already occurred in the macro business environment.

3) Administrators frequently talk about authority, power and superior-subordinate relationships.

4) Flexible and creative action.

5) Working in inadequate circumstances and conditions is considered a proof of loyalty to the organization.

6) The organization sees itself as a part of a larger system where there is an interdependence that involves the community, suppliers and the competition.

7) People and groups tend to display infantile behavior.

8) Past achievements are constantly cited as references and as examples on how to deal with present situations and how to face future adversities.

9) The organization evolves in harmony and balance with its macro environment.

10) People act under constant stress and pressure.

11) There is constant questioning and redirection of actions.

12) Power serves to provide discipline and achieve order in conflicts of interest.

13) The organization considers the motivations and needs of people.

14) There are rigid patterns and uniformity in people’s behavior.

15) The company has and utilizes a great number of rules, norms and regulations about operational aspects of the business.

17) The delegation of power to operational levels tends to be very restricted.

18) Negative feedback is encouraged to correct the organizational direction.

19) The organization expects complete devotion and dedication from its employees.

20) The company benefits more from external events (environmental, etc.) than from strict planning.

21) There are many taboos and prejudices in the organization.

22) The relationships between superiors and subordinates tend to contain elements of love and hate.

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23) Long term achievements will be achieved in partnership with the forces acting with the macro-environment and not against it.

24) To dismiss people and streamline activities are part of the game.

25) Most people think about and influence on the destiny of the company.

26) Interpersonal gossip consumes energy and diverts attention from productivity.

27) Organizational objectives and people’s needs can be met simultaneously.

28) The organization is a realm of bureaucracy.

29) The organization is expected to operate in a routine, efficient, reliable and predictable manner.

30) Employees are seen as valuable resources who can offer rich and varied contributions to the organizations activities, provided that the organization attends to their needs and motivations.

31) Rumors and gossip are frequent.

32) The organization tends to offer quick answers to changes in their macroenvironment.

33) The organization values executives who appear framed and faithful to the mode of being of the company 34) In strategic decision making the company normally abandons the simple view and prefers to take into account the complexity of the situation.

35) People are dedicated to the organization because they feel they belong to something greater, which transcends their existence and individual limitations.

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp.213-234 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200002

INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM USING MULTIWORDS EXPRESSIONS (MWE) AS DESCRIPTORS Edson Marchetti da Silva Federal University of Minas Gerais, MG, Brazil Renato Rocha Souza Getúlio Vargas Foundation - FGV, RJ, Brazil _______________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT This paper aims to propose an alternative method for retrieving documents using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) extracted from a document base to be used as descriptors in search of an Information Retrieval System (IRS). In this sense, unlike methods that consider the text as a set of words, bag of words, we propose a method that takes into account the characteristics of the physical structure of the document in the extraction process of MWE. From this set of terms comparing pre-processed using an exhaustive algorithmic technique proposed by the authors with the results obtained for thirteen different measures of association statistics generated by the software Ngram Statistics Package (NSP). To perform this experiment was set up with a corpus of documents in digital format.

Keywords: Extraction of Expressions Multiwords, Measures of Association Statistics, Compared Search, Information Retrieval System, the Document Structure.

1.

INTRODUCTION

Since the first computers appeared, one of their main purposes has been to collect, store and process large volumes of data to produce information. It is for computer systems to receive data, organize them and classify them, so they can be retrieved and presented to the user requesting to meet the demand for desired information. Since the 1960s some models have been proposed and implemented to manage the maintenance and retrieval of structured data. Among them we mention the Network Model, the Hierarchical Model and the Relational Model. All of them require that a structural scheme is designed to receive data by creating a strong bond between the semantic data and the exact location where it is stored, i.e., the metadata. In this type of solution to ensure that the extraction of information is deterministic, the data must _____________________________________________________________________________________ Manuscript first received/Recebido em 15/01/2012 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 15/03/2012 Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência Edson Marchetti da Silva , Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, MG, Brasil, Msc em Administração pela Universidade FUMEC, Doutorando em Ciência da Informação pela UFMG – E-mail: edson@div.cefetmg.br Renato Rocha Souza, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, RJ, Brasil, Doutor em Ciência da Informação pela UFMG. E-mail: rsouza.fgv@gmail.com Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

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necessarily be organized in a structured way and grouped according to their intrinsic characteristics and semantics. Therefore, these models are suitable only when dealing with data that can be organized this way, as is the case of information systems, which store their data supported by the technologies provided by Relational Database Management Systems and their extensions. However, most of the information generated by humans is not as structured as it is registered through language in written form. The big challenge, which still presents many open questions, is how to bring the computer close to the human form in dealing with information, that is, by the treatment of the natural language.

The quest to build a machine capable of communicating with humans in a natural way through the spoken or written language is something that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been seeking for decades. AI is a research area, which according to Russell & Norvig (2004 p. 3-4) had its genesis with John McCarthy in 1956 and that historically has been working on two fronts: the first focused on systems that think and act as humans and the second focused on systems that think and act rationally. Research with the focus on the first approach, proved far more complex than it seemed. The second approach, which works with rationality, does what is right considering the data it has, it is far more successful, although limited to represent only some aspects of human nature.

According to Manning & Sch端tze (1999, p. 4-7) two schools of thought prevailed in language studies. The first, the empiricists, between 1920 and 1960, postulated that the experience is unique, or else at least the main form of construction of knowledge in the human mind. They believed that cognitive ability was in the brain and that no learning is possible from a tabula rasa, and that therefore, the brain had the ability to associate a priori pattern recognition and generalization, which combined with the rich human sensor capacity enabled language learning. The second, the rationalists, between the years 1960 and 1985 postulated that a significant part of the knowledge of the human mind is not derived from the senses, but previously established, presumably by genetic inheritance. This current of thought was based on the theory of innate faculty of language proposed by Noam Chomsky, which considers the initial structures of the brain as responsible for making every individual, from sensory perception, follow certain paths and ways to organize and generalize the information internally.

Currently, from the most diverse areas of knowledge, advances have been aimed at the ability of machines to represent and retrieve information. In this search, one of the main aspects is to develop the ability to interpret documents assigning semantic value to the written text. The area of Language Engineering and Natural Language Processing (NLP) is highlighted which through studies of morphology, syntax and semantic analysis, and statistical processing were designed to predict behavior of a textual content.

All these issues are still a useful field for the sciences. There is a ceaseless quest to articulate ways of representing knowledge in machinery to reduce the differences between computational and symbolic capacity of human thought. From what perspective should the issue address? This is a relevant and complex debate, waged by the most diverse areas, from human, social and exact sciences. The language is symbolic and a direct equivalence does not even exist between the signs in mind and the creation of a word that expresses its meaning in the different languages spoken around the world.

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215 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors

The language constructs semantic fields or areas of significance linguistically circumscribed. Vocabulary, grammar and syntax are geared to the organization of semantic fields. Thus the language constructs classification schemes to differentiate objects in gender or by number; ways to accomplish the stated reason for the opposition to be listed; modes indicate the degree of social intimacy, etc.. (Berger, 1985 p. 61) The human mind is a particular view of an individual formed by social relations which constitute what we commonly call personality, which makes up its own set of beliefs and values. Added to this there are personal relationships, data and information kept in mind that form knowledge. Reflections for the production of human knowledge, or simply to produce answers to questions and needs: the mind does not process all the knowledge in the brain. The mind seeks to approach similar situations producing inferences, creating new relationships or seeking memories recorded in the memory.

That is, a cut of one point in the context of the brain. Therefore, there is no guarantee of accuracy in the answers at any time. The computer works in a completely different context of the human brain. Therefore, current technology will never be able to simulate the human mind to its fullest. What can you get is an approximation of some human capabilities. According to Vygotsky's ideas, a clear understanding of the relationship between thought and language is necessary in order to understand how the intellectual development occurs.

The meaning of words is only a phenomenon of thought as it is embodied in the speech and is only a linguistic phenomenon connected with thought and enlightened by it. It is a phenomenon of verbal thought or speech signifier - a union of thought and language. (Vygotsky, p. 277-278).

We believe that by directing the efforts of science, in search of the semantic representation of knowledge for information retrieval, simulating the human mind is not the path that will give the best results. Therefore, these efforts result in the same "defects", or characteristics of the human form of processing information, uncertainty, etc. does not guarantee repeatability. So the best way to handle this problem is to reduce the language to the limitations of logic and thus guarantee the accuracy of what you want to express, rather than try to approximate the language of logic and enter the inaccuracy.

We propose as a common thread of this work the theoretical treatment of the text by reducing the content expressed in a natural language to a certain set of lexical compounds that have greater capacity to express the meaning of a textual content, Multi-Word Expressions (MWE), and use them as search descriptors in an Information Retrieval System (IRS).

Related Works Several studies aimed at identifying MWE were published, among them we highlight Dias Lopes and GuillorĂŠ (1999) aimed at the extraction of MWE independently of language, based solely on statistical methods; Silva Lopes (1999) that aims to extract n-grams from the analysis of a text in a local context called LocalMaxs; Portela, Mamede and Batista (2011) who take into account the morpho-syntactic text, and therefore require intensive use of computational resources, among others. We can also cite studies that apply the concept of MWE for automatic translation alignment through the use of lexical expressions to see how they would compare the same text in different languages which may provide clues relevant to the identification of these

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expressions: Calzolari et al. (2002), Sag et al. (2002); Ramich (2009), Zhang, Yoshida, Tang and Ho (2009); Villavicencio, Ramisch, Machado, Caseli and Finatto (2010).

Based on these studies the existence of a gap in relation to extraction of MWE is verified, which takes into account the intrinsic physical characteristics of the documents and which language is independent. It is from these ideas that we proposed to obtain MWE from a document base and use it to search keywords compared to the automated retrieval of similar documents.

To better describe the experiments the work is structured into the following sections which are presented in the following contents: Section 3 - theoretical framework about MWE, Section 4 - methodology, Section 5 - Results and conclusions; Section 6 - Recommendations for future work.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK As noted by Zhang et al. (2009), the ability to express the sense of a word depends on the other words that accompany it. When a word appears accompanied by a set of terms, the greater the chances of this set to have a significant meaning. This indicates that not only a word but also the contextual information is useful for processing information. It is from this simple and direct idea that research on MWE is motivated. Thus it is expected to capture relevant semantic concepts from the text expressed by MWE. Although there are many papers on the subject, there is no formal definition of consensus in the literature on MWE. We can consider that MWE are formations composed of two or more adjacents words that occurring in a frequency above a threshold when combined it have a greater semantic expressiveness than when each of its terms are set separately. For Sag et al. (2002) MWE are "idiosyncratic interpretations that cross the boundaries (or spaces) between words" (p. 2). A further description found in the literature is shown below.

The term multiword expression has been used to describe a large number of different constructions, but closely related, such as support verbs (give a demonstration, give a lecture), nominal compounds (Militar Police), institutionalized phrases (bread and butter) and many others. [...] IN encompasses a large number of buildings, such as fixed expressions, noun compounds and verb-particle constructions. (Villavicencio et. al, 2010, p. 16.)

According to Ranchhod (2003, p. 2) the fixed expressions are linguistic objects that have differences in terminology and the absence of criteria for the analysis that led them to be regarded as exceptional linguistic objects can not be integrated into the grammar of languages. However, there has been a growing interest, especially in NLP, afterall these fixed forms are so numerous in any type of text, therefore, they can not be ignored. Therefore, these characteristics make the relevant MWE treatment a lexical resource, the informational inputs of which are important for many applications related to the NLP, such as an automatic translation of text summarizing, etc. In this sense, Villavicencio et. al (2010) point out that many studies have sought ways of automation in lexical acquisition. These studies seek to understand the formation of lexical resources, an area still in need of research.

To Sag (2002, p. 4) MWE can be classified into:

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217 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors









Fixed Expressions are those that do not present morphosyntactic and crunches do not allow internal modifications. They challenge the conventions of grammar and compositional interpretation, as treating them as word for word would not have the representation of the phrase, which has its own meaning given by composition.

Semi-Fixed Expressions are those that have restrictions on word order and composition, but admit any lexical variations in bending, the reflexive form and choice of determinants. This type of MWE is categorized into three subgroups: the non-decomposable idioms, the noun compounds, and proper names. The first category occurs when two or more words together form an expression that has a new meaning, different from that obtained by the words in isolation. Example "kick the bucket", which has the compound meaning the idea of "give up". In this case there is variability of the idiom. The second category: compounds nominal are similar to the non-decomposable expressions, being syntactically unchangeable and in most cases they can be inflected in number. The third category: proper names are syntactically highly idiosyncratic. Take for example the compound "Holy Spirit"; it may be related to the federal state of Brazil, and it can be a surname, etc.

Expressions Syntactically Flexible are expressions that admit syntactic variations in the position of its components. The following types of variations are possible: verb-particle constructions, constructions consisting of a verb and one or more particles that are semantically idiosyncratic or compositional; decomposable idioms. The light-verb construction is a verb regarded as being semantically weak subject to a variability syntactic solution, including passivation. They are highly idiosyncratic, because there is a notorious difficulty in predicting which light-verb combines with which noun.

Institutionalized Expressions are compositional expressions (collocation), which vary morphologically or syntactically and that typically have a high statistic occurrence.

According to Moon (1998 cited by Villavicencio et al.) MWE are lexical units formed by a broad continuum between the compositional groups and non-compositional or idiomatic. In this context it is understood by those compositional expressions from the characteristics of these components which determine characteristics of the whole.

And non-compositional idioms whose meaning or set of words has nothing to do with the meaning of each part. Given these characteristics, in dealing with MWE as words separated by space, they will surely bring anomalies to the process of IR. Among the different approaches that deal with NLP, they highlight those dealing with MWE and use the symbolic methods by Calzolari et al. (2002) and a statistical approach by Evert and Krenn (2005). Both seek to interpret the textual content written in a natural language, but follow different paths to get results and computational costs of different contents. Thus the advantages and disadvantages of each method depend on the context for which they are being used. The symbolic approach seeks to find the meaning of syntactic, morphological and pragmatic texts based on a controlled dictionary of words and a set of rules aimed at interpretation. In this case, processing is strongly dependent on the language and the domain of the corpus. While the statistical approach seeks to give treatment to the text by recognizing behavior patterns based on the frequency of co-occurrence of words. The MWE are a set of words that co-occur with a frequency above chance.

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Calzolari et al. (2002, p. 1934) corroborate the classification presented by Sag (2002) and even include an "etc" at its end. That is, as the authors themselves define, MWE are used to describe different but related phenomena, which can be described as a sequence of words which act as a unit at any level of language analysis and which have some or all of the following behaviors: reduced syntactic and semantic transparency, reduction or absence of compositionality, more or less stable, capable of violation of any rule syntax; high degree of lexicalization (depending on pragmatic factors), high degree of conventionality. Also according to these authors, MWE are located at the interface between grammar and lexicon. They also have some of the causes of the difficulties encountered in theoretical and computational framework for the treatment of MWE, as the difficulty of establishing clear boundaries for the field of MWE, the lack of computational lexicons of reasonable size to assist in NLP, before the multilingual perspective, often can not find a direct lexical equivalence; generalization of lexical difficulty (general and terminology) to a specific context.

The work Cazolari et al. (2002) uses a focused approach in MWE that is productive on the one hand and, on the other shows that regularities that can be generalized to classes of words with similar properties. In particular they seek to find grammatical devices that allow the identification of new MWE motivated by the desire for recognition as possible in the automated acquisition of MWE. In this sense, the research of these authors studied in depth two types of MWE: support verbs and compound nouns (or nominal complex). For according to them these two types of MWE are at the center of the spectrum of compositional variation where the internal cohesion together with a high degree of variability in lexicalization and language-dependent variation can be observed.

The approach used by Evert and Krenn (2005) is based on the calculus of statistical measures of association of the words contained in the text. In empirical tests, these authors used a subset of eight million words extracted from a corpus consisting of a newspaper written in German. The proposed approach was divided into three steps. In the first extracts the tuples from the corpus source contain Lexical pronouns (P), nouns (N) and verbs (V). These data are grouped in pairs (N + P, V) and placed in a contingency table, represented by a three-dimensional structure, where each pair is disposed in a plane P + N V and the third axis is assigned to the frequency information represented by four cells. Thus a comparison is made between all pairs extracted from the lexical corpus with their sentences, accounting for each sentence, one of four possibilities: there are PN and V; there is PS, there is not V; there is not PS and there is V; there are not PS and V. That is, one unit is added whenever one of the possibilities occurs.

The second step the association measures are applied to the frequencies collected in the previous step. This process results in a list of pairs of MWE candidates with their association scores calculated and ordered from the most strongly associated to the less strongly associated. The "n" top candidates on the list are selected for use in the next step.

The third step is the evaluation of the list of MWE generated by a human expert.

Thus, the approach proposed by these authors is characterized by an extraction of semiautomatic MWE. In order to minimize the intellectual work of an expert, these authors propose the use of a technique of extracting a random sample, representative of the corpus rather than the complete set of documents.

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219 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors

Research conducted by Villavicencio et al. (2010) seeks to extract the MWE combining two different approaches: the approach and the approach based on associative lexical alignment. At first, the association measures are applied to all bigrams and trigrams generated from the corpus and the result of these measures is used for evaluation. The second approach draws MWE in an automated way based on the alignments of lexical versions of the same content written in Portuguese and English. To combine the results obtained, the authors used two approaches to Bayesian networks.

The statistical approach for the extraction of MWE through the co-occurrence of words in texts has been used in several recent works, among them: Pearce (2002); Kreen and Evert (2005); Pecina (2006); Ramisch (2009) and Villavicencio et al. (2010).

These studies use various statistical techniques that seek to identify MWE as a set of adjacent words that co-occur with a frequency greater than expected in a random sequence of words in a corpus. Thus the associative approach is nothing more than the use of a set of association measures that aim to identify the candidate expressions for MWE. Among the techniques used include: coefficient of Pearson Chi Square; Dice coefficient; Pointwise Mutual Information – PMI; Poisson Stirling among others.

The lexical approach alignment checks if MWE found in a document written in certain a language also occurs in the corresponding version written in another language.

In order to perform a review, the documents need to be aligned by matching the words expressed between the different versions in different languages. However, for the alignment to be possible, it is necessary that the documents are analyzed based on their morphology processed by a preprocessing tagging. Thus the parts of speech are used as additional information in the identification process of MWE. In the research carried out by Zhang et al. (2009) a method called Enhanced Mutual Information and Collocation Optimization (EMICO) is proposed to extract MWE focused on named entities. These compounds are characterized by being contiguous containing from two to six words describing more stable syntactic pattern concepts. These authors employ this technique in processing and text mining techniques, comparing it with traditional indexing vector space model speculating that the use of MWE for semantic interpretation of the text produces better results than the statistical and semantic models that deal with individual words.

In seeking to make sense of a text from their relevant parts, other strategies have been adopted. In this line the use of noun phrases stands out as search descriptors, addressed by the work of Kuramoto (1996) and Souza (2005) and researcher Maia (2010) who seeks to use the phrases to group documents. The method of identification of noun phrases uses an approach based on language, in the words of the text which are pre-labeled to identify them in grammatical classes as a basis for extracting phrases.

However, the identification of phrases requires an in-depth analytical processing of sentences which demands a comprehensive rules-based computer processing which dependens on the language. In the context of this research, which aims at seeking a test case of IR, through the use of parts of the text as semantically relevant keywords for the search process compared to a computational cost that makes possible the response time for text processing to online, we chose the use of MWE that are easier to obtain and language-independent. These aspects lead us to suppose that the proposed technique is more appropriate for the context to retrieve similar documents from a corpus of MWE extracted from a document used as a reference for the search. The goal is to get the semantic meaning of the document represented by the MWE and use them as descriptors of the search process.

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3 METHODOLOGY The purpose of this study is to test the automatic retrieval of documents from a corpus, from a document used as a reference, considering the intrinsic physical characteristics of textual content in order to compare the use of different techniques. In this sense, MWE will be extracted from a reference document for use with search keywords in a IR system. This methodology allows the user to search an alternative. In that, instead of informing keywords as part of the search, the user will be responsible for informing a document. In other words the search will be made from bigrams extracted from a document. This alternative strategy simplifies the user's work, which is known to use documents on the topic of interest to serve as the basis of the compared search in the recovery of similar documents.

Figure 1 shows a proposed software structure diagram which can be presented as a module of addition compared search, highlighted, which can be added to conventional systems of word search.

Figure 1 - Module of compared search integrated with a SRI. Source: Prepared by the authors.

According to Sarmento (2006), a text is not just a random jumble of words. The order of the words in the text is what makes sense. Therefore, the study of cooccurrence of words brings important information. This may indicate that the words are directly related by affinity or compositionality or indirectly by similarity. Therefore, the empirical base of linguistics is to find from the frequency of co-occurrences observeing significant dependencies between terms. Evert (2005 cited by Sarmento) points these four groups of measures: - Tests of statistical significance; - Coefficients of association; - Based on concepts of information theory; - Based on various heuristics.

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221 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors

To perform the experiment, two software components were implemented: One called Server and one called Client. The Server is responsible for indexing the corpus and providing a consultation service for information retrieval. The Client is responsible for receiving the reference document for MWE extraction search, sending a request to query and return the response with similar documents. This paper proposes a heuristic called Heudet to identify MWE. Then these tools are described in detail.

3.1 Converting a PDF document in the list of standardized terms For a document to be processed by the proposed application, it is necessary to be is in a text format, encoded in ASCII. That is, it is necessary to convert the binary format, typical of the software in which it was recorded, in a plaintext format. In this research all incoming documents are in PDF format, protected or not. To perform the conversion into text format, the TET PDF software was used. This software consists of a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) that was coupled in software components developed in C++ by the authors. The process of converting the PDF document page by page was performed in order to identify the header of the pages. To perform the segmentation of the PDF document pages, the Adolix software was used. All sub-steps of this process are executed by both software components drawn up for the experiment. Figure 2 shows an outline of the steps taken in this process.

Figure 2 - Process of converting documents in standardized terms.

Source: Prepared by the authors.

Following each of these substeps is presented in details.

3.1.1 Preliminary filtering of the contents of the documents After transforming the document text into PDF, preliminary filtering was performed in order to remove parts of the contents considered as noise. The adopted

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heuristic evaluates the content that occurs repeatedly in all the pages from the top of each page. This extract, called header, is filtered and therefore eliminated in the converted text. Another filtering process that is performed at this stage the removal of the references, to include terms such as: name of authors and works, which often lie outside the central theme of the document.

3.1.2 Segmenting the string into sentences After the elimination of the parts considered as noise, the goal in this substep is to perform parsing, ie, to process the string extracted from the document and separate the block into sentences and terms.

The accuracy of this process is of fundamental importance, so that an error does not propagate at this point in further processing. As described by Mikheev (2002, p.

290). Processing division of a text into sentences is a simple task in most cases. All it takes is to consider how separators characters: full stop, exclamation mark, question mark. However, there are some exceptions, for example, when the endpoint is used between numbers, abbreviations, or even when in both things at once. Therefore, some care should be taken, since an error in the separation of the sentences may generate failure to identify MWE. Take the example where an error in the process of separation of sentences leads to misidentification of MWE. When considering the sentences below as a single sentence, the term "information science" could be interpreted as MWE. While, in fact, there is no such a semantic meaning in the text, for the words and information sciences are not connected semantically; when considering the structure of the text, the fact that the terms are placed in separate sentences is take into account: On the internet we can find a lot of information. Science works to improve quality of life.

To handle these exceptions, we use a strategy similar to that adopted by Mikheev (2002) that considers the local context of the document and applies a small set of rules for making the disambiguation. However, in the context of this work these rules could be relaxed without affecting the final result. The process of separating the text into sentences and words to create the vocabulary words is known as tokenization.

Manning, Raghavan & Schütze (2009, p. 22-26) define tokenization as the task of receiving as input a given sequence of characters in a document and split it into parts called tokens, while discarding those characters that indicate the points of separation.

After the text is broken up into sentences, they must be broken into words in order to become or not a term in the vocabulary. The characters usually used to indicate the separation of the words are the comma, the hyphen and blank space. But they can not be considered as separators on an unrestricted basis. For example, the comma can be used to separate whole numbers from decimals in the European model of numerical representation, or the thousands in the Saxon model; the hyphen may be used to divide syllables of a word at the end of a line, or compounds that can be found in different spellings, in the case of the blank space, the problem occurs when it is used to separate the names, in which case the terms should not be separated because they made a semantic sense.

To mitigate these problems we used some strategies described below. In the case of the comma it is discarded, so the numerical representations are expressed only by numbers without separators. In the case of the hyphen in the Portuguese language such as: “infraestrutura1”, “infra-estrutura2” or “infra estrutura3”; by making a Google search 1

Under the new Portuguese orthographic agreement in effect as of 2009.

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223 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors

for three terms two different results are found. When searching for “infra-estrutura” or “infra estrutura”, approximately 3,960,000, links were found while “infraestrutura” found approximately 3,420,000 responses. Therefore this is still an open question. In this study we will ignore the hyphen, thus, words spelled with a hyphen will be treated as a single word, and syllable breaks of the dash, when removed, will regroup the word.

In the case of the blank space, the problem is found in the contents with proper nouns, such as “New York”, because the semantic meaning in this case must be made by the two words together, not as two separate entries in the vocabulary. In this work, this problem becomes irrelevant, because if these words are relevant in the context of the document, they will become a bigram and will be found only if the sequence in the document collection. Therefore, during the process of converting a text, a treatment was carried out byte by byte characters where the following tasks were performed: (1) To identify and convert all accented characters, which are represented by multibyte characters, the usual Portuguese, transforming them into non-accented characters while preserving the original spelling of the text of uppercase and lowercase letters, (2) to remove the hyphens, (3) to remove the dot (.) that is used to abbreviate words, (4) to remove the periods (.) and commas (,) used as separators of numbers, (5) to remove expressions such as "[...]" "(...)"; (6) Delete all ASCII bytes whose value is less than 1 or greater than 126. All these steps were performed in order to minimize the error parser separation of sentences.

Thus, the rules adopted to consider the existence of a delimiter sentence were: (1) If you find any of the following characters: question mark, exclamation point, (2) If after the (.) period there is a line breaking character, a new paragraph, end of a text or a capital letter. All characters used as separators are eliminated from sentences.

3.1.3 Decoding Acronyms A very common practice of writing, especially in science, is the use of abbreviations. Typically, the first appearance terms are shown in full with the letters that make up the acronym in each term presented in uppercase followed by the acronym itself with capital letters separated or not by a period between brackets. From this premise, in this sub step the goal is to identify acronyms in order to build a table of acronyms used in each document, and add to the part in full text whenever when the acronym occurs. This strategy is important to be adopted, since the content expressed in the text only as an acronym would not be interpreted as MWE. While in fact this kind of content is usually high in semantic content to express the meaning of the document, and when it is placed in full, depending on its frequency of occurrence, it makes this set of terms become MWE. 3.1.4 Segmentation sentences into terms In this sub step, the goal is to separate the sentences into terms in order to create the vocabulary of terms. Tokens, ie, the pieces that were targeted, normally go through a standardization process before they become a term of the vocabulary. Normalization aims to reduce the number of dictionary entries. In this sense all words are transformed into lowercase.

2 3

Spelled before the agreement.

Spelled incorrectly, but that could be found.

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3.1.5 Secondary Filtering – Stop Words In this substep, after breaking the documents into a word sequence, a new filter is executed. The goal is to remove the vocabulary words that appear very frequently in all documents and, therefore, have little power of discrimination. Manning, Raghavan & Schßtze (2009, p. 27). defined stop words as common words that seem to have little value to select the corresponding documents. These words usually belong to the class of articles, prepositions and some conjunctions. These authors explain that a strategy that can be used to determine the list of stop words is to count the number of times each term appears in the collection of documents, and to verify, often manually, which the semantic relevance of the term is in relation to field of documents being indexed. Those considered relevant are included in the list of stop words. For the purpose of this paper the use of the list of stop words contributes positively. For example content, "information science", treated without the filter would be a stop word trigram, after filtering it, it would be transformed into a bigram. After removal of the stop word, the size of each returned term is verified after performing the break of the sentence into words, and those with only one character are the discards.

3.2 Server features This software component aims to index the corpus and provide a document recovery service accessed via the network through a number of IP and communication port. This component performs the following steps: 1. to convert the document into standard terms (described in Section 4.1); 2. to indexing terms; 3. to provide a recovery service of documents by searching for keywords.

Steps 2 and 3 will be detailed below.

3.2.1 Index terms The purpose of this step is to build an inverted list of standardized terms pointing to the documents in which they are referenced. Additionally, we use the technique described by positional index of Manning, Raghavan & SchĂźtze (2009, p. 4143). This technique consists in adding to the inverted structure list the position or positions controlled from a numerical sequence containing the position where the term has been found in the document. That is, how much of the sentence and how many words within the sentence. This allows to perform searches where it is desired to find an expression containing consecutive terms of a single sentence, as it is necessary for identifying MWE. It should be noted that in the search time, it is necessary to perform the search, separately, each of the terms of expression, and from the result returned for each one of them it is possible to verify if they are consecutive. Figure 3 shows a sketch of the data structure used by this technique. Where: {t1, t2, t3, ..., tn} represent the vocabulary terms; {d1, d2, d3, ..., dn} represent the documents; {p1, p2, p3, ..., pn } represent the position of the sentence and word within the sentence in which a particular term was found in a document, and, {r1, r2, r3, ..., rn} represent a reference to where the document is stored.

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225 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors

Terms t1

Documents d1 {p1,p2,…pn }

t2 t3

d1 {p1,p2,…pn }

d2 {p1,p2,…pn }

d3 {p1,p2,…pn } d3 {p1,p2,…pn }

tn

d1

r1

d2

r2

d3

r3

dn

rn

Figure 3 - Outline of the data structure used in the inverted list with a positioned index.

Source: Prepared by the authors.

3.2.2 Provide consultation service After the entire corpus has been processed and the documents are indexed in the volatile memory of the computer, the function of this stage is to provide a consultation service through a communication protocol between the two software components, the Server and Client. The communication protocol consists of sending the client a list of all bigrams extracted from the reference document search and return the response by the server with a reference link to similar documents found in the corpus. For each bigram the search for each of its separate terms will be processed. The results will be analyzed by checking the terms of each bigram found in the same sentence of the same document and adjacent. In this case the coefficient will be computed as relevant, otherwise the item response is discarded so that the next item can be analyzed.

3.3 Client features This software component aims to consult the corpus from a document (PDF), which related documents exist. That is, a search process which will be extracted compared in all MWE found in the base document expressed using bigrams that will be sent to the service provided by the Server. Requisitions with the descriptors are sent by Client via a communication protocol TCP / IP network established via the Server. In the same way the answers are returned to the Client. This component performs the following actions: 1. to receive the document used as a reference search; 2. to extract MWE from the documents and generate a list of bigrams; 3. to send the request to the Server with the list of bigrams; 4. to return the search result.

3.3.1 Receiving the document used in reference search

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At this stage the goal is to develop a web application that serves as end-user interface compared to the process of document search. To develop the interface the PHP language was used and the software component created is called "Search". This interface is in charge of receiving the document and uploading it in order to make the call request to the Client through the document as a parameter processing. The PDF document will be converted into standardized terms (as described in Section 4.1). Figure 4 shows a sketch of the interface screen.

Figure 4 - Display the prototype, which reports the documents used in compared search.

Source: Prepared by the authors.

3.3.2 Extract the bigrams At this stage, the standard terms extracted from documents used as references for the search are identified by number and position of the sentence in the sentence in order to organize them into a data structure in memory that allows the extraction of MWE. The proposed structure is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 - Representation of the data structure created to extract MWE. Source: Prepared by the authors.

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227 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors

To understand this structure, we will consider the document, the string is composed of S = { S1, S2, S3 } sentences shown below: S1  John ate a candy.

S2  Pedro ate a candy.

S3  John ate an apple.

By considering that the reference document contains only the S1, S2 and S3 sentences, after performing the segmentation of text into sentences and words the result is a set of standardized terms V = { T1, T2, T3, T4, T5 }, as shown in table 1.

Table 1 – Standardized terms Identification Terms T1 John T2 ate T3 candy T4 Peter T5 Apple Source: Prepared by the authors.

And finally, we consider that set of nodes N = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 } representing each of the nine words of the text being arranged within the proposed structure.

Because the processing is performed in the sequence in which the sentences are read. By reading the S1 sentence, the terms T1, T2 e T3 are processed referenced by three nodes, 1, 2 e 3 respectively. By reading the S2 sentence, the terms T4, T2 e T3 are processed referenced by nodes 4, 5, 6 and so on.

After all sentences processed, the proposed structure allows us to identify what the existing phrases are in the string and the which sentences in which a term occurs.

To extract MWE, the algorithm goes through the sentences checking each word and which its adjacent words are: then there is the frequency of repetition at which adjacent terms occur. MWE with a frequency (Fr), number of repetitions, from a given parametrized value are considered as relevant. In this experiment we used three as the value of this parameter. The following is a pseudo-code with the steps of this process. while (there are sentences) do term = nextTerm(Sentence) while (there are Adjacent) do Adjacent = findAdjacent() if unprocessed(Term) totAdjacent = countAdj(Term) if totAdjacent >= Nr Insert(Term, Adjacent) endif endif endwhile endwhile

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One point that should be highlighted is that although this processing is used to extract only bigrams, it does not mean that expressions with n-grams are not considered.

In practice, the process can handle any number of consecutive terms that have a frequency equal to or above the observed quantity defined in the parameter. This can be done for any set of n-grams converted into pairs of bigrams. In the following example the Trigrams "University of Model Example" is transformed into two bigrams: "university model" and “model example". The term "of" is dropped in order to function as a stop word.

3.3.3 Send the request to the server with the list of bigrams At this stage, the list of bigrams that expresses the semantic meaning of the document, in which one seeks to find similar documents, will be submitted through a request to the Server via a network communications protocol.

The list contains the bigrams and after the receipt by the Server, it will be split into pairs of terms. Peer-to-peer, each term is searched in the corpus to produce a list with the answers and documents in which these terms were found. The responses are identified by document number, sentence number and position of the word in the sentence. Thus, each MWE will be validated according to the responses received. The documents whose answers to the terms of MWE are not adjacent are discarded. The remaining responses are modulated according to the frequency of occurrence and the structural coefficient (Sc) parameterized according to the shape of the spelling of the word in the text. The answers will eventually be sorted by relevance and presented only those corresponding to a percentage, defined by parameter, among the best responses. In other words, a cutoff point will be used where only those documents with better results than the percentage reported are to be presented as a response.

This processing can be better understood by observing the algorithm shown below, considering:      

C corpus containing the documents.

B is the set of bigrams extracted from the reference document of the search.

Sca e Scb is structural coefficient of the term "a" and the term "b" ,respectively.

B = {(t1a, t1b), (t2a, t2b), ..., (tna, tnb)} – Bigrams formed by n pairs of terms.

Ra = {(d1a,s1a, p1a), ..., (dna,sna, pna)} – Answers search conducted of the i-ith term tIa in the collection of documents C. Returns containing the triple where the terms were found: d = documents, s = sentence, p = position.

Rb = {(d1b,s1b, p1b), ..., (dnb,snb, pnb)} – Same as before, only referring to the term "b" of the bigram.

The triple each of the terms "a" and "b" of bigram are compared to verify if they are adjacent.

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1 for x from 1 to n do 2 Ra = search(txa, C) 3 Rb = search(txb, C) 4 do 5 if (dxa < dxb) then 6 next dxa 7 else 8 if (dxa > dxb) then 9 next dxb 10 endif 11 endif 12 until dxa = dxb 13 do 14 if (sxa < sxb) then 15 next sxa 16 else 17 if (sxa > sxb) then 18 next sxb 19 endif 20 endif 21 until sxa = sxb 22 if (pxa adjacent pxb) then 23 weightDoc[I] = weightDoc[I] + txa * Sca + txb * Scb 24 endif 25 endfor 26 sort(weightDoc) 27 showRelevant(documents) 3.3.4 Display the search result At this stage the client will receive the Server response containing a reference search to access all documents that were considered similar. A page with these responses in order of relevance will be displayed allowing the user to query view the full document from a click on its reference. Figure 6 shows an outline of the screen response.

Figure 6-screen response with the documents found.

Source: prepared by the authors

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As can be seen, the screen displays four columns in the interface response: similarity coefficient, the link with the physical address of the document in the corpus, the first two hundred characters of text after being partially converted and filtered, and an icon to access the document complete.

3.4 Evaluation of bigrams extracted To perform the empirical tests in a corpus composed of full articles was evaluated, published in major scientific meeting of the area of Information Science (ENANCIB) of 2010. All documents were obtained in Portable Document Format (PDF) and stored in a computerized system of files organized in folders and subfolders in a hierarchical way by the Working Groups (WG). The total corpus of 193 articles was typically containing between 20 to 25 pages, totaling 687,490 normalized terms, 7970 was different.

Figure 7 shows the frequency distribution of co-occurrence of bigrams found in the corpus.

Figure 7 - Representation of the data structure created to extract MWE. Source: Prepared by the authors.

After the standard corpus is indexed into memory, and it is necessary to compare the result of MS Heudet extracted by the technique proposed by the authors with the software NSP, extracted through thirteen different statistical techniques shown in Table 2. For each document of the corpus, fourteen files were generated with MWE, one for

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231 Information retrieval system using Multiwords Expressions (MWE) as descriptors

each technique. The data files have been loaded into the MySQL database in order to facilitate the comparison of the MWE extracted by different techniques.

Table 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; List of statistical association measures implemented by NSP. Number Measure Statistical Association (NSP) 01 Log-likelihood Ratio 02 Pointwise Mutual Information 03 Mutual Information 04 Poisson Stirling Measure 05 Left Fisher 06 Right Fisher 07 Fisher Twotailed Test 08 Phi Coeficcient 09 Tscore 10 Personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chi Square Test 11 Coeficiente Dice 12 Jaccard Coeficient 13 Odds Ratio Source: Prepared by the authors.

4

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

The result of the comparison processing of the techniques is shown in Table 3. It is observed that all the techniques of statistical measures of association returned a similar number of MWE, an average of 15,063, although the relevance coefficient obtained by the techniques are different. While Heudet drew 14,755, and 14,343 of that total are common to the combined results of the thirteen measures taken by the NSP. Column (A) shows the total values of MWE extracted by fourteen different techniques.

Column (B) shows the related quantities extracted from MWE, having one or more of their terms in accordance with one character, an average of 155 cases. These cases were discarded for technical Heudet. Therefore, these values are subtracted to NSP and values shown in column (C). Column (D) shows the amounts of the common MWE found when comparing Heudet with each of the techniques of the NSP. Finally in column (E), the net difference of the extracted MWE is presented by comparing Heudet with each of the techniques of the NSP. An average of 565 cases, and these are related to two situations: The first 223 cases corresponding to the difference between the average net values extracted by the NSP (14,908) and the amount extracted by the Heudet technique (14, 755), involving a gain in the identification of MWE compared to other NSP techniques, and the second, 343 cases drawn, mainly corresponding to MWE, bordering points of adjacent sentences. These cases were discarded by the Heudet technique because, in order for them to be considered as MWE, it is necessary that the bigrams are in the same textual element, the same sentence. This strategy is not adopted by other statistical techniques to consider the text as a bag of words.

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Table 3 – Results of extraction of MWE. (A) (B) (D) (C) (E) Technical Quantity of MWE Noise Commum A–B C–D extracted with heudet 15054 155 14899 14324 575 Odds 15055 155 14900 14329 571 X2 15062 154 14908 14344 564 Os 15063 155 14908 14338 570 Jaccard 15063 154 14909 14345 564 Ll 15063 153 14910 14345 565 Tscore 15064 155 14909 14338 571 Phi 15064 155 14909 14339 570 Dice 15065 158 14907 14364 543 Twotailed 15065 158 14907 14365 542 Lfisher 15067 159 14908 14333 575 Pmi 15068 154 14914 14349 565 Tmi 15068 154 14914 14351 563 Rfisher 15063 155 14908 14343 565 Average 14755 Heudet Source: Prepared by the authors.

That is, 14,343 corresponding to 96.21% of the extracted MWE are identical regardless of the technique you used. 223, corresponding to 1.5%, are different MWE, exclusive of the Heudet technique, which can be regarded as an accurate gain. The 342 remaining 2.29% of the corresponding MWE extracted by different NSP can be considered as noise that shows inaccuracy. The processing time for the extraction of the entire corpus, through the Heudet technique, consumed 197 seconds running on a UCP coreTM 2 Duo T6400 2.0 Ghz notebook. Therefore, we conclude that the deterministic technique used for this specific purpose has advantages in terms of accuracy, simplicity and performance. Figure 8 shows an outline of the result.

Multiword expressions extracted by Corpus

223342 Commum NSP Exclusive Heudet Exclusive 14343

Figure 8 - Comparison of MWE obtained by various techniques.

Source: Prepared by the authors.

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5

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE WORK

The result obtained by Heudet technique is promising, because it showed better responses than those obtained for thirteen different statistical techniques exclusively.

This can be explained by checking that statistical techniques do not consider the physical structure of the document during the extraction process of MWE. For them the text is a sequence of words in sentences that do not exist. The results could be further enhanced with the creation of new heuristics that aim to identify the inherent characteristics of the physical structure of the document that may assist in identifying MWE, further improving the results.

REFERENCES BERGER, Peter L., LUCKMANN, Thomas. A construção da realidade. Petrópolis: Floriano de Souza Fernandes, 1985.

CALZOLARI, Nicoletta FILLMORE, Charles J.; GRISHMAN, Ralph, IDE. Nancy; LENCI, Alessandro ; MACLEOD, Catherine ; ZAMPOLLI, Antonio 2002. Towards best practice for multiword expressions in computational lexicons. Em Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2002), pp. 1934–1940, Las Palmas, Canary Islands.

DIAS, Gaël ; LOPES, José Gabriel Pereira ; GUILLORÉ, Sylvie. Mutual expectation: a measure for multiword lexical unit extraction. In Proceedings of Vextal, 1999.

EVERT, Stefan ; KREEN, Brigitte. 2005. Using small random samples for the manual evaluation of statistical association measures. Computer Speech and Language, 19(4):450–466.

KURAMOTO, Hélio. Uma abordagem alternativa para o tratamento e a recuperação da informação textual: os sintagmas nominais. Ciência da Informação, Brasília v. 25, n. 2, mai/ago, p. 182-196, 1996.

MAIA, Luiz Cláudio ; SOUZA, Renato Rocha. Uso de sintagmas nominais na classificação automática de documentos eletrônicos. Perspectivas em Ciência Informação, Belo Horizonte, v. 15, p. 154-172 , 2010.

MANNING, Christopher D.; RAGHAVAN, Prabhakar ; SCHÜTZE, Hinrich. An introduction to information retrieval. Ed. Cambridge online, 2009.

MIKHEEV, Andrei. Periods, capitalized words, etc. Computacional Linguistics, 28(3), 289-318, 2002.

PEARCE, Darren. A comparative evaluation of collocation extraction techniques. Em of the Third (LREC 2002), Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain, May, 2002.

PECINA, Pavel ; SCHLESINGER, Pavel. Combining Association Measures for Collocation Extraction. In ACL’06, page 652, 2006.

PORTELA, Ricardo Jorge Rosa ; MAMEDE Nuno ; BATISTA, Jorge. Multiword Identificação. In Terceiro Simpósio de Informáctica Portugal pp. 110-199, 2011.

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RANCHOLD, Elisabete M. O lugar das expressões ‘fixas’ na gramática do Português. in Castro, I. and I. Duarte (eds.), Razão e Emoção, vol. II, Lisbon: INCM, pp. 239-254, 2003.

RAMISCH, Carlos. Multiword terminology extraction for domain specific documents.

Dissertação – Mathématiques Appliqueées, École Nationale Supérieure d’Informatiques, Grenoble, 2009.

RUSSELL, Stuart J; NORVIG, Peter. Inteligência Artificial. Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2004. 1021p.

SAG, Ivan A. ; BALDWIN, Thimothy ; BOND, Francis ; COPESTAKE, Ann ; FLICKINGER, Dan. Multiword expression: a pain in the neck for nlp. Em Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing CICLing-2002), volume 2276 of (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), pp.

1–15, London, UK. Springer-Verlag.

SARMENTO, Luís. Simpósio Doutoral Linguateca 2006. Disponível http://www.linguateca.pt/documentos/SimposioDoutoral2005.html: out. 2011

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SILVA, Ferreira J. LOPES Pereira G. A local maxima method and fair dispersion normalization for extracting multi-word units from corpora. (1999). Sixth meeting on Mathematics of Language, pp. 369-381.

SOUZA, Renato Rocha. Sistemas de recuperação de informações e mecanismos de busca na web: panorama atual e tendências. Perspectivas em Ciência Informação, Belo Horizonte, v. 11, n. 2, Aug. 2006.

VIGOTSKY, Lev Semenovich. Pensamento e Linguagem. Edição eletrônica: Ed Ridendo Castigat, 1987.

VILLAVICENCIO, Aline ; RAMISCH, Carlos; MACHADO, André; CASELI, Helena de Medeiros; FINATTO, Maria José. Identificação de expressões multipalavra em domínios específicos. Linguamática, v. 2, n. 1, p. 15-33, abril, 2010.

ZHANG, Wen; YOSHIDA, Taketoshi; TANG, Xijin; HO, Tu-baq. Improving effectiveness of mutual information for substantival multiword expression extraction.

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 235-264 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200003

THE 3C COOPERATION MODEL APPLIED TO THE CLASSICAL REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS Vagner Luiz Gava IPT - Institute for Technological Research of the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil Mauro de Mesquita Spinola Antonio Carlos Tonini José Cardenas Medina University of Sao Paulo, Brazil ______________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT Aspects related to the users' cooperative work are not considered in the traditional approach of software engineering, since the user is viewed independently of his/her workplace environment or group, with the individual model generalized to the study of collective behavior of all users. This work proposes a process for software requirements to address issues involving cooperative work in information systems that provide distributed coordination in the users' actions and the communication among them occurs indirectly through the data entered while using the software. To achieve this goal, this research uses ergonomics, the 3C cooperation model, awareness and software engineering concepts.

Action-research is used as a research methodology applied in three cycles during the development of a corporate workflow system in a technological research company. This article discusses the third cycle, which corresponds to the process that deals with the refinement of the cooperative work requirements with the software in actual use in the workplace, where the inclusion of a computer system changes the users’ workplace, from the face to face interaction to the interaction mediated by the software. The results showed that the highest degree of users' awareness about their activities and other system users contribute to a decrease in their errors and in the inappropriate use of the system.

Keywords: Software Requirements, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 3C Cooperation Model and Awareness.

_____________________________________________________________________________________ Manuscript first received/Recebido em 15/01/2012 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 15/03/2012 Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência

Vagner Luiz Gava, IPT - Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas do Estado de SP, São Paulo, Brasil Email: vlgava@ipt.br Mauro de Mesquita Spinola, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil E-mail: mauro.spinola@usp.br Antonio Carlos Tonini, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil E-mail: antonio_tonini@vanzolini.org.br José Cardenas Medina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil E-mail: ppcardenas777@gmail.com Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

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1. INTRODUCTION Due to its nature, cooperative work depends on people`s will to work together; it cannot be prescribed (Daniellou & Six, 2003), and once information systems are introduced, the environment and the activity are thoroughly transformed. In such a case, the work with the new system will differ from the current one and even if the existing work goes through an accurate analysis, there is no guarantee of a possibility to forecast completely its future utilization.

This matter is especially important when there is the production of information systems which must be used in an environment that will replace processes involving cooperative work.

Sommerville (2010) mentions the importance of using alternative methods while finding requisites for an information system with specific regards to the following situations: - Software requirements come from the way people work (real work) rather than whatever the processes definition recommends for the work (prescribed work); - Software requirements come from the cooperation and perception of other people`s activities.

In the traditional approach for software development, the most frequently used hypothesis regards models that are centred in one single user (seen as standard and independent on the environment or group in which it is inserted); they are generalized for the study of collective behaviour involving all the users.

In order to be possible to address the paradox of design (Daniellou, 2007) - when developing a computer system that will replace part of an IS, it is necessary to have this system available in advance, and in order to conceive it appropriately, it is essential to be aware about the future activities in the first place; a process that deals with this matter must be established, essentially considering the fact that people work together to achieve several goals established and also that users have inherent difficulties to discuss effectively on how this cooperation happens (Sommerville, 2010).

The process proposed for this study uses ergonomic techniques, software prototyping, the 3C cooperation model and awareness and classical software engineer concepts with the purpose of dealing with collective and cooperative working issues which must be considered in the project of a computer system. To do so, the action research methodology is applied while the system is found in development.

This article allows us to answer the following question: -

How can the 3C Cooperation Model and Awareness be applied to the elicitation of requirements for cooperative work?

We accept as a premise that conventional methods used for software development do not deal properly with the collective dimension of the work in the information system, neither in its conception nor in its improvements/corrections.

The process is applied in the phase of cooperative workflow implementation in a big company of technological research in Brazil. It shows how to consider the change of the face to face interaction for an interaction intermediated by the software with its respective results.

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237 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

This article is organized as follows: first of all, the definition of the main concepts to provide the basis for the proposed process, and then these concepts are logically linked according to the proposed process. The results are presented through action research based on the given theory. Finally, they are discussed and we call attention to some recommendations to carry on the work.

2. MAIN CONCEPTS This section is to define the main concepts underlying the proposed process. It is initially through the conceptualization of collective work, in 2.1 and then, in 2.2 we focus on questions of how to use prototyping. In 2.3, we borrow the the 3C Cooperation Model concept and 2.4 presents the awareness concept and its relation with the 3C model. Finally, 2.5 and 2.6 define model concepts and software requirements, respectively, which were used in this paper.

2.1 Collective work Once the collective dimension of the work makes the situation more flexible, more complicated and less deterministic (for a given observer) regarding interrelations (interactions, retroactions, interferences, etc.), the systemic complexity increases by manifesting the fact that the whole presents qualities and properties which are not found in the perspective of parts, in isolated consideration. Also because parts have qualities and properties that disappear under the aspect of organizational coercions of IS (Morin, 2002).

A new order of complexity comes when the existence and maintenance of its diversity are not separable from interrelations with the environment, interrelations in which the IS gets outside matter/energy in a superior degree of complexity (which are autonomous and dependent at the same time): information (Morin, 2002).

The cooperation term, which is about dealing with working matters, may be defined in a wider way regarding two or more people cooperating when working on a joint task with a certain objective. In order to accomplish this goal, actions from both parts are necessary in a way that cooperation means common operation with the purpose of having an adjustment through new matching operations as well as reciprocity or complementarities (Piaget, 1996).

The definition used in this paper is given by Dejours (2005, p. 93): â&#x20AC;&#x153;cooperation is a coordinated conduct defined as the action to join a common task. Cooperation assumes to be somewhere where single contributions converge and dependency relationships among parts get solid at the same timeâ&#x20AC;?1.

The author highlights that cooperation refers to collective work and it is a coordinated conduct that enables superior and supplementary developments in relation to individual developments.

Cooperation does not idealize the human operator because it regards the integration of differences among people articulating each worker`s specific abilities and compensating possible single flaws. According to the author, reliability, safety and the job quality are directly linked to the quality of cooperation that may be able to 1

TN: My own translation.

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compensate failures concerning the organization of a prescribed job and restrictions of human developments.

The individual integrated to an IS, in which there is a distribution of competences, tasks, and roles, needs integrating processes (coordination, communication, organization/cooperation). The duality between the whole and the parts, between unification and distribution, between homogeneity and heterogeneity are rarely taken into account for methods of analysis and conception of computer systems (Erceau, Chaudron, Ferber, & Bouron, 1994). This case is much more detailed in item 4, where integrating processes will be associated to cooperative work of a given group and focused by implementing software.

2.2 Prototyping When developing software, a prototype corresponds to a version of the system which is available right in the first steps of a development process. Functional prototyping, according to Boar (1985), implements parts of the system requirements through the construction of a prototype that performs a real behaviour of this system (by algorithm implementation and databank) which can also use tools especially built for the production of this kind of prototype (functional prototyping is used in cycle 3 of this research).

Afterwards, this prototype is discarded for the next step which is the effective development of the system in accordance with a traditional sequence (analysis, project, implementation and tests) holding a set of well refined requirements.

This work employs the term of incremental or evolutionary prototyping as a synonym of incremental development (the prototype is not discarded but it evolves to reach stakeholders` requirements).

On the other hand, the non-functional prototyping (used for cycle 2 of this research) attains the stakeholders` behaviour and the system by interactions and interactions by them through a set of graphic interfaces simulating the real behaviour of the system (without the algorithms and databank implementation).

The use of system prototypes (functional or not) provides several advantages (Boar, 1985; Kotonya & Sommerville, 1998; Leffingwell, 2003):  Distance reduction among the project participants: communication is a crucial development problem . Even when someone knows what they want, there are always changes whenever these needs become requirements;  Increase in the agents` participation and interest: complex systems which involve several areas of one company claim for commitment, agreement and consensus among several agents in order to have them operating correctly;  Permission of measures according to the size of functionalities through function point analysis: from the function identification of a given type and transaction type and also a sketch of the system data model, it is possible to calculate function points, from the very beginning of the system and its refinement during several development cycles;  It is a vehicle to validate requirements which enables to test its interfaces from early stages.

Regarding the user interface, according to Pressman (2009), prototyping is the only practical way to validate whatever has been projected.

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239 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

2.3 The 3C Model 2.3.1 Introduction CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) is the field of study that investigates how people work together using computer technology. Typically, CSCW applications include e-mail, videoconference, chat systems, interactions among multiple individuals, shared applications in real time, notification systems, and support perception.

Groupware is a supporting technology for the interaction among participants of a working group and normally considered a synonym of CSCW. This technology has been a lot diffused to model distributed systems using digital media and computer nets (Fuks, Raposo, Gerosa, Pimentel, Filipo & Lucena, 2011).

The 3C cooperation model used in this research comes from article Ellis, Gibbs and Rein (1991) and is supported by the conception that to cooperate, members of a group (C) communicate, (C), coordinate and (C) collaborate (3Cs). As we can see Figure 1, there is a cycle indicating that people must communicate to coordinate their working efforts and collaborate for one single objective.

For cooperation, communication is necessary; it can be directly or through information attained within the environment where the work takes place. There is stimulus provided by awareness information (2.4) in each relationship and they enable a sharing understanding to happen around the collaboration object. The object means goals and objectives established for a task conclusion or even for the whole job (Assis, 2000). enables

Collaboration

Coordination

presupposes

provides elements for

Communication

Figure 1 - Cooperation models Source: Ellis et. al (1991) & Fuks, Raposo, Gerosa, Pimentel, Filipo and Lucena ( 2007) Despite the separation of these activities for analysis purposes, communication, coordination and collaboration are not carried out in tight and isolated way; they are performed continuously and iteratively while the group work takes place (Fuks et al., 2007). Tasks come from commitments dealt with during the communication process, managed by coordination and carried out during collaboration. With the awareness mechanism (2.4), the individual gets feedback from their actions and feed through their co-workers actions.

Cooperation is a joint operation of group members in a shared space that performs tasks when generating and manipulating collaboration objects while tasks are

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being carried out. At the collaboration time, it is necessary to renegotiate and make decisions concerning unexpected situations and this requires new rounds of communication and coordination.

Before the task being effectively performed, the group gets organized and articulated, for instance. For such an activity there are also specific needs of cooperation; they are different from necessities that happen during the task execution.

Individuals who plan it may not be the same who perform it as it normally happens in assembly lines where activities are planned and later individuals performs their tasks without any kind of interaction with one another. In cooperation, the plan is dynamically renegotiated and it is not possible to separate thoroughly coordination from collaboration. In the course of cooperation among individuals, they learn and refine working processes renegotiating initial plans and intercalating actions and negotiations (Gerosa, 2006).

2.3.2 Instantiation of 3Cs models in cooperative systems - CSCW Here we will present 3Cs interrelations that illustrate how different application domains lead to different combinations of cooperation dimensions in which their respective cooperative systems need somehow to reflect in their projects. In this section, three types of 3Cs instantiations (occurrences) will be presented and the instantiation for other kinds of CSCW systems is possible, as for example, networking websites, media spaces and family calendars (Fuks et al, 2007) The first instantiation of the 3C model focuses on the group work domain (Figure 2) in which conservation is targeted to action: as communication happens, people negotiate and make decisions; while coordination happens, they deal with conflicts and organize their activities in a way that they avoid a waste of communication and efforts of collaboration. This necessity of decision-making and renegotiation regarding unexpected situations that happen during the collaboration process demands a new round of communication which will therefore demand coordination to reorganize tasks to be performed all along the collaboration process. This is the case of a service debate.

generates engagements managed by

Communication

Coordination

(conversation for action)

(deals with conflicts) promotes

promotes

mediates

mediates

Awareness demands

mediates

promotes

organizes tasks to

Collaboration (common space between tasks)

Figure 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 3Cs interrelation in conversation for action Source: Fuks et al. (2007)

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241 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

Figure 3 shows a workflow. When performing pre-defined tasks by a workflow, the group members feel they need to change whatever was previously arranged. A counterexample is the classic industrial assembly line where employees are not expected to negotiate execution in respect to next tasks based on attained results of previous executions.

organizes tasks to

Coordination

Collaboration

(sequence of activities)

(performs activities) promotes

promotes

mediates

mediates

Awareness demands

changes engagements mediates

promotes

Communication (renegotiation)

Figure 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 3Cs interrelations in adaptive workflow systems Source: Fuks et al. (2007) Finally, another instantiation about the three dimension of the 3C model is presented; it characterizes command and control (Figure 4). Here coordination is a supervision fact that inspects the group production and command changes. An example where command and control are collapsed is in the oar where the captain observes the development of a rower group and requests for more effort.

orders

Communication

Collaboration

(command)

(production) promotes

promotes

mediates

mediates

Awareness demands

mediates

promotes

changes contexts

Coordination (control)

Figure 4 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 3Cs interrelations in Command and Control Source: Fuks et al. (2007) These cycles show the interactive nature of cooperation. They also highlight the 3Cs interactions among themselves. These interactions are mediated through awareness information available in the environment itself, and they are consequently influenced by each dimension of cooperation (Fuks et al, 2007).

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2.4 Awareness in cooperative work supported by computers 2.4.1 Introduction While the interaction between people and the environment within a face-to-face situation seems natural and considering senses as vision and hearing fully available, the situation gets less clear when there is a trial to provide support to perception in the virtual environment (Fuks & Assis, 2001). These environments tend to hide several pieces of information that would be available in a face-to-face meeting.

Another aspect to be acknowledged is the relation among people within a cooperation environment. This environment must facilitate interaction understanding among participants in a way that individuals manage to comprehend events and foresee possible necessities. The environment must also enable interactions to happen in an appropriate way; this means that information must be provided in an organized way to prevent erroneous data interpretation (Assis, 2000).

Relevant perception information must be seen, how it can be generated, where perception elements will be necessary and in which way these elements should be presented. It must be carefully considered that the elements really assist cooperation instead of making it more difficult.

2.4.2 Awareness For this paper, awareness is defined as consciousness about the contextualization of individual activities through comprehension of activities performed by other people (even when they are not directly communicating); it refers to being acquainted with group activities, to knowing what happened, what has been happening and/or what might happen besides the knowledge about the meaning of this work and the group. In summary: awareness means comprehension about the total status of the system including past activities, current situation and future options (Brinck & Mcdaniel, 1997; Pinheiro, Lima & Borgwe, 2001; Santos, Tedesco & Salgado, 2011).

This awareness is crucial for coordination with other individuals in cooperative tasks where there is not always a direct communication and it can even refer to indirect ways of communication as, for instance, deductions or suppositions about what the other person is arguing based on transmitted information or used gestures in the space they share.

It is a complicated situation for distributed computer systems (used by several users in different kinds of environment). Resources for this kind of information are poor if compared to resources of a face-to-face scenario whose interaction mechanisms are different than the usual ones. As a result, working together with software intermediation, which is based on digital and distributed technology, apparently may seem inefficient and weary if compared to face-to-face work. This is an important factor of awareness for the cooperation flow and normality (Santos, Tedesco & Salgado, 2011).

2.4.3 Awareness and 3C model This section aims to draw a parallel between the necessity of attention and science in order to promote a task understanding of a piece of information or an objective inside the working environment as well as fundamental concepts of the 3C model groupware.

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Awareness and communication Communication may be understood as a mean to share information. It can happen in distinct levels and different ways. The relevance of information established between the communicator and receptor depends on the context into which it has been inserted and on inherent rules for the establishment of communication, appropriate means, pertinent information, and other factors (Calv達o, Pimentel & Fuks, 2011).

Synchronous communication is understood as communication in real time where stimuli are noticed almost at the same time they are accomplished; asynchronous communication is where information is not noticed at the same time it is transmitted (Santos, Tedesco & Salgado, 2011).

When cooperative work happens through software, there is a change in the faceto-face scenario for communication, anywhere and anytime. Besides, there is the creation of a new and more generic domain compared to the conversation one; the communication domain presenting new vehicles for information transmission and new contexts for knowledge sharing.

Structures of a language used in this communication must be present for the understanding of the transmitted content. To do so, however, the knowledge of using new media is necessary and they become part of the communication domain.

Awareness and coordination It is crucial that each member is aware about the working progress of their colleagues when decisions and results depend on the integration of efforts from different group members, as for example: whatever is necessary for an accomplishment, preliminary results, etc. Thus, an information system that supports cooperative work must provide information to its participants about what must be done and actions the colleagues have been doing.

The term awareness information is used to describe this monitoring of activity progression or group production constituting one context for individual work whose comparison are activities of the rest of group (Dourish & Belloti, 1992). This context is used to guarantee that contributions established are appropriated for group activities and the process of cooperative work. Without this context, individuals cannot measure the quality of their own work in respect to the group objectives and progresses.

Awareness information must be also introduced whenever someone needs to know what must be done in order to proceed with their work; this kind of information is not always associated to working knowledge about the work of the rest of the group. In this case, it is necessary to indicate which steps should be taken through some communication mechanisms or through the availability of some repository that holds this kind of information in the environment.

Thus, awareness channel implicit to this mechanism must offer some written or spoken information, some icons, diagrams, photos, etc. Awareness information generated by communication within a working environment will be useful for group coordination if it is presented in a clear and ordered way.

Besides of comprehending exchanged information, members of a working group need to be engaged with the work. This means that actions must be coordinated in a way that there are no losses in the communication effort; this would make cooperation more difficult. Shared knowledge of a certain situation will happen if the working group

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presents equivalent expectations related to the actions that must be carried out (Fuks & Assis, 2001).

Expectations are interpretations of the necessary awareness information for an understanding of the situation and for some evaluation like the development of the established goals of the cooperation object.

There will be new ways to manage information in virtual working environments.

Man-computer interaction must be taken into account when the data presentation to be evaluated by users is happening as well as during all the conception of this environment where there are several elements that must be regarded for this interface construction as much as the construction of utilities towards this interaction (Assis, 2000).

Awareness in collaboration Interaction among individuals or between one individual and objects of some working environment does not consist of a collection of activities which are not related.

There is a set of new events as a result of the interaction that involves a set of information which consequently generates a cognitive structure that individuals seek for knowledge in a way of planning and coordinating future interactions.

Awareness develops functions in different levels under the collaboration point of view. In a more abstract level of a hierarchical scale of awareness, perception over the characteristics of other participants` activities enables individuals to structure their activities, then avoiding work duplication. In a more factual level, there is the perception over the activity content of each person turning the work into a more accurately distributed and shared one. Also, there is some synergy in the group behaviour in respect of the collaboration object; these factors must be present in cooperative applications.

The space of shared interaction is necessary for shared understanding. This space is provided by tools and artefacts for the information movement and they facilitate the contact among users (Santos, Tedesco & Salgado, 2011).

2.4.4 Awareness elements Awareness elements are elements of shared space where information to provide awareness is available (perception). Information systems developed for cooperative environments must provide awareness elements that make the necessary information to cooperation available in an adequate way as much as in an individual work.

Getting to know how communication, coordination and cooperation mechanisms work, and mainly how they must be used to keep different awareness elements, the designer of the shared virtual environment may create techniques and tools that provide appropriate information for users regarding goals, tasks and other elements of the environment.

Guided by their own perceptions, individuals create a shared understanding and get coordinated in a way that their individual efforts add value to the groups` work.

When projecting an information system with such characteristics, there must be taken into consideration which pieces of awareness information will be necessary considering how to generate, gather and distribute them (Gerosa, Fuks & Lucena, 2003).

Awareness information is relevant for both group and individual work. Some examples of awareness information, which are more suitable for individual work, are about the pieces of information from messages the individual has already read and what

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is new since his/her last visit. On the other hand, group-oriented information is present in the environment of people working with an artefact, for example. Despite this separation, all kinds of information must be projected in order to complement each other and to assist individual work in the cooperation context. Other examples of useful awareness information to contextualize participants are the following: common objective, each person`s role within the context, what must be done, how to proceed, what impacts the actions cause, where to act, who is around, what the partner can do, what the other people are doing, location, origin, importance, relations, authorship of cooperation objects (Gerosa, Fuks & Lucena, 2003).

For awareness support, some considerations must be taken into account: what information to provide, how to predict it and how to give individuals the information control (if it can be viewed, changed, etc.) (Brinck & McDaniel, 1997). Types of awareness information in groupware vary as followas: perception about documents, projects, tasks, and even about the colleagues` location and work activities that may be presented in a written or spoken way through photographs, icons, etc.

There are several types of awareness elements; they are classified by purpose, time, scope, abstraction, aggregation, perspective, provision way, personalization, and others (Brinck & McDaniel, 1997). These elements basically aim to respond the following questions: â&#x20AC;&#x153;who, what, where, when and how". These questions must be asked all through the environment seeking for which elements users should be conscious about in relation to the situation and to provide understanding.

Table 1 and Table 2 show elements characterized by their meanings and they are divided into two tables: Table 1 to characterize present events and Table 2 to characterize past events. The elements are all part of common knowledge and deal with interactions between people and the environment.

Table 1 - Awareness elements related to the present Category

Element

Meaning

Who

Presence

If there is anyone present in the environment

Identity

Who is taking part of the activity

Authorship

Who has performed a particular event

Actions

What must be done and what the others are doing

Intentions

What the objective of an action or work is

Artefacts

In which objects individuals are working at the moment

Production

What the preliminary results of some work are

Location

Where people are found in the environment

Observation

Where people are looking at

Vision

To where they can or should look at

Range

Up to where people can or should perform

What

Where

Source: ASSIS (2000)

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Table 2 - Awareness elements related to the past Category

Element

Meaning

How

Action background

How operations happen

Artefact background

How a particular artefact reached that state

When

Event background

When a particular event happened

Who (past)

Presence background

Who was in one location of the environment and when

Where

Location background

Where a particular individual was

What

Action background

What a particular individual was doing

Production background

Which experiences are materialized at work

Source: ASSIS (2000) Having this data, we can evaluate, for instance, how face-to-face situations would be translated into a groupware environment. This does mean that support should be equally given to all elements in the interface.

There are two crucial factors to determine how each element should be dealt with. The first one is which interaction degree among participants of one activity indicates how general or specific information must be provided. The second deals with the element dynamism: "how often do elements change?â&#x20AC;? This factor indicates, in a general view, the number of times that the interface must be changed to reflect new pieces of information.

Some particular elements will never change in some situations; that is the reason that there will not be the necessity of explicit support in the interface. If some activity always happens on the same day and time, there is no need for the system to accumulate and to distribute detailed information about the actions that must be taken.

Other information type to one specific objective will happen. In spite of that, this basic set of elements provides a high level organization to facilitate perception in shared environments. Elements related to the present are characterized by information that must be dealt with and normally distributed as feedback. Besides this characteristic, elements related to the past must be kept for future treatments (Assis, 2000).

2.5 Software model and process A software process is an organized set of activities and results associated that transform inputs and outputs and generate a software product. A software model process is a simplified description of a software process, a useful abstraction to explain different ways to approach the development (Kotonya & Sommerville, 1998; Pressman, 2009).

In the evolutionary approach of iterative development model, there is a system developed through successive versions. An executable system is quickly generated based on initial specifications. Then, it must be refined in accordance with the client`s attained feedback with the aim of producing one system that will be satisfactory to his/her needs. So, the system is delivered - one alternative is to re-implement it - with the use of a better structured approach in order to produce a stronger system with more maintainability.

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247 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

There are two main evolutionary development strategies:  Discardable prototypes. The purpose of building discardable prototypes is to define requirements which are misunderstood with the aim of developing a good specification. In this case, prototyping is focused on a requirement definition which has been poorly defined;  Exploratory development (evolutionary model). The development starts with well-defined parts of the system and it will progress according to the increase of new characteristics required by the client.

According to Sommerville (2010), for small and medium systems, the best solution is an incremental solution. On the other hand, for complex, large and long-term systems or even for systems developed by different teams, the best solution contemplates prototyping use (discardable or not) to define misunderstood requirements with an implementation through a better structured model (cascade model).

This work, according to Sommerville (2010), employs the term of incremental or evolutionary prototyping as a synonym of incremental development whose prototype is not discarded but it evolves to reach stakeholders` requirements.

2.6 Software requirements For Sommerville (2010), requirements are description of how the software should behave, information on the application domain, restrictions about software operations or property specifications or software attributes. Requirements are defined during the first steps of the software development with specifications of what might be implemented. Requirements invariably present a mixture of problem information, explanations of behaviour and software properties, project conditions and construction constrains.

Software requirements are classified as:  Functional: they must describe what the system must do, how it should react to particular inputs and how it should behave in some given situations; therefore, they refer to input and output conditions and demands of transformation.  Non-functional: they are service or function restrictions offered by the system. They include time restrictions, and process and standard restrictions (Souza & Castro, 2004). They are generally applied to the system as a whole and may be classified as: Product and external process requirements. They regard technical specification of standards and methods about the productive process, product quality and desirable characteristics, and applicable policies for the process and product generated;  Domain requirements: these requirements come from the application domain and they reflect on characteristics and restrictions of this domain; they may be functional or non-functional. They usually include specialized terminology in the application domain or reference to its concepts. These kinds of requirements are important because they reflect on the grounds of the application domain in a way that it may be impossible to develop the information system if these requirements are not satisfied;  User requirements: they must describe functional and non-functional requirements in a way they are understandable by the users with no need of a detailed technical knowledge. They must only specify the external behaviour of the system JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 235-264

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avoiding the most technical details about it and focusing on key facilities that will be provided; ď&#x20AC;­ System requirements: it is a wider version of the user requirements which are used by system developers as a starting point for the system project. These requirements add details to explain how user requirements may be served by the system and must focus on the external behaviour of the system as well as its restrictions with no concerns on how the system will be implemented or projected.

The requirement sources (stakeholders, domain and system) may be represented by the system viewpoints because each viewpoint represents a subset of the system requirements (Sabetzadeh, Finkelstein & Goedicke,2010); 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This research uses the action-research methodology (AR) that corresponds to one kind of social research with empirical basis conceived and carried out in aclose association with an action or with the resolution of a collective problem in which researchers are involved in a participative or cooperative way (Thiollent, 2011).

This action-research reaches three main phases: preliminary, driving cycle and metaphase (Coughlan & Coghlan, 2002).

The first phase (preliminary phase - Figure 5) is about a context understanding in which the research will be carried out as well as the purpose of conducting the work.

This phase also involves a justification establishment for the required action besides justifications for the research.

First phase: Preliminary phase Context and Purpose

Second phase: Conduction cycle Third phase: Monitoring Data gathering Data feedback

Evaluation Monitoring Implementation

Data analysis Action planning

Figure 5 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Action-research cycles Source: based on Coughlan & Coghlan (2002) The second phase (Figure 5) is composed of six steps and it starts with data gathering (diagnosis and/or data collected when the research is found in progress), data feedback (for those who are involved in the research), data analysis (with those who are involved in the research), action planning (definition of future intervention), action implementation (to put everything that was planned into practice), and evaluation (to

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249 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

check whether the implementation results will bear desired results or not) returning to a new data gathering (if necessary) and closing the cycle (first interaction).

The third step (monitoring - Figure 5) reaches the inspection of each of the previous six steps in a way of controlling whatever learning is generated during actionresearch with its monitoring being performed in different ways as the research advances through the steps of the second phase.

Research lineation With the purpose of complying with questions and objectives posed in I.2, this research uses the action-research methodology (see item 3) through driving cycles (Figure 6) and the proposed process (see item 4) with the following planning: 1.Methodological and applied literature review (that refers to cooperative working concepts, Requirement Engineering and related issues); 2.Context and purposes: production of a specific context of AR; 3.Conduction of the first action-research cycle: process to specify software requirements focused on the identification of individual characteristics at cooperative work and domain characteristics; 3.Conduction of the second action-research cycle: process to specify software requirements focused on the identification and simulation of cooperative characteristics at work; 3.Conduction of the third action-research cycle: process to specify software requirements focused on refining characteristics of cooperative work (in real use); 6. Production of an article with research results.

Data gathering

Data gathering Data feedback

Evaluation Monitoring Implementation

Data feedback

Evaluation Monitoring

Data analysis

Implementation

Action planning Cycle 1

Data analysis Action planning

Cycle 2

Figure 6 - Interaction of Action-research cycles The main focus of this article regards the conduction of the third cycle of this action-research from the 3C cooperation model perspective. Cycles 1 and 2 are better approached in Gava, Spinola, Gonรงalves, Medina and Tonini (2011b) and Gava, Spinola, Medina and Tonini (2011c).

Action-research cycles The final objective of the proposed process is to attain the system requirements (item 2.6) and models (which is the document the software developers must perform);

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this means that the expanded version of users` requirements used as a starting point for the system project is the document that software developers must perform.

In systems which one evolutionary solution is adopted, this document can be simpler by focusing on users` requirements definition and high-level functional requirements (Sommerville, 2010).

Action-research context This work presents results of an action-research carried out while some cooperative workflow software was being developed in a Brazilian technology company.

One of this company`s mission is to provide technical support to productive sectors and this is done through laboratory services like the development of technical advice for areas of civil engineering, metallurgy, mechanics, industrial electricity, data processing, higher education and training.

At this moment the company owns 40 laboratories that offer services, and, despite of a set of internal norms about general aspects that must be performed for the service of a particular request (budget, etc.), each of these laboratories apply these norms in their particular way because the service is not centralized.

As a result of this lack of standardization about the information about service procedures that cause independent ways of performing in each laboratory (several of them presented service procedures through paper file), information are fragmented and the company presents difficult aggregation even to come back to the service situation of a particular client.

On the other hand, this service procedure corresponds to workflow which passes through several steps, from request opening to its accomplishment in a way that involves the laboratory participants, who work collectively (technicians and secretaries), especially at laboratories that offer several kinds of service that complement one another (the same request may need several of these services from the same laboratory).

Thus, having this reality presented, this company`s directorship approved the development of an information system with the following objective, taken from its vision document: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The laboratory monitoring system aims to standardize monitoring and managing laboratory service methods through all the company in order to offer homogeneity and more efficiency to current technical service development and monitoring, from the first moment of a service request to its last, the billing. The systems can generate budget, register samples, have number of technical documents, and create billing requests in a thoroughly integrated way. By a set of reports it is also possible to monitor daily activities in the laboratory as well as to provide management information about the main performed activities.â&#x20AC;?2 Thus, this computerized system follows the several steps of service requests, from solicitation opening, through all execution phases to its accomplishment; this way it involves collective work from all laboratory participants (technicians, supervisors and secretaries). The standard sequence of each service (responsible and tasks) is previously defined (see Figure 10) but it may change depending on each case, for example, when 2

TN: my translation from Portuguese.

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251 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

exchanging the staff`s temporary functions or special service situations that are not programmed in the information system.

Action-research conduction: procedures to simulate cooperative work from the computerized system perspective The procedures to simulate cooperative work were the study the object of the action-research cycle 2. In spite of the fact that this step of the research is not the objective of this article (action-research cycle 2), this cycle is here presented in a summarized way with the aim of facilitating cycle 3 understanding which is, in fact, what this work focuses on.

Thus, this conduction cycle was applied to a process to simulate and identify cooperative characteristics of the job whose main purpose is to attain transactional characteristics of cooperative work by using the Collective Analysis at Work (CAW) techniques described by Ferreira (1993), mental model and interaction (Norman, 2006) and software models and procedures anchored by artefacts generated during the conduction of this cycle.

As it has been presented in 2.2, we opted for non-functional prototyping technique with the development of successive software prototypes offering a common representation to communicate with users and designers and also constituting a guide to specify successive versions. Prototypes were presented to users for collective discussion using the CAW and the starting point was the user`s working baseline from their own point of view to project typical actions of the future computerized system.

The main objective of this cycle is to have requirements of used systems as a starting point for the software project (third cycle) highlighting the definition of users` requirements and high-level functional requirements (once an evolutionary solution is adopted) focusing mainly on the evolution of cooperative work requirements.

The conduction of the third action-research cycle that corresponds to the process to specify software requirements focused on refining characteristics of cooperative work (in real use) is better detailed in 4.3.

4. PROPOSED PROCESS 4. 1 The process general view We can see a simplified diagram of the proposed process for this research in Figure 7. The highlight refers to a cut-out and we intend to focus on the development process of information systems within software engineering: the sub-area that deals with requirement engineering (item 2.6).

Within this cut-out, processes to analyse feasibility and applicability are considered to identify individual characteristics in cooperative work, to identify and simulate characteristics in cooperative work, and finally to refine the identification of characteristics in cooperative work (which regards, in fact, the functional version of the system).

First of all, in order to identify individual characteristics in cooperative work, it is necessary to analyse the project viability and to verify if the system is a good candidate for the application of the proposed process, which means that a cut-out must be done to evaluate the process applicability.

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Context and purposes Yes

1. Feasibility analysis

8. Life of the process/ maintenance

No

2. Study for the process application

3.Is the process applicable?

9. Was there a significant change in the process?

7. Other kinds of specifications/project/ implementation

No

Yes

Cycle 1 4. Identification of individual requirements for the cooperative work

5. Identification and simulation of cooperative work requirements (nonfunctional prototype)

Cycle 2

Cycle 3 6.Refinement of cooperative work requirements (functional prototype)

Figure 7 - Main process to identify characteristics of cooperative work.

Source: produced by the author The developed artefacts in the process to identify individual characteristics of cooperative work will be the starting point to study characteristics of cooperative work in information systems. Once necessary requirements are attained, the next step is the system implementation (functional prototype) from where the cooperative requirements of the system will be complemented mainly focusing on the 3C model and awareness concepts.

4.2 Checking the process applicability for the candidate system The purpose of this step is to check if the proposed theory can be applied to the system or if any other kind of process will be necessary for the development of requirement definition.

As defined in item 2.2 and taking into account item 5.1, prototyping may be applied to a set of candidate systems that must present the following characteristics: ď&#x20AC;­ The system has a lot of interaction with users through transactions with reports associated to databank and does not operate with a lot of batches (Boar, 1985; Kotonya & Sommerville, 1998); ď&#x20AC;­

Coordination distributed in users` action (without a defined centre of

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253 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

coordination - item 2.4),  Communication among users carried out in an indirect way of data inserted in artefacts of collaboration (there are no specific tools – hardware/softwarefor direct communication among users - item 2.3),  Asynchronous environment (users do not need to be working simultaneously in order to reach the objective - item 2.4),  Uncoupled graphic user interfaces (they are not coupled to interfaces of other group participants - item 2.4),  Although the phases of the process are normally associated to specific roles in the group, they may be performed by any participants (item 3.3.1).

The next step starts when all sufficient factors are weighed to decide if the proposed process is the most suitable for the given problem.

4.3 Process to specify software requirements focused on refining characteristics of cooperative work - Cycle 3 Activities regarding the last phase of the process amount to the case of identification process and simulation but now there is a real system that has been developed using the main requirements of the previous process.

1. Artefacts produced in the identification and simulation process

For the life of the project/ maintenance

Cycle 3

2. Cascade implementation (analysis/ project/implementation)

3. Presentation

No

5.Prototype?

Yes

4. Data analysis

Figure 8 - Process to refine the identification of characteristics in cooperative work.

Source: produced by the author The phase of the proposed process starts with artefacts developed in the previous phase (second cycle) and used as input in the implementation activity of Figure 8 below.

Regarding the previous phase, defined requirements in this current phase will effectively be implemented and not simulated in a preset action/response.

The CAW sessions that will be carried out with users follow the same guidelines defined in the non-functional prototyping process (see item 4.3.2) which uses as an initial physical model the implemented system and gains new components while

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interactions and iterations take place in this phase of the proposed process (Figure 8). A distinctive and important aspect for this moment of the process if compared to the previous one is that these sessions will be oriented by the 3C model and awareness concepts.

The presentation of a functional prototype is another distinguishing aspect and must be realized after the systemis sufficiently employed in the users` working environment.

4.3.1 Cascade implementation Evolutionary prototyping starts its first cycle in this activity; it receives artefacts from the previous phase that will be useful for the development of a first functional version of the system that will be handled by users in their jobs.

In this phase, implementation makes use of cascade model which outputs “flows” from one step to another and the development only carries on whenever one step gets accomplished. To assume such an option in case some changes regarding requirements after phases of presentation and data analysis happen, it is necessary that they wait for the next cycle to be implemented, i.e., there will be an interruption of current requirements discussed with the users during the current iteration.

Gonçalves, Gava, Pessôa & Spinola (2005) present some more details about the architecture used in this activity (it does not take part of the scope for this research).

The system development is oriented to the process flow; for each phase defined as workflow (see figure 10) one or more interfaces were associated and for each of these interfaces the hierarchy of sub-activities and their respective interfaces were associated.

In order to reach the users` mental model we follow the same patterns of the previous process (cycle 2); our starting point is the functional model developed in this initial activity and it will be the initial interaction model of the system.

The main output artefacts are the following: domain requirements, flowchart and interfaces as well as associated functionalities, model of implemented data, navigation diagram and artefacts associated to the 3C model and awareness.

4.3.2 Presentation of evolutionary prototype (functional) As the case of non-functional prototyping (second cycle), developed artefacts in the phase of cascade implementation (graphic interfaces, interactions, programmed responses, navigation among form hierarchies and flowchart of workflow) will be used as “guides” for the Construction Analysis Workgroup application.

To carry out the first CAW session, the users need to use the system in a real working situation after receiving suitable instructions about the first functional version of the system (first iteration cycle).

In a general view, aspects approached in the CAW sessions (Ferreira, 1993) must focus on the real use of the system regarding the fact that some of these aspects must consider the contextualization of individual activities through an understanding of activities carried out by other people.  In order to explain what must be done, it is necessary to ponder about one´s attitude; it is not a common process; it is a way of turning all automatic actions into conscious and explicit ones once persons express themselves and become aware of them; they do not express themselves aiming at other people, they express themselves JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 235-264

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255 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

in order to be conscious about their own purposes. It is not usual to think about the activity that is done; however, regarding the results, it is the activity itself that is important, it is the one that shall be explained. ď&#x20AC;­ Check what is common and what is different in the activity workers describe with the purpose of evaluating the main detached points and a more detailed characterization of certain aspects of the user`s activity; ď&#x20AC;­ Try to understand the relations of users` activities with other activities: explain what other people do before and after them during the productive process in the hierarchical scale; ď&#x20AC;­ During the session, check the necessity to introduce elements of the 3C model and awareness according to concepts presented in items 2.3 and 2.4 and Tables 1 and 2 in a way of trying to be aware about the contextualization of individual activities through the comprehension of activities performed by other people and in a way the computerized system will reflect on these elements.

4.3.3 Data analysis - evaluating the conclusion of the evolutionary prototype Data from the prototype presentation in real time are analysed according to the responses given to questions from Tables 1 and 2 with the purpose of achieving awareness elements described in item 2.4.4 and the 3C model described in 2.3. Due to obtained results, suitable elements are selected for implementation and a new CAW session should happen with interrupted requirements over the research-action cycles.

During this phase of the process with systems in use and before the sessions, it is necessary to take interviews with the users who represent the several roles of the workflow aiming to attain necessary information to build and/or correct software artefacts in use.

When this process is accomplished, a report must be written by the researchers and, before its release, it shall be presented to participants so they can detect interpretation errors and other points which were not clarified in the meetings. This confirmation can be also achieved by the users` agreement while CAW sessions take place or after confirming this phase (data analysis).

5 RESULTS The objective of this research is to have requirements and models of the systems used as a starting point for the software project highlighting the definition of users` requirements and high-level functional requirements (once an evolutionary solution is adopted) focusing mainly on the evolution of cooperative work requirements. Below, the main attained results are presented: 5.1 Dynamic for the 3C model and awareness application The knowledge of communication, coordination and cooperation mechanisms and mainly how they must be used to keep different awareness elements enable the creation of techniques and tools that provide appropriate information for users regarding goals, tasks and other elements of the environment.

Figure 9 below corresponds to the 3C diagram used in cycles 2 and 3; in order to make coordination and cooperation possible as whole, information about whatever is

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happening and what other people are doing is necessary. Through this information, participants can have a shared understanding about cooperation objectives and the goals of tasks or the whole work.

This figure also shows that the starting point that feeds this diagram is the objective of the group, which means the work is being done in a cooperative way.

enables

Communication

Collaboration generates

generates

provides elements for feedback

Awareness

changes engagements

generates

Purpose: It is carried out with Cooperative work

Coordination

Coordination distributed in the users` actions

Figure 9 - Diagram of the 3Cs and awareness adapted to cycle 3 Source: produced by the author This figure presents several input stimuli and one output stimulus. This means that several events of participants that belong to the same group, volunteers or not, must have an awareness element that generates feedback for the collaboration of members of a working group.

The example of Figure 9 highlights that information generated for collaboration and communication does not have to be compulsory once the feedback may not be desired in all moments during the work. On the other hand, the coordination event will always provide some degree of awareness once the workflow could be interrupted and get stuck without information transmission.

5.2 Cycle 2 During cycle 2 of the research-action (not presented in this article) the first artefacts linked to the 3C model emerged and they are reproduced in figures 11 and 12.

Although these two artefacts are discussed collectively with users while the software simulation was taking place in cycle 2, they were not enough to avoid some problems linked to cooperative work that arises from other emergent artefacts that came up during this simulation while the system was in real use. The changes from face-toface interactions to interactions mediated by the software were not foreseen in an explicit way during simulation of cycle two of action-research.

For example, the user could not always understand which his/her real role was in the system or suggest alternative ways like parallel registrations while using the functional prototype.

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257 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

To make an easier understanding of the presentation and interpretation of the obtained data with the application of the proposed model of this paper, Figure 10 reproduces the implemented workflow by the laboratory monitoring software described in 3.3.1 with the several phases the process has.

Inspection and execution: Service 1 SO1 (executor 1)

Order request

Budgeting

Followup

Approved

Material registration and distribution of service order (SO)

Inspection and execution: Service 2 SO2 (executor 2)

Production of technical document 1

Delivery of technical document 1

Production of technical document 2

Delivery of technical document 1

Technical document composition and distribution

Inspection and execution: Service 3 SO3 (executor 3)

Figure 10 - Final flowchart of the process The first artefact described in Figure 11 was created due to the user` necessity to have as a starting point of the application a coordination artefact that could show everything that was pendent (each item is listed in Figure 10) to permit the coordination of the execution system of workflow phases in a context where they could be accessed in theory by any user of the group allowing a self-coordinated system, i.e., the actions of the group should lead to its own coordination.

Through this artefact and the representation the user holds in the system, which allows him/her to understand the its total status (awareness), the user organizes his/her activities and defines which shared object of collaboration (in this case, it corresponds to one of the eight phases of the process) will be used through the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Linkâ&#x20AC;? column connecting his/her actions with the other users.

Figure 11 - Individual coordination and main page of the software Whenever there is collaboration mediated by one of these shared objects (see item 5.1), new information is stored in the system allowing communication to happen among the users by changing engagements in the coordination artefacts.

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Thus, there is no clear distinction between coordination and communication (see item 4.2) and both are collapsed (Figure 9) in a way that communication always happens in an indirect and asynchronous way as a result of collaboration, which means data inserted into the system.

As there is no explicit object of communication, the coordination is done through an understanding of the relation of the users` actions (Figure 11) and its interrelations with the other users` actions (Figure 12).

Figure 12 - Coordination with group activities The artefact of Figure 12 (accessed by “”relatórios” - reports - of Figure 11) was created because the user of the working group also needed to know what the other participants of the group were doing besides the situation of his/her own work. Thus, they could fit their own activities with the activities of the other group participants. The purpose of this artefact was to show all pendent phases of a particular request, regardless of whom their responsible was. Thus, the user could be aware of how the course of the entire request was.

Figure 12 shows this new coordination artefact that can be seen as: (report of) the request progress. As an example, request 6/06 was used (Figure 12). We can see that this process has some pendant phases that are not with the user “COLLABORATOR NAME 1”. For example, the Composition phase of the document is with “COLLABORATOR NAME 4” and one phase of “Document production” is with the user “COLLABORATOR NAME 6”.

5.3 Cycle 3 The objective of this cycle is the refinement of requirements attained in cycle 2 through the system in use especially the ones that privilege the cooperative work of the system`s final users.

The 3C model and its relation with the developed research is applied offering to users awareness elements that facilitate the contextualization of individual activities by the comprehension of activities performed by the other group´s participants.

While the collective discussion about new artefacts was taking place, some issues about the dynamics regarding phase transmission within the working group were raised. There was one emergent aspect of this discussion; it was the necessity of visualizing the phase that was with another user in order to perform activities of the user

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259 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

him/herself, or even the situation where it was necessary to assume another user`s phase to keep going with their own work and the group work (for example, in case of the absence of the responsible for the phase).

In order to meet this need, a solution in which one user could visualize one phase that was not under his/her responsibility was discussed and they could even send it to another user or solve it by themselves (transversal access to the process, which means without its user`s pendency).

Figures 14 and 15 show adopted solutions after this session with the users. The access to it is done through the main page on the tab “Acesso transversal” (Transversal access)

Figure 13 - Main page: acesso transversal (transversal access) Figure 14-1 shows filter options and, in this case, one filter per user was inserted. Figure 14-2 shows the backlog for the researched item (in this case, the request number is 606). This backlog aims to allow the user to notice all the pendent phases of that request.

Figure 14 - Transversal access: backlog Having all pendent phases verified in this list, the user chooses the phase that he/she wants to visualize (Figure 15-1) by clicking the “Confirmar” (Confirm) button (For Figure 15-2 the phase “Composição do documento” (Document composition) was selected and it presents NOME COLABORADOR 4 (COLLABORATOR NAME 4).

Thus, the user will be able to see/edit the content of this phase (see Figure 16) and if

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they want, it is also possible to send it to another user (in this case, it will be sent to NOME COLABORADOR 5 (COLLABORATOR NAME 5), see Figure 16-1)

Figure 15 - Transversal access: choice of phase

Figure 16 - Composition of technical document visualized through the artefact Transversal access In the discussion of transversal access, the participants of this session guided by awareness elements of Tables 1 and 2 mentioned the following situation: if one user could enter and update a new phase that was not in his/her backlog (under their responsibility), the system should register a background about the access on this phase.

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Thus, there was another emergent aspect of the session that was the necessity of an artefact to register who the responsible for the phase was, who accessed it and to whom it was forwarded. The discussion about the characteristics of this artefact should have brought the fact that this same artefact could contribute as a tool to assist in verifying the process flow, it could also contribute to know if there was a sudden closing and to increase the system reliability because users could be aware about who accessed/changed a particular phase.

Figure 17 shows this artefact after its implementation whereas Figure 17-1 presents filter options suggested in the session, and Figure 17-2 highlights an example of a result for the research by the request number, showing the situation described in Figure 16-1 whose phase was with the user “NOME COLABORADOR 4” (COLLABORATOR NAME 4) accessed by “NOME COLABORADOR 1” (COLLABORATOR NAME 1) and sent to user “NOME COLABORADOR 5” (COLLABORATOR NAME 5)

Figure 17 -Background of the request in progress In data provided by Table 3, we can observe the relation between awareness elements associated to emergent artefacts that came up during this session.

Table 3 - Emergent artefacts of session 2, awareness elements and actions Artefact/Interview

Awareness elements

Transversal access

What (actions, artefacts and production)

Background of requests in What (background of actions), When (background of progress events) and Where (background of location) Source: produced by the author

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6. CONCLUSIONS With the purpose of finding conclusions for this article, we intend to answer the following question related to this action-research: How can the 3C Cooperation Model and awareness be applied to the elicitation of requirements for cooperative work?

This question can be answered by employing the proposed process described in item 4.3 that takes into account the dynamics for the 3C model and awareness application described in 5.1, and it is applicable to systems according to 4.2 with results obtained in field presented in 5.2.

Thus, awareness and the 3C model elements that emerged in cycle 2 of RA (Figures 11 and 12) were not enough for a full accomplishment of awareness in the new computerized environment, in a way that, during cycle 3,the application of new artefacts emerged in the CAW sessions for users through awareness elements described in Tables 1 and 2 with the development of a set of artefacts (Figures 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17): -

Transversal access: the necessity assumed by the group to visualize the phase that was with another user in order to carry on activities of the user him/herself, or even the situation where it was necessary to assume another user`s phase to keep going with their own work and the group work.

-

Background of phases of the processes: the necessity of an artefact to register who the responsible for the phase was, who accessed it and to whom it was forwarded. The discussion about characteristics, this artefact should have brought the fact that this same artefact could contribute as a tool to assist in verifying the process flow; it could also contribute to know if there was a sudden closing and to increase the system reliability (subordination).

Thus, by using the process established for cycle 3, it was possible to check that a computerized projected system aiming to meet the cooperative work requirements of an IS must consider face-to-face iteration changes of users in an IS with the purpose of achieving a contact intermediated by the computerized system that presents a less fruitful system to carry out necessary iterations in order to reach the goals of cooperative work.

7. FUTURE WORKING ACTIVITIES While cycle 2 of this research (not approached in this work) mainly dealt with more transactional requirements of cooperative work where evolution of these requirements was directly checked during the simulation of the future computerized system, in cycle 3, the verification of requirement awareness evolution was not direct in a way that the necessity of developing a new qualitative method to measure these kind of requirements was raised, as Gava (2011a) shows.

Another important aspect is that new interdisciplinary research must be developed in the field of requirements elicitation of cooperative work aiming for quality and fast improvement regarding the discovery of requirements of cycles 2 and 3, as, for example, the use of the concept of instruction for the double suggested by Clot (2000) in cycle 2 and by concepts of explicitation interview in cycle 3 (Vermersch, 2006).

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263 The 3C Cooperation Model applied to the classical requirement analysis

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was translated into English by Monique Pfau, translator and Phd student of Translation Studies of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC).

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp.265-284 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200004

PROPOSAL FOR A MEASUREMENT MODEL FOR SOFTWARE TESTS WITH A FOCUS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF OUTSOURCED SERVICES Angélica Toffano Seidel Calazans Ricardo Ajax Dias Kosloski Luiz Carlos Miyadaira Ribeiro Junior Centro Universitário de Brasília, Uniceub, Brasilia, Brazil Universidade de Brasília, UNB, Brasilia, Brazil _____________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT The need for outsourcing IT services has shown a significant growth over the past few years.

This article presents a proposal for a measurement model for Software Tests with a focus on the management of these outsourced services by governmental organizations. The following specific goals were defined: to identify and analyze the test process; to identify and analyze the existing standards that govern the hiring of IT services and to propose a Measurement Model for outsourced services of this type. As to the analysis of the data collected (documentary research and semi-structured interviews), content analysis was adopted, and in order to prepare the metrics, the GQM – Goal, Questions, Metrics – approach was used. The result was confirmed by semi-structured interviews. Here is what the research identifies as possible: to establish objective and measurable criteria for a measurement size as the input to evaluate the efforts and deadlines involved; to follow up the test sub-processes and to evaluate the service quality. Therefore, the management of this type of service hiring can be done more efficiently.

Keywords: Test process, hiring management, outsourcing, metrics, and measurements

_____________________________________________________________________________________ Manuscript first received/Recebido em 22/09/2011 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 12/04/2012 Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência Angélica Toffano Seidel Calazans, Doctorate degree in Information Science from Universidade de Brasília (2008) and a master´s degree in Knowledge Management and IT from Universidade Católica de Brasília (2003). A post-graduate degree in Systems Analysis from UDF (1986) and in Client Server Platform (1996). Professor at Centro Universitário de Brasilia, Uniceub/BR, FATECS, Brasília-DF, Phone: 55 061 81167246, E-mail: angélica.calazans@uniceub.br Ricardo Ajax Dias Kosloski, Professor at Universidade de Brasília – UnB. A post-graduate degree in Software Engineering, from Universidade Católica de Brasília - UcB (2003), a master´s degree in Knowledge Management and Information Technology also from UcB (2005). TiMétricas, Brasília-DF, Phone: 55 061 84063679, E-mail: ricardo.kosloski@metricas.com.br Luiz Carlos Miyadaira Ribeiro Junior , Associate Professor at Universidade de Brasília, master´s degree in Computer Science from Universidade Federal de São Carlos and a doctorate degree from Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo (2007). Universidade de Brasília-UnB, Brasília-DF, E-mail: luiz.miyadaira@gmail.com Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

266 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L.,

1. INTRODUCTION High market competitiveness and technological advances have increased the demand for better and better software, produced through predefined costs and deadlines.

In turn, such factors as complexity, size, heterogeneity and the dynamism of computer systems have directly impacted the quality of these products. In this scenario, the test process becomes increasingly important due to the fact that its main objectives are product analysis, identification of defects and their possible elimination.

Software tests include the Verification and Validation processes. According to (Melhoria de Processo do Software Brasileiro, 2009), the purpose of Verification is to confirm that each service and/or product of the process or project satisfies the specified requirements while the objective of Validation is to confirm that a product or component will satisfy the intended use when applied to the production environment.

The correct implementation of these processes results in economic gains such as: reduction in the levels of software defects, reduction in development costs and in product delivery time and the increase in efficiency of the software development process (Venkatasubramaniarn et Vinoline, 2010).

Despite these gains Juristo, Moreno And Vegas (2004) regard software tests as one of the most costly practices in the development process, which needs to be properly managed in order to avoid resource waste and delays in the software development project schedule, among other possibilities. Models such as COBIT and ITIL emphasize the need for the competent management of all IT resources, whether internal or external.

This need is also reflected on the test activities, especially when the outsourcing of this process is considered.

According to Silva, Duarte and Castro (2009), â&#x20AC;&#x153;the outsourcing activity or information technology outsourcing has been showing significant growth rates in the IT services segment.â&#x20AC;? And by taking the test context into account, Venkatasubramanian et Vinoline (2010) affirm that software development organizations are currently beginning to outsource test activities (through the use of test factories), in order to reduce costs and increase the quality and the reliability of software products. This has also been a trend in Brazil, especially among government agencies.

Thus, this paper´s purpose is to define a proposal for a Measurement Model for Tests considering the needs of the outsourcing process management by government agencies. A brief view of the test process is then presented in section 2. The laws, standards and models related to service hiring are briefly described in section 3, such as Law # 8666/93, Normative Instruction # 4 of 2010 and other models. In section 4, the research methodology is presented, and a few of the criteria for the measurement of test services are described in item 5. Measurements for the assessment of the quality of the service provided are shown in section 6 and the ways to measure product quality are in section 7. Conclusion and future papers are found in section 8.

2

TEST PROCESS

Testing software is more comprehensive than reporting impressions and nonconformities. The IEEE829 standard for software tests documentation specifies the way

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267 Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services

to use a set of documents defined in eight stages for the software tests, and for each stage to potentially produce its own type of document, as shown in Figure 1.

The Test Plan, according to this standard, contains the test's objectives and the global goals, while the Test Design Specification describes in detail and specifies how the Test Plan will be executed. The Test Specification Case describes situations which must be tested and the Test Procedure Specification describes the actions that must be performed by the software for the Test Case to be executed.

As for the Test Log (or evidence), it describes the executed tests, regardless of errors having been encountered or not. The Test Incident Report describes the failures that have occurred during the execution of the tests and, finally, the Test Summary Report (or executive) contains the summary of the test conditions executed, the failures encountered and the desired statistical tabulations.

Figure 1 – Standard 829 for Software Tests Documentation

In addition to Standard 829, the “V” model software tests (Pfleeger, 2004) emphasizes the verification and validation activities for the purpose of preventing/detecting failures, and minimizing the risks of the project. For each stage of the software development process, a “V” model introduces one stage or the corresponding test level. In this model, the test planning and specification occur from top to bottom, that is, throughout the software development stages the tests are planned

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268 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L., and specified. The execution of the tests occurs in the opposite direction, as can be seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2 - V Model for software development (Adapted from Pfleeger, 2004)

As a complement to these definitions, Caetano (2008) cites the existence of two test techniques. The Structural Test technique, known as the White-Box Test, where criteria are used for the creation of test cases with the purpose of identifying failures in the software's internal structures. While the Functional Test technique, also known as the Black-Box Test, where criteria are used for the creation of test cases with the purpose of evaluating adherence or compliance of the implemented software in relation to the behavior described in the requirements.

In addition to these techniques, many authors (Sommerville, 2007; Pressman, 2000) identify several types of tests: functionality, usability, performance, security, regressions, load, and configuration, among others.

That is, the test activity involves multiple facets and identifying and defining them for future outsourced services also involves the analysis of already existing standards of hiring and of monitoring this type of service, which are briefly described below.

3

LAWS, STANDARDS AND MODELS LINKED WITH SERVICE HIRING AND MONITORING

In order to do this research, Law n. 8666/93 and Normative Instruction n. 4 of 2010 were briefly analyzed to also identify the applicable aspects of the hiring and monitoring of software test activities. Law n. 8666/93 establishes general rules about bids and administration contracts related to the works, the services, including advertising, purchases, liens, and rentals under the scope of the Powers of the Union, of the States, of the Federal District and of the Municipalities.

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269 Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services

In addition to establishing the service hiring methods of Law n. 8666/93, this law also establishes, among other aspects, the need for monitoring of the contract when it cites in its paragraph 67 that “The execution of the contract shall be monitored and inspected by a specially assigned Administrative representative, as the hiring of thirdparties is allowed, in order to assist them and provide them with information related to this assignment.”

Paragraph 1 complements this article citing that “the Administration representative will write their own notes regarding the events related to the execution of the contract, by establishing the necessary means to correct existing failures or defects encountered”.

The Normative Instruction n. 4 of 2010 (IN04, 2010), of the Logistics and Information Technology Department from the Ministry of Planning, establishes in its article 2, paragraph 20, that: “Acceptance Criteria: they are objective and measurable parameters used to verify whether an asset or service provided complies with the specified requirements.”

In its article 15, paragraph 3 establishes that the service hiring strategy must contain, among other items: - establishment of procedures and Acceptance Criteria of the services or assets provided, including metrics, indicators and minimum accepted values; - previous quantification or estimation of the volume of the demanded services or the number of assets to be provided for comparison and control purposes; - establishment of the quality assessment methodology and of the suitability of the Information Technology Solution to the functional and technological specifications; Finally, in article 25, paragraph 3 which describes the monitoring of the services provided, the following items are then specified, among other items “quality assessment of the services or assets provided as well as justifications in accordance with the Acceptance Criteria established by means of a contract, assigned to Technical Inspectors and to the Petitioner of the Contract.”

It is important to highlight that the Normative Instruction n. 4 of November 2010 (IN04, 2010) recommends the use of metrics in software solutions while the Court Decisions of the Federal Audits Court recommend the use of Unadjusted Function Points under contracts for the provision of systems maintenance and development services.

Also, by considering the service hiring context, Cruz, Andrade and Figueiredo (2011) present a service hiring process which complies with Normative Instruction #4.

In the established process, in its stage 4 named Contract Management and in the

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270 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L., Perform technical monitoring activity, these authors describe the need for: monitoring the service order execution; managing risks, establishing corrective measures and making changes to the service order.

The description of these activities emphasizes the application of the constant monitoring of the service performance. The authors also highlight the need to evaluate the services provided by the Contracted Party in order to verify the “compliance with requested functional and qualitative requirements as well as quality criteria established in the processes of the work.”

With a focus on the management of the service hiring process, Cobit (ITGI, 2007), which is one of the best known IT governance models, in its “Monitor and Evaluate” domain, highlights the need of the top management to ensure compliance with the IT processes by the external requirements, that is, the legislation and jurisprudence (ITGI, 2007).

In addition, COBIT, in this same domain, stresses the importance of IT processes to be regularly evaluated in order to assure quality and adherence to control requirements.

There are other models which describe and emphasize the importance of the management of the service hiring process, among them, the CMMI-ACQ v1.2 (SEI, 2007), eSCM-CL v1.1 (ITSqc 2009a) (ITSqc 2009b), and the MPS.BR-Guia de Aquisição:2009 (Softex, 2009).

As such, by considering the test process characteristics, with its activities and products, Law # 8666/93, the instructions in Normative Instruction #4, the proposed service hiring process put forth by Cruz et al (2011) and the need for managing this process, the hiring of the Test factory should contain, at least, objective criteria to measure the demands, evaluate the quality of the services provided, and evaluate product quality in accordance with previously established criteria.

In the next sections, the conceptual model proposed and the research methodology will be presented as well as some types of metrics and measuring techniques, associated with the conceptual model proposed.

4

METHODOLOGY

The general objective of this work is to propose a Measurement Model for software tests by considering outsourced services, in order to make it easier for these contracts to be managed. In order to achieve this general goal, the following specific objectives were set: - To identify and analyze the test process, its stages and activities; - To identify and analyze existing laws and standards which govern the hiring of IT services; - To analyze and propose a Measurement Model for outsourced test services.

The following data collection instruments were applied: research in documentation and semi-structured interviews. For the analysis of the data collected, content analysis was used (interview and documentation). In the documentary analysis, the following constructs were considered: aspects related to test processes, identifying stages, activities and products generated; the laws, standards, instructions and models concerning the test discipline.

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271 Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services

Documentary research is the data collection method and aims to access the related sources, whether they are written or not. Written documentary sources include official, unofficial and statistical documentation. Non-written documentary sources include sources such as images and sounds, and iconography, among others.

Documentary research sometimes leads to other research techniques such as observation, content analysis and others (Albarello et al, 1995).

By considering the data obtained through documentary research, a conceptual model was designed which represents the adopted concepts and the relationships between one another. The conceptual model built (Figure 03) was based on the confirmation that the management of test services, in order for it to be consistent with the laws, the standards in force, and the proposed models, and in order for it to be efficiently performed, it should use criteria to: measure the test services provided (size and effort), evaluate the quality of the service provided, and measure the quality of the product.

Figure 3 – Conceptual Model

That is, the construction of the model identified the need to, in order to manage the outsourced test services, propose a Measurement Model by taking the following needs into account: - To establish criteria for the measurement of test services provided (size and effort); - To establish the criteria for the evaluation of the quality of the service provided.

- To measure the quality of the product.

By considering these criteria, the GQM – Goal, Questions, Metrics – approach was applied in an attempt to identify the main goals, questions and the metrics related to the test services. The GQM approach was proposed by BASILI in the first half of the 90´s and has been used to provide metrics in accordance with the information needs related to the products, processes and resources used, establishing the basis for comparisons with future work (Basili & Rombach, 1994).

The GQM approach is used in relation to the assumption that an organization, in order to objectively perform measurements, must specify the objectives to be achieved by the established measurements. Such objectives direct the course of the questions which, after being refined, result in metrics, whose application will answer the

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272 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L., established questions and, consequently, the identified measuring objectives (Basili & Rombach, 1994). The measurement model of the GQM approach works according to hierarchical levels among objectives, questions and metrics where: -Conceptual Level – it is defined in the scope of the evaluation; that is, the object to be measured.

-Operational Level – questions that help characterize the object being studied are defined and how it must be seen within the context of quality.

-Quantitative Level – data sets to be obtained are defined, as related to each of the questions defined with the purpose of answering them in a quantitative manner; that is, as metrics.

The results of the data collected allow for an interpretation model related to the objectives set forth (Basili & Rombach,1994). The GQM paradigm provides a top-down method for the establishment of questions and metrics and a bottom-up interpretation model of the data.

The GQM approach contributes to the establishment or selection of metrics which achieve the objectives set forth by the organization and has been widely used by other models with a focus on continuous improvement. The CMMI model, for instance, says that the GQM approach is useful to select measurements that provide information about the business objectives of the organization (Chrissis, Konrad & Shrum, 2003).

In order to complement the research and aiming at the triangulation of the results, employees of a test factory were interviewed, in search of their perception of the services performed in a test contract. Also, semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees of a hiring company of a test factory, with the purpose of identifying the perception of their needs as related to the test activities hired.

The purpose of the interview is to obtain descriptions of the different aspects and the specific situations of a real-world phenomenon according to the interviewees´ view (Kvale, 1996). In the semi-structured interview, the interviewer obtains detailed information, as well data and opinions by means of a free-style conversation, following a previously prepared list of questions, supported by theories of interest to the research (Trivinos, 1987). Kvale (1996) cites five methods to analyze and interpret qualitative interviews: Meaning condensation, meaning categorization, narrative structuring, meaning interpretation and generating meaning are generated by means of ad-hoc methods. The meaning condensation method was used in the research for the purpose of identifying common points in the perception of the participants.

Next, the research results are described aiming to identify measuring criteria of the test services provided (size and effort.)

5

METRICS FOR MEASURING THE SIZE AND EFFORT FOR THE TESTS

Chart 1 shows the comparison of some techniques and experiments identified to estimate the effort that will be put into the Software Test subject in a software development project. In this chart the metrics are succinctly described, and the advantages and disadvantages found. It is interesting to highlight that all the interviews JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 265-284

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273 Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services

carried out with the employees from the test factory and the employees who hire this service found the need for metrics to estimate the effort of the test. This is a necessity for both teams.

Technique

TPA â&#x20AC;&#x201C; (Test Point Analysis)(Veenendaal And Dekkers, 1999)

Description Advantage Refines estimations by size at function points, Functional metrics, with considering impact factors: the test strategy and refinements from other the productivity level. physical characteristics.

Size - Adds considerations to the function A well defined and detailed points about: complexity (number of conditions method found in the of the functionalities); interfaces (data kept by documentation; the functionalities) and uniformity (similarities Contains a reference of among functions and their tests). productivity value (0.7 to 2.0 Test Strategy - Takes into consideration the h/TPA) selection of components and their There are Free tools for characteristics of quality; and the range of the calculating TPAs tests.

Productivity: scores of the variables according to predefined scales (testware, team size, etc).

The productivity factor should come from the organization's base history.

Context of use: Systems under development and/or in maintenance with specifications on test cases and measurements on function points Technique: FPA â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Function Points Analysis(IFPUG, 2010

Disadvantage Does not include the management of the test process (planning, monitoring and control) Refers to system tests and acceptance alone.

Depends on the size at the function points and consequently they depend on the existence of the documentation Little information on productivity of the base history on the researched literature

Description Based on the functional size of the software to identify, from productivity values, the total effort required for its development. From the knowledge of a life cycle for the development/maintenance of the software and of a percentage of the distribution of the effort by its phases, subjects and/or activities, the estimation is refined for the test subject.

Context of Use: Systems under development and/or in maintenance that have requirements (cases of use or descriptive requirements) to count function points.

Knowledge of the life cycle, its phases, activities of the percentage of the distribution of the effort.

Disadvantage Depends on the system documentation to identify the size of the function points.

It is a non-specific size of the measurement for the test activities. As such, it does not arrive at the level of detail of the life cycle of the tests and therefore it depends strongly on other measurements aside from productivity. For example: it depends on the identification of the percentage of the effort of the test subjects and its subdivisions by phases/activities.

Technique: Description

Advantage Functional metrics, widely used with plenty of well researched data on the productivity of the development/maintenance of the software and life cycles (with their percentage of the effort by phases/activities).

Depending on the organization's base history it may include the management of the life cycle tests.

Aranha and Borba (2007) Advantage

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Disadvantage

274 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L., From a controlled natural language (CNL), the It may be calibrated for all To obtain the details of steps of the test cases are evaluated with respect to of the organization's the estimations, it the functional and non-functional characteristics. projects or for project depends on the controlled The characteristics are identified and evaluated groups sorted by similar language to elaborate the with respect to their relevance by experienced characteristics test cases, which testers. The characteristics should also be evaluated Used by Motorola significantly complicates with respect to their impacts (low, medium, high), the preparation of the generating scores from 0 to 10. The calibration of system's documentation the model is done through the base history.

Context of Use: . Systems under development and in maintenance that have the tests defined in the CNL. Technique Cognitive Information Complexity Measureâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;(CICM)(KUSHWAHA AND MISRA, 2008) Description This metric tries to measure the test's complexity through the complexity of the code. The authors work with some variables, such as: identifiers and operators, the information contained in the code, the size of this information, and the basic control information. The result of this metric is a measurement of the size of the test based on the complexity of the code. It is necessary, later on, a definition for productivity so as to identify the effort for this test.

Context of Use: Applicable to systems already built, as it needs the source code.

Technique:

Disadvantage Requires the preparation of applications by language to execute the counting No information on productivity from base history in the literature researched, that is, the need for practical experiment to define productivity.

The outdating of the code (considering the legacies), may interfere on the counting.

Estimation of the process of the software test based on the requirements (SANTRA, 2010)

=Description It consists of the quantitative definition of the test cases based on the requirements. The author used a good quantitative base of requirements to arrive at an average of test cases by requirements. He also estimated the effort for the phases for the preparation and execution of the tests.

Context of Use: New development and maintenance of the systems with defined requirements

Technique:

Advantage Uses only the code to analyze the size of the test It could be applied to legacies without documentation

Advantage A technique that is easy to apply.

Only the defined requirements are needed

Disadvantage Needs practical experiment The lack of standardization of the requirements may interfere in the end result, but this may be resolved by segmenting the application of the metric by system, subject area etc.

Test Case Points (PATTEL ET AL ,2001)

Description Test Case Points (TCP) is an approach to estimate functional test projects. This method estimates the test effort for each activity separately. This technique encompasses seven phases: Identify Cases Used Identify Test Cases Determine TCP to generate Test Cases

Advantage A technique that is easy to apply.

Use cases and test cases are necessary

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Disadvantage Needs practical experiment The lack of standardization of the use cases and of test cases may interfere in the end result, but this may be

275 Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services Determine TCP for automation Determine TCP for manual execution Determine TCP for Automated execution Determine total TCP (the use of an adjustment factor of up to 25%, considering the complexity of the domain, the integration with other devices, multi-language support, etc) The calculation of the effort is based on paradigms of productivity arising from the organization's base history.

Context of Use: New development and maintenance systems with the defined requirements Technique: Adjusted Use Case Points (AUCP)(NAGESWARAN ,2001) Description Consists of an adaptation of the metrics of use of case points (AUCP - Adjusted UCP) where there are scores and weights that need to be defined in the model by the test manager.

The size of the AUCP tests are identified (corresponding to the planning, preparation and execution of the tests) and the effort is obtained through the identification of productivity multiplied by the AUCP Context of Use: Systems that are under development and/or in maintenance with updated specifications of case uses in order to hold a counting of the adaptation of the case use points for tests.

Advantage There is no need for a previous measurement It identifies the size of the test (AUCP) involving planning, preparation and execution of the tests

resolved by segmenting the application of the metric by system, subject area etc.

Disadvantage Little experimenting It depends on the existence of the documentation of the use cases, as these calculations are done considering this tool.

Chart 1 - Comparison of some techniques and experiments

5.1 Some final considerations on the estimations of the size and effort Among the techniques mentioned for size measurement, the Test Point Analysis - TPA considers the most number of factors for the estimation, which presumes that this technique may give more consistent results to measure the size of a software test. For example, the complexity factor is obtained by the quantity of the conditions (IF-THENELSE) of a function, which will directly influence the quantity of Test Cases.

The Function Point Analysis, for example, two similar functions may have the same size in FP, but if they have different complexities, the TPA technique will reflect the difference in the size of the functions.

The Test Case Points â&#x20AC;&#x201C; TCP technique also seems to be more accurate with respect to the estimation of the size for the test process than the FPA, for it also considers by certain factors, the internal complexities of the functions.

It is important to highlight that all techniques use a productivity factor to derive the effort through the measurement of the size obtained by the technique. Thus, such a factor should be calibrated according to three characteristics:

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276 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L., - The method for measuring the size; - The characteristics that influence the productivity of the project, such as technology, environment, team, etc; - The strategy of the tests used, including the levels, types and test techniques as well as the test environment.

6

METRICS FOR PROVIDED

THE

EVALUATION

OF

THE

SERVICES

In the context of outsourcing test services, one of the challenges to be considered is how to monitor the quality of the services provided. Also, how to validate whether the test activities and scopes of outsourcing were executed satisfactorily, especially if the tested software product is not of good quality.

Demanding only the predefined tools may be risky, for it does not guarantee the quality of the execution of the tests. As such, it is necessary to monitor closely the test process, from the strategy adopted, going through the range reached, to finalizing and follow-up of the defects that were found. To make comprehension of this subject easier, a mind map was created (Figure 04) with the most needed information. The documentary research identified that the various authors cited metrics for the monitoring of defects, effectiveness of the tests etc (Nirpal & Kale, 2011), (Caetano, 2008), (Pusala, 2006), (Kaur, Suri & Sharma,, 2007). It is interesting to highlight that the interviews emphasized the need for some of these metrics to follow up the service provided. The employees from the test factory as well as the hiring company cited the absence of this monitoring.

Figure 4 - Measurement models in tests - Follow-up of the tests

Next, some of the defined objectives, metrics and questions are described: Objective 1: Monitoring the progress of the services provided Purpose: Follow-up Subject: progress Object: outsourced test services Question 1.1: How much is it being tested?

Metrics 1.1a The aim of this metric is to verify proportionally how much is being tested Classification Objective, quantitative and follow-up Measurement base Quantity of test cases tested (of a single functionality) relative to the total of test cases (functionality)

Measurements

M1.1.a=( ÎŁ functionality of test cases tested/ ÎŁ functionality test cases)*100

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277 Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services Indicator

To calculate the percentage of what is being tested relative to the total test cases during a certain period The objective of this indicator is to point out the volume of what is being addressed relative to what is planned during a certain period Example of the indicator

Analysis Model

The analysis model of this indicator is given by dividing the sum of the functionalities of test cases tested by the sum of all the functionalities of test cases prepared during a certain period The indicator must be represented by a line graph, and it will show the percentage variation of test cases tested As the test process becomes solid, the tendency is that the percentage stabilizes itself Interpretation of the Aim - 90% indicator Ideal value - 100% of range . Low percentages show the need to act to adhere to the test process. There is a high risk associated with low levels since the quality of the test and the product will be impacted.

Analysis procedure Frequency - monthly Responsibility - test team Phase or activity in which it has to be analyzed - At any time Question 1.2: What is the progress of the defects?

Metrics 1.2a The objective of this metric is to identify the situation of what was tested Classification Objective, quantitative and follow-up Relation between the quantity of test cases that passed, failed and the total of Measurement base test cases tested Measurements M 1.2a1 = (Σ test cased that passed/ Σ test cases)*100 M 1.2a2 - (Σ test cases that failed/ Σ test cases)*100 Indicator The objective of this indicator is to point out the status of the functionalities of test cases tested, considering monthly periods of evaluation Example of the indicator

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278 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L.,

Analysis Model

Interpretation of the indicator

Analysis procedure

Metrics 1.2b Classification Measurement base

The analysis model of this indicator is found by the division of the sum of the test cases executed by status and the total of test cases executed The indicator should be represented by a bar graph, and it shows the percentage variation by functionality of the statuses of the test cases.

Low percentages of test cases that passed may show the need for actions of adherence to the development and/or test process.

High percentages of case tests that failed, were blocked and re-executed may show the need for actions of adherence to the development and/or test process.

It is interesting to see, in case of large variations among functionalities, the variables that are impacting the indicators positively or negatively.

Frequency - monthly Responsibility - test team Phase or activity in which it has to be analyzed - At any time The objective of this metric is to identify proportionally the occurrences of defects that are not confirmed (valid, invalid) Objective, quantitative and follow-up Relation between the quantity of defects by type and the total defects identified

M 1.2.b1 = (Σ valid defects/ Σ defects)*100 M 1.2b2 = (Σ valid defects/ Σ defects)*100 Indicator The objective of this indicator is to point out the status of the test cases tested by functionality, considering the monthly periods of evaluation Example of the indicator Measurements

Analysis model

Interpretation of the indicator

Analysis procedure

The analysis model of this indicator is found by the division of the sum of the types of defects and the total of defects found by functionality The indicator should be represented by a bar graph, and it shows the percentage variation by functionality of the types of defects Aim - valid defects - 100% and invalid - 0% High percentages of valid defects may show the need for actions of adherence to the development and/or test process High percentages of invalid or abandoned defects may show the need for actions of adherence to the development process.

Frequency - monthly Responsibility - test team Phase or activity in which it has to be analyzed - At any time

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279 Proposal for a measurement model for software tests with a focus on the management of outsourced services

7. METRICS FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE PRODUCT TESTED Finally, it is most important to ensure that the product has the quality expected by all, in accordance with the criteria of the quality demanded. Such criteria of quality must be evaluated according to criteria that are also objective, that is, by metrics software. As such, the NBR ISO/IEC 9126 norm itself provides in parts 2, 3 and 4 the metrics for the evaluation of the criteria of quality, be it External, Internal, and Quality of Use of this norm.

A software product does not reach its complete stability in the first releases of the software. The most important fact is that the evolution of the defects be monitored as soon as possible and that the causes are addressed during the development process.

This way, the NBR ISO/IEC 9126 norm itself provides a set of metrics for each of the characteristics of quality and their respective sub-characteristics. Such metrics aim to answer such questions as: - How adequate are the evaluated functions?

- How complete are the functions relative to the specified requirements?

- How frequently do the users find incorrect results?

- How complete are the auditing records in reference to the accesses by users of the system and to the data?

It is important to highlight that the follow-up to the quality of the product should be in line with the criteria of the quality demanded and that the strategy of the tests should test the attributes that best represent the adherence to the desired and adequate level of quality. In this context, the criteria of quality relative to the non-functional requirements are normally forgotten or non-prioritized, for example, the requirements of Performance or Efficiency. Should there be any requirement of performance for some function, this attribute should be measured and validated by the test process.

The documentary research identified a few other measurement proposals of quality of the product, frequency of defects etc ((Lazic & Mastorakis, 2008), (Kaur et al, 2007)). These measurements, aside from the ISO IEC 9126 proposal, were also confronted with the results from the interviews, aiming to identify the most relevant ones. Described below are some metrics given to evaluate the product tested.

Objective 2: How to evaluate the product tested Purpose: Identify Subject: evaluation Object: product tested Metrics 21 Identify the residual density of the defects Classification Objective, quantitative and follow-up Measurement base Relation between the quantity of defects that the end-user found and the size Measurements M 1.1a - (ÎŁ number of defects found by module or set of functions/size of the product) Indicator The objective of this indicator is to point out the proportion in the number of defects found after the test process and the size of the product Example of the indicator

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280 Calazans,A., T., S, Kosloski, R., A., D., Ribeiro Junior, L.,

Analysis model

The analysis model of this indictor is found by the division of the sum of the quantitative of the defects found by module after the test process by the size of the point of application. The indicator should be represented by a line graph, and it shows the proportion of defects by module.

I Aim - 0 Interpretation of Ideal value - 0 the indicator It is interesting to verify in the case of large variations, among the modules, the variables that are impacting the indicators positively or negatively.

Analysis procedure Frequency - monthly Responsibility - test team Phase or activity in which it has be analyzed - At any time Question 2.2: Are the tests being effective?

Metrics 2.2 Identify the effectiveness of the test considering the residual quantity of the defects over the total of defects (residual and internal) Classification Objective, quantitative and follow-up Measurement base Relation between the quantity of defects that the end-user found and the total quantity defects Measurements M 2.2 = (ÎŁ number of residual defects / ÎŁ number of internal and residual defects found)/100 Indicator The objective of this indicator is to point out the proportion between the number of residual defects after the test process and the total defects Example of the indicator

Analysis model

Interpretation the indicator

of

Analysis procedure

The analysis model of this indicator is found by the division of the quantitative of residual defects by the sum of the residual and internal defects The indicator should be represented by a line graph, and it shows the percentage variation of the residual defects Aim - 0 High percentages may show a need for actions of adherence to the test and development process.

Frequency - monthly Responsibility - test team Phase or activity in which it has to be to be analyzed - At any time

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8

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE PAPERS

The general objective of this paper was to "propose a measurement model for software tests, considering the outsourcing of this service and the need to support the management of these contracts. In order to achieve this general objective, the following specific objectives were defined: - Identify and analyze the test process with all its phases and activities; - Identify and analyze the already existing laws, norms and models that regulate the hiring of services in IT; - Analyze and propose a measurement model to outsource test services This research allowed identifying the complexity of the subject of the tests through the study of the test process. The analysis of the already existing laws, norms and models allowed defining the conceptual model of the research that identified the need to manage the service for the outsourcing of the test services, the building of a Measurement Model considering the following criteria: - Measuring the test services provided (size and effort); - Evaluating the quality of the service provided; - Measuring the quality of the product Furthermore, it was evident that the outsourcing of any IT service also needs to consider the characteristics that influence the productivity of the project, like technology, environment, team, etc., and the strategy of the tests used, including their levels, types, and test techniques as well as the test environment.

Finally, after the analysis of the measurements found in the specialized literature, of the already existing norms, instructions, and models to manage the outsourcing of services in the governmental sphere, and of the application of the GQM methodology, it is possible to: establish a measurement in size, and consequently input, to estimate the effort and the time frame for tests demands monitoring the sub processes of outsourced tests, also by means of objective and measurable criteria; and to establish the criteria of quality, evaluating whether the end-product meets such criteria. As such, the management of this type of outsourcing would be made viable in a more efficient manner. It is important to highlight that the interviews held validated the identified needs as well as the proposed measurements.

For future papers, the implementation of the model, and of the proposed measurements to verify its applicability, is recommended.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Support by TiMetricas

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 285-306 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200005

TELECOMMUTING AND HRM: A CASE STUDY OF AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICE PROVIDER André Fernandes Bernardino Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil Karina De Déa Roglio Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brasil, Jansen Maia Del Corso Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil _____________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT With the development in information technology resources, a way of working has been standing out: telecommuting. This manner of working from a distance may offer a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining highly skilled professionals. The purpose of the research presented in this article is to identify guidelines for the implementation and management of telecommuting, as an alternative to overcome the shortage of qualified professionals in Information Technology (IT). The results, based on a case study of a Brazilian subsidiary of a multinational organization that provides IT services, show that telecommuting (1) contributes to attracting and retaining qualified professionals in IT, (2) should be based on trustworthy relationships, (3) has to be supported by a strategy of decentralization of both structure and organizational assets.

Keywords: Information Technology, Human Resource Management, Telecommuting.

1. INTRODUCTION In the Information Technology (IT) sector, the service segment stands out for having significant growth rates, with an increasing demand for high-skilled professionals worldwide. According to the International Data Corporation Consulting _____________________________________________________________________________________

Manuscript first received/Recebido em 09/05/2011 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 05/05/2012 Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência André Fernandes Bernardino, MsC. Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Centro de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas. Rua Imaculada Conceição, 1155 Sala 103B, Prado Velho, Curitiba, PR, Brasil, CEP 80215-901 Telefone: (41) 3271-1476, E-mail: midware@hotmail.com Karina De Déa Roglio, Dra. Universidade Federal do Paraná, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração-PPGADM. Avenida Lothário Meissner, 632, 2° andar, Jardim Botânico, Curitiba, PR, Brasil, CEP 80210-170 Telefone: (41) 3360-4365, E-mail: karinaroglio@gmail.com Jansen Maia Del Corso, Dr. Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Centro de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas. Rua Imaculada Conceição, 1155 Sala 103B, Prado Velho, Curitiba, PR, Brazil, CEP 80215-901 Telefone: (41) 3271-1476, E-mail: del.corso@pucpr.br Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

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Group (IDC, 2009), the global growth in this sector was 5 percent in 2007. In Brazil, this growth was 11 percent. Skilled labor is even more necessary in order for such a growth to be sustainable, in addition to the need of having adequate infrastructure.

Leão, Moresi, and Oliveira (2007) warned that one of the biggest challenges for the Brazilian IT sector is the shortage of skilled professionals. With the purpose to overcome this shortage, several initiatives have been implemented by organizations, such as partnering with educational institutions, investing in training, and telecommuting. According to Nilles (1997), the particularities of telecommuting indicate the need for the adoption of specific practices in order to manage this type of work relationship. For the author, these practices may differ from those used in a traditional work system. Thus, it is important to understand these practices so that telecommuting can make a difference in the war for talent by increasing the number of potential professionals for companies that seek to fulfill their highly-skilled labor needs.

The study reported in this paper has the purpose to identify guidelines for the implementation and management of telecommuting, in order to overcome the demand for highly skilled professionals by IT service providers. The primary focus of this investigation is Human Resource Management (HRM) practices directed at managing telecommuters: staffing, training, compensation, and performance appraisal. The organization investigated was chosen because it is one of the largest in the IT service sector in Brazil and in the past few years it has gone through significant changes in its growth strategy, including the implementation of telecommuting. In the next section, we present the theoretical references. Next, the methodology used is described. Following that, the presentation and analysis of the data, as well as the conclusions and recommendations for future research, are presented.

2. THEORETICAL REFERENCES In accordance to this article purpose, the theoretical references are based on the following themes: IT Service Sector and the Shortage of Skilled Professionals, Telecommuting, and Human Resource Management Practices.

The Information Technology Service Sector and the Shortage of Skilled Professionals Since the end of the 19th century, companies have faced significant transformations in business management, as a consequence of industrial automation. At the height of the industrial revolution, “in industries such as railroad,, and steel, corporate strategies were marked by a focus on volume expansion and vertical integration” (Snell, Shadur, & Wright, 2001, p. 628). During the last three decades, heeding the call for knowledge management, the competitive environment has experienced significant changes and, as a result, the use of Information Technology (IT) has virtually been transformed into an essential “passport” for corporate competition at all levels.

Organizations from different sizes and locations must fight for market share on a global level. For Cazarini, Santos, and Oliveira (2007), IT is of such importance that it has induced significant worldwide transformations in the organizational environment, affecting the formulation of corporate strategies and business activities. In terms of strategic operations in IT, Feeny and Willcocks (1998) emphasize the necessity for an

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alignment between this and other organizational sectors, affirming that the companies need to sustain three key points in IT: “a reusable technology base, a strong IT staff, and a partnership between IT and business management” (Feeny & Willcocks, 1998, p. 9).

Due to the decline in costs of hardware, the increase in self-confident people using IT, and the development of advances in IT, several managers concluded that the use of Distributed Data Processing (DPP) is a strategic choice. According to Buchanan and Linowes (1980), DPP consists of the systematic decentralization of the activities involved in processing data, including a great variety of management tasks and responsibilities, and should be associated with an organizational strategy.

With the implementation of DPP, tasks that were previously accomplished in large data processing centers are partitioned into smaller activities, which are then transferred to remote centers for their conclusion. In this manner, the decentralization of tasks allow for greater flexibility in IT operations, as it becomes outsourced. With the primary objective being reduced costs, many companies located in developed countries have significantly increased their outsourcing. According to MacDuffie (2007), deriving from DPP, these companies come to use offshore outsourcing, which consists of the outsourcing of IT to companies located abroad, generally in emerging economies. For Silva, Duarte, Castro, and Araújo (2009), the key element of this strategic change is the growing importance of emerging economies like Brazil and India.

Meanwhile, many IT companies are facing a shortage of highly skilled professionals in emerging economies, including Brazil. An evaluation made by International Data Corporation (IDC, 2009) revealed that the IT service sector in Brazil has grown above the world’s average. However, Scartezini (2007) pointed out that the country is responsible for only a small share of the global market for IT service providers. Brazil’s position in the world market of software and services is represented in table 1.

Table 1: Brazil’s Participation in the World Market for Software and Services Brazil’s world rank in software and

2004 – 15th; 2005 – 12th; 2006 – 13th; 2007 – 12th; 2008

services

– 12th

Brazilian market movement and

Approximately $11.12 billion in 2007, an increase of

growth

22.3% over 2006.

In 2007, Brazil was responsible for 1.43% of the global

World Market

market for software and services. In 2006, it was responsible for 1.27%.

In Latin America, Brazil was the sector leader, with 43%

Latin America

market share, followed by Mexico, Argentina and Colombia.

Source: IDC (2009), Scartezini (2007).

In contrast to the relatively high level of competition with foreign companies in the Brazilian market, the presence of Brazilian companies abroad still lacks vigor (Burzynski, Balbinot & Graeml, 2010, p. 500). For the authors, smaller and less JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 285-306

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developed countries have been able to take better advantage of the opportunities in the international market than Brazil. Among the reasons for the lack of participation Brazilian companies have in the global market, the shortage of skilled professionals and the very high payroll taxes stand out. In order to have a significant growth in the Brazilian Software and Services sector, it is necessary to overcome some important restrictions: 1. Insufficient skilled professionals to meet the demands; 2. A shortage of technicians: IT professionals usually have Undergraduate and Graduate degrees, whose compensation costs can impact the organization competitiveness; 3. A shortage of professionals fluent in English, which harms international ventures: public policy in China and Mexico supports English education and India has an inherent advantage as English is one of their official national languages; 4. High indirect HR costs: in terms of the internal market, the challenge is to operate with ever-increasing costs in regards to hiring and employment.

One challenge for HRM in an IT organization operating in Brazil is to find out alternatives to minimize the impacts of these restrictions. In this context, flexible practices in hiring and work relationships, both in terms of workday and its location, may offer a distinctive element in the war for talent, increasing the number of potential qualified applicants. Strategic initiatives are being taken, primarily in the IT sector, by the use of home-offices, the typical structure of telecommuting.

3. TELECOMMUTING The term telecommuting, also known as remote work, was coined in 1970. It was mentioned for the first time in the literature by the American physicist Jack M. Nilles, considered “the father of telecommuting”. According to the definition of Nilles (1997), telecommuting can be conceived as the use of computers and telecommunications in manners that change the traditional geography of work and it has, like a telecommuter, an individual who uses technology in a way that supersedes the traditional restrictions of space and time placed on work.

In a general manner, telecommuting can result in both positive and negative aspects for the individuals and organizations. According to Andreassi (1997); Barros and Silva (2010); Fusco, Lima, and Riça (2003); Lautsch, Kossek, and Eaton (2009); Martinez, Pérez, Luis, and Vela (2007); Nilles (1997); Pyöriä (2011), the positive aspects for the telecommuter are: savings on transportation, food and clothes and time; flexible work hours; improvement in health due to the reduced stress levels; an improvement in the quality of life due to the time flexibility and a work location that permits reconciling work with family life; and an increase in motivation and productivity. The same authors point out some of the negative aspects to the adoption of a home office for telecommuters: social and professional isolation; loss of home space; a possible loss of job benefits (transportation, meals); lack of interaction with professional colleagues; an increase in expenses related to home infrastructure; a

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difficulty in separating professional life from private life; difficulty in any future adaptation in the case of work away from home again; and possible limitations to career opportunities.

Regarding positive aspects for organizations that adopt the home office system, several authors (Andreassi, 1997; Fusco et al., 2003; Martinez et al., 2007; Nilles, 1997; Pyöriä, 2011) believe it allows for a greater capacity for attracting and retaining qualified workers; access to a larger domestic talent pool (elderly and handicapped individuals); reduction in physical space requirements; reductions in absenteeism; fast business growth; greater flexibility in work structure; an increase in productivity and work quality; and access to a global workforce. Some of the negative aspects the authors highlight are: the necessity for new management capabilities; complex issues of health and safety; workers identifying less with their company, or at least a difficulty in implementing and extending corporate culture; possible social isolation of employees.

The positive and negative aspects of telecommuting present challenges for the HRM department because of the specific characteristics these work relationships have.

In some ways, they require the implementation of specific practices in staffing, training, compensation, and performance appraisal.

4. HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES Due to the characteristics of telecommuting, it is important to evaluate the need for specific HRM practices. According to Lautsch et al. (2009), greater knowledge is needed about how to manage this new way of working, particularly in blended workgroups comprising both telecommuting and non-telecommuting employees. For Martinez et al. (2007), HRM practices aimed at telecommuting correspond to the level of its implementation. Research into how its implementation yields positive results indicate that such specific steps are necessary, not just for the success of telecommuting itself, but also to enhance its contribution to the organization.

As understood from Braga (2006), HRM of a telecommuting arrangement can mainly differ from a conventional working system in the following aspects: space, time, communication, organizational history, management models, socialization processes, organizational policies, leadership and power, rules and norms, dress code, human resource policies and practices, and organizational climate. In this aspect, it is appropriate to highlight the management methods presented by Rubio (2001). Using a telecommuting management program in the IT service sector that was implemented in an American multinational’s Spanish subsidiary as a basis, the author created the “FAT Formula” (Flexibility-Awareness-Trust). This formula consists of three strategic practices (Rubio, 2001, p. 2): 1. Apply flexible labor practices to all parties involved; 2. Conduct an awareness campaign centered on working at a distance; 3. Manage the campaign through trust-based relationships (and not control), focusing on results (instead of physical presence).

If some of these factors are not present in the organization, Rubio (2001) categorically affirms that telecommuting is not a viable option. The author states that flexibility can be “obtained through equipment that is adaptable to any situation, and JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 285-306

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through which everyone can access all of the organizations’ information” (Rubio, 2001, p. 3). Such flexibility as work location, combined with flexibility in working hours, is one of the positive aspects telecommuting has for the telecommuter. According to Nohara, Acevedo, Ribeiro & Silva (2010), most of the teleworkers they interviewed considered the flexibility in working hours, in working location, and in the control over work tasks, as some of the most important benefits of teleworking that can motivate better performance and organizational identity.

For Martinez et al. (2007), telecommuting is a flexible modality that requires the implementation of specific HRM practices, with the purpose of creating an organizational climate based on trust. This is because, in the majority of cases, employers are more likely to offer telecommuting as an option to the professionals they trust the most. Supporting this idea, several authors (Braga, 2006; Mayo, Pastor, Gomez-Mejia, & Cruz, 2009; Rubio, 2001) affirm that for a smooth operation of telecommuting, it is necessary to have an organizational culture based, above all, on trust between supervisors and their subordinates. These authors highlight that managers must keep in mind that even employees who are physically in an office can use a computer for personal reasons, and not just for professional ones: “productivity can no longer be associate with presence. It is important to teach to work towards objectives and achieving results” (Rubio, 2001, p. 7). In this belief, Rubio agrees with Braga (2006); Mayo et al. (2009), who support the need for managers of telecommuters to change their focus from “work time” to “work results”. On the other hand, telecommuters should make a commitment to work towards quality, as well as an agreement on deadlines, results, and benchmarks. This posture requires, in addition to an auspicious organizational culture, a decentralized organizational structure in which HRM policies concerning telecommuting emphasize the substitution of physical control.

Towards the objective of promoting flexibility, awareness and trust in relationships with telecommuters, traditional HRM practices need to have particular characteristics. Considering the purpose of this research, we investigated the following practices: staffing, performance appraisal, training and compensation, which have a large influence on the processes of attracting and retaining highly skilled professionals.

In the next sections, each of these practices will be analyzed, with the focus on the particularities of telecommuters.

Staffing. The staffing process is pointed out by Nilles (1997) as one of the most important and challenging aspects concerning the successful implementation of a telecommuting program. Apart from the fact that some companies manage this process using the traditional methods for recruiting and selecting traditional workers, there is not a consensus in the literature. Authors such as Blackburn, Furst, and Rosen (2003) emphasize that some specific factors should be taken into consideration, because not all candidates have the right profile to be a telecommuter. In this respect, Golden (2009, p.

247) observes that “some individuals may not prefer, or may not function well within work situations in which they have limited face-to-face contact with co-workers or others in the work environment, and therefore may not do teleworking well. Conversely, it may be that some individuals thrive in the comparative solitude of working from home or another remote location, and are therefore well suited to this work mode”. For MacDuffie (2007), hiring should occur in a conventional manner, by verifying the same attributes defined for other workers. Telecommuting, according to Nilles (1997), requires organization, discipline, and personal motivation, which represents a challenge for the HRM department: to identify professionals with these characteristics and hire them as telecommuters.

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Blackburn et al. (2003) identify some imperative characteristics that remote work candidates must have, and that should be tested during the staffing process: (1) self-management: personal initiative with a capacity for defining personal benchmarks and achieving them in the absence of rigorous supervision; (2) communication: the ability to use technology for efficient communication; (3) cultural awareness: the ability to deal with cultural diversity; (4) in-depth knowledge of technology. Considering that these characteristics are not easily identified through tests and interviews, internal recruitment is a good choice for telecommuters. However, in the cases where it is absolutely necessary to use external recruitment, traditional methods for announcing the job opportunities can be used. The well-known method for recruiting professionals - the employee referrals – is very efficient for telecommuters, due to the trust issue discussed before. If an employee has recommended a potential candidate, it means that he/she knows the candidate’s qualifications to work from a distance.

In the selection process, the easy access to internally recruited candidates simplifies the application of selective techniques: interviews, written and oral knowledge tests, psychological tests, and group dynamics. In the case of external recruitment, HR professionals may face difficulties to apply these techniques in person.

Nilles (1997) affirms that the tools and technologies used to support distance communication are not a substitute for face-to-face physical and direct interpersonal interaction during the hiring process.

Regarding labor laws in Brazil, there is no difference between the job executed at the company and that performed at the employee’s home. All of the obligatory procedures during the hiring process are also valid for telecommuters. After the hiring process, a mandatory period of residence at the company office is one of the most used techniques when telecommuters are recruited externally. This period can vary, depending on the hiring urgency, physical location of the worker, and specific training requirements. This type of initiative permits that the new employee experience an immersion in the organization, facilitating his/her adaptation due to the interaction with superiors and work colleagues.

Performance appraisal. Performance appraisal is particularly important in the context of telecommuting considering that face-to-face interactions are occasional.

Cascio (2000) argues that this distance is one of the biggest challenges for telecommuting. For this reason, it is fundamental to define and communicate, in a clear and objective manner, each person’s roles and responsibilities, as well as each person’s tasks and compensation. Furthermore, in the author’s opinion, it is necessary to establish specific and challenging benchmarks, along with appraisal actions focused on performance (Cascio, 2000).

According to Lautsch et al. (2009), the use of flexibility should not undermine telecommuter performance, and that supervisors should adjust their behaviors to ensure positive performance. For Ji, Liu, and Min (2010), the success of remote working relies heavily on effective communication. Martinez et al. (2007) warned that communication is very important in the process of performance appraisal: managers should develop their communication skills in order to avoid the isolation feeling. For the authors, it is important to not rely on just emails or instant messages, it is also necessary to balance the use of these tools with learning how to conduct virtual meetings and deliver useful feedback (Martinez et al., 2007).

The feedback process is one of the most relevant elements to the effectiveness of the performance appraisal, and is continually mentioned in the telecommuting literature.

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According to Nilles (1997, p. 47), “continuous feedback as to how work is being carried out is a necessary element of good supervision, but in many cases is disregarded in telecommuting”. For MacDuffie (2007), feedback should be given periodically as part of a performance management system, and is particularly important for virtual teams where, quite often, it is difficult to have the opportunity for face-to-face sessions, informal feedback. In the opinion of this author, the consequences of a lack of continuous feedback within this context can be damaging to the professional, causing isolation, a drop in productivity, a lack of motivation, and difficulties in acquiring new knowledge (MacDuffie, 2007).

Braga (2006) and Mello (1999) suggest that, within the scope of remote labor, the question of control over the employee and the work performed requires the management of “those that can’t be seen” (Golden, 2009, p. 246) which means a change in perspective: the focus should be moved from “time of work” to “results of work”.

Due to the fact that telecommuting is based upon a high degree of autonomy and little control, Mayo et al. (2009) believe that managers are more likely to compensate their employees for performance. The differences in control methods for telecommuting comparing to conventional labor were also analyzed by Alves (2008): because telecommuting does not allow direct observation of workers or control over them through means such as “clocking in”, employers must turn to alternative technological tools that enable this process: control of access to the company’s computer networks, generation of periodic reports, and documentation of activities developed by the telecommuter. This information allows the company to follow up progress, and compensate it based on goals and results.

In sum mary, the ideas of the authors mentioned previously are that, considering that it is not possible to control telecommuters in the same way as they control traditional workers, organizations should delegate more managerial responsibilities to telecommuters. This means not only being responsible for results, but also for determining and enacting the most adequate methods for achieving them. Evaluation of the telecommuter occurs, therefore, in a more indirect and subtle manner than for a traditional worker; but is still present, in an intensity which certainly depends on the organizational culture, strategy and objectives.

Training. According to Lawler III (2003), organizations truly committed to the development of their employees have positive results; “this is especially important in technology companies that need a workforce whose skills and abilities need constant updating” (Lawler III, 2003, p. 123). Concerning the telecommuting process, Menezes, Santos, and Silva (2006, p. 53) assert that special attention should be directed to the training strategies. The use of distance-learning programs is important for the success in adopting telecommuting, primarily for high-tech companies. In a research published by Hone and Kerrin (2001), the lack of training opportunities was considered a negative aspect of telecommuting, in the opinion of the telecommuters and managers interviewed. The conclusion reached by these authors is that distance-learning based training is efficient when used for virtual teams, and is often necessary to create incentives to encourage its use.

The implementation of training programs for the telecommuters’ managers is also relevant. Martinez et al. (2007) affirm that it is necessary that these managers develop their communication skills. Mello (1999) and Menezes et al. (2006) indicate that training aimed at managers should focus on the capacity for managing virtual teams, and encompass aspects such as: improving communication, defining goals, and

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performing evaluations based on results. According to these authors, white-collar employees should also be trained to offer adequate support for telecommuters.

In terms of professional development of the IT employees, Mezzomo and Nunes (2004) showed that the growth in IT outsourcing and the need to demonstrate personal knowledge about specific technologies has promoted the growth of Professional Certifications. These authors conclude that in several areas of IT, having only an undergraduate degree is not sufficient, especially in sectors that make use of highly specialized software. McGrath (1998) attests that these certificates are an additional way of confirming professionals’ knowledge, and can assist in attracting customers and increasing the functional competence of work teams. Another relevant aspect is that investments in training and development can increase confidence when a telecommuter recognizes that the company is investing in his/her professional development.

Compensation. We did not find evidences of differences in compensation systems between traditional and telecommuting employees in the literature reviewed. In the Brazilian legislation, articles 6th and 83rd of Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho¹ (labor legislation) makes reference to working from a distance. Article 6 th states that there shall be no difference between work performed at the company and that executed at the employee home, in as much as it characterizes the employment relationship. It is to be noted that this article does not make a distinction between telecommuters and other categories of employees. According to article 83rd, telecommuters have the right to the same fringe benefits: thirteenth-month salary, time off, compensation for overtime, vacation, official holidays, sick leave and other types of leave as established by law.

Even though telecommuters have more flexible working hours, the number of hours they work is still subject to the overtime compensation law. The Brazilian labor legislation, as agreed upon with labor unions, guarantees that telecommuters have the same overtime payments as other workers. This legislation also demands that companies with more than ten employees have a means of controlling labor hours. Since telecommuter professionals perform their activities at a distance, online systems of control should be used.

The importance of monetary rewards in employee motivation has been the subject of several studies. Monetary rewards are not equally important in all situations or to all individuals (Rynes, Gerhart, & Minette, 2004). There are many other elements in the compensation system that can stimulate employees’ motivation. In this case, telecommuting may be considered as a strong motivational factor. Andreassi (1997) discovered that many professionals change employment, at times receiving a lower payment, just to have the option of working at home. For Mayo et al. (2009), telecommuting can allow great flexibility for the worker, which is an important nonfinancial reward. In the opinions of the authors cited, telecommuting is sometimes used by companies for the primary motive of attracting and retaining skilled professionals. In addition, it can increase employee’s motivation by offering the incentive of selfresponsibility and autonomy. The skilled-based pay as well as performance-based pay systems should also be included in the telecommuters’ compensation. Paying the person rather than the job is particularly popular in high-tech companies and team-based manufacturing operations (Lawler III, 2003, p. 195). In the case of outsourcing, telecommuters might be hired to work on temporary activities or projects. In this case, MacDuffie (2007) and Mello (1999) insist that it is important to tie compensation with the work accomplished, creating periodical checkpoints.

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5. METHOD The empirical research was designed to investigate HRM practices directed at managing telecommuters, and to identify guidelines for the implementation and management of telecommuting. It was based on a case study of a multinational corporation that provides IT services. Data was obtained through documental analysis (labor contracts and organization documents) and semi-structured interviews composed by open-ended questions. The number of employees in the Brazilian subsidiary is about 14,000 with 2,500 managers. We interviewed 12 telecommuters working with IT, 6 telecommuters’ managers, and 1 HR manager. The choice of the interviewees was intentional, due to the need for investigating employees who could make relevant contributions to the research topic. The primary criteria used to choose the telecommuters is that they have to be working as telecommuters at the company for a minimum of six months. In relation to the choice of telecommuter managers, the criteria used is that they manage a minimum of two telecommuters. For choosing the HR manager, the criteria are having participated in the process of implementing telecommuting in the Brazilian subsidiary of the organization, and also participating, having participated or having knowledge about the existing staffing process, performance appraisal, training, and compensation practices.

The interviews were conducted between September 2009 and December 2009.

Each interview lasted an average of 1 hour and the term home-office was used instead of telecommuting, because it is the term used at the company. Due to the fact that the majority of the participants were located in Curitiba and São Paulo, the interviews with these professionals were made face-to-face. For participants from other locations, we used telephone interviews. In both cases, we used an interview guide to address the following topics: (1) telecommuting, (2) staffing, (3) performance appraisal, (4) training, (5) compensation. To maintain confidentiality, the identification of the organization, as well as the names of the interviewees, are not mentioned. Each interviewee is referred to by coded letters-numbers: Tel-telecommuter, TcMgrTelecommuting Manager, MgrHR-Human Resource Manager. Their principal characteristics are presented in Table2.

Table 2: Primary Characteristics of the Subjects Interviewed Code

Age/Sex/Marital

City

Position

status

Interview Date

Tel01

29/M/Married

Sorocaba – SP – Brazil

Technical area of IT

12/11/2009

Tel02

39/F/Married

Curitiba – PR – Brazil

Technical area of IT

10/14/2009

Tel03

38/M/Married

Curitiba – PR – Brazil

Technical area of IT

10/14/2009

Tel04

31/M/Single

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

Technical area of IT

09/30/2009

Tel05

48/M/Married

Curitiba – PR – Brazil

Technical area of IT

10/14/2009

Tel06

46/M/Single

Rio de Janeiro - RJ –

Technical area of IT

10/27/2009

Brazil

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295 Telecommuting and HRM: a case study of an information technology service provider Tel07

30/M/Married

Belém – PA – Brazil

Technical area of IT

10/05/2009

Tel08

51/M/Married

Timóteo – MG – Brazil

Technical area of IT

12/11/2009

Tel09

44/M/Single

Vinhedo – SP – Brazil

Technical area of IT

10/05/2009

Tel10

33/M/Single

Campinas – SP – Brazil

Technical area of IT

11/05/2009

Tel11

30/M/Single

Curitiba – PR – Brazil

Technical area of IT

10/15/2009

Tel12

35/M/Married

Sumaré – SP – Brazil

Technical area of IT

10/04/2009

TcMgr01

48 /M/Married

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

Telecommuter manager

10/09/2009

TcMgr02

32 /M/Single

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

Telecommuter manager

11/17/2009

TcMgr03

35/F/Married

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

Telecommuter manager

10/22/2009

TcMgr04

31/ F/Married

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

Telecommuter manager

11/16/2009

TcMgr05

28/F/Married

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

Telecommuter manager

10/22/2009

TcMgr06

40/F/Single

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

Telecommuter manager

12/11/2009

MgrHR01

35/F/Married

São Paulo – SP – Brazil

HR manager

10/26/2009

Source: Empirical Research.

Data analysis was based on a phenomenological approach for qualitative data analysis proposed by Minayo (1998). Each individual interview was analyzed using categories stemming from the literature and the original research interest, but these were improved and modified as new categories emerged from data. The categories that had emerged from individual interviews were then tested against the rest of the data collected. Results are illustrated with direct quotes of those interviewed. Additionally, researchers’ notes were inserted in order to facilitate the understanding of information; these are presented in brackets. Due to a previous agreement with the company, we only revealed non-confidential information.

6. SYNTHESES OF FINDINGS The results are divided into two sections: (1) the process of telecommuting implementation in the organization; (2) telecommuting HRM practices, which are further divided into the following sections: staffing, performance appraisal, training, and compensation.

The Process of Telecommuting Implementation The organization investigated is one of the largest providers of IT services in the world, operating as a globally integrated company with a highly decentralized structure for IT activities. This company is situated in many countries and is renowned primarily for supplying IT services, being strongly positioned in the outsourcing sector. The JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 285-306

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Brazilian headquarter is located in São Paulo, with subsidiaries in the capitals of the major Brazilian States. The majority of telecommuters are computer technicians, programmers, systems analysts and support analysts. Due to the company growth in Brazil in the last 5 years, telecommuting has been widely used as a strategy to overcome the demand for high-skilled professionals.

The first issue analyzed is why and how the organization implemented telecommuting in the Brazilian subsidiary. In the opinion of the HR manager, telecommuting started at Brazil almost accidentally: “Employees spent a lot of time at the companies [customers], and couldn’t access their emails, report work hours, or communicate with other members of the team. Due to this fact, it was decided to supply access via internet.” (MgrHR01, personal communication, October 26, 2009). In order to solve this problem, the company developed a technological infrastructure and software that allowed employees to access the internal network, known as Virtual Private Network (VPN). Because it is an IT company, it did not face major problems or costs with the implementation of the technological infrastructure necessary for telecommuting. This aspect is confirmed by Mayo et al. (2009): telecommuting is relatively easy and inexpensive to implement.

With the VPN software installed and an access code, any employee with a notebook connected to the internet was able to contact the company’s network and make use of any of the programs available in the system. The customers had high-speed internet connections, which enabled the use of the VPN technology by workers on site.

However, with a slow-speed internet connection at home, it wasn’t possible to implement the work-at-home structure without compromising professional activities.

The implementation of telecommuting happened in 2002, when high-speed internet became accessible in Brazil. In this respect, one of the Managers stated that: “The trend really caught on when Telefonica launched ADSL connections, from then on everyone wanted to work from home, especially on Fridays” (TcMgr04, personal communication, November 16, 2009).

Due to the implementation of telecommuting, there was a need to improve IT and telecommunication resources, in a way to support remote connections with quality and reliability. The flaws in these resources began to cause disorder as more employees began to work from home, as related by Telecommuter 04: “I was working from home every day [...], when the VPN felt there was a chaos” (Tel04, personal communication, September 30, 2009). Further than the physical IT infrastructure, some programs designed to work only within the company intranet were adapted for remote use, as cited by Manager 01: “the software for registering working hours migrated to an internet platform and could only be accessed via a browser” (TcMgr01, personal communication, October 9, 2009).

Since the technological infrastructure became stable, the HR department began to encourage telecommuting, motivated by three reasons (stated on the HR department website and confirmed during the interview with the HR Manager): “attract, maintain and motivate the professional”. As discussed in the theoretical reference, the shortage of high-skilled professionals in IT was one of the primary reasons for the telecommuting implementation. Another reason is that telecommuting may contribute to the retention of these professionals once hired. According to Manager 06: “[…] it is clear that a shortage of professionals in the area exists […] working from home has helped us immensely” (TcMgr06, personal communication, December 11, 2009). This statement is consistent with the research of Leão et al. (2007) about the shortage of IT professionals in Brazil. The HR Manager further emphasized that telecommuting allows JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 285-306

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the company to expand its activities, contributing to the organizational strategy of achieving a huge growth rate in Brazil.

Some positive aspects of telecommuting previously discussed are observed in the organization investigated. In the opinion of Manager 05, the main positive aspect of telecommuting is related to the war for qualified professionals. She specifically referred to the fact that, due to telecommuting, her team has not lost projects to teams located in Indian and Chinese subsidiaries, showing the intensive competition between these emerging markets, identified by Scartezini (2007). “Today our team has 110 people, practically 50/50 [half traditional employees and half telecommuters]. It was possible to hire people from all of Brazil and not lose the opportunities of diverse projects to India and China” (TcMgr05, personal communication, October 22, 2009). This statement also emphasizes the easiness of recruiting candidates from locations outside of the subsidiary’s headquarters, allowed by telecommuting. This reinforces one of the positive aspects of this type of work highlighted by Nilles (1997): access to a global workforce.

Another positive aspect of telecommuting is the improvement in customer service because of work flexible hours, which allowed the organization to meet the customer requirements and solve problems out of the traditional business hours: “It is easier for a technician to respond to a call [a customer’s technical problem] on the weekend or at night if they have the possibility of having their notebook by his/her side […]” (TcMgr04, personal communication, November 16, 2009). For Telecommuter 01, “the IT professional should be available just like a doctor” (Tel01, personal communication, December 11, 2009). The difference in time zones between Brazil and the United States was also mentioned by one of the Telecommuters interviewed, highlighting another positive aspect of telecommuting: “[…] it [the time difference] can be up to three hours during our summer time and they [the USA] aren’t, and homeoffice helps in this sense immensely” (Tel04, personal communication, September 30, 2009).

The space-saving aspects of telecommuting were pointed out by the HR Manager as one of its most important benefits. This aspect was previously mentioned during the literature review by Andreassi (1997), concerning a reduction in the space required for company facilities: “[…] the speed of construction [of new buildings] did not accompany the rapid growth in the number of contracts” (MgrHR01, personal communication, October 26, 2009).

It was also possible to identify some of the negative aspects in adopting the telecommuting. For Manager 02 (TcMgr02) and Manager 06 (TcMgr06), telecommuters face difficulties to interact with superiors and on-site colleagues and have limited access to training programs. Manager 03 cites communication barriers that make the process of motivating telecommuters difficult: “even though we use teleconferencing, [this] didn’t transmit the emotions […] sometimes we had to deal with a very complicated situation and everything had to be achieved only through the use of our voices” (TcMgr03, personal communication, October 22, 2009). MacDuffie (2007) affirms that communications exclusively channelled through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools tend to eliminate non-verbal clues that amplify the understanding of what is spoken, restricting how people communicate their ideas.

For the author, communication within a remote set-up can eliminate the use of visual aids.

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Manager 04 says that to organize work schedules is a complex activity. Even though it is not directly related to telecommuting, this aspect was highlighted, since a large part of the telecommuters in his team serve international customers: “[…] in our case, we assist clients in the USA and Canada, and it is always a challenge to negotiate who will have to work on Brazilian holidays and who will work on the US holidays” (TcMgr04, personal communication, November 16, 2009). The challenge of aligning traditional workers and telecommuters around common goals, as well as reaching a fair distribution of tasks between them, is mentioned by Manager 03: “sometimes it is difficult to get all of those that are working from home to unite on the same objectives” (TcMgr03, personal communication, October 22, 2009).

Telecommuting HRM Practices One aspect that stands out in the organization investigated is the decentralization of the HRM practices. Several utterances (including those from the HR Manager) reveal that managers have the autonomy to make decisions usually restricted to the HR department in many organizations. It shows that the trust level present in the organization supports not only the relationships between managers and their subordinates, but also between managers and the HR department. Another aspect that shows the importance of trust-based relationships in telecommuting is that although recruiting via the internet may seem to be the most suitable technique for recruiting IT telecommuters (due to the continuous use of the internet in their professional activities), the technique used in the organization investigated is the employee referrals. The flexibility and the lack of strict rules concerning the recruitment of telecommuters make employee referrals a defining factor in the hiring process. When potential applicants receive a testimonial from an employee, it usually carries more credibility than other recruitment techniques (Lawler III, 2003, p. 81). Usually, available telecommuting positions are not advertised outside the organization. Moreover, the decision to hire new telecommuters is made by the line managers, not by the HR department.

The autonomy held by line managers is also evident in the performance appraisal process. The HR department recommends that each telecommuter goes to the company at least twice a year for individual appraisal. Nevertheless, this recommendation is not always carried out, primarily because of the need to refund employees’ travel costs. This factor can also have a negative effect on training telecommuters, due to the lack of on-site training. It is necessary that IT companies invest in enhancing their employees’ capabilities, simply because of the speed at which technological knowledge becomes obsolete in this area. Specifically in the telecommuter case, the distance education systems are a good choice. However, these systems should not be the only ones used by the organization for training their remote employees. On-site training is important, and can also be an alternative to encourage meetings and interaction with other team members.

Despite the fact that the organization studied operates in a highly dynamic sector, the definition of individual goals used to appraise telecommuters’ performance is made only once a year, and the results of this appraisal are not tied to compensation.

Since the IT sector faces a severe shortage of high-skilled professionals, performancebased pay may offer a positive contribution towards attracting, retaining and further motivating telecommuters. Details of the results related to each one of the HRM practices are presented in the sequence.

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Staffing. The HR department did not fix rigid rules for recruiting telecommuters at the organization investigated. The recruitment can be internal or external, but the internal one is the most used. On the company website, information open to the general public does not include the positions available for telecommuting. On the internal website (accessed only by the employees) this option is available. Manager 02 reported that internal recruitment has become an easier method for finding new telecommuters if compared to external recruiting: “Imagine an employee in Tocantins (a State located in Midwestern region of Brazil) who doesn’t even know the company and the company doesn’t know him; it’s risky to hire him for working from home, you can’t trust him” (TcMgr02, personal communication, November 17, 2009). This statement reinforces the importance of trust-based relationships in telecommuting, which exist even before the professional becomes part of the organization, as mentioned by Rubio (2001).

Regarding the selection process, resumes are only accepted via internet. They are stored in a database and analyzed by an HR specialist. This initial analysis is to determine if the candidate has the profile required by specific areas within the organization, and to evaluate the candidate’s academic background, language skills, and professional experience.

The future telecommuter manager designates a specialized professional in a specific technology to interview the candidate. Interviews with candidates from other cities are made over the telephone. For the HR manager: “the process is totally via internet, with the exception of the technical interview which is done in person or over the telephone” (MgrHR01, personal communication, October 26, 2009). In the case of Teleworker 03, the entire hiring process was done over the telephone. The first personal contact between the candidate and his future manager happened in a São Paulo airport, on the way to an international trip: “We already had a trip scheduled abroad […] I found the resume [of the candidate], we did the process over the telephone and we met at the airport […] there wasn’t time for him to meet me before” (TcMgr01, personal communication, October 9, 2009). We then asked this telecommuter what reasons led him to accept this type of contract without having had a previous contact with his future manager. In the words of the telecommuter “I was even in doubt as to whether it was really his own [company], but I knew someone that worked in São Paulo, and I had asked her to go and see if he [the manager] really existed” (Tel03, personal communication, October 14, 2009).

The telecommuters interviewed said that when they were hired they did not go through psychological or group dynamic tests. The first contact with the candidate (over the telephone) is always made by his/her future manager. Except in the cases of errors or missing information on the application form, the HR analyst does not contact in the beginning; they do so only after the manager has accepted the candidate. For Manager 04, it is the first contact that decides the future of the candidate in relation to telecommuting: “If we really need the professional and he can only work via homeoffice, everything is negotiable” (TcMgr04, personal communication, November 16, 2009).

We identified three alternative scenarios that describe the hiring process of the twelve telecommuters interviewed: (1) a planned transfer to telecommuting after an initial period of adaptation within the organization; (2) the traditional employee later transferred to telecommuting; (3) directly hired as a telecommuter. The first option is based on an agreement between the employee and the organization that, after a period of time working at the company, the employee would have their labor contract changed to JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 285-306

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home-office. It is important to point out that the date of this change of status is not communicated to the HR department, because the probation period can be extended or shortened. According to the HR Manager, “the recommendation is for a minimum of six months, but the manager has autonomy to decide if he/she will stay longer” (MgrHR, personal communication, October 26, 2009). This statement demonstrates that the flexibility endowed by telecommuting, mentioned by Rubio (2001), is also extended to the relationships between managers and the HR department.

It is important to point out that in the case of the telecommuters investigated here, all of them had their probation period reduced. There is only one situation in which the candidate was hired directly as a telecommuter without the probation period.

This candidate was recommended by other employees and the organization had urgency in hiring someone with her specific knowledge.

In the cases where a traditional employee was later transferred to telecommuting, we discovered three reasons for this change: (1) at the time of hiring, the candidate did not know that telecommuting was an option; (2) at the time of hiring, the candidate was not interested in telecommuting; (3) the individual was already an employee of the organization.

All managers interviewed agree that they have the autonomy for decide to hire an employee directly to telecommuting. In the words of Manager 06: “we request a position from HR and the question of home-office is decided according to the necessity” (TcMgr06, personal communication, December 11, 2009). In agreement with the previous statement, Manager 04 emphasized that the only difference is in the content of the labor contract signed by the employee: “the difference is made clear [to HR] that the job opening will be home-office” (TcMgr, personal communication, November 16, 2009). The HR manager agrees with managers’ statements about their autonomy in hiring telecommuters: “[…] this question depends upon each individual manager. He has the greater power in the decision about the type of vacancy, because they know the particularities of how it must function” (TcMgr01, personal communication, October 26, 2009). The only restriction is that telecommuting has to be done exclusively within the Brazilian territory, so that any problems with labor laws are avoided.

In some cases, the option of telecommuting stems from a lack of physical space at the company. According to two Managers, this was one of the decisive factors for implementing telecommuting in the organization: “if we had the physical space and the employees were available on the labor market, I wouldn’t encourage home-office on my team, I prefer it when everyone is close together” (TcMgr01, personal communication, October 09, 2009).

Performance appraisal. The organization investigated does not use any particular methods to perform telecommuter performance appraisal. The appraisal methodology adopted by the company is applied to all employees, and it is the responsibility of each manager to create an effective system of communication for monitoring results, as demonstrated by this statement from the HR Manager: “In practice, the department [HR] has little participation; it is the responsibility of the manager, once he has authorized the home-office position, to establish a clear evaluation process” (MgrHR01, personal communication, October 26, 2009). In this respect, the HR Manager agrees with Ji et al. (2010) and Martinez et al. (2007), about the importance of the communication process for performance appraisal in telecommuting. It is reasonable to say that, within this organization, the manager has autonomy in regards to the performance appraisal of his/her subordinates: “the manager monitors the employee on

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a day-to-day basis, and has the competence to evaluate if the work is being performed to expectations” (MgrHR01, personal communication, October 26, 2009).

The formal system of performance appraisal used in this organization is based on well-defined goals. In order to have a positive evaluation, two sets of goals must be reached by the employee: departmental and individual. The departmental goals are established by the top management in each area and everyone´s responsibility , whether or not he/she is a telecommuter. Individual goals are defined between the manager and each of his/her subordinates, normally in January. After twelve months, the annual appraisal performance is completed.

Even though there is a clear and detailed formal appraisal process, which is highly encouraged by HR managers in all organizational subsidiaries, we concluded that having a goal-based system with only a single annual review might not be very efficient in a highly dynamic sector such as IT. In the words of Telecommuter 01: “the environment is dynamic, it doesn’t work to adhere to the goals based upon [the reality] of January, as clients change all the time […] the goals are not updated at the rate one hopes for” (Tel01, personal communication, December 11, 2009). There is, though, an informal appraisal process, based on the employee ability to adapt to the tasks at hand and respond fast to the organization’s emergent demands.

One important element that influences the effectiveness of the performance appraisal is the managers’ commitment to the telecommuting system. They understand that it is essential to be always available to their subordinates and to have contact with them on a daily basis. Usually this is done through the use of communication technologies which, depending on the case, might be the only channel of communication with the subordinate.

For Managers 01 and 05, a successful performance appraisal process may depend directly on the level of confidence a manager has in his/her subordinates, as well as the work methods adopted by the manager. This is exemplified in the statement: “I believe this question depends a lot on confidence because we don’t have much control over what each one does in their home” (TcMgr01, personal communication, October 09, 2009). In this aspect, the managers mentioned the particularity identified by Braga (2006): in telecommuting the question of control over the worker requires a change of perspective, from focusing on “work time” to “work results”.

Training. According to three interviewed Managers, training has been one of the organization’s primary initiatives towards having a qualified group of professionals to enable its growth strategy. This supports the vision Lawler III (2003) has about the importance of training to the organization performance. There are two different distance training platforms available to telecommuters in the organization. The first has the purpose of sharing the instructor’s computer screen in such a way that all of the instructor’s activities are able to be observed via the internet by the trainees. The second is the Distance Education (DE) platform, where different programs are available on the intranet and can be accessed by any employee. Many of these programs have videos, so that it is possible for trainees to both see and hear an instructor teaching.

In respect to on-site training, all telecommuters participate in the onboarding program. This is a mandatory training program directed at newly hired workers and intends to help them better understand corporate culture and strategy. In the opinion of the HR manager: “this training gets the relationship between employee and company to be on the same page” (MgrHR, personal communication, October 26, 2009). With the exception of the onboarding program, the majority of telecommuters interviewed never JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 285-306

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had an on-site training experience. In the opinion of Manager 03, this type of training is expensive because of the lack of available physical space in the company. Another factor mentioned by Manager 02 is related to the company’s primary activity: IT service supply. Because this is the company’s main area, it is increasingly difficult to justify onsite training programs for its employees: “Most of the time we do not have how to justify the investments in training, because we are chosen by the customers for the reason that we already have the skills to supply the service” (TcMgr02, personal communication, November 17, 2009). When further questioned about this issue, the manager explained that each employee in her department is being indirectly paid by one or more customers. Telecommuters are hired based on specific customers’ needs. At the moment that a department assumes responsibility for a customer’s account, it is supposed that the required knowledge is already available at the organization.

In regard to Professional Certifications, there is an incentive given by some outsourcing areas in the organization for employees to obtain certifications in their functional skills. This is reported by Manager 03: “There is an incentive, because this improves our image towards the customer […] if the entire team is certified we have a greater chance of taking over the accounts of our competitors” (TcMgr03, personal communication, October 22, 2009).

Compensation. There are no differences in compensation for traditional employees and telecommuters, the same as in performance appraisal. This situation was described by Barros and Silva (2010) in a study case of telework at Shell Brazil.

All of the aspects related to benefits, incentives, recognition awards, promotions, holidays, pension plans, and overtime are identical for both. The only difference is an exclusive reimbursement policy for telecommuters to afford the monthly costs of highspeed internet accessed at home. The organization has a specific labor contract for telecommuters; however, due to the confidentially agreement between the researchers and the organization, the analysis of the content of this contract cannot be disclosed.

According to the HR manager, the organization uses the traditional job-based pay, based on criteria such as (1) the types of work people do, (2) seniority, and (3) vertical promotions. The exceptions are the highest positions at the top management team that, in addition to the job-based pay, have a profit sharing plan and exclusive benefits (cost allowances, transportation allowances, insurance and retirement planning, accommodation allowance). There is also a different reward system for sales personnel, who earn additional bonuses, in order to encourage them to reach sales goals.

7. CONCLUSIONS The purpose of the research reported in this paper is to identify guidelines for the implementation and management of telecommuting, in order to meet the demand for IT high-skilled professionals. In general, theoretical references indicate that there is a shortage of qualified IT professionals able to achieve the growth rates of IT organizations. Due to this shortage, the HRM department faces a challenge in attracting and retaining qualified professionals to meet organizational demands. From the theoretical references, we developed an empirical research based on a case study of a Brazilian subsidiary of a multinational organization that provides IT Services. In table 3 we propose guidelines for the implementation and management of telecommuting, particularly in organizations of the IT services segment. These guidelines are organized

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303 Telecommuting and HRM: a case study of an information technology service provider

in the following categories: (1) the analysis of labor laws; (2) the analysis of the internal environment; (3) decentralization of HRM practices; (4) staffing; (5) performance appraisal; (6) training; (7) the analysis of the external environment.

Table 3: Guidelines for the Implementation and Management of Telecommuting Action

Guidelines

Even though there is not difference between working at the company and working at Analysis of the a distance in the Brazilian labor laws, it is important to use a specific labor contract for telecommuters, which protects the company against legal issues. It is also Labor Laws necessary to take into account that telecommuting should be performed within the same territory, in order to avoid possible differences in labor laws.

Internal Environment Analysis

Decentralizatio n of HRM practices

Staffing

Performance Appraisal

Training

External Environment Analysis

The internal environment analysis before the implementation of telecommuting should consider the organizational culture and technological infrastructure, in order to find an alignment between IT and HR strategies. First of all, the management team has to be open to change and able to develop a trustworthy relationship with telecommuters, giving them high levels of autonomy and accountability. If it is not the case, training programs are necessary before the telecommuting implementation takes place. Concerning the IT technological infrastructure, it is fundamental to forecast the costs involved in telecommunication resources and software required to home-office positions.

In telecommuting, HRM practices should be decentralized, giving the line managers great autonomy to make decisions particularly related to staffing and performance appraisal.

The internal recruitment and the use of employee referrals as a recruitment technique is very efficient for telecommuters, due to the relevance of trustworthy relationships in this work arrangement. However, the external recruitment is essential to have access to potential candidates on the worldwide labor market. In the selective process, tools and technologies for distance communication are useful. However, they should not substitute personal interactions with the candidate, which contribute to establish a trustworthy relationship between the company, the worker, and his or her future colleagues.

In a performance appraisal system for IT telecommuters, the goals should be revised in a quarterly basis due to the fast changes in this highly dynamic sector. Regarding the feedback process, it is particularly important to use distance communication tools for virtual teams where, quite often, it is difficult to have the opportunity for face-toface, informal feedback.

Training programs are especially important in technology companies that need a workforce whose skills and abilities need constant updating. Incentives to Professional Certifications are also important as they may attract customers and increase the functional competence of work teams. Another relevant aspect is that investments in training and development can increase confidence when a telecommuter recognizes that the company is investing in his/her professional development.

The external environment analysis, before the implementation of telecommuting takes place, should take into account the market conditions, the customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs, and the labor pool. The first analysis should consider if the company operates in a highly dynamic sector and if it has customers in other countries. The interactions with customers should be positively affected by the implementation of telecommuting, such as the improvement in customer services because of the work flexible hours. Regarding the labor pool, telecommuting is specially indicated when the company is facing problems to meet the demand for highly skilled professionals in specific activities.

Source: Empirical Research.

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Even though the guidelines presented here are based on an organization in the IT sector, which has successfully implemented telecommuting in Brazil since 2002, they should also be analyzed by organizations from other sectors that are planning to implement telecommuting or those facing problems to manage this work arrangement.

We conclude that if the HRM department thinks of telecommuting as a competitive advantage, this new way of working can contribute to the attraction and retention of high-skilled professionals. The concept that telecommuting is a benefit given by the organization with the purpose to retain high-skilled professionals in IT is shared by the majority of the employees interviewed. However, data showed that telecommuting is more effective to attract rather than retain these professionals. To understand better its effects in retaining telecommuters, it is important to make a longitudinal investigation that compare turnover rates of conventional employees with telecommuters over a long term period.

Another relevant conclusion is that in order to reach effective results, telecommuting should be based upon flexible and trustworthy relationships. These relationships should be part of a decentralization strategy of an organizational structure and assets. The implementation of telecommuting also requires a solid technological infrastructure. There is a need for online systems and the understanding that telecommuting is more than just a privilege given as a reward to certain employees.

Telecommuting should be understood as being an essential element in the organizational strategy.

We believe that the telecommuting theme reflects an important topic of research that needs future investigation. In reference to the telecommuter, research about turnover rates and the particularities of telecommuting activities in different departments other than IT could be very useful. Regarding the organizational level, we suggest investigations focused on a deeper understanding of the strategic relationships between HRM and IT. It is also important to investigate other HRM practices related to telecommuting: job design, career development, health and safety, motivational issues, interpersonal relationships. Considering the challenges faced by the Brazilian IT service supply sector, along with the high levels of competition with foreigner IT companies, such studies should be seen as priorities by academics and practitioners.

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Silva, M. A., Duarte, R. G., Castro, J. M., & Araújo, A. R. (2009). IT Outsourcing and redefinition of the subsidiary role: A comparative study between the Brazilian and the Indian subsidiaries of an American multinational. JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management, 6, 173-202.

Snell, S. A., Shadur, M. A., & Wright, P. M. (2001). Human Resources Strategy: the era of our ways. In M. A. Hitt, R. E. Freeman & J. S. Harrison (Eds.), The Blackwell handbook of strategic management. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 307-322 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200006

SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION OF ENTROPY AND INFORMATION THEORY IN BRAZILIAN JOURNALS Irani Rocha Rita Buzzi Rausch Nelson Hein Regional University of Blumenau – FURB, Brazil ______________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT This article aims at giving an overview of the scientific production about Entropy and Information Theory in national periodical publications in Qualis/CAPES. This article is a descriptive research and a bibliometric study with a quantitative approach. Its sample is composed of 31 articles from periodic publications from different areas, such as: Accounting, Economy, Computer Sciences, Electrical and Hydraulic Engineering, Sciences, Mathematics, Physics and, also, articles that were published in an electronic library called Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo) from 2002 to 2009. Among the results, one was able to notice that the “B5” (Qualis Capes) classification has shown a higher number of articles, as well as that 2008 was the year with a higher number of publications.

Keywords: Entropy, Information Theory, Bibliometrics, Scientific Production, Shannon.

1. INTRODUCTION Investigating the scientific production of a specific subject provides researchers with a thorough understanding of what is being discussed and worked with in the academic world. In this sense, Moura, Mattos and Silva (2002, p. 34) define scientific _____________________________________________________________________________________

Manuscript first received/Recebido em 22/10/2010 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 22/05/2012

Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência Irani Rocha, Mestranda do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Contábeis da Universidade Regional de Blumenau – FURB Rua Antonio da Veiga, 140. Victor Konder. Blumenau – SC Telefone (47) 3321-0565, E-mail: irocha@al.furb.br Rita Buzzi Rausch, Doutora em Educação, Professora do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Contábeis da, Universidade Regional de Blumenau – FURB, Rua Antonio da Veiga, 140. Victor Konder. Blumenau – SC Telefone (47) 3321-0565 E-mail: rausch@furb.br Nelson Hein, Pós-Doutor - Associação Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Professor do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Contábeis da Universidade Regional de Blumenau – FURB, Rua Antonio da Veiga, 140. Victor Konder. Blumenau – SC, Telefone: (47) 33210565 , Email: hein@furb.br Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

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production as an "important vector for the consolidation of knowledge in learning areas."

There are, accordingly, various means for publishing scientific papers. Among them one can mention periodical publications. Ronchi, Ensslin, Gallon and Nascimento (2008) consider periodical publications one of the most utilized vehicles by researchers for disseminating scientific work, since they have a higher concept in the scientific community. Thus, this study seeks to investigate, in periodical publications, the scientific articles that address issues related to Entropy and Information Theory.

The concept of Entropy emerged from Physics and started expanding to many other areas. In this sense, Oliveira, Correia and Melo (2008, p.3) emphasize that "Entropy is an “objective” method of designating weights, i.e., it determines weights without having the decision maker issue preference between criteria." In agreement with the authors, Zeleny (1982) considers Information Entropy a good measure to be used by the decision maker.

Mattos and Veiga (2002, p.3) emphasize that "Entropy in Information Theory corresponds to probabilistic uncertainty associated with a probability distribution. Each distribution reflects a certain degree of uncertainty and different degrees of uncertainty are associated with different distributions." According to the author, the greatest uncertainty is reflected at the same time as the probability distribution is more widespread.

Considering the relevance of periodical publications and the scope of Entropy and Information Theory in different knowledge areas, the question that guides this research emerges: What are the main characteristics of scientific production related to Entropy and Information Theory in periodical publications classified by CAPES Qualis?

For answering this question, we aim at giving an overview of the scientific production on Entropy and Information Theory in articles in periodical publications listed in Qualis/CAPES. To do so, the following specific objectives are presented: i) to know the concentration of periodical publications according to the Qualis/CAPES classification; ii) to identify the area of knowledge that has published the highest number of articles concerning Entropy and Information Theory; iii) to demonstrate the thematic categorization of the investigated articles iv) to measure the number of authors by scientific publications.

Seeking to achieve the objectives of this study, this research will address all the papers that have presented the term Entropy and Information Theory, in order to identify the periodical publications in which the articles are published and the areas that have published the most about this subject. From the identification of the scientific publications, this research will undertake a mapping of these articles, in order to identify the researchers’ thoughts and use this information as a guide for reflection and suggestions for future research.

Thus, the relevance of this research consists in identifying the interdisciplinarity of the subject in scientific periodicals and its insertion in the area of Applied Social Sciences. This agrees with Mattos and Veiga (2002) when they mention that the principle of Entropy has recently been developed in different fields such as thermodynamics, probability, statistics, economics, finance and others.

This article is organized as follows: initially there is an introduction to the topic; in section two, there will be a brief contextualized explanation about Scientific Production, Information Theory and Entropy; the third section will discuss the research

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methodology; in the fourth section, there will be an analysis of the results; and, finally, the fifth section will present the final remarks and suggestions for future research.

2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND In this section, we seek to explore the content related to: (i) scientific production, (ii) Entropy and (iii) Information Theory.

2.1 Production Scientific In an attempt to highlight the facts that are correlated, scientific knowledge aims at explaining why and how phenomena occur. The product of scientific knowledge is the result of scientific production (Leite Filho, Junior & Siqueira, 2007). Thus, we have observed that in most of the different areas of knowledge, studies that analyze scientific production are quite often seen.

The researchers’ attention regarding the nature of the knowledge generated in their field of study is considered to be essential, as well as the fundamentals that guide the research (Theóphilo, 2007). Accordingly, in Accounting, scientific production must continue in order to present, describe and discuss the quality of research in Accounting Sciences (Martins & Silva, 2006).

Rocha (2006) considers scientific production as a major means of assessing the quality of the faculties in institutions. In this sense, Nossa (1999) mentions that some of the ways of keeping up to date and encouraging scientific production are participating in conferences, symposia, courses and lectures. Thus, according to Araújo and Andere (2006), for professors, it is essential to have not only a title, but also the ability to build quality knowledge, to act as a motivator of the student’s educational process, and to see scientific production as one of the sources of the construction process. According to Silva, Oliveira and Ribeiro Filho (2005), scientific production and its dissemination causes the bases of knowledge to be solidified and to be used as a support for further scientific development.

Bibliometrics is the tool which is used to measure scientific production. The scientific activities in the survey of studies are used in many different fields of knowledge, or else, careful research is done for certain topics in various publications of the area of studies (Pinto, Silva & Toledo Filho, 2009). Bibliometrics studies the quantitative aspects of the production, dissemination, and use of registered data (Macias-Chapula, 1998). Thus, through a review of the scientific production of a certain theme, it is possible to characterize this production by the theoretical approach that has been studied by several authors, the purposes and the methodological options of their research, the instruments for data collection, and the analysis procedures that are most used, among other important aspects (Brandão, 2006).

2.2 Information Theory Fernandez and Azevedo (2006) consider information reproduction as a communication problem, that is, to reproduce information on one side of the communication, in an exact way, or very close to it, to the transmitted by the other side.

Information Theory was born to help solve this problem. This theory was developed in 1948 by Claude E. Shannon, and it is not only related to the communication problems,

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but it is also related to issues concerning various areas of knowledge, such as: Cryptography and Cryptanalysis, Probability Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Economics, etc. (Fernandez & Azevedo, 2006). In agreement with the authors, Gonรงalves (2008, p.16) highlights that "Information Theory was developed by Shannon in the 40s bearing in mind the applications it would have in communication engineering." However, this theory had a major impact not only on engineering, but also on areas such as Statistics and Economics (Gonรงalves, 2008). Thus, Trigo Jr. (2007) points out that Information Theory originated from studies on the statistics of electrical equipment for telecommunications.

Communication system, in general, can be drawn as shown in Picture 1.

Information source

Trasmitter

Destination

Receptor

Signal Receptor

Signal

Message

Message

Noise source

Picture 1. Communication system in general.

Source: adapted from Shannon, CE (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Tech. Journal, 27.

According to Picture 1, these are the parts of a communication system in the information source: the transmitter and the receiver of the message and the destination.

So, we can describe them as follows (Shannon, 1949): Information source - place where the message to be transmitted is produced. It can be of different types, i.e., a sequence of letters and numbers as the ones used in the telegraph, a continuous function of time as the ones used via radio and television, telephone, etc.

Transmitter - It operates in the message to produce a signal that is suitable for the transmission through a channel to the reception point so that the message is less susceptible to noise in the channel it is important to encode it.

Channel - whereby the signal is transmitted, from the transmitter to the receiver.

The channel may be a pair of wires, a coaxial cable, a light beam, etc. As noted in Picture 1, during transmission, the signal may be disturbed by noise.

Receiver - It normally acts on the received signal by performing the inverse operation that was performed by the transmitter, i.e., it reconstructs the message signal.

Destination - Person or machine to whom or which the message is designated.

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For Epstein (1986), "Information Theory concerns only the structures of the codes as vehicles that enable the transmission of variety." Thus, Minei (1999) highlights that Information Theory is interested in the information content of the message, and not only in the message, so that the amount of information can be related to a numerical quantity. Contributing to the author, Trigo Jr. (2007) considers that Information Theory aims at providing quantitative measures of the ability of different systems to generate, transmit and store information.

Information Theory has two basic concepts: "(i) Entropy - a measure of uncertainty or randomness of random individuals or combined variables; and (ii) mutual information - stochastic dependence between random variables" (Gonçalves, 2008, p.16).

2.3 Entropy In 1865 Clausius launched the first two Laws of Thermodynamics. The first Law stated that the total energy of the universe is constant, and the second Law stated that the total Entropy of the universe is increasing toward a maximum value (Coveney & Highfield, 1990). In agreement with the authors, Epstein (1986) notes that "the physical entropy measures the degree of disorder in a system, and its quantification was proposed

by Clausius around 1864, in terms of a transformation that always accompanies a conversion between thermal and mechanical energy.” The meaning of Entropy can also be related to the disorder of a system (Covolan, 2003). The concept of Entropy and information was related for the first time by Shannon. The notion of Entropy is related to the degree of disorganization in the existing source. The greater the disorganization is (Entropy, uncertainty), the greater the potential of information in the source. (Shannon, 1949) Entropy Law can be defined as the most economical law of the physical laws. It is urgent to include the issue of Entropy in the economic thought, given the current environmental crisis and the pursuit of sustainable developments. The material base that serves as a support, as well as the ability of the environment to absorb high Entropy resulting from the economic process, is what threatens the sustainability of the economic process (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971).

According to Gonçalves (2008), uncertainty can be characterized by the amount of information that the occurrence of an event provides; uncertainty would then be translated based on the probability of an event. In this sense, there is no additional information on an event whose occurrence is certain, i.e., the certainty of the occurrence contains all the information. For the author, "one can state that the determination of the amount of information produced by the occurrence of an event is determined by the amount of surprise that this occurrence brings with it (Gonçalves, 2008 p.16)."

Information is provided by the observation of an occurrence of an event from the sample space of a random variable. In this sense, common events contain less information than rare events. We can cite as an example of Entropy that one learns very little from hearing: - "the sun rose in the morning", and one learns much more from hearing: - "Sao Paulo was hit by a hurricane this morning" (Castro & Castro, 2001) Thus, for Bertalanffy (2002) Entropy is a measure of disorder. The author also defines Entropy as the probability logarithm, i.e., a way to mathematically measure information when making decisions. Zeleny (1982) considers Information Entropy as a good measure to be used by the decision maker when choosing from several options that

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have the same probability. In agreement with the author, Soares (2001, p. 93) highlights that "Entropy is a measure of the available choice in sequences controlled by probability." Gonçalves (2008, p.17) points out that "Shannon Entropy is, therefore, a weighed measure of information Q (pi)."

To calculate Entropy, one must consider the weight of the significance of the attribute (λi), considering the i-ith attribute as a measure of relative importance in a given decision situation, which is directly related to the amount of intrinsic information generated by a set of possible alternatives for each i-ith attribute, and in parallel to the subjectivity associated with the importance, the culture, the psychology and the environment in which the decision-maker lives and are reflected (Zeleny, 1982).

According to the author, there are two components in the λi weight composition: a) The concept of priori stable relativity, assigning wi importance, reflecting the individual, cultural, genetic, psychological, social and environmental culture; b) Unstable relativity, concept in the dependent-context of the informational λi importance, based on a particular set of possible alternatives of a given decision-making situation.

These weights are sensitive to any change in both X (values of the decision matrix) and D (normalized values of the decision matrix) sets, and in fluctuations in amounts of intrinsic information generated by them. In this sense, Entropy is calculated by: d ik  d ik Ln  k 1 D i  Di m

e(d i )  

   

Zeleny (1982) considers entropy to be a simple, yet powerful, measure, because of the amount of information supplied by a given information source.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This is a descriptive research, conducted as a bibliometric study, with a quantitative approach. According to Cervo and Bervian (2002, p 66), "Descriptive research observes, registers, analyzes and correlates facts or phenomena (variables) without manipulating them." This research is classified as descriptive, because it draws an overview of the scientific production in different areas which address contents related to Entropy and Information Theory.

Regarding the bibliometric study, Cardoso et al. (2005 cited in Leite Filho & Siqueira, 2007, p.3) emphasize that "one of the ways of assessing the scientific production in a given area of knowledge is its bibliometric analysis, whose subject is to study publications."

Regarding the quantitative approach Silveira, Moser, Cristelli, Jesus Rodrigues & Maccari (2004, p. 107), note that "generally, quantitative research is based on analyzing differentiated and numerical characteristics, usually some dimensions, between two or more groups, seeking to prove the existence of relationships between variables."

This research is a bibliographical study, since it performs the analysis of scientific articles in periodical publications in the following areas: Accounting, Economics, Computer Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Sciences, Mathematics, Probability and Physics, in a period between 2002 and 2009, listed in Qualis/CAPES, classified as A1, A2, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5 and C. The scientific JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 307-322

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articles published in the electronic library Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) during this period of time were also a criterion for data collection.

It should be highlighted that this research was limited to national publications in the period of analysis. The criterion used for selecting the articles was based on the occurrence of the terminology “Entropy” and “Information Theory” in the titles, abstracts and keywords of the articles. Thus, 31 articles were found between 2002 and 2009. Table 1 shows the sample of the scientific articles that were collected.

Table 1: Number of articles comprising the sample by periodical publications’ titles: CLASSIFIC ATION IN QUALIS / CAPES

PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS’ TITLES

AMOU NT OF ARTIC LES

Revista Brasileira de Entomologia (Brazilian Entomology B1 Magazine)

1

Iheringia. Série Zoologia (Impresso) (Iheringia. Zoology B1 Series) (Printed)

1

Boletim de Geografia (Geography Bulletin)

B5

1

C&T. Revista Militar de Ciência e Tecnologia (C&T. B5 Science and Technology Military Magazine)

1

Caderno Brasileiro de Ensino de Física (Brazilian Physics B1/B5 Teaching Book)

1

Cadernos de Ciência Technology Book)

B4

1

Ciência e Tecnologia de Alimentos (Food Science and B4 Technology)

2

Ciências Agrárias e Engenharias (Agricultural Sciences and B5 Engineering)

1

Estudos Econômicos (USP. Impresso) (Economical Studies) B2 (USP. Printed)

1

Pesquisa Operacional (Operational Research)

B3

1

Revista Brasileira de Estudos de População (Impresso) B4 (Brazilian Population Studies Magazine) (Printed)

1

RECITEC. Revista de ciência e tecnologia (RECITEC. B5 Science and Technology Magazine)

1

Revista Brasileira de Anesthesiology Magazine)

2

&

Tecnologia

(Science

Anestesiologia

and

(Brazilian

B1

Revista Brasileira de Ciências Farmacêuticas (Brazilian B4/B5 Phramaceutical Sciences Magazine)

1

Revista Brasileira de Engenharia Agrícola e Ambiental B3 (Brazilian Agricultural and Environmental Engineering

2

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Magazine) Revista Brasileira de Ensino de Física (Online) (Brazilian B5 Physics Teaching Magazine) (Online)

7

Revista Brasileira Magazine)

1

de

Finanças

(Brazilian

Finances

B5/B3/B5

Revista Brasileira de Recursos Hídricos (Brazilian Water B3/B5 Resources Magazine)

1

Revista Controle & Automação (Automation & Control B1 Magazine)

1

Revista de Administração (Business Magazine)

B3/B4

1

B2

1

Revista Tecnológica (UEM) (Technological Magazine) B5 (UEM)

1

TOTAL NUMBER PUBLICATIONS

31

Revista de Magazine)

Economia

Política

(Political

OF

Economics

PERIODICAL

Source: research data 4 RESEARCH ANALYSIS Seeking to meet the specific objectives of this research, the following is a description of the articles: the classification of the periodical publication according to CAPES (Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel); knowledge area that has published the highest number of articles on the subject discussed by this paper; thematic categorization of the articles which were investigated; and, finally, thenumber of authors who published the analyzed articles.

It is important to highlight the comprehensiveness of Entropy and Information Theory in various knowledge areas, i.e., its origin in the area of physics and its gradual application in other areas, as one will be able to notice throughout this topic.

4.1 Classification of journals according to CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) Picture 2 shows the articles prevalence percentage according to the classification of Qualis/CAPES.

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Picture 2. Classification of the periodical publication according to CAPES Picture 2 shows the predominance of periodical publications classified as B5 (48.72%), followed by the B3 classification (17.95%), B1 (15.38%), B4 (10.26%) and B2 (7.69%). It is important to highlight that the Brazilian Physics Teaching Magazine concentrated the highest number of publications, presenting 7 (seven) articles. The Food Science and Technology Magazine presented 3 items, which put it in the second place, and the Brazilian Anesthesiology, the Agricultural and Environmental Engineering and the Political Economics magazines presented only two articles each.

Picture 3 presents the percentage of scientific articles published per year in the period between 2002 and 2009.

Picture 3. Percentage (%) of articles published per year.

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Picture 3 shows the percentage of scientific articles published per year in the period between 2003 and 2009. In this sense, one can see the predominance of publications in 2008 (23% - 7 articles), followed by the year of 2005 (16%). The years in which there was the lowest number of publications were 2002 and 2006 (only 6%).

Among these publications, there are articles in the areas of Hydraulic Engineering, Mathematics/Probability and Agricultural Sciences I. 4.2 Scientific articles on Entropy and Information Theory in periodical publications related to different areas of knowledge The search for articles on the referred topic was held in different areas of knowledge, since it is an interdisciplinary topic which was originated in Physics and then disseminated in other areas of knowledge. According to Georgescu-Roegen (1971), it is important to include Entropy in economical thinking. So, in other areas we could also observe the application of Entropy. Thus, Picture 4 presents the number of articles, from 2002 to 2009, in several periodical publications related to different areas of knowledge in which any connection with that theme was found.

Picture 4. Articles in periodical publications related to their respective areas of knowledge - 1 article Source: adapted from Espejo, M. M. dos S. B. (2008). Perfil dos Atributos do Sistema Orçamentário Sob a Perspectiva Contingencial: uma abordagem multivariada.

Doctoral Accounting Theses – Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo, SP, Brasil.

Available at: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/12/12136/tde-30062008-141909/

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Picture 4 shows areas regarding periodic publications which are related to Entropy and Information Theory. During this search, the following articles were found, and they are related to seven specific areas: Agricultural Sciences I (2 articles), Economics (2 articles), Interdisciplinarity (2 articles), Electrical Engineering (1 article) Mathematics/Probability (7 articles), and Hydraulic Engineering (10 articles). At the same time, some articles from common areas were also found in some periodical publications such as: Hydraulic Engineering and Economics (1 article); Science/Mathematics, Electrical Engineering and Mathematics/Probability (1 article); Electrical Engineering and Hydraulic Engineering (3 articles); Hydraulic Engineering and Mathematics/Probability (1 article); Economics, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics/Probability (Article 1). The area that presented the highest number of publications was Hydraulic Engineering (10 articles), in second place Mathematics/Probability (7 articles), Electrical Engineering and Hydraulic Engineer (3 articles each), Agricultural Sciences I, Economics and Interdisciplinarity (2 articles each), and the other two presented 1 article each, totalizing 31 articles that were investigated. Given the results of this research, Fernandez & Azevedo’s (2006) considerations that highlight the theme’s dissemination in several areas of knowledge are confirmed. It can be deduced, from this context, the predominance of articles in Engineering and, in second place, Mathematics, i.e., according to (Gonçalves, 2008) these were the areas where Information Theory had a major impact on.

4.3 Thematic Categorization of the Investigated Articles This subsection will reveal the thematic categories resulting from the study area of the analyzed articles, as well as the nature of the application of Information Entropy, which are covered in Table 2.

Table 2: Categorization of the articles NATURE OF THE ARTICLE CATEGORIZATION

TOTA L

PERCENTAG E

PRACTICA L

THEORETICA L

Computational Sciences

1

1

2

6.45%

Economics

0

1

1

3.23%

Education

1

0

1

3.23%

Finances

1

1

2

6.45%

Physics

3

9

12

38.71%

Animals

2

0

2

6.45%

Medicine

2

1

3

9.68%

Psychology

0

1

1

3.23%

Environment

6

1

7

22.58%

TOTAL

16

15

31

100.00%

Source: research data

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Table 2 shows the classification of the articles in ten categories, namely: a) Physics Category - addresses some kind of practical experience which emphasizes a large area of Physics - this category comprises 12 articles representing 38.71% of the articles analyzed, where 9 articles are theoretical, and 3 are practical applications. It is important to note that Physics is the area from which Information Theory originated; b) Environmental Category - this category is composed of articles related to the application of Entropy by means of experiments with plants, rivers, soil and sustainability policies – presenting seven articles which represent 22.58% of the articles that were studied, c) Medical Category - discusses studies that measure entropy related to medicines and anesthesia - this category consists of three articles that represent 9.68% of the analyzed articles; d) Computational Category with 6.45%; e) Financial Category, which also represents 6.45%, f) Animals Category, which is related to articles that use entropy to calculate the distribution of death and survival of the species - it represents 6.45% of the analyzed articles; and, finally, the categories that represent only 3.23% - Economical and Educational Categories, which address a practical proposal to teach high school students the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the Psychological Category – which refers to the analysis of the transition of people into adulthood.

4.4 Number of authors in scientific publications Table 3 presents information regarding the amount of authors/educational background of those who participated in the development of the selected articles.

Table 3: Number of authors that participated in the selected articles Number of Authors

TITLE/FORMATION

1 author

NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS

(%)

Doctor of Physics, Doctor of Economics, Doctor of Demography

1

22,58%

2 authors

Doctor of Physics, Taller de Ensenanza de la Física, Doctor of Ecole Nationale, Graduated in Physical Education - Licenciateship, Doctor of Education to Science

10

32.26%

3 authors

Doctor of Mechanical Engineering, Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Master of Electrical Engineering, Doctor of Physics, Doctor of Nuclear Physics, Doctor of Surgery, Professor of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Doctor of Business, Master of Economics, Doctor of Environmental Sciences, Doctor of Geotechnics, Master of Geography

6

19.35%

4 authors

Scholarship student of the Institutional Program of Scientific Initiation Scholarships, Doctor of Food Engineering, Doctor of Food Technology, Degree in Chemistry – Licentiateship, Master of Molecular Sciences

2

6,45%

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319 Scientific production about entropy and information theory in Brazilian journals

Doctor of Chemistry, Doctor of Pharmaceuticals Sciences, Degree in History, Master of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biosciences, Master of Geosciences, Doctor of Food Engineering, Doctor of Metallurgical Engineering, Specialist in Automation and Control of Industrial Processes, More than Degree 4 authors in Physics, Master of Physics TOTAL

6

19.35%

31

100.00 %

Resource: research data Table 3 presents the number of authors of the articles under examination. There have been found articles that were developed by 1 to 6 authors. In this sense, it can be highlighted that 32% of the analyzed articles were written by two authors, 22.58% of the articles were written by only one author. In 19.35% of cases, there was the participation of three authors, 12.90% of the articles were written by five authors and, finally, 19.35% of the analyzed articles were written by more than four authors. One can infer from the 31 articles that were analyzed that there was the total participation of 84 authors, and that only one author, called Rogean Rodrigues Nunes, who is from the University of Fortaleza, related to the Interdisciplinary area, presented two publications in 2004. The other authors had only one publication each. In this context, the number of articles written by two authors prevailed, i.e., 32% of the articles. This result is consistent with the findings of Leite Filho, Paulo Junior and Siqueira (2007) that have found, in their studies, the result of 46% of the published articles on the researched topic, written by two authors each.

5 FINAL REMARKS This study aimed at giving an overview of the scientific production on Entropy and Information Theory in articles in periodical publications listed in Qualis/CAPES. For this purpose, the sample was composed of 31 scientific articles that present in their titles, abstracts and keywords the terminology Entropy and Information Theory. In this context, the question that guided this research is revised: What are the main characteristics of the scientific production related to Entropy and Information Theory in periodical publications classified by Qualis CAPES? In response to this inquiry, the predominance of scientific papers in periodical publications classified as "B5" (48.72%) was established among the various knowledge areas that were addressed. The predominance of scientific papers published in 2008 was also observed, i.e., there were seven of them among the various analyzed periodical publications.

Regarding the number of articles in periodical publications listed by area of expertise, one is able to observe that the area of periodical publications with the highest number of published papers was the area of Hydraulic Engineering, followed by the areas of Mathematics/Probability, Electrical Engineering and Hydraulic Engineering, Agricultural Sciences I, Economics and Interdisciplinarity, and, finally some other areas.

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Regarding the categorization of the articles that were investigated, it was observed that the highlighted area was the category of Physics, since there was a higher number of a certain publication in this category, followed by the Environmental, Medical, Computational, Financial, Animal and, finally, Economical, Educational and Psychological categories.

Finally, regarding the number of authors by scientific publication, there were observed articles written by one, two, three, four or more than four authors. However, the number of articles published by two authors was predominant. In this context, one could also observe that one author alone was responsible for publishing two articles related to the topic. All the other authors have published only one scientific paper each.

There was the participation of 84 authors in preparing the articles that were investigated.

As limitations for this research, one can mention the search in national periodical publications and the analysis period from 2002 to 2009. It can be suggested as future research: i) to replicate this study at conferences related to the areas of: Accounting, Economics, Computational Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Science, Mathematics, Probability and Physics; ii) to conduct this research at an international level, iii) to conduct this research some years from now aiming at monitoring scientific developments regarding the research issue.

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Universidade de São Paulo, SP, Brasil.

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Disponível: http://www.ravel.ufrj.br/arquivosPublicacoes/cos702_Rafael_Tiago.pdf Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971). The entropy law and the economic process. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

Gonçalves, L. B. (2008). Entropia de Rényi e Informação Mútua de Cauchy-Schwartz Aplicadas ao Algoritmo de Seleção de Variáveis MIFS-U: Um Estudo Comparativo.

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Soares, P. F. (2001). Projeto e Avaliação de desempenho de redes de monitoramento de qualidade da água utilizando o conceito de entropia. Tese de Doutorado em Engenharia Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo. São Paulo, SP, Brasil. Disponível: http://www.teses.usp.br/ Theóphilo, C. R. (2007). Pesquisa Científica em Contabilidade: desenvolvimento de uma estrutura para subsidiar análises crítico-epistemológicas. Anais do Congresso USP de Controladoria e Contabilidade, São Paulo, SP, Brasil, 7.

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp.323-352 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200007

USES OF ERP SYSTEMS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON CONTROLLERSHIP FUNCTIONS IN BRAZILIAN COMPANIES Arnaldo Morozini De Lira Santo Andre Foundation CFO, São Paulo, Brazil, Cláudio Parisi FECAP, São Paulo, Brazil, Ivam Ricardo Peleias FECAP and Pontifical Catholic University - PUC-SP, São Paulo, Brazil, Marcos Reinaldo Severino Peters FECAP, São Paulo, Brazil _____________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT Controllership and Information Technology provide ways for companies to adapt to the competitive context of business environments. As such, the aim of this research is to identify and analyze the impacts of ERP systems on Controllership functions, verifying the relationships between the use of solutions and possible improvements in such functions. The need for management control and operations control were observed. This research is descriptive and exploratory of the survey kind. The subjects mentioned in this research are managers involved in Controllership activities in large companies from the Auto Parts sector in the State of São Paulo. The data obtained through a questionnaire by non-probabilistic samples were analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics. According to the subjects, ERP systems modify Controllership functions and better serve the control needs of the operations. The results showed problems to be overcome in management control.

Keywords: Operations control, Management control, Information systems, Car industry. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Manuscript first received/Recebido em 15/02/2011 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 04/05/2012 Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência Arnaldo Morozini de Lira, Master's degree in Accountancy at the Centro Universitario Alvares Penteado Bachelor's degree in Economics at the Faculdade de Ciencias Administrativas da Fundacao Santo Andre - CFO, working for domestic and foreign organizations E-mail: arnaldo.lira@arcelor.com.br Cláudio Parisi, Doctorate, Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Accountancy at FEA-USP - Professor and Accounting Researcher at the Centro Universitario FECAP - Business Consultant E-mail: claudio.parisi@uol.com.br Ivam Ricardo Peleias, Doctorate and Master's degrees in Accountancy at FEA-USP - Bachelor's degree in Accountancy at the Faculdade Tibiriçá - Sao Paulo - SP - Professor and Accounting Researcher at the Centro Universitario Alvares Penteado and at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica - PUC-SP Accounting Expert and Consultant , E-mail: ivamrp@fecap.br Marcos Reinaldo Severino Peters, Doctorate, Master's, and Bachelor's degrees in Accountancy at FEASP - Professor and Accountancy Researcher at Alvares Penteado - Business Consultant - Centro Universitário Álvares Penteado – Master's Degree Program in Accounting – Avenida Liberdade, 532 – Liberdade – São Paulo – SP – CEP 01502-001 – telephone: 11-3273-2301 – fax: 11-3272-2302 E-mail: marcos.peters@fecap.br Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

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1. INTRODUCTION Managing companies in uncertain and dynamic business environments is a constant challenge. To some extent, the life cycle of many products and services has been increasingly shorter due to the fact that technologies have changed and evolved.

Companies in such environments need to identify and adapt to a new reality; thus, many of them regard Controllership as a partner in the necessary search for development. Part of a successful adaptation lies in the use and application of Information Technology (IT). Through the observation of how organizations use IT, in many circumstances it is noticed that companies which do not adapt to a solution used by other players from the same sector will be at a competitive disadvantage (Saccol, 2004).

In order to accomplish its mission, Controllership may improve its business efficacy and operational efficiency through the use of IT. Among the available alternatives, ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) systems stand out, which are also called business management integrated systems, widely used since the 1990´s.

The implementation and the use of ERP systems represent a change in relation to previous technologies, as business processes are associated by an automated flow of work and a single database (Brazel & Dang, 2008). It is not only about a simple implementation of systems, this is a complex process whose success needs the efforts all the people involved in it (Muscatello & Chen, 2008).

The implementation and the use of ERP systems arouse the interest of scholars.

Saatçioglu (2009), Helo, Anussornnitisarn and Phusavat (2008), Pries-Heje (2008) and Crisostomo (2008) have analyzed implementation processes, changes occurred and results obtained through the use of these systems. Davenport (1998), Wood Jr. and Caldas (1999), Neves (1999), Bergamaschi & Reinhard (2000), Saccol (2004), Mendes & Escrivão Filho (2002) have studied the influences of ERP systems on organizations.

According to Davenport (1998, pp. 124), ERP systems impose their logic on the strategy, on the culture and on the organization of the company; they are a general solution and their design reflects a number of hypotheses concerning the operations of the organization and they are developed to show good business practices; nevertheless, companies which use them must define such practices. The changes in the processes and in the culture of the organization are part of the interest scholars have in ERP systems (Davenport, 1998; Bergamaschi & Reinhard, 2000; Hwang, 2005).

Controllership is an administrative area in business management. One of its assignments is the provision of information for the decision making process to take place, helping managers in their search for management efficiency (Borinelli, 2006; Peleias, 2002; Catelli, 2001). As it plays its role, the meeting of the demands imposed by management control and operations control is observed among its different assignments (Peleias & Parisi, 2001). Meeting control demands requires information technology. It is then possible to conclude that the implementation and the use of ERP systems may contribute to and influence Controllership functions.

In this context, an answer is searched and given to the following questionproblem: What is the relation between Controllership functions and ERP systems?

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325 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

The general goal is to identify and analyze the impacts of ERP systems on Controllership functions, aiming at the existence of relations between the use of the solution and the possible improvements in such functions. The specific goals are: a) To identify and catalog the theoretical foundations of the functionalities in ERP systems which are related to Controllership. b) To identify and analyze by means of field research: ď&#x201A;ˇ which functionalities in ERP systems influence the functions of Controllership; ď&#x201A;ˇ whether ERP systems impose their logic on Controllership functions, changing them.

The relation between the use of ERP systems and the improvements in Controllership is verified. The purpose of this work is to contribute to a better understanding, identification and analysis of the impacts caused by ERP systems (benefits or problems in Controllership functions), verifying and showing the existence of limitations yet to be overcome.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2.1 Controllership and its Functions Business environments are complex. Companies aim to improve their business processes in order to ensure the execution of their plans. In this context, Controllership is inserted into the company system, receiving internal and external influences, especially influences concerning technological changes and globalization processes in interconnected markets.

According to Roehl-Anderson and Bragg (1996), Controllership is developed with the inclusion of the global operations of the company, providing information to be communicated to its managers. Thus, it must be capable of analyzing information obtained from a variety of areas, developing and offering projections in a timely fashion so that decisions are made. The demands imposed on Controllership by organizations inspired Borinelli (2006) to study it, based on three different perspectives, shown in Figure 1 below:

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In an integrated manner, the author explores the study of Controllership as: a) branch of scientific knowledge (conceptual perspective), b) administrative unit, presenting Controllership in the context of the organizational model of the companies; and c) the study of its procedural aspects, exploring the functions, activities and artifacts promoted and used by Controllership.

This research is structured from the perspective of procedural aspects, by designing the “Controllership functions” variable, which enabled Borinelli (2006) to propose the following functions: information management, managerial and strategic, protection and control of assets, costs, risk management, accounting, tax and internal controls. Performance appraisal was classified by him as an activity and, in this research, it is classified as a function (Almeida, Parisi and Pereira, 2001), and control of assets is classified as an activity in the accounting function.

This option is in line with the proposition of Padoveze (2003, pp. 36-37), when the author states that Controllership is composed of two major areas: the first, accounting and fiscal, which handles corporate and fiscal information and functions related to the custody of assets; the second, planning and control, in charge of budgets, projections, simulations, costs and accountability.

Other authors have been studying Controllership functions. The variety of indentified sources demanded a summary of these functions.

The obtained result is in chart 1, below: Controllership Functions Information Management Managerial and strategic Performance Appraisal

Costs

Accounting

Tax

Internal Controls Risk management

Definitions as per theoretical framework Design, construction and maintenance of such information systems as management, strategic, accounting, economic, financial, equity and costs in order to meet information needs in the management process.

To make and keep an integrated plan for the operations, compatible with short and long-term goals, which supports the management process.

To measure the company´s efficacy against the performance achieved through the goals and objectives established for financial and nonfinancial factors, offering the necessary support to the continuous improvement process.

Definition of a method for cost analysis, measuring and control, management and strategic analyses as to the feasibility of product and service launch, results from the products and the services of business lines and of the customers/clients.

To develop corporate accounting, to manage accounting activities, to process and keep accounting records (accounting processing), to prepare accounting statements, to assist stakeholders and to develop accounting and control policies and procedures, including asset control and protection.

To comply with all legal, tax and accessory obligations established by law as well as with tax norms (Tax Accounting), to record, analyze and control taxes and levies, to make the tax planning It is a set of activities, methods, measures, guidelines, procedures and instruments adopted to achieve, restrict, monitor, inspect, govern and verify all the organizational activities in order to safeguard assets and protect the company´s interests.

To generate information to identify, measure, monitor and control risk as well as their possible effects on the business.

Theoretical Framework 1/2/3/5 4/5 4/5/6

5/6

5/8/12

5/8

9 1/10/11

CHART 1 –Controllership Functions Source: Written by the authors Legend: 1 – Catelli (2001, p. 344); 2 – Almeida Parisi, Pereira (2001, p. 344); 3 – Possebon, Freitas (1996); 4 – Martins (2001); 5 - Borinelli (2006, p. 146); 6 – Padoveze (2003); 7 – Padoveze (2003, p. 74); 8 - Mcgee, Prusak (1994); 9 - Koontz, O´Donnell, Wehrich (1995); 10 - Guimarães (2006); 11 - Marshall (2005); 12 - Peleias (2002)

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327 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

Controllership is supposed to meet all the control needs of organizations.

Peleias & Parisi (2001) identify two groups of needs: a) For management control: they aim to ensure business efficacy; in order to achieve this aim, a structured management process is needed, composed of such stages as planning, execution and control; b) For operations control: they aim to ensure the efficient execution of operational activities resulting from the decisions made, through the optimal use of resources, promoting the safekeeping of assets.

Through the adoption of these definitions, it is possible to classify Controllership functions into these two groups. Due to the scope of some functions, such as tax, they may be classified simultaneously as needs for management control (tax management) and operations control (tax accounting). By taking the purpose of this work into account, which is to verify the influences of ERP systems on Controllership functions, a proposal to classify the functions is offered; that is, management of information and costs, classified as management control, and tax classified as operations control.

The adopted classification results in Figure 2, below, which shows Controllership functions:

2.2 ERP systems and their functionalities An ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning - is a business software solution which proposes the integration of processes, functions and elements of the organizations, representing the evolution of the MRP - Material Requirements Planning

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– systems and MRPII , developed in the 1960´s (PELEIAS, PARISI, 2001; BIANCOLINO, 2010).

As stated by Momoh, Roy & Shehab (2010), the ERP system implementation is suitable for organizations when they are in search of the benefits of integrations and good practices for their information systems, adding a large number of functionalities.

Nevertheless, when the authors (Correa, Gianesi, Caon, 2000; Peleias, & Parisi, 2001; Biancolino, 2010) research the state of the art of ERP implementations, they concluded that only 10% of them are successful and that it is necessary to research critical factors which are neglected by organization in order to better understand this context, such as: lack of the management of change, lack of commitment from the company´s top management, excess of customization, and a misalignment of the business strategy with the ERP solution, among other factors.

These works dedicate to solely research and understand the ERP functionalities related to Controllership previously discussed. Functionality is the overall set of functions embedded in an ERP system as well as its characteristics and different possibilities of use (Valente, 2004). The composition of the functions creates the transactional system which supports business processes. According to Hypolito and Pamplona (1999), management integrated system modules take into account the functionalities related to areas whose operations are specific. Thus, Controllership modules would include general accounting functionalities, billing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, accountability and management of assets. Chopra & Meindl (2003) identify important points in the architecture and functionalities of ERP systems. The functionalities would be a general solution as to how companies operate in general. In order to make its use flexible by companies from many different sectors, ERP systems are developed so that the general solution is customized. As explained by Zancul (2000), most ERP systems offer similar functionalities and the most advanced and complete ones possess additional functionalities.

ERP functionalities are grouped by modules related to functional areas and to the companies´ business processes. Jetly (apud Zancul, 2000) highlights the variations in the adopted nomenclature by providers for similar functionalities and modules, which makes it difficult to perform comparisons between two or more ERP systems.

Comparisons must be based on a neutral classification which shows the main modules and functionalities of these systems. Frezatti and Tavares (2003) proposed a systematic manner for the classification and choice of information system.

A summary-chart was developed for the bibliographic review, adding characteristics and functionalities of these systems. The characteristics and/or functionalities contain a summary of the main definitions, proposing a list of ERP functionalities. According to chart 2, below, the grouping of the main ERP functionalities is presented as well as the probable impacts on Controllership functions of the companies which use this technology:

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329 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

Functionalities of ERP systems which may influence Controllership functions Functionalities Probable impacts on Controllership Shorter timelines in month-end financial closing processes, promptness in obtaining accounting statements and reliability in the analysis of taxes payable or to rebate. Compliance with external agents. Functional and geographic coverage. (1) General Accounting Accounting entries, registration of chart of accounts, cost allocation, cost centers, issuance of reports and fiscal logs, transactions of various companies, establishments, business units and currencies. (1) Integrated Consolidation of the Control of multi-company transactions. Easiness to track accounting Accounting results by companies and information for auditing purposes. (3) branches . Efficiency and accuracy in transactions involving the fixed assets Management of assets flow. Accounting classification and registration in the fixed assets log. Accounting control and registration of depreciations. (2) Control of inventories Cost Control

Fiscal Management

Financial planning and control

Cost analysis Fiscal Process Support Management of Fiscal Risks Tools: accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash flow, bank reconciliation, treasury

Control of inventories of various companies, branches and those controlled by third parties, control by product, inventory (4) Accuracy in manufacturing cost control. Support for the control of costs, standard costs, analysis of variations, costs by activity, control of the shop floor associated with costs. (2) Issuance of report and fiscal logs, transactions of various companies, establishments, business units and currencies (2) Compliance with legal requirements involving levels of complexity and conformity, in a more agile manner. (5) Benefits for groups which do business in various units, possibility of the online consolidation of financial data of the operations performed, even outside the country. (10)

Promptness in the budgetary process, performance monitoring. Cost control estimated by product, family/group of materials, based on Support to the business standard costs, final cost of acquisition/manufacturing, and average Budget budgetary processes cost of the inventory or quotes at suppliers, multiple currencies.

Control of expenses by cost center, projection of results. (6) Process Control - payroll Control of personnel, cost center allocation, promptness in controls, Payroll and HR vacation scheduling, training programs, assessments. (6) Improvements in business processes. Easiness in the BCS implementation process. (6) It reflects and reproduces the integrated unit of a company, which Performance Support to the performance promotes the MBC. (7) management processes Appraisal Performance management by means of department and/or individual goals, using the functionalities in HR Modules. (6) Monitoring of the ROI by monetary and non-monetary parameters.

(6) Standardizat Single entry of information Management information quality (1/6) ion of the into system database Delimitation of the functions and activities of the various areas, Process control in an regrouping or redistribution, in case changes in the organization integrated way (workflow) Internal structure occur, or even complex restructuring. (1) control Standardization of routines and processes. It enables a review of the process Redesign of processes processes based on good models, tested and operating in several companies. (8) Integrated management: such as finance, Integrated management of operations, elimination of rework, accounting, fiscal, Integrated reduction of administrative costs, higher operational deficiency in the Management commercial, supplies and execution of the phases and stages which compose the flows. (9) HR, information integration Organization integration, Information single database, non It creates a comprehensive set of detailed, updated, consistent and system redundant, better complete data, to be used in the management information system. (7) support information quality

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CHART 2 - Functionalities of ERP systems which may influence Controllership functions.

Legend: 1 – Peleias and Parisi (2001), 2 - Oliveira (2006), 3 - Tavares (2005), 4 - Rodrigues (2002), 5 Souza (2003), 6 - Riccio (2001), 7 - Kale (2000), 8 - Souza (2000), 9 - Wood Jr. and Caldas (1999), Souza and Zwicker (2007), Albertão (2005), 10 - Neves (1999) Source: Developed by the authors.

Momoh, Roy & Shehab (2010) researched the state of the art in the ERP implementation. They identified, in the papers analyzed, various benefits resulting from the implementation and use of these systems by organizations, ranging from positive results related to the solution of legacy system problems to the improvement in the processes and management of companies. Sangster, Leech & Grabski (2009) have a more critical view of the potential benefits and argued that the success in the ERP implementation avoids the development of competitive disadvantages in the short term and, in this context, updates in ERP successful implementations and reimplementation occur in organizations. They also state that ERP systems cause a little impact on management accounting, usually in relation to the creation of more time to perform other value-added tasks.

Based on the probable benefits and expected advantages by organizations with the implementation of ERP systems, (Momoh, Roy & Shehab, 2010; Sangster, Leech & Grabski, 2009; Saatçioglu, 2009; Helo, Anussornnitisarn & Phusavat, 2008; Spathis, 2006) and of the functionalities of these systems, which may influence Controllership functions, a grouping of the probable effects related to the benefits and to the advantages to Controllership, through the implementation and the use of ERP systems, was inferred.

Group

Probable impacts on Controllership Functions

1

Changes to activities of a function

2

Changes in execution times of the activities of a function

Effects Elimination of redundancies and incorporation of new management concepts based on the new activities for a function Shorter execution time for the execution of the activities, planning, making of the budget, and accounting closing process, among others.

Reliability of information, improvements in the decision-making process (more organized, more integrated) Cost increase in order to take advantage and benefits 4 Change to the costs of the function from ERP systems or the reduction of the cost in the structure of a function.

CHART 3 – Classification of probable impacts on Controllership functions Source: Developed by the authors 3

Qualitative aspects associated with the functions

The theoretical framework of Controllership functions, defined in topic 2.1, enabled the creation of Figure 03, which represents the ERP system's basic functionalities and the Controllership functions influenced by these systems. ERP systems impose their own logic on the strategy, on the culture and on the organization of the company (Davenport, 1998); they are a general strategy to assist all types of companies and their design reflects a variety of hypotheses concerning the manner in which organizations operate and are developed to show good business practices; however, the clients, the user companies, are the ones which define their good practices.

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331 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

Figure 3, below, developed from the general purpose of this research, groups and relates Controllership functions (key-variable depends on the research) and the ERP system functionalities (key-variable does not depend on the research) into two groups, according to the needs of management of control and operations.

3. METHODOLOGY This research is descriptive and exploratory in the auto parts sector, limited to the verification of the relation between the many “Controllership functions” and “functionalities of ERP systems”. It is applied as to the research problem (Cooper and Schindler, 2003) and quantitative as to the research variables (Soares, 2003). A field survey was used as a research strategy (Cooper and Schindler, 2003), in an analytical and empirical manner (Martins, 2002). The data was collected through a closed questionnaire, described in the appendix, at the end of this article (Hill & Hill, 2002).

The questionnaire comprises four aspects: a) question: the question which was made; b) key-variable: the main subject to which the question aims to relate; c) purpose, identification and explanation of the goal supposed to be achieved through the answer for the question made; and d) reference sources of the theoretical framework: the author cites who the idea from which the question was originated. After establishing the points to be developed, an analysis was performed as to how the format and structure of the questionnaire should be. Closed questions were used, which provided possible answers, so that the respondents did not need to spend much time on the survey. The questionnaire structure was established in accordance with the assumptions for the research, associated with the theoretical framework.

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The groups and sub-groups defined are described in chart 4, below: Groups Group 1 – Functions for Management Control Group 2 – Functions for Operations Control  Sub-group 1.1 Information Management  Sub-group 2.1 Accounting  Sub-group 1.2 Managerial and strategic  Sub-group 2.2 Tax  Sub-group 1.3 Performance Appraisal  Sub-group 2.3 Internal Controls  Sub-group 1.4 Costs  Sub-group 1.5 Risk Managment CHART 4 – Groups and Sub-groups for the questionnaire

A pre-test of the questionnaire was made in October 2009 with specialists from the involved areas (Controllership and Systems), which presented some improvements: a) not to use a code for the answers, but ticking them on a Likert scale ; b) to reduce the number of questions and the time to answer them; c) as a spreadsheet was sent to all the answers, the use of a search engine was suggested, in which a link was sent by email in order to access the questionnaire. This processed resulted in a questionnaire composed of 34 questions, described in appendix 1.

The population researched is composed of companies which use ERP systems, from the auto parts sector in the State of São Paulo. These companies were chosen due to the complexity of their processes as suppliers in the automotive sector, which promotes the demand for ERP. The end product of the commodity chain, of which the auto parts sector is part, the motor vehicle, is complex.

The production of its components demands a technology of products and processes which are different from one another. A motor vehicle, a car, a light or heavy one, is composed of components from such industries as metalworking, electrical/electronic and chemical (Sindipeças, 2009). Another characteristic of the commodity chain, of which the auto parts sector is part, is its hierarchy of tiers , or supply levels: a) systematic companies are the large transnational ones (in terms of revenues); they supply pre-assembled sets to car companies; b) domestic companies are typically suppliers of tier 2 and tier 3 components.

One respondent per company was chosen, preferably the Controller, the Controllership Manager, the Administration Controller and the Financial Manager and, in some cases, Specialists in Controllership. The scope of the functions is justified by the absence of the Controllership administrative unit in some researched organizations, in which the functions are performed by specialists and analysts related to the financial and administrative area. The research aimed at the Controllership department, at the Controller or at any other professional in charge of a similar task. When the company did not have the Controllership department, the research aimed at the financial and administrative area.

The research field was the State of São Paulo, the largest industrial hub in Brazil. In order to classify the size of the companies, the criterion of Law 11,941/2009 (current Law of Publicly Traded Companies) was adopted, for assets of over R$ 240 million or annual gross revenues of over R$ 300 million. According to the 2008 base year sectorial performance report, released by the Sindicato Nacional da Indústria de Componentes para a Indústria de Veículos Automotores (National Association for Automotive Components Manufacturers, 2009), the State of Paulo is composed of such 339 companies, that is, 71% of the 477 companies classified by them. The information about the companies, users of ERP systems in this sector, was not available. In order for the research to be more assertive, large companies were aimed at, according to the

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333 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

criteria established by the Law of Publicly Traded Companies. Based on these criteria, the distribution below described on Chart 4, indicates: Revenue Number of Companies Market Share % Up to R$ 300 Milhões Million 805% 384 Over R$ 300 Milhões Million 19.5% 93 Total Brazil 100.0% 477 CHART 4 – Classification by size of company revenue Source: The 2008 base year sectorial performance report, released by the Sindicato Nacional da Indústria de Componentes para a Indústria de Veículos Automotores (National Association for Automotive Components Manufacturers)

By taking the 19.5% into account for the companies in the State of São Paulo, a target population of 66 companies was defined. By accessibility, 9 other companies were added, which are not associated with the National Association for Automotive Components Manufacturers, though meaningful to the sector, 75 elements of the population were defined.

For the collection of the data, the starting point was the identification of the respondents by company. Based on the list of companies defined as elements of the target population, the contact was made by telephone, trying to reach the Controller, the Controllership Manager, the Administrative or Financial Manager or, in some cases, Analysts or Specialists in Controllership.

In the contact made by telephone, the purpose of the research was presented as well as the manner in which it would be conducted. 75 emails were sent containing a link to access the questionnaire, formatted in an application (https://www.google.com/accounts). After the answers were given, the system would verify the occurrence of questions without answers and would request a conclusion, creating a database with the answers of the research subjects. The application made the whole process easy for the respondent, reducing the time for data collection. The survey was conducted between November 29th, 2009 and January 20th, 2010. Of the 75 questionnaires submitted, 40 (53%) were sent back and regarded as valid (without errors or incomplete), comprising the research sample. The sampling technique used was the non probability sampling.

4. PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION OF RESULTS The results obtained were tabulated and analyzed for each of Controllership functions, correlating them to ERP system functionalities. Next, they were analyzed in relation to what is established in the literature review, as per the table below:

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Support to Information Systems

Information Integration

Integrated Management

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 1 – Changes to the activities of the information management function B – Occurrence

A - Likert scale Q

Assertions

ERP eliminated redundancies 1 in Controllership Processes ERP created opportunities to incorporate 2 new management concepts Management information offered by ERP meets the demands 3 of Controllership in the management of the Company

I disagree

I partly disagree

I partly agree

n

n

%

n

%

%

completely agree n

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

It partly occurred

It occurred

n

%

n

n

%

%

Total n

%

5 12.5

3

7.5

9 22.5

23 57.5 40 100.0

3

7.5 14 35.0 23 57.5 40 100.0

2

5.0

0

0.0 10 25.0

28 70.0 40 100.0

2

5.0 11 27.5 27 67.5 40 100.0

4 10.0

0

0,0

7 17.5

29 72.5 40 100.0

3

7.5

4

ERP allows to develop management reports

3

3

7.5 20 50.0

14 35.0 40 100.0

3

7.5 23 57.5 14 35.0 40 100.0

5

The formats of the reports offered by ERP meet management needs

8 20.0

4 10.0 17 42.5

11 27,5 40 100.0

4 10.0 17 42.5 19 47.5 40 100.0

7.5

7 17.5 30 75.0 40 100.0

According to table 1, 58.0% (complete agreement) of the respondents noticed improvements in the Controllership process with the elimination of redundancies.

According to Peleias and Parisi (2001), ERP systems promote information integration across the organization, mostly developed in real time, with the best quality and without inconsistencies, with standardized procedures.

Standardization eliminates rework and improves processes, affecting Controllership activities in information management. Wood Jr. & Caldas (1999), Souza & Zwicker (2007) & Albertão (2005) agree when they state that ERP systems allow for the elimination of redundancies and create opportunities to incorporate new management concepts.

When the opportunities to implement new concepts offered by ERP systems are observed, the complete agreement presented in the sample is higher, 70.0%, converging with the findings of Saatçioglu (2009), who considers the improvement in management as the main benefit of the system. It is then assumed that this characteristic of ERP systems is a modifying factor in Controllership activities. As stated by Wood Jr. and Caldas (1999), organizations have faced more dynamic scenarios than the previous ones, which make them search for the adaptation to the new reality. Authors highlight the fact that there is no option but to change. It is then assumed that companies tend to use the new management concepts incorporated into ERP systems.

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335 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

As to the creation of management information, 73.0% of the subjects completely agree with the fact that ERP systems meet the demands of Controllership regarding information integration, at a level of occurrence of 75%. However, when asked about reports meeting management needs, complete agreement drops to 28.0% and the same fact occurs as to the ERP availability to develop management reports.

According to Saatçioglu (2009), ERP report procedures are poor, representing a barrier to the implementation of the solution.

It is assumed that, although ERP systems promote improvements in Controllership for information management, there are problems to be solved regarding these activities. Correa, Gianesei & Caon (2000) highlight the tendency to clearly indicate that the ERP system structures are used by companies as foundations of their information systems.

Standardization of the database

Support to information systems

Functionality of ERP systems

TABLE 2 – Qualitative aspects associated with the information management function

Q

6

7

8

9

Support to information systems

B – Occurence

A - Likert scale Assertions

ERP reduced the time for the making and obtaining of management reports ERP systems r standardized the company´s database ERP improved information quality ERP information is reworked in spreadsheets

The spreadsheets 10 are used to generate reports The integrity of the information is kept after the 11 rework through spreadsheets

12

The use and maintenance of the spreadsheets require manual work

I disagree

I partly disagree

I partly agree

n

n

n

%

%

%

I completely agree n

%

Total N

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

n

%

n

n

%

%

Total n

%

3

8.0

0

0.0 14 35.0

23 58.0 40 100.0

3

8.0 11 28.0

26 65.0 40 100.0

1

3.0

0

0.0

9 23.0

30 75.0 40 100.0

2

5.0

7 18.0

31 78.0 40 100.0

1

3.0

1

3.0

7 18.0

31 78.0 40 100.0

1

3.0 11 28.0

28 70.0 40 100.0

4 10.0

2

5.0 23 58.0

11 28.0 40 100.0

4 10.0 20 50.0

16 40.0 40 100.0

3

1

3.0 20 50.0

16 40.0 40 100.0

3

8.0 16 40.0

21 53.0 40 100.0

4 10.0

6 15.0 17 43.0

13 33.0 40 100.0

4 10,0 20 50.0

16 40.0 40 100.0

2

0

25 63.0 40 100.0

3

23 58.0 40 100.0

8.0

5.0

0.0 13 33.0

8.0 14 35,0

As shown in table 2, the reduction in time to obtain and produce management information is considered to be a functionality of support for Controllership (58%). One reason for this is the standardization of the database of the company (Kale, 2000), merging them into a single database, ensuring the integration between the systems and

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the end-users. In this research, 78.0% of the respondents completely agree that there was an improvement in the quality of the information.

For Riccio (2001), a centralized and standardized database promotes a change from a function-oriented company into a team-work oriented inter-functional, processoriented, a more flexible and strongly integrated company. Souza (2000) observes the need for a change in the cultural vision of the owner of the information into a vision of responsibility for the information. When asked about the use of electronic spreadsheets to generate management reports, 40% of the respondents completely agreed and 50% partly agreed with it. As such, they showed manual reprocessing of information by 40% of the companies. This fact confirms the difficulty in developing new management reports, seen in question 4 of the previous item. To reinforce this perception, 63% completely agreed that the use of spreadsheets requires manual work to generate information, Laulkkanen and Sarpola (2006) cite the visibility of information, which assists the management process for decision-making. It is concluded that ERP systems may influence the quality, the integrity, and the shaping of the information that is used

by Controllership in companies which have this technology available.

Planning and control

Functionality o fERP Systems

TABLE 3 - Qualitative aspects associated with the managerial and strategic function A - Likert scale Q

Assertions

I I partly disagree disagree n

The implementation of ERP produced 13 qualitative improvements in the decisionmaking process

%

0 0.0

n

%

I Partly agree n

%

2 5.0 13 33.0

B - Occurrence

I completely agree n

%

Total n

%

25 63.0 40 100.0

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

N

N

%

%

2 5.0 10 25.0

%

Total n

%

28 70.0 40 100.0

Table 3 shows 63% in complete agreement and an occurrence of 70% in the perception of the subjects that ERP systems affected the decision-making process in qualitative terms. In Neves' vision (1999), as a macro vision, the flow of information for the decision-making process becomes fast and precise, and as an operational vision, the integration ensures higher efficiency and effectiveness in the day-to-day work.

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337 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

Functionality of ERP System

TABLE 4 - Changes to the activities of the managerial and strategic functions

Budgetary process

Q

Assertions

I disagree n

%

A - Likert Likert Scale I I partly I partly completely disagree agree agree n

%

n

%

14

ERP supports the budgetary process according to the requirements of Controllership

7 18.0

3 8.0 18 45.0

15

ERP allows for the simulation of 12 30.0 scenarios (volumes/amounts)

1 3.0 19 48.0

16

ERP produced improvements in strategic planning

3 8.0 17 43.0

5 13.0

n

%

B - Occurrence Total n

%

12 30.0 40 100.0

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

N

%

%

%

Total n

%

8 20.0 18 45.0

14 35.0 40 100.0

8 20.0 40 100.0 10 25.0 17 43.0

13 33.0 40 100.0

15 38.0 40 100.0

5 13.0 16 40.0

19 48.0 40 100.0

Focusing on the budgetary processes, table 4 shows that the perception of the respondents changes regarding the support which ERP systems provide in order to meet the needs of Controllership activities. The complete agreement was 30%, and the occurrence was 35%. ERP systems do not meet the needs of Controllership to simulate scenarios for 30% of the subjects. According to Helo, Anussornnitisarn & Phusavat (2008), one disadvantage of the use of ERP systems is that they do not fit into the management model, for the materialization of their principles occurs exactly by means of management artifacts, such as budgets and business simulations.

As Sacol (2004) points out, there are a few contributions made by ERP systems to the strategic variables such as clients and consumers, rivalry, competitiveness and the market. It concludes that ERP systems seem to add value to the variables like suppliers (relationship and monitoring) and to production (gains in productivity and scale in the use of software). For 38% of the subjects (complete agreement), ERP systems produce improvements in strategic planning.

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Budgetary process

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 5 - Changes to the execution time of the activities of the performance appraisal function B â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Occurrence

A - Likert Scale Q

Assertions

I disagree n

%

I partly disagree n

%

I partly agree n

%

I completely agree N

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

N

n

%

%

%

Total n

%

ERP produces information to measure the results 17 according to the management needs of the company

3

8.0

2 5.0 22

55.0

13 33.0 40 100.0

4 10.0 20 50.0

16 40.0 40 100.0

ERP allows Controllership 18 to follow up performance by department

1

3.0

1 3.0 11

28.0

27 68.0 40 100.0

1

3.0 12 30.0

27 68.0 40 100.0

2 5.0 16 40,0.

18 45.0 40 100.0

5 13.0 18 45.0

17 43.0 40 100.0

19

ERP allows the use of the budget to quantify operational plans and to gain commitment from the managers

4 10.0

After analyzing the measurement of the results, table 5 shows that the support given by ERP systems is partly verified by the respondents (55%). As for the follow-up of performance by department, complete agreement and occurrence stayed at around 68%. For Riccio (2001), ERP systems encompass several alternatives in programs and methodologies to improve the processes, including the innovation and improvement of the business processes; furthermore, it contains all the means to implement the BSC. Also, analyzing the budgetary process, when inquired about ERP system functionalities to quantify operational plans and the quest for the commitment from the managers, the complete agreement was 45%, with an occurrence of 43%, in a similar agreement to the previous assertions. In order to gain commitment from the managers, Controllership may be a channel to facilitate the processes of changes in the organization, by using IT tools.

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339 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

Cost control

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 6 - Changes to the execution time of the activities A - Likert scale Q

Assertions

I disagree

21

n

%

I partly agree n

n

%

55.0 40 100.0

n

%

1

3.0

3 8.0 14 35.0

22

12 30.0

3 8.0 21 53.0

4

The requirements for the management of 20 the costs are met according to the needs of the Company

The cost reports are reworked in electronic spreadsheets

I partly disagree

B - Occurrence

I completely agree

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

3

%

%

%

Total n

%

8.0 17 43.0

20 50.0 40 100.0

10.0 40 100.0 11 28.0 20 50.0

9 23.0 40 100.0

Table 6 reveals that ERP systems thoroughly meet the requirements of Controllership to manage costs in 55% of this sample, and in 35% in partial terms. To face these assertions, the subjects were asked about the rework in the cost reports from the spreadsheets, obtaining a partial agreement of 53%. It is assumed that, for managing costs, ERP systems from this sample do not completely meet the needs of Controllership.

Cost control

Functionality of t ERP Systems

TABLE 7 - Changes to the activities of the cost function A - Likert scale Q

Assertions

ERP allowed for the use of 22 new concepts in managing costs

I disagree

I partly disagree

I partly agree

n

n

n

%

7 18.0

%

%

5 13.0 14 35.0

B - Occurrence

I completely agree n

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

%

%

14 35.0 40 100.0 12 30.0 15 38.0

%

Total n

%

13 33.0 40 100.0

With complete agreement of 35% and partial of 35% (table 7), the respondents stated that ERP systems allow for the use of new concepts to manage costs, as stated by Riccio (2001).

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A - Likert scale Q

Assertions

I I partly disagree disagree %

n

%

n

%

n

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

%

%

%

Total n

%

Risk Management

n

I partly agree

B - Occurrence

I completely agree

The standardization of the processes 23 produced by ERP minimizes operational risks

1 3.0

3 8.0 10 25.0

26 65.0 40 100.0

2 5.0 13 33.0

25 63.0 40 100.0

Control by process

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 8 - Qualitative aspects associates with the risk Management function

ERP meets legal 24 requirements minimizing the risks

0 0.0

1 3.0 18 45.0

21 53.0 40 100.0

1 3.0 13 33.0

26 65.0 40 100.0

ERP systems lead to the standardization of routines and processes (Souza, 2003) and allow for the revision of processes through good models, tested and operating in several companies. Table 8 shows that, for 65% of the subjects (complete agreement and 63% occurrence), this standardization minimizes operational risks. The perception of the subjects on meeting legal requirements, which in turn reduce the risks for the company, is 53% at complete agreement and 45% at partial occurrence. Thus, in the majority of the subjects' perceptions, legal requirements are met by ERP systems.

Redesign of Processes

Functionality of ERP systems

TABLE 9 - Qualitative aspects associated with the Accounting function A - Likert Scale Q

Assertions

ERP provides accounting information 2 according to 5 the management needs of Controllership

B - Occurrence

I completel y agree

I disagree

I partly disagree

I partly agree

N

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

0.0

17

43.

0

21

53.

0

4 100.0 0

2

%

5.0

0

Total %

Did not occur

Partly occurred

N

%

n

%

n

%

n

3.0

18

45.

0

21

53.

0

40 100.0

1

Occurred

Total %

Table 9 shows that the needs of Controllership regarding management accounting information are met for 53% of the respondents (complete agreement and

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341 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

occurrence), but 43% see these needs partly met. To avoid problems with management accounting information, Padoveze (2003) proposes an approach which he names systemic, where the informational needs would be brought forth beforehand, so that after the implementation of ERP, the information output meets the requirements of the various end-users. In this case, the structure of the chart or accounts is the base which allows the visualization of management information, a situation where Controllership plays an important role.

Redesign of the processes

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 10 - Changes to the fixed costs of the Accounting function A - Likert Scale Q

Assertions

I disagree

I partly disagree

I partly agree

n

n

n

%

%

%

B - Occurrence

I completely agree n

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

%

%

%

Total n

%

26

ERP allowed the reduction in fixed costs in accounting processes

4 10.0

0

0.0 17 43.0

19 48.0 40 100.0

6 15.0 14 35.0

20 50.0 40 100.0

27

ERP reduced the number of personnel in Controllership

4 10.0

2

5.0 15 38.0

19 48.0 40 100.0

7 18.0

9 23.0

24 60.0 40 100.0

5 13.0 40 100.0 26 65.0

5 13.0

9 23.0 40 100.0

ERP increased the 28 number of 27 68.0 personnel in Controllership

5 13.0

3

8.0

The analysis from table 10 allows concluding that there were changes to the organizational structure of Controllership, as emphasized by Davenport (1998), Bergamaschi & Reinhard (2000). The needs for changes in the processes and in the culture of the organizations are relevant. The implementation of ERP systems cause changes in the business processes, in the attributions, and in the responsibilities of the organizational structures, in the departments and in individuals.

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Fiscal Management

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 11 - Qualitative aspects associated with the tax functions A - Likert Scale Q

Assertions

I I partly disagree disagree n

29

All fiscal processes are performed according to the current legislation

%

3 8.0

N

%

I partly agree N

%

3 8.0 13 33.0

B - Occurrence

I completely agree n

%

Total n

%

21 53.0 40 100.0

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

%

%

4 10.0 14 35.0

%

Total n

%

22 55.0 40 100.0

The respondents completely (53%) and partly agree (33%) that the fiscal processes are performed according to the legislation (table 11). Peleias et al (2009) found that the end-users of the accounting and fiscal modules of an ERP system used in the transportation sector noticed improvements in the processes and in the relationship between areas, improving accounting controls as well as the fiscal area. Nevertheless, they found that the system did not improve the image of accounting in the organization, and that the fiscal module was the one that presented more problems. Thus, it is noticeable that there are problems and improvements in the functionalities of ERP systems regarding fiscal management.

Fiscal Management

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 12 - Changes to the tax function A - Likert Scales Q

Assertions

I disagree n

ERP provides information 30 that contributes to tax planning

%

4 10.0

I partly disagree n

%

I partly agree n

%

1 3.0 20 50.0

B - Occurrence

I completely agree N

%

Total n

%

15 38.0 40 100.0

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

%

%

5 13.0 21 53.0

%

Total n

%

14 35.0 40 100.0

According to table 12, in the perception of the respondents, the information provided by ERP systems contribute to the tax planning of the companies by 38% with complete agreement and 50% with partial agreement. According to Souza & Zwicker (2007), ERP systems meet the legal requirements of higher complexity, providing more conformity and more agility in fiscal management.

However, it is seen that, due to the partial agreement of 50% (partial occurrence of 53%) in the sample, it is possible to see that the information provided by ERP systems do not fully meet the demands to support tax planning. This is because, as defined by Borges (2000), it is necessary to project the industrial operations, the commercial businesses, and the provision of services, aiming to know the obligations and the tax charges contained in each pertinent legal alternative, so that through the legitimate means and instruments, the company may adopt an annulment, a reduction, or a delay in the fiscal burden.

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343 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

Standardization of the processes

Redesign of the processes

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 13 - Internal controls function: changes to the activities of a function A - Likert Scale Q

Assertions

I I partly disagree disagree n

The implementation 31 of ERP improved internal controls

32

ERP reduced the time to execute the routines

%

N

%

I partly agree n

%

B - O Occurrence

I completely agree n

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

%

%

%

Total n

%

1 3.0

0 0.0 15 38.0

24 60.0 40 100.0

1 3.0 12 30.0

27 68.0 40 100.0

1 3.0

2 5.0 14 35.0

23 58.0 40 100.0

2 5.0 11 28.0

27 68.0 40 100.0

According to table 13, the improvement in internal controls was seen in 60% of the sample, indicating that the functionality of ERP systems to redesign the processes may improve internal controls. According to Souza (2000), ERP systems allow to standardize the administrative activities in companies or groups with various locations.

Thus, Controllership improves its monitoring, inspecting, governing, and verification of the organizational activities, to protect the assets and safeguard the organization's interests.

The reduction in the execution time of the routines was seen by the respondents, with a 58% complete agreement. The standardization of the processes increases the efficiency of the organization (Riccio, 2001), eliminating redundancies, repetitions, producing synergies and increasing fluidity (Peleias & Parisi, 2001).

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A - Likert Scale Q

Assertions

I I partly disagree disagree %

n

%

n

%

n

%

Total n

%

Did not occur

Partly occurred

Occurred

N

n

n

%

%

%

Total n

%

Control by process

n

I partly agree

B - Occurrence

I completely agree

33

The tracking of the information improves the auditing process

2 5.0

0 0.0

8 20.0

30 75.0 40 100.0

2 5.0

7 18.0

31 78.0

40 100.0

Workflow

Functionality of ERP Systems

TABLE 14 - Internal controls function: changes in the time regarding the execution of activities

34

ERP allows decentralizing internal transactions

2 5.0

0 0.0 12 30.0

26 65.0 40 100.0

2 5.0 10 25.0

28 70.0

40 100.0

Table 14 shows that, for 75% of respondents (complete agreement and 78% occurrence); ERP systems have controls by process which allow for the tracking of the information, improving the auditing processes. Thus, Controllership may obtain a reduction in the time taken for internal or external audits and a better quality of the controls. The decentralization of the transactions was seen by 65% of respondents (complete agreement). Peleias & Parisi (2001) point out that ERP systems allow for distinguishing the functions and activities in several areas, their regrouping or their redistribution, in case of modifications to the organizational structure, or even complete restructuring.

Some companies adopt the same ERP to meet their needs for standardization as defined by the car makers. This trend was seen in this sample: 55% of the researched companies adopt the same ERP. By using the same ERP, it is possible to adopt similar operational processes, improving the controls and the exchange of information with clients. It is deduced that ERP systems tend to standardize the companies' processes.

Since ERP systems have played a reference role for IT, by incorporating good practices, companies are pressured into using them to avoid losing competitive advantages. For Beuren & Muller (2010), many organizations become isomorphic, and consequently, Controllership functions are influenced by these aspects.

The main impacts found in this field research, relating the functionalities of ERP systems to Controllership functions, are summarized in Chart 5 below:

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345 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

Needs

ERP Controllership Main impacts on Controllership functions Functionality functions Integrated ERP System created opportunities to incorporate new management management concepts The needs for the development of management reports are not met Support to information systems

Management Control

Information management

Planning and control

Strategic and Managerial

Budgetary Process

Performance Appraisal

Cost Control

Costs

Control by process

Risk management

Depending on the ERP applied, the management of the information is done by parameters and models which modify the information systems of the companies using the Controllership Function of information management ERP improved the quality of the information used by Controllership Rework of the information on spreadsheets Qualitative improvements in the decision-making process.

It is deduced that the support to the strategic planning is changed by the system applied. Since there is an influence by ERP on the management control and on the management of information, the support to the strategic planning is influenced, affecting the strategic managerial function.

Deficiency in the budgetary process in order to meet the needs of Controllership Low level of support for the simulation of scenarios (volumes/amounts) ERP allows Controllership to follow up performance by department Lack of adherence between ERP and the Controllership Function in measuring the results according to the management needs of the company There are improvements in the support for costs management ERP allowed the use of new concepts in cost management It is possible to standardize the processes and to reduce costs related to the operations Improved adherence to the legal requirements

Redesign of ERP contributes to the reduction of the number of Accounting processes personnel Fiscal ERP provides information which contributes to tax Tax management planning Operations control Standardization Reduction in the execution time of the routines of the Internal Improvements in the auditing processes processes controls Workflow Decentralization of internal transactions CHART 5 - Main Impacts on Controllership Functions Source: Developed by the authors

It was ascertained that the activities of Controllership in the researched companies are influenced by the functionalities ERP systems. This is due to the fact that upon implementing a unique and cohesive database, there are significant improvements JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 323-352

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in the management of information (Kale, 2000; Souza, 2000; Peleias & Parisi, 2001). It was ascertained that there was a reduction in the execution time of the routines of Controllership functions, since ERP systems allowed the elimination of redundancies and the improvement of the processes (Wood Jr., Caldas, 1999; Souza, Zwicker, 2007; Albert達o, 2005; Sangster, Leech & Grabski, 2009).

ERP Systems affect the management controls of the companies researched, the improvement in the decision-making process, the availability of information, and the use of new concepts in cost management (Kale, 2000; Souza, 2000; Peleias & Parisi, 2001). Nevertheless, they present limitations in order to comply with the managerial formats when measuring the results, in the development of managerial reports and management tools, like budgeting (Sangster, Leech & Grabski, 2009).

The research points out an apparent contradiction, that is, although they identify these limitations, respondents gave a positive perception of the qualitative improvement of the decision-making process, which is a direct need of Controllership functions, which are not fully met by ERP systems Considering the premise that Controllership (Almeida, Parisi & Pereira, 2001) is by excellence, the coordinator of the information of the economic-financial management of the organizations, the limitations pointed out by the implementation and the use of ERP systems at the respondent companies, as related to the managerial reports, the continuation of the use of electronic spreadsheets, and the support to the budgeting and simulations, are significant for exercising Management Control. These findings corroborate the results of the research by Sangster, Leech and Grabski (2009), on the impact that ERP systems have on managerial accounting. The development of these Controllership solutions, which materialize the organizations' specific characteristics and are difficult to standardize inside the ERP environment, tends to need high levels of investments in customization, more complexity and more costs in maintenance and updating of the system, maximizing the occurrence of excesses in standardization, a critical factor for the success of the implementation of ERP systems (Momoh, Roy & Shehab, 2010). Nonetheless, if ERP represented an evolution of the MRP and the MRPII systems (Correa, Gianesi & Caon, 2000), in the future, perhaps, its substitute may be even more complex and may also contemplate these functionalities for the total support of Controllership functions, substituting specialist systems and electronic spreadsheets.

5. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS, FUTURE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS In this paper, the aim was to learn the relationships between Controllership functions and ERP systems, as related to the needs for management control and for operations control. This field research showed that, in the respondents' perception, ERP systems more adherently meet the needs of Controllership functions to control operations. As for management control, the main deficiencies found were: a) information management functions for the support of the development of managerial reports; b) managerial and strategic for the support of simulation of scenarios, performance appraisal and budgetary processes; and c) cost function, improvements in the cost management reports.

As for the specific objective of identifying the theoretical foundations of the functionalities of ERP systems, as related to Controllership functions, the

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347 Uses of ERP systems and their influence on controllership functions in Brazilian Companies

bibliographical research revealed 20 functionalities of ERP systems, and the description of the probable impacts on Controllership functions. Upon studying these descriptions, the impacts on these functions were grouped into four categories, showing different aspects which influence these functions: changes in the activities of a function, changes in the execution time of the activities of a function, the qualitative aspects associated with the function and the changes to the cost function.

As an objective to identify and analyze which functionalities of ERP systems influence Controllership functions, checking whether ERP systems impose their logic by modifying these functions, in the subjects' opinion, the most relevant aspects observed in this field research were: a) Changes to Controllership activities: ERP systems created the opportunity to incorporate new management concepts, by eliminating redundancies in Controllership processes and by improving internal controls, in particular on the follow-up of the performance by department. The standardization of the processes was considered a factor which minimizes the inherent risks to the operations; b) Changes to the execution time of the activities of Controllership functions: the respondents noticed a reduction in execution time of Controllership routines, generating gains in the execution time of the activities and in the time for obtaining managerial information; c) Qualitative aspects associated with Controllership functions: improvements were seen in the quality of the information used by Controllership, as related to their functions. This is due mainly to the functionalities of ERP systems: Single database and the standardization of the processes through the implementation of the system. On the qualitative aspects, the tracking of the information stood out, improving the auditing process. The standardization of the processes produced by ERP systems minimize operational risks, improving the management of these risks by Controllership, providing better information for tax planning. d) Changes to the cost structure for Controllership functions: there were changes in the organizational structure of Controllership, due to the changes in the processes associated with the use of ERP systems; e) Improvements in the decision-making process: The majority of respondents noticed that ERP was a factor which improved the decision-making process.

Once the main and the specific objectives were defined, the question-problem posed was defined: What is the relation between Controllership functions and ERP systems? The results obtained reveal that ERP systems through their functionalities influence Controllership functions. These are changes in different perspectives and approaches: opportunities to incorporate new management concepts resulting from good market practices incorporated into ERP systems, the reduction in the execution time of the activities, improvements in the decision-making processes, and the qualitative aspects associated with Controllership functions. The impacts on these functions should be the subject of attention when implementing projects, changing ERP systems and updates of versions, as the management of the company could be compromised.

This research did not intend to exhaust this theme, due to the different perspectives in the analysis of ERP systems and of Controllership. Based on the results JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 323-352

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described herein, an investigation is proposed as to how Controllership functions are addressed during the implementation projects of ERP systems, ensuring that the needs of these functions are met, and observing the premises of the management model of the organization.

More in-depth research through case studies will allow for a better understanding as to how the functionalities of ERP systems assist Controllership functions or not, in particular situations, yet relevant to the research area.

To conclude, the results obtained are limited to the companies and to the respondents who collaborated with the researchers and cannot be generalized. Other limitations are: economic - auto parts sector; geographical range - the State of Sao Paulo; organizational - Controllership functions; technology and information - ERP system. USP, Brazil.

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Almeida, L. B., Parisi, C. & Pereira, C. A. Controladoria. In: Catelli, A. (Coord.).

(2001). Controladoria: uma abordagem da gestão econômica - GECON. (2a. ed.). São Paulo: Atlas.

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Appendix â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Questionnaire applied to the research subjects Column "A" - Likert Scale Based on your experience, and using this scale from 1 to 4, indicate in column "A" in the table below, your opinion regarding the following statements 1 2 3 4 I agree I partly agree I partly disagree I completely agree Column "B" - Occurrences or Specific Application Based on your perception, and using this scale from 1 to 3, indicate in column "B" in the table below, your opinion regarding the occurrences of the following statements.

1 Did not occur

# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

2 3 Partly occurred Occurred Table of Assertions ERP eliminated redundancies in Comptrollership Processes ERP created opportunities to incorporate new management concepts Management information offered by ERP meets the demands of Comptrollership in the management of the Company ERP allows to develop management reports The formats of the reports offered by ERP meet management needs ERP reduced the time for the making and obtaining of management reports systems ERP standardized the company´s database ERP improved information quality ERP information is reworked in spreadsheets The spreadsheets are used to generate reports The integrity of the information is kept after the rework through spreadsheets The use and maintenance of the spreadsheets require manual work The implementation of ERP produced qualitative improvements in the decision-making process ERP supports the budgetary process according to the requirements of Comptrollership ERP allows for the simulation of scenarios (volumes/amounts) ERP produced improvements in strategic planning ERP produces information to measure the results according to the management needs of the company ERP allows Comptrollership to follow up performance by department ERP allows the use of the budget to quantify operational plans and to gain commitment from the managers The requirements for the management of the costs are met according to the needs of the Company The cost reports are reworked in electronic spreadsheets ERP allowed for the use of new concepts in managing costs The standardization of the processes produced by ERP minimizes operational risks ERP meets legal requirements minimizing the risks ERP provides accounting information according to the management needs of Comptrollership ERP allowed the reduction in fixed costs in accounting processes ERP reduced the number of personnel in Comptrollership ERP increased the number of personnel in Comptrollership All fiscal processes are performed according to the current legislation ERP provides information that contributes to tax planning The implementation of ERP improved internal controls ERP reduced the time to execute the routines The tracking of the information improves the auditing process ERP allows decentralizing internal transactions

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A B

JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 353-368 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200008

WEBSITE RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS AS PRESCRIPTIVE DETERMINERS IN THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS OS SISTEMAS DE RECOMENDAÇÃO NA WEB COMO DETERMINANTES PRESCRITIVOS NA TOMADA DE DECISÃO Fernando Colmenero-Ferreira Universidade da Madeira, Ilha da Madeira, Portugal Adicinéia Aparecida de Oliveira Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil _____________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT Overwhelmed by an extremely large volume of information on the Internet, it is difficult for a user to keep informed without a huge effort involved. The information that abounds on the Internet does not simplify the process of choice. In parallel, companies, in order to retain their consumers, more often use recommender systems on their websites, and their users seem to regard this alternative as a prescriptive strategy to solve their problems in their search for information and the consequent decision making process. How can recommendations influence a decision making process? By isolating this question it was possible to find the attributes that defined ways and objectives to begin this research. In the materialization of the research, the choice of elements in laboratory environments was rejected; instead, the research focuses its attention on real people, who perform real tasks in real conditions as well as on the process through which decisions are made in each individual´s environment. A qualitative approach is adopted related to the natural process of search for the information produced in a quasiexperimental basis. The results of the research show that, in order to solve one´s decision making problems in the phase of information search, people evaluate recommendations that websites progressively provide them, with the possibility of performing an internal search on companies websites and resorting to traditional search engines is practically not necessary.

Keywords: Recommender Systems, Prescription, Decision Making, Web 2.0.

_____________________________________________________________________________________ Manuscript first received/Recebido em 22/10/2011 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 22/05/2012

Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência Fernando Colmenero-Ferreira, Doutorado em Ciências de Gestão – Universidade de Paris X Nanterre. Professor do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Empresariais da Universidade da Madeira. Colégio dos Jesuítas – 9000-081 – Funchal – Ilha da Madeira, Portugal. E-mail: fcf@uma.pt Adicinéia Aparecida de Oliveira, Doutorado em Engenharia Elétrica – POLI/USP. Professora do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação da Universidade Federal de Sergipe – PROCC/UFS. Cidade Universitária Prof. José Aloísio de Campos – Av. Marechal Rondon, s/n Jardim Rosa Elze – CEP 49100-000 – São Cristóvão/SE, Brasil. E-mail: adicineia@ufs.br Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

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RESUMO Confinado com o volume explosivo de informações na Internet, é difícil a um utilizador, manter-se informado sem um esforço enorme. A abundância de informações na Internet não veio simplificar o processo de escolhas. Paralelamente, as empresas, no sentido de reterem os seus consumidores, empregam cada vez mais amiúde sistemas de recomendação nos seus sites, e os utilizadores parecem encontrar nesta alternativa, uma estratégia prescritiva para resolver os seus problemas de procura de informação e consequente tomada de decisão. Como é que a recomendação pode influenciar a tomada de decisão? Isolando esta pergunta, aspirou-se a encontrar atributos que lançassem a pesquisa e que definissem caminhos e objetivos. Na materialização da pesquisa, refutase a recolha de elementos em ambientes laboratoriais, ao invés disso, a atenção da pesquisa centra-se nas pessoas reais que executam tarefas reais em condições reais, com a pesquisa centrada no processo pelo qual as decisões são tomadas no ambiente de cada pessoa. A pesquisa segue uma abordagem qualitativa do processo natural de procura de informação produzida num quadro quasi-experimental. Os resultados da pesquisa indicam que, para resolver os seus problemas de tomada de decisão, na fase de procura de informação, as pessoas avaliam as recomendações que os sítios lhe fornecem progressivamente, com recurso a uma procura interna dentro dos sítios das empresas, deixando praticamente de recorrer aos tradicionais motores de procura.

Palavras-chave: Sistemas de recomendação, Prescrição, Tomada de decisão; Web 2.0.

1. INTRODUÇÃO O crescimento da Internet e do seu ambiente, colocou o utilizador numa situação de dificuldade para encontrar as informações que lhe interessam, isto porque, a qualquer momento, é confrontado com o problema de saber “por onde seguir”. Este problema começou a evidenciar-se devido a um fenômeno de sobrecarga de informação. Porém, a solução mais largamente empregada pelos utilizadores para o ajudar na resolução desse problema de sobrecarga de informação tem sido o recurso à utilização dos motores de procura (Wei, Moreau & Jennings, 2003). No entanto, os motores de procura concebidos originalmente para terem uma função utilitária, foram perdendo esta utilidade devido à existência de numerosos sites potencialmente relevantes (Montaner, López & DeLaRosa, 2003).

Embora os motores de pesquisa forneçam um meio para encontrar a informação existente, porém, são desprovidos de qualquer mecanismo que previna o utilizador sobre o aparecimento de novas informações que estejam relacionadas com os seus interesses. Confrontado com o volume explosivo de informações, é difícil a um utilizador, que esteja equipado com apenas esta capacidade de procura, manter-se informado sem um enorme esforço.

No entanto, para resolver esse problema, é possível, por exemplo, utilizar técnicas de filtragem de informação que podem ajudar as pessoas num determinado contexto (Loeb & Terry, 1992).

No caso dessas técnicas, os sistemas realizam continuamente a triagem de grandes volumes de informação textual, e apresentam ao utilizador apenas as informações suscetíveis de satisfazer o seu interesse (Belkin & Croft, 1992). Contudo, os sistemas atuais têm tido uma evolução natural e, atualmente, os sítios na Internet apoiam-se em sistemas de recomendação.

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Como é que a recomendação pode influenciar a tomada de decisão? Tversky e Kahneman (1974) deram-nos a conhecer um conjunto de heurísticas de como as pessoas tomam realmente decisões sob o estado de incerteza, mostrando à evidência de alguns dos enviesamentos sistemáticos que influenciam a tomada de decisão.

Simon (1955) com o conceito de racionalidade limitada explica algumas limitações da tomada de decisão. Parece óbvio que a habilidade humana de tomar decisões perfeitamente racionais é limitada, mas as teorias econômicas tradicionais advogavam sempre que as pessoas atuariam sempre de forma racional.

A pesquisa reside sobre a observação do desempenho da procura de informação em linha no ambiente pessoal de cada computador dos participantes, ou seja, em situação real.

Com efeito, trata-se de sites reais, e não páginas web criadas para a “experiência” como é genericamente aplicado em outras pesquisas (Ariely, 2000; Bruner & Kumar, 2000; Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Häubl & Trifts, 2000; Lynch e Ariely, 2000; Mandel & Johnson, 2002). O grupo dos participantes é constituído por pessoas que utilizam a Internet nas suas atividades profissionais e, por conseguinte, é formado majoritariamente por participantes competentes.

A fase da procura da informação está diretamente ligada a uma quantidade de incerteza ou porque a tarefa está mal definida ou ainda porque existe um elemento de incerteza naquilo que o utilizador é capaz de obter e aceitar como resultado do processo.

Por outro lado, dentro de um reportório nada negligenciável de estratégias a empregar nesta fase de procura de informação, o problema poderá colocar-se em saber qual ou quais das estratégias de procura provarão serem as mais efetivas? No ambiente da Web, a distância entre o fornecedor da informação e o utilizador desta é especialmente aguda.

O objetivo prende-se com a identificação das estratégias seguidas pelos participantes na fase de procura de informação no processo de tomada de decisão. Os resultados identificam quatro estratégias principais: estratégia de execução, estratégia de exploração, estratégia de tentativa-erro e estratégia de prescrição. Esta última revela-se para as empresas de importância fundamental porque revela que os utilizadores que seguem estas estratégias mantêm-se dentro dos sites até a conclusão do processo, evitando, consequentemente, o recurso aos motores de procura de informação.

2. ELEMENTOS TEÓRICOS A procura de informação começa a conhecer as suas publicações no final dos anos 1960, nomeadamente na precisão da influência das diversas fontes de informação sobre o consumidor (Claxton, Fry & Portis, 1974; Robertson, 1971; Udell, 1966).

Um dos problemas com que as pessoas são agora confrontadas é a existência de uma sobrecarga de informação na Internet, passando a existir um equilíbrio sensível entre a disponibilização de uma informação suficiente para que o utilizador tome uma decisão, e a informação excessiva que provoca uma sobrecarga no utilizador e, consequentemente, perturba a tomada da melhor decisão. Assim, mais parece que os computadores e a Internet vieram aumentar os problemas de uma compra qualquer, venda ou distribuição da informação ao invés de minorá-los.

Um importante resultado empírico da investigação recente sobre a tomada de decisão mostra que as pessoas utilizam uma variedade de estratégias de escolha (Resnick & Varian, 1997).

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Por vezes, uma pessoa utiliza uma estratégia que trata toda a informação relevante e, consequentemente, abrange todos os aspectos, positivos e menos positivos, de cada alternativa.

Noutras ocasiões, a mesma pessoa poderá utiliza uma estratégia de decisão que evita arbitragens entre os atributos e que reduze, significativamente, a necessidade de informação a tratar, ignorando potencialmente informação importante do problema.

A tomada de decisão perfeitamente racional pode ser restringida por muitos fatores: uma falta de informação importante; a hora e o custo de obter informação; a inteligência, só para nomear alguns.

Os behavioristas reconhecem os limites da pessoa humana no comportamento de decisão, procurando compreender melhor as insuficiências na tomada de decisão, de forma idêntica, procuraram maneiras de otimizar os resultados da tomada de decisão considerando essas insuficiências. Assim, deram destaque à utilização de modelos de prescrições que podem melhorar os resultados a obter com a tomada de decisão (Bell, Raiffa & Tversky, 1988).

A especificação da maneira em que os utilizadores podem ganhar na tomada de decisão, por assim dizer, prescrever o que constitui um “bom comportamento” da parte do utilizador. O utilizador é fortemente incentivado a seguir o comportamento prescrito, a fim de que a sua tomada de decisão não sofra de qualidade, deixando a habilidade para uma decisão mais acertada ao prescritor (Page, Brin, Motwani & Winograd, 1998; Hollon & Beck, 2004).

Resnick e Varian (1997) definem um sistema de recomendação, como uma entidade capaz de ajudar e aumentar o processo social natural de escolha de um utilizador sem experiência pessoal ou suficiente, que possa permitir-lhe escolher entre recomendações de todos os tipos de fontes.

Assim, um sistema de recomendação típico agrega e dirige recomendações aos seus destinatários. Pode ser observado que o valor principal de um sistema de recomendação é agregar informações e ser capaz de equalizar as recomendações com a informação pretendida. Difere de um sistema de filtragem convencional porque as recomendações são baseadas em valores subjetivos atribuídos pelas pessoas, antes que propriedades objetivas (como o conteúdo do texto de um documento).

Em comparação com um sistema que procura apenas informações ou que tem simplesmente funcionalidades de filtragem de informação, os sistemas de recomendação exigem menos experiência por parte do utilizador, e menos esforço para especificar e reter os seus interesses, porque estes sistemas fornecem recomendações que foram reconhecidas como satisfatórias pelos seus utilizadores, baseados nas suas preferências previamente expressas ou sobre as preferências de outros utilizadores que têm os mesmos interesses (Resnick & Varian, 1997).

Os sistemas de recomendação podem ser classificados fundamentalmente em duas classes: espacial e funcional. A abordagem espacial produz um resultado em conformidade com o domínio de aplicação, ao passo que a abordagem funcional produz um resultado em conformidade com as técnicas utilizadas pelos sistemas. Um sistema de recomendação realiza sempre uma ação de recomendação a partir da análise do perfil do utilizador.

Assim, a geração e a movimentação do perfil do utilizador são fundamentais, sendo realizado de acordo com cinco tipos de funções: a representação do perfil; a

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produção do perfil inicial; a fonte histórica dos principais eventos que representa os interesses do utilizador; o perfil da aprendizagem e o perfil da adaptação.

Como depreendemos, um sistema de recomendação só pode começar a ser implementado depois do perfil do utilizador estar criado.

Para produzir e manter o perfil do utilizador, o sistema tem necessidade da informação relativa aos interesses do utilizador, mas quando o utilizador interage com o sistema, vai fornecendo um grande volume de informações sobre ele mesmo, revelando o seu histórico, os seus interesses e as suas preferências, graças ao qual é possível conhecer as suas escolhas.

No entanto, uma técnica de aprendizagem do perfil do utilizador que extraia as informações importantes e que estrutura essas informações em função do seu perfil é sempre necessária, dado que a exclusiva presença do histórico do utilizador não fornece, só em si, uma grande contribuição. Por conseguinte, dado que os gostos se alteram com o tempo, o perfil também deve estar em constante progressão.

Observamos, pois, que já que existe uma enorme quantidade de informações na Internet, a operação fundamental a realizar consiste na seleção de uma técnica mais adaptada à recomendação da informação importante às instâncias de decisão. Por conseguinte, a existência de um método de filtragem de informação é essencial, e quanto à exploração do perfil do utilizador, duas dimensões caracterizam os sistemas da recomendação: o perfil do utilizador e o método de filtragem de informação.

Em termos de uma taxonomia de métodos de filtragem de informação, dois tipos de abordagens são utilizados para produzir recomendações: a filtragem baseada no conteúdo e a filtragem de colaboração.

No primeiro caso, o tratamento das recomendações é realizado analisando a semelhança entre o conteúdo das informações que estão prontas para ser recomendadas e as que têm sido marcadas previamente pelo utilizador.

No segundo caso, o tratamento das recomendações é realizado mostrando as informações que foram julgadas corretas pelas pessoas e as que o utilizador apresenta com interesses semelhantes.

Um grande número de técnicas de recomendação foi desenvolvido. Contudo, estas são baseadas, principalmente, em três classes de técnicas de filtragem: baseadas no conteúdo; baseadas na colaboração; e baseadas no estado demográfico. Porém, existe também um conjunto de técnicas de filtragem híbridas que combinam as três classes de técnicas principais.

As técnicas convencionais para trabalhar com a sobrecarga de informação exploram, geralmente, as técnicas de filtragem baseada no conteúdo. Estas técnicas de filtragem recomendam informações ao utilizador baseando-se nas descrições das informações previamente avaliadas.

Uma técnica complementar largamente utilizada é a da filtragem colaborativa (Goldberg, Nichols, Oki & Terry 1992), ou filtragem social (Shardanan & Maes, 1995).

A ideia básica da filtragem colaborativa é a utilização, para uma determinada pessoa, de recomendações produzidas por outros.

A filtragem colaborativa automatiza essencialmente o processo de recomendações “boca a boca”, isto é, as informações são recomendadas a um utilizador baseado nos valores atribuídos por outras pessoas com interesses semelhantes.

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O sistema determina os utilizadores que têm interesses semelhantes, partindo de fórmulas standard com o objetivo de encontrar correlações estatísticas, como, por exemplo, realizando estimativas sobre as informações dos seus interesses (Goldberg et al., 1992).

Por conseguinte, antes de calcular a semelhança de informações, a filtragem de colaboração calcula a semelhança de interesses dos utilizadores. Ou seja, informações subjetivas à pessoa podem ser incorporadas nas recomendações.

Terveen e Hill (2001) exprimem que a participação de numerosas pessoas é indispensável para aumentar a probabilidade que permitirá a uma pessoa encontrar outros utilizadores com preferências semelhantes.

A abordagem demográfica utiliza as descrições das pessoas, como a idade, o gênero, a profissão, o endereço, etc. para compreender a relação entre uma simples informação e o tipo de pessoa que tem a mesma referência (Krulwich, 1997).

Os perfis dos utilizadores são criados classificando as pessoas de acordo com um estereótipo que apresenta um conjunto de características de uma classe de utilizadores.

Estes sistemas exigem sempre o registro de um formulário pelo utilizador.

Os sistemas de filtragem híbridos compõem-se da integração das abordagens baseadas no conteúdo e na colaboração.

A razão desta integração é fazer face às fraquezas das duas abordagens quando se apresentam isoladamente (Herlocker, Konstan & Riedl, 2000). Num sistema híbrido, a propriedade objetiva e a propriedade subjetiva de uma informação são tomadas em consideração para predizer a qualidade das informações a recomendar. Por exemplo, este tipo de método é comumente utilizado pela Amazon.com.

Várias abordagens são utilizadas para representar o perfil dos utilizadores, nomeadamente: o histórico das compras; a navegação na Internet; os e-mails recebidos e enviados; o vetor booleano de características; os métodos de tratamento da linguagem natural (rede semântica, rede associativa, rede neural, rede De Bayeux e árvores de decisão); a matriz dos ranks e as características demográficas (Montaner et al. 2003).

O perfil típico do utilizador é utilizado para recomendar novos atributos importantes relacionados com o utilizador. Os sistemas baseados na filtragem do conteúdo utilizam uma comparação direta entre o perfil do utilizador e os novos atributos, isto é, aplicam uma técnica de concordância (matching).

O resultado mais importante no processo da determinação da recomendação, qualquer que seja o item e a sua importância, é realizado de maneira automática através da comparação entre a representação dos interesses do utilizador e a representação dos itens em consideração. A maior parte dos sistemas utiliza técnicas para realizar a atualização do perfil do utilizador: seleção simples das palavras; semelhança e vizinhança o mais próxima possível (Montaner et al. 2003).

Schafer, Konstan e Riedl (2001) apresentam uma taxonomia dos sistemas de recomendação baseada nas categorias de interface das recomendações.

Uma atualização dessa taxonomia implicaria a inclusão das novas interfaces como as categorizações em árvore, os botões, os documentos PDF, as nuvens de tags, os RSS e os botões de procura.

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3. A ESTRATÉGIA DE INVESTIGAÇÃO Esta pesquisa segue uma abordagem qualitativa do processo natural de procura produzida num quadro quasi-experimental.

A pesquisa centra a atenção em pessoas reais que executam tarefas reais em condições reais. Genericamente, observa-se o desempenho na procura de informação em linha no ambiente pessoal de cada computador dos participantes.

Os dados recolhidos consistem em três tipos diferentes de material, resultados: de um questionário; de notas de observação; e dos registros vídeos das sessões de procura de informação. Os dados utilizados no estudo compilaram-se em duas sessões de procura de informação.

Nesta pesquisa recorremos a uma metodologia de amostragem não probabilística e não intencional administrada por critérios de conveniência e disponibilidade dos participantes (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2003).

A observação de formas variadas de procura de informação em linha é assim favorecida pela relação com o real.

A procura de informação na Web é assim iniciada por um projeto que toma a forma de um cenário imposto aos participantes.

Quatro cenários são concebidos. O primeiro cenário de encontrar um itinerário entre duas cidades corresponde a uma situação de procura de informação em que o desafio e a motivação são fracos. O segundo cenário para encontrar um DVD, reenvia a uma situação de procura de informação onde o desafio é fraco e a motivação é elevada.

O terceiro cenário para encontrar uma viagem ou estadia de férias corresponde a uma situação de procura de informação onde o desafio e a motivação são elevados. Por último, o quarto cenário para encontrar um computador portátil, retorna a uma situação de procura de informação onde o desafio é elevado e a motivação é fraca.

Foram codificadas 1184 ações. A operação de codificação dos dados utilizou as técnicas de process tracing aplicadas originalmente nos estudos experimentais em psicologia e nomeadamente adotadas aos estudos sobre a tomada de decisão (Beach & Mitchell, 1978; Newell & Simon, 1972; Payne, Bettman & Johnson, 1993).

Mais recentemente, Lurie (2004) utilizou as mesmas técnicas no seu estudo sobre interatividade na Web. É importante fazer notar que o paradigma do tratamento da informação sublinha como as decisões são tomadas, e não somente quais as decisões que são realizadas. Como resultado, a investigação neste campo de conhecimento completa frequentemente os resultados da análise da escolha ou julgamento realizado com o process tracing, com os relatos verbais do processo durante a execução da tarefa, o monitoramento da procura de informação e o tempo de resposta (Svenson, 1996).

Parece-nos fundamental reafirmar que a utilização do método baseado no process tracing é coerente com a ideia que a compreensão do processo de decisão deve ser analisada de um ponto de vista microscópio e não por interpretações indiretas de grandes dados globais (Simon, 1982).

A riqueza do conteúdo proposto pelos vídeos é muito motivante. A título ilustrativo, consideremos o seguinte resultado procedente da transcrição de uma pequena parte de uma sessão de observação: “ - Ora bem, vamos aqui ao Google, motor de procura...

- Procuramos Paris Hamburgo itinerário...

- Talvez estradas? O mais fácil seria com um guia de estradas...

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- Encontramos aqui um mapa, mas isto não dá...

- Temos aqui Paris e temos ali Hamburgo, e uma estrada, mas não diz nada...

- A conclusão à qual se chega é que é melhor ir de avião...

- Este mapa obtido não é suficiente, não é?

- Então, isto aqui com o American Express, tem aqui coisas interessantes...

- Como é que se chama aquilo? Conheço um software de toda a Europa...

- É fácil de ver aquilo, vou aqui ao Btuga, é um site de pirataria tipo Emule.

- Não é bem isso, é um site onde as pessoas colocam o software e depois tiramno.

- É um software muito pesado, 2 ou 3 gigas, é tipo GPS do melhor que se pode ter...

- Aí está, é a Estrada 66, por 369€ descobrimos os caminhos para todos os lados...

- Devo encontrar um mapa de estradas da Europa...

- Temos diversos mapas, mas não nos dão o itinerário...

- Sinceramente, não estou capaz de ver.”.

A Tabela 1 ilustra o resultado da codificação de um arquivo de vídeo registrado, obtido com a metodologia anteriormente descrita.

Tabela 1. Codificação de um arquivo de vídeo utilizando o process tracing.

Paralelamente, foi contabilizada a quantidade de tempo utilizada pelo sujeito para realizar a tarefa, bem como o número total de ações empregadas por tarefa. Os diversos métodos aos quais os participantes chamam a fim de completar o cenário com sucesso foram igualmente registados.

4. A ANÁLISE DOS RESULTADOS O tratamento qualitativo dos materiais recolhidos, os questionários e as observações, mas, sobretudo, o exame detalhado dos vídeos registrados durante as sessões de observação, providencia-nos uma análise estruturada ao redor de elementos quantitativos, da qual vamos ilustrar e examinar a sua natureza. Este recurso à

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361 Os Sistemas de Recomendação na Web como Determinantes Prescritivos na Tomada de Decisão

integração dos métodos quantitativos na validade da construção quantitativa, e tão decantada pelos estudiosos da metodologia científica veio reforçar a fiabilidade da análise (Zipf, 1949).

Patton (1990) também defende que é provável que os métodos quantitativos e qualitativos acabem por responder em conjunto a perguntas que não se obtêm facilmente para fornecer uma imagem única e bem integrada da situação.

O tratamento acima proposto foi iniciado com a categorização das operações em função da sua natureza. Encontraram-se oito categorias de operações, descritas na Tabela 2.

Tabela 2. Categorização das operações.

Operação

Descrição

Procura externa Procura interna

Categoriza as operações efetuadas essencialmente sobre os motores de procura; Categoriza as operações de procura efetuadas exclusivamente a partir da informação contida no site; Categoriza as operações de escrita direta do endereço de um website na barra do navegador; Categoriza as operações de utilização dos atalhos de endereços de website registrados pelo utilizador no seu navegador;

Endereço direto Favorito Ação

Categoriza as operações possíveis realizadas pelo utilizador como, por exemplo, o preenchimento de um formulário;

Insucesso

Categoriza as operações que indicam que o utilizador não chegou a terminar a operação na qual se comprometeu;

Avaliação

Categoriza as operações no curso da qual o participante toma conhecimento das alternativas que se lhe oferecem; e,

Decisão

Categoriza as operações de escolha operada pelo utilizador entre o conjunto das alternativas.

Partindo da categorização das operações, calculou-se um modelo de regressão múltiplo (Tabelas 3 e 4) para caracterizar a duração da tarefa pelas diferentes operações que a compõem. Esta noção de operação é importante, porque ela forma a unidade de análise numa tarefa, a um nível micro do qual temos necessidade de conhecer a estrutura.

Tabela 3. Significância do modelo de regressão.

Modelo

R

R2

R2 Ajustado

Std. Error

1

,956

,915

,904

144,66008

Soma dos quadrados

ddl

Média dos quadrados

F

Sig.

Regressão

15225213,362

8

1903151,670

90,944

,000

Residual

1423004,638

68

20926,539

Total

16648218,000

76

Modelo 1

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Tabela 4. Coeficientes de regressão.

Modelo 1

B

Std. Error

Beta

t

Sig

Act_A Endereço direto

90,211

27,350

,185

3,298

,002

Act_B Ação

5,593

4,387

,086

1,275

,207

Act_D Decisão

46,101

11,741

,480

3,926

,000

Act_E Avaliação

-1,706

9,766

-,019

-,175

,862

Act_F Favoritos

65,282

43,821

,055

1,490

,141

Act_I Procura interna

5,538

24,982

,011

,222

,825

Act_G Procura externa

22,466

11,296

,156

1,989

,051

Act_X Insucesso

36,438

14,792

,204

2,463

,016

Como podemos observar, o valor total de R2 da regressão múltipla é de 0,915, o que explica bem o modelo da duração da tarefa.

A partir do nosso modelo de regressão, realizamos uma segmentação das observações por uma análise de classificação automática com o método Ward. Esta técnica tem recurso a um modelo hierarquizado (Ward, 1963).

O resultado é apresentado no Anexo I. Assim, chegamos a um resultado, ilustrado na Tabela 5 e na Figura 1, que concentra quatro grandes grupos, cada um que representa um tipo de estratégia que classificamos da forma seguinte: estratégia de execução, estratégia de prescrição, estratégia de exploração e estratégia de tentativaerro.

Tabela 5. Número de tarefas por estratégia.

1 Execução

23

Percentagem acumulada 29,5 29,9

2 Prescrição

13

16,7

46,8

3 Exploração

29

37,2

84,4

4 Tentativa-erro

12

15,4

100,0

77

98,7

Frequência Valide

Total

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363 Os Sistemas de Recomendação na Web como Determinantes Prescritivos na Tomada de Decisão

0,50

E xe cuti o n p rescrip ti on e xp l o ra ti on

P ourc entag e

0,40

e ssa i erre ur

0,30

0,20

0,10

0,00 Favoris

Recherche interne

Adresse directe

Action

Evaluation

Recherche Externe

Echec Decision

Type d'opéra tion

Figura 1. Quatro tipos de estratégia de procura de informação.

No caso, da estratégia de prescrição, o utilizador avalia as recomendações que os sites lhe fornecem progressivamente. Assim, a atividade consiste fundamentalmente a avaliar, tomar decisões e ao recurso de uma procura interna dentro dos sites. Este tipo de estratégia conduz a poucos insucessos e não utiliza praticamente a procura externa.

Ao contrário, neste tipo de estratégia, o utilizador recorre fundamentalmente à operação de “Endereço direto” e, mais frequentemente, aos “Favoritos”.

A sequência seguinte, com a descrição de uma sessão de observação obtida apresenta o comportamento associado à prescrição de forma bem evidenciada: O participante [PF01] conhece perfeitamente a existência de um site onde poderá comprar um DVD no qual participa o ator Tom Cruise. Consequentemente, ele acede imediatamente ao [site amazon.com] e no espaço de 2 minutos e 19 segundos, executa a tarefa com sucesso.

Os participantes [PF03], [PF04] e [PF13], bem como o participante [PF01] conhecem igualmente esse mesmo [site amazon.com]. Executam eficazmente a tarefa, o número de operações varia de 4 para 5, e o tempo passado de 1 minuto e 7 segundos a 1minuto e 40 segundos. [PF13] tinha este site referenciado nos seus Favoritos.

Na Figura 2, observamos que a curva da duração média da tarefa, para o comportamento de exploração, é alta, situando-se a duração fraca para o comportamento de prescrição.

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Durée Moyenne

500,00

400,00

300,00

200,00

prescription

essai erreur

Execution

exploration

Figura 2. Duração média da tarefa por tipo de estratégia.

5. CONCLUSÃO O comportamento dos consumidores na procura de informação é conduzido com base em dois fatores: custo e benefício; ou seja, que a quantidade de procura levada a efeito pelo consumidor é correlacionada positivamente ao valor da informação e, que é negativamente ligada ao custo de procura em relação ao custo de oportunidade do tempo do consumidor, ao custo para o indivíduo do tratamento de informação e aos custos diretos da procura, como, por exemplo, o esforço cognitivo.

Com o enorme conjunto de informações e outros serviços disponíveis na Internet, passou a ser muito importante ajudar os utilizadores a procurar fontes de informação e por um conjunto de serviços à sua disposição.

Assiste-se assim, à criação de um vasto conjunto de instrumentos que permitem ajudar os utilizadores a localizar a informação na Internet. Os instrumentos de procura, que os utilizadores podem utilizar para localizar produtos, são de duas categorias: os instrumentos gerais de procura com uma intenção, através dos motores de procura, e os instrumentos específicos de compra, através dos sistemas de recomendação. Estes instrumentos concentram grandes quantidades de informações e representam um serviço particularmente importante para os mercados de Internet.

As recomendações são baseadas, na sua generalidade, nas vendas do sítio, nas características demográficas do utilizador ou na sua história passada de forma a poder predizer o seu futuro comportamento.

Um segundo ponto situa o problema da recomendação de informação em termos da solução para o problema da sobrecarga de informação. Da informação centrada na sua escassez, que fazia com que a sua aquisição estivesse associada a um elevado preço,

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365 Os Sistemas de Recomendação na Web como Determinantes Prescritivos na Tomada de Decisão

com a abundância, o problema passou a situar-se no custo de tratamento de informação.

Empresas e consumidores ficaram perante um equilíbrio sensível entre a disponibilização de informação suficiente de modo que o utilizador tome uma decisão, e a informação excessiva que dificulta a tomada de decisão.

O resultado foi que a abundância de informações não veio simplificar o processo de escolhas passando a recomendação a ter um papel fundamental na ajuda à tomada de decisão de forma a solucionar o problema.

Com o aparecimento e a aplicação pelas empresas de sistemas de recomendação nos seus sites, os utilizadores parecem encontrar uma estratégia, prescritiva, para resolver os seus problemas de procura de informação. Neste caso, o utilizador avalia as recomendações que os sítios lhe fornecem progressivamente.

Assim, a interação, entre empresas e consumidores, consiste fundamentalmente na avaliação e tomada de decisões com recurso a uma procura interna dentro dos sítios.

Este tipo de estratégia conduz o utilizador a poucos insucessos na procura da informação para solução do seu problema de tomada de decisão, dispensando praticamente a utilização dos motores de procura externos.

Como a pesquisa revelou, a estratégia prescritiva faz recurso fundamentalmente ao conhecimento dos endereços dos sítios e, também frequentemente, à utilização do conjunto de favoritos, marcadores organizados no ambiente dos browsers dos utilizadores.

Assim, para as empresas, melhor que oferecer novos métodos de interface nos seus sites, é essencial criar notoriedade para os endereços dos seus sites, motivando os seus consumidores a memorizá-los ou a registrá-los em sistemas de favoritos, complementando com o ensino na utilização das interfaces já existentes.

5.1 Limitações da pesquisa e sugestões para trabalhos futuros A primeira nota a levar em conta é que a nossa pesquisa tem uma série de limitações e, simultaneamente, não pretende ser exaustiva. Uma limitação do nosso estudo reside na fraqueza do tamanho da amostra utilizada, principalmente porque é feito com um grupo reduzido de participantes.

Essa limitação, possivelmente a mais importante, impede a possibilidade de generalizar os resultados.

Apesar de alguma validade estatística no tratamento da informação categorizada, a pesquisa é marcada pela sua natureza qualitativa que carrega sempre algumas limitações, embora os resultados forneçam um quadro de raciocínio relevante.

No entanto, o grupo de participantes e a quasi-experiência são adequados ao caráter exploratório da pesquisa. A execução da pesquisa torna possível estudar o processo da procura de informações para a tomada de decisões pelas pessoas no seu ambiente natural.

Contudo, a realização de novos trabalhos com grupos de dimensões mais importantes e diversificados deve levar a precisar dos resultados da pesquisa.

A riqueza das vias de pesquisa abertas, no curto e médio prazo, é particularmente interessante por causa da natureza exploratória desta pesquisa e as diversas implicações que ela representa.

Além disso, os resultados desta pesquisa convidam à extensão da análise apresentada neste estudo, e a continuar a determinar em que medida os sistemas de JISTEM, Brazil Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 353-368

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recomendação atuam como determinantes prescritivos na tomada de decisão do consumidor. Esta fase aparece como a espinha dorsal do problema e que precisa ser desenvolvido em pesquisas futuras.

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol. 9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp. 369-390 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200009

INFOINCLUSÃO EM PIRAÍ DIGITAL: EVIDÊNCIAS EMPÍRICAS A PARTIR DA TEORIA ATOR-REDE DIGITAL INCLUSION (INFOINCLUSION) IN PIRAÍ DIGITAL: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE BASED ON THE ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY Adonai Teles Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, RJ, Brasil Luiz Antonio Joia Fundação Getulio Vargas-FGV, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil ____________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT This paper presents the Piraí Digital status quo, based on the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and on the heuristic model of digital inclusion (2iD). In the first phase of this research, the original heuristic model was expanded from the ANT assumptions, giving rise to a more suitable version (e2iD), aiming at the observation of the digital inclusion process (infoinclusion) in the City of Piraí. Next, the ANT was adopted as a methodological support so that authors, by means of interviews and direct observation and from the standpoint of the authors interviewed, could understand how digital inclusion (infoinclusion) is developed in the City of Piraí. From that point on, the results are presented based on the ANT taxonomy and on the elements of the e2ID model. This research work about digital inclusion (infoinclusion) in the City of Piraí began in 2007 and extended up until the last few months of 2009. It is concluded that digital inclusion in the City of Piraí has been a reality to the local public administration and to the educational and health systems. Nevertheless, it is noticed that both the productive sector and the local civil society have had few or no benefits from the program in question. Lastly, it is possible to understand the role of the various public players in the ANTs and explain why the results of the Piraí Digital have not homogeneously impacted the local society so far.

Keywords: Digital Inclusion, Actor-Network Theory, Heuristic Model, Information Technology, Brazil

_____________________________________________________________________________________ Manuscript first received/Recebido em 10/10/2010 Manuscript accepted/Aprovado em: 14/11/2011 Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência Adonai Teles, Professor Adjunto da Universidade Federal Fluminense, Departamento de Turismo-Rua Mário Santos Braga, 30, sala 714, CEP 24020-140, Niterói, RJ, Brasil. Tel.: (21) 2629-9888 Doutor em Administração e Mestre em Gestão Empresarial pela Escola Brasileira de Administração Publica e de Empresas da Fundação Getulio Vargas. E-mail: adonai@turismo.uff.br Luiz Antonio Joia, Professor adjunto da Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública e de Empresas da Fundação Getulio Vargas/FGV Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. -Tel.: (21) 3799-5794. Engenheiro de Fortificação e Construção pelo Instituto Militar de Engenharia; Mestre em Ciências em Engenharia Civil pela COPPE/UFRJ; Doutor em Ciências em Engenharia de Produção pela COPPE/UFRJ e Mestre em Ciências em Management Studies pela Oxford University. E-mail: luiz.joia@fgv.br Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

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RESUMO O artigo apresenta o status quo do programa Piraí Digital, com base na Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT) e no modelo heurístico de inclusão digital (2iD). Numa primeira etapa desta pesquisa, o modelo heurístico original foi expandido com base nos pressupostos da ANT, gerando uma versão mais adequada (e2iD) para a observação do fenômeno da infoinclusão em Piraí. Em seguida, a ANT foi adotada como suporte metodológico para que os autores, por meio de entrevistas e observação direta, compreendessem, sob a ótica dos atores ouvidos, como a infoinclusão tem ocorrido no município de Piraí. A partir daí, os resultados são apresentados com base na taxonomia da ANT e dos elementos do modelo e2ID. O presente trabalho de pesquisa sobre a infoinclusão em Piraí começou em 2007 e se estendeu até os últimos meses de 2009. Concluiuse que a inclusão digital em Piraí tem sido uma realidade na administração pública local, na educação e na saúde. Porém, percebeu-se que o setor produtivo e a sociedade civil local, pouco ou nada tem se beneficiado do programa em questão. Finalmente, foi possível compreender o papel dos vários atores públicos nas redes de atores da ANT e explicar porque os resultados de Piraí Digital não têm, até agora, impactado homogeneamente a sociedade local.

Palavras-chave: Inclusão Digital, Teoria Ator-Rede, Modelo Heurístico, Tecnologia da Informação, Brasil

1. INTRODUÇÃO Na virada do século XXI, artigos na mídia reportaram um programa que visava promover a inclusão digital numa pequena cidade do estado do Rio de Janeiro, Piraí.

O programa foi descrito como sendo: “tecnologia usada para promover a inclusão social, fornecer equipamentos e desenvolver serviços associados, como a melhoria na educação e mobilização social, propiciando políticas de inclusão digital via acesso às tecnologias da informação e comunicação” (Silva , Palhares& Rosa, 2005, p.2).

Este programa – conhecido como Piraí Digital – foi estabelecido em Piraí, no estado do Rio de Janeiro, uma cidade que vem procurando imprimir sua marca registrada no âmbito do uso da tecnologia da informação na sociedade. Assim, a partir de 2007, iniciou-se uma pesquisa visando avaliar o status quo desse empreendimento.

Com isso em mente, detectou-se a necessidade de buscar tanto referencial teórico quanto método de pesquisa que contemplassem os processos inerentes à inclusão digital que poderia estar ocorrendo em Piraí. Percebeu-se que a Teoria Ator-Rede (Actor-Network Theory - ANT) fornecia uma estrutura ideal a esse mister. Isto é, compreendeu-se que pelo entendimento de como as redes de atores vêm se formando em Piraí Digital, seria possível ter uma boa visão de como Piraí estaria (ou não) se beneficiando do programa em questão.

Além disso, havia interesse em desenvolver e aplicar um modelo de inclusão digital que permitisse focalizar uma gama maior de elementos relevantes no processo de inclusão digital, evitando-se utilizar apenas alguns poucos dados estatísticos, tais como: número de computadores, acesso, frequência de uso etc. (ver, p.ex., OECD, 2001; Sicherl, 2003; Fox, 2004). Assim, conforme sugere Barzilai-Nahon (2006), optou-se por utilizar um modelo que transcendesse lentes atômicas ou monotípicas.

O objetivo deste artigo é, portanto, apresentar os resultados da investigação realizada acerca da inclusão digital em Piraí, propiciada pelo programa Piraí Digital.

Esta pesquisa, de caráter qualitativo, foi desenvolvida com base na Teoria AtorRede (ANT), a qual serviu simultaneamente a dois propósitos: produzir uma versão

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estendida do modelo heurístico de infoinclusão de Joia (2004), o qual serviu como base para a descrição de Piraí Digital; e ancorar o método de pesquisa adotado, o qual buscou seguir os atores e apresentar Piraí Digital conforme relatado pelos mesmos.

Buscou-se, também, descrever o envolvimento dos diferentes setores da sociedade no programa Piraí Digital e os efeitos que ele gerou e tem gerado em cada um deles. Nesse sentido, um objetivo secundário deste artigo foi o de investigar a pertinência do uso da ANT para avaliação do fenômeno da inclusão digital em um ambiente complexo como o de uma cidade.

Acredita-se que entendendo, por meio do uso das recomendações da ANT, como as redes de atores têm se desenvolvido no programa Piraí Digital, é possível responder à seguinte pergunta de pesquisa: “Como Piraí tem se beneficiado das iniciativas de inclusão digital decorrentes do programa Piraí Digital?”.

A estrutura do artigo compreende uma descrição do método de pesquisa usado, a apresentação do referencial teórico adotado – englobando um modelo heurístico de infoinclusão dinâmica (2iD), uma visão geral da Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT) e a fusão dessas duas correntes, de modo a tornar possível o desenvolvimento de um modelo estendido de infoinclusão (e2iD).

A seguir, é apresentado o status atual de inclusão digital em Piraí, fundamentado na avaliação do programa Piraí Digital vis-à-vis o modelo estendido desenvolvido.

Finalmente, conclui-se o artigo com algumas observações finais, implicações acadêmicas e gerenciais, assim como as limitações do mesmo e recomendações para estudos futuros.

2

MÉTODO DE PESQUISA

Em termos metodológicos, a Teoria Ator-Rede (doravante denominada de ANT) fornece ao pesquisador uma grande dose de flexibilidade. Isto porque, quando um tema ou objeto sob investigação é analisado, não existe nenhuma definição definitiva a priori, nem tampouco premissas associadas a quem são os atores relevantes, já que tal é buscado por meio de observação empírica e análise (Hardy & Williams, 2008).

Nesse sentido, a ANT se configura um método de pesquisa "onde o fundamental e essencial é ‘seguir os atores’" (Lagendijk & Cornford, 2000, p.212). Tal característica provê uma oportunidade de incluir artefatos e pessoas, de forma igualitária, nas redes e de ter-se uma taxonomia simples para descrever seus movimentos.

De acordo com van der Duim (2007), os pesquisadores devem entender como os significados e tarefas são atribuídos a pessoas e coisas, e distribuídos entre elas. Eles devem, portanto, seguir e elucidar esse processo de ordenamento (van der Duim, 2007).

Assim, com respeito a essas recomendações, os seguintes passos metodológicos descritos abaixo foram adotados neste trabalho.

Inicialmente, como o modelo de infoinclusão 2iD é de natureza heurística (Winter, 1998; Joia, 2004), a ANT foi usada para suportar e justificar o mesmo, por meio das ligações de seus componentes com a Teoria Ator-Rede.

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O resultado disso foi um novo modelo denominado modelo estendido de infoinclusão (e2ID), totalmente suportado, justificado e ampliado pela Teoria AtorRede, o qual foi aplicado empiricamente na pesquisa.

A partir daí, decidiu-se coletar dados via entrevistas semiestruturadas com um determinado número de atores situados em Piraí. Essas entrevistas se caracterizaram pela informação ao entrevistado dos propósitos da pesquisa realizada em Piraí e de um espaço para que ele apresentasse suas impressões sobre como o programa Piraí Digital tem afetado a cidade.

Após esse primeiro momento, e considerando-se as impressões dos pesquisadores sobre o que foi dito pelo entrevistado, algumas perguntas eram feitas com base nos elementos do modelo heurístico, a fim de se obter a voz do entrevistado sobre como esses elementos se apresentavam na cidade.

Os primeiros atores foram selecionados por sua importância na cidade e/ou no programa Piraí Digital. Outros potenciais entrevistados emergiram dessas entrevistas, ou por sugestão direta dos respondentes ou por terem sido mencionados no curso das entrevistas. Tal abordagem fundamenta-se na análise de stakeholders, como sugerido por Pouloudi, Gandecha, Atkinson e Papazafeiropoulou (2004).

Assim, foram conduzidas entrevistas com 12 informantes, incluindo o prefeito, dois secretários municipais, o funcionário responsável por Tecnologia da Informação (TI) na cidade, o gerente da agência municipal de empregos do estado do Rio de Janeiro, dois professores da rede municipal e estadual de ensino, dois membros da coordenação do programa Piraí Digital, dois atendentes de telecentros, o representante local do SEBRAE e o proprietário de uma pequena empresa local.

As entrevistas foram conduzidas entre julho e agosto de 2009, em Piraí, e variaram de 20 a 80 minutos, com uma duração média de 45 minutos. Sete entrevistas foram gravadas e notas escritas foram tomadas de todos os entrevistados. Além disso, um chat não estruturado com 37 estudantes do último ano do Ensino Médio foi também conduzido, de modo a compreender o senso de importância da TI e Internet em suas vidas cotidianas.

Finalmente, os textos obtidos a partir das entrevistas foram analisados sob uma perspectiva qualitativa vis-à-vis o novo modelo de infoinclusão desenvolvido (e2iD).

Isto é, a análise das entrevistas realizadas pelos pesquisadores se fundamentou nas anotações escritas, para as entrevistas não gravadas, e nas anotações escritas e gravações para as entrevistas gravadas.

Os pesquisadores procuraram avaliar o quanto o discurso dos entrevistados aderia ou se afastava dos elementos propostos pelo modelo heurístico, por meio de afirmações e silêncios que pudessem ser, explícita ou implicitamente, associados aos ditos elementos.

Essa análise, juntamente com as observações diretas dos próprios pesquisadores, forneceu a base prática para avaliação do processo de inclusão digital em Piraí, assim como do impacto do programa na cidade como um todo.

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REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO

Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT) Quando há necessidade de referir-se à Internet, um computador, um scanner ou um sistema de informação, depara-se com a limitação de que esses objetos inanimados – de acordo com um grande número de teorias – não podem ter a mesma importância que pessoas na estruturação da vida social.

A ANT oferece um framework que supera essa barreira (Hardy & Williams, 2008). Além de Latour (2005), onde se pode consultar a primeira tentativa de consolidação da ANT, obras importantes para a compreensão da teoria são, entre outras, Callon (1986, 1999), Law (1986, 1997, 1999, 2003), Johnson (1988) e Latour (1987, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1999).

Podem-se citar aplicações da ANT em várias áreas. Entre outras, pode-se mencionar: administração pública (Walsham & Sahay, 1999), adoção de softwares livres (Guesser, 2004), políticas públicas de inclusão digital (Azevedo, 2008), fornecimento de serviços (Uden e Francis, 2009) e adoção de sistemas de informação (Cho , Mathiassen, & Nilsson, 2008 & Tatnall, 2009), apenas para citar algumas.

O elemento central da ANT é a rede de atores per si, i.e., a combinação de agente e estrutura ou contexto, onde nenhum deles existe independentemente do outro.

(Green Hull, McMeekin, & Walsh 1999).

Vista em perspectiva, a sociedade como um todo e seus subconjuntos são formados por uma multidão de redes de atores humanos e não humanos, sendo estes, artefatos criados pelo homem (Mitev, 2009).

Na terminologia ANT, qualquer elemento capaz de impor sua linguagem sobre outro pode ser considerado um ator na rede. Sistemas operacionais, ferramentas de busca na Internet, programas de automação de escritório, por exemplo, são artefatos que criam um campo de atração em torno de si, assim como determinam comportamentos e usos da tecnologia, que influenciam o crescimento das redes centralizadas neles próprios (Hanseth & Monteiro, 1998).

O processo de formação da rede é, em termos gerais, o papel ou trajetória principal do ator, o qual participa em numerosos processos desse tipo, seja como protagonista ou participante. É por meio da formação das redes, e como resultado de sua participação em muitas redes, que os atores criam sua identidade social (o que são) e sua função social (o que fazem e como fazem).

O fato da teoria (como projetada por Michel Callon e John Law, a partir dos trabalhos de Bruno Latour) tratar artefatos humanos e não humanos da mesma forma, no que tange à possibilidade de serem atores na rede – o princípio da heterogeneidade (Hardy & Williams, 2008) –, a torna especialmente atraente para aqueles engajados no estudo do uso e impacto das tecnologias, incluindo a tecnologia da informação (TI) na sociedade (Comber, Fisher & Wadsworth ,2003).

Os principais elementos da ANT associados com este estudo, além dos já citados ator e rede, são tradução, inscrição e irreversibilidade (Latour, 2005; Ryder, 2007).

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Tradução é o processo de negociação, mobilização, representação e deslocamento entre atores, entidades e lugares. Envolve a redefinição desses fenômenos, de modo a que os mesmos sejam instados a agir de acordo com os requisitos da rede, sendo estes requisitos frequentemente inscritos em materiais heterogêneos que atuam para consolidar a rede (Murdoch, 1998, 2006; van der Duim, 2007).

Em outras palavras, para a ANT, a tradução tem a ver com o processo de ordenamento ou estabilização de um conjunto de elementos que, de outra forma, iriam funcionar de uma forma desagregada entre si. Por exemplo, a organização não é uma coisa própria em si, mas um efeito ou produto; ordena e organiza os elementos de redes heterogêneas, num sistema relativamente estável. Sem o poder ordenador da tradução, os elementos podem evoluir em toda e qualquer direção.

Nesse sentido, o processo de tradução é uma negociação entre atores acerca do foco de ações a serem executadas pela rede, ou “a iniciativa e o resultado de (...) alinhar os interesses dos múltiplos atores” (Hardy & Williams, 2008, pp. 6). Esse processo requer a cooptação, envolvimento e mobilização de atores e recursos.

Assim, o processo de tradução propicia dois resultados: o estabelecimento de pontos de passagem obrigatórios (PPO) e a formação de relacionamentos (intermediários) por meio da inscrição de artefatos tecnológicos, textos (p.ex., marcos regulatórios), pessoas e recursos financeiros (Comber et al., 2003).

O estabelecimento de PPOs é o modo pelo qual atores-rede impõem seus interesses de forma imperativa sobre outros atores-rede, na busca por seus próprios objetivos.

A formação de relacionamentos, as redes, se dá a partir dos processos de tradução, e se consolidada por meio de inscrições, i.e. a criação de artefatos técnicos que garantam a proteção dos interesses de um ator (Latour, 2005; Ryder, 2007). Essas inscrições contribuem para assegurar a irreversibilidade da rede, quando é impossível para aqueles nela envolvidos mudar de alternativas (Latour, 2005; Ryder, 2007).

A ANT ajuda a entender os processos cíclicos de negociação, redefinição e apropriação de interesses em redes, na medida em que identifica a inscrição dos mesmos em artefatos técnicos (Hanseth, Monteiro & Hatling, 1996).

Para finalizar, permitindo uma, a priori, não diferenciação entre elementos sociais e tecnológicos numa rede sócio-técnica, a ANT propicia uma definição detalhada dos mecanismos concretos que servem para manter uma rede conectada, sem que haja dúvidas acerca do como tal é conseguido (Hanseth & Monteiro, 1998).

Divisão Digital Takahashi (2002) afirma que a divisão digital é um dos maiores desafios que o mundo vem enfrentando hoje, já que a exclusão digital pode aumentar a distância entre os países desenvolvidos e os em desenvolvimento, no que tange ao acesso e uso adequado e relevante da informação e conhecimento.

A divisão digital é normalmente uma conseqüência da divisão econômica e social nos países com alto grau de desigualdades (Yu & Wang, 2009; Takahashi, 2002).

Entretanto, como declarado por Zhong (2003), a inclusão digital pode fornecer aos países em desenvolvimento uma excelente possibilidade para implementação direta das mais avançadas infraestruturas tecnológicas e processos produtivos, sem a necessidade

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de implantar-se primeiro as tradicionais infraestruturas associadas à sociedade industrial.

Esse salto quântico pode acelerar a entrada de países em desenvolvimento na arena dos países desenvolvidos. Assim, a tecnologia da informação é um motor para o avanço de nações em desenvolvimento, sendo a inclusão digital de cidadãos e organizações o ponto de partida para tal.

Em linha com isso, vários acadêmicos (ver p.ex. Choudrie et al, 2010; De Haan, 2004; Martin, 2003; Warschauer, 2003; Norris, 2001, para citar apenas alguns) vêm clamando por uma abordagem menos tecnocêntrica e mais holística, sistêmica e dinâmica para o estudo do fenômeno da inclusão digital.

O Modelo Heurístico de Infoinclusão Dinâmica (2iD) O modelo heurístico de infoinclusão dinâmica (2iD, ver figura 1) foi proposto por Joia (2004) com base no modelo desenvolvido por Afonso (Afonso, 2000). O 2iD se coaduna com as demandas anteriormente expostas por um modelo de inclusão digital mais dinâmico, holístico e sistêmico.

Figura 1: Modelo Heurístico de Infoinclusão Dinâmica (2iD) (Fonte: Joia, 2004)

Um modelo heurístico se caracteriza por ocupar uma posição intermediária entre uma lista discricionária de itens que podem ser relevantes para o entendimento de um fenômeno e um modelo teórico perfeitamente formulado e elaborado (Winter, 1998).

De acordo com o modelo 2iD, são as seguintes as condições essenciais para a infoinclusão de indivíduos de uma determinada comunidade (Joia, 2004): - sustentabilidade econômica, política, ética e legal do processo; - existência de infraestrutura física e acesso disponível a computadores e Internet; - existência de conteúdo produzido localmente e/ou adaptável para uso local; - educação voltada à autonomia e qualificação dos cidadãos, de modo a que possam se beneficiar das oportunidades oriundas da sociedade da informação.

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Essas condições devem responder, dinamicamente, aos seguintes estágios do chamado Ciclo Virtuoso de Participação e Empoderamento do modelo: - implementação de iniciativas de infoinclusão; - aumento da conscientização dos usuários no que tange às possibilidades oriundas de tais iniciativas; - aumento da demanda por iniciativas de infoinclusão; - retroalimentação do processo, a partir daqueles já incluídos no mesmo, com o crescimento tanto em número de novos participantes quanto no senso de cidadania e empoderamento daqueles alcançados pelo modelo.

O Modelo Heurístico Estendido de Infoinclusão Dinâmica (e2iD) Como mencionado acima, de modo a robustecer o modelo heurístico 2iD, decidiu-se justificar e estender cada um dos seus elementos segundo a taxonomia da ANT. A ANT propõe a existência de uma série de processos que são capazes de descrever a criação e expansão de redes heterogêneas, tanto humanas como não humanas. Em essência, translação, inscrição e irreversibilidade são os elementos teóricos que propiciam a descrição de cada um dos elementos do modelo 2iD em termos gerais.

O relacionamento entre os elementos do triângulo de infoinclusão e ANT são mostrados e justificados nas tabelas 1, 2, 3 e 4.

Essencialmente, acredita-se que cada etapa na construção do processo de infoinclusão esteja ligada à história de formação de uma rede, cujo interesse central está associado aos elementos do triângulo e do círculo virtuoso do modelo 2iD. Tabela 1: Relacionamento entre o triângulo do modelo de infoinclusão e aspectos operacionais da Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT) Elementos do Modelo 2iD

Aspectos Operacionais da ANT

Sustentabilidade Tradução política, econômica, ética e legal Inscrição (base do triângulo) Irreversibilidade

Premissas acerca da necessidade de uso TI pela comunidade (geração de emprego, atração de empresas intensivas em tecnologia, criação de centros tecnológicos) Códigos, padrões, arranjos politicos, textos legais, contratos, arranjos políticos. Elaboração do PDI (Plano Diretor de TI) Aprovação de textos, disseminação de padrões e valores na rede. Institucionalização do PDI (Plano Diretor de TI)

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Tabela 2: Relacionamento entre o triângulo do modelo de infoinclusão e aspectos operacionais da Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT) Elementos do Modelo 2iD

Aspectos Operacionais da ANT

Tradução Infraestrutura e acesso (2o. nível de acesso do Inscrição triângulo)

Irreversibilidade

Premissas financeiras relativas à infraestrutura de TI: tipos de rede, sistemas operacionais, natureza do código fonte dos programas, tipo de acesso à Internet (privado ou público; pago ou grátis) Estabelecimento de redes e seus padrões, compra e instalação de computadores, desenvolvimento e manutenção de contratos, fornecimento de crédito, elaboração de códigos de acesso (telecentros, laboratórios, quiosques) Incorporação de padrões no uso das tecnologias ativas

Tabela 3: Relacionamento entre o triângulo do modelo de infoinclusão e aspectos operacionais da Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT) Elementos do Modelo 2iD

Aspectos Operacionais da ANT

Tradução

Educação e conteúdo local (3o. nível de Inscrição acesso do triângulo)

Irreversibilidade

Definição da TI como ferramenta para propósitos administrativos e suporte pedagógico na educação.

Premissas relativas ao papel da TI como propiciadora de uma praxis educacional nas escolas. Consciência da importância de conteúdo relevante e contextual na web.

Estabelecimento de um modelo pedagógico baseado em TI adaptado localmente. Capacitação de professores e alunos nos aspectos instrumentais da TI. Capacitação dos professores nas questões pedagógicas associadas à TI. Capacitação de cidadãos no uso de sistemas de governo eletrônico, portais Internet e grupos de discussão acerca de questões locais.

Disseminação do uso de informação local pela comunidade, processos pedagógicos suportados por TI, empregos associados ao domínio de TI e produção de conteúdo local na web.

As ligações entre o círculo virtuoso de participação e empoderamento do modelo e ANT são apresentadas e justificadas na tabela 4 abaixo.

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Tabela 4 Relacionamento entre o triângulo do modelo de infoinclusão e aspectos operacionais da Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT) Elementos do Modelo 2iD

Aspectos Operacionais da ANT

Aumento da conscientização

Tradução, com discussão dos pontos estáveis previamente estabelecidos (contestação à irreversibilidade) e novas propostas para o desenvolvimento do processo.

Aumento da demanda

Tradução, onde as discussões que evoluem de maneira positiva são apresentadas como novas necessidades de expansão do processo de infoinclusão.

Descartado, já que considera-se que são, em análise Retroalimentação e crescimento final, parte do resultado dos vários processos de implementação Implementação

Foi incorporada aos vários elementos do modelo, correspondendo ao estágio de inscrição na linguagem ANT

O estágio de retroalimentação e crescimento foi eliminado já que considera-se que ele é coberto pelo estágio de implementação, o que é mostrado no modelo estendido.

Aumento da conscientização da população local e aumento da demanda por conteúdo, educação, serviços e acesso correspondem a translações na “linguagem” ANT. Tal é o fato, visto que esses processos demandam que profundas discussões sejam incorporadas no processo de infoinclusão ou que a (sempre provisória) irreversibilidade da rede seja contestada e reavaliada pelas novas e pelas já estabelecidas redes de atores.

Finalmente, a implementação de iniciativas de infoinclusão é o momento de inscrição na rede, o que ocorre de forma incessante e, por essa razão, está ligada com cada uma das questões já discutidas, ocorrendo em diferentes momentos e de diferentes modos em cada um dos componentes do modelo.

Assim, a combinação do modelo original com a ANT sugere uma nova representação gráfica que represente a dinâmica associada ao processo. Essa nova representação é mostrada na figura 2.

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Figura 2: Modelo Heurístico Estendido de Infoinclusão Dinâmica (e2iD) Fonte: Elaborado pelos autores.

Essa nova representação gráfica mostra que a precedência entre os elementos não é algo mandatório. Com o processo em movimento, novas traduções, inscrições e irreversibilidades ocorrerão dentro do escopo de cada componente, não se requerendo ajustamento entre as partes. Entretanto, todas as dimensões estão interconectadas e suas dinâmicas podem influenciar e mesmo demandar mais detalhadas discussões e realinhamentos nas redes adjacentes.

O estágio de conteúdo local pode ser inserido no estágio de educação, já que aquele objetiva propiciar um melhor processo educacional para a sociedade como um todo, via infoinclusão.

A seta recursiva com a letra i para cada elipse ilustra o processo de inscrição, que substitui as indicações relativas ao estágio de implementação do modelo original.

O novo modelo pode ser interpretado de uma forma menos rígida do que o anterior. Os componentes procuram refletir sua própria dinâmica por meio dos processos de inscrição ocorridos dentro do escopo dos mesmos.

O crescimento da demanda e da conscientização, refletido em torno da elipse de infoinclusão, indica que novas questões podem ser incorporadas ao processo como um todo, por redes de atores externas. Essas questões podem ser incorporadas ao modelo por explícito interesse no assunto e/ou por influência na expansão da rede.

Este é, segundo a ANT, o espírito associado à constante adaptação das redes, o qual se torna essencial à análise de processos de infoinclusão.

Com o modelo e2iD totalmente estabelecido, pode-se avaliar o processo de inclusão digital em Piraí, o que será feito a seguir.

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4.

AVALIAÇÃO DA INCLUSÃO DIGITAL EM PIRAÍ

Piraí é uma cidade às margens da mais importante rodovia do Brasil – a BR116 – que liga o Rio de Janeiro a São Paulo. Está localizada a 70 km do Rio de Janeiro, perto de Volta Redonda – a mais importante cidade do médio Paraíba. Piraí cobre uma área de cerca de 520 km2, tendo perto de 24.000 habitantes.

O processo de incorporação da TI à identidade da cidade iniciou-se em 1996, quando o então prefeito comissionou a Universidade de Brasília (UnB) para produzir as diretrizes da cidade para adoção da tecnologia da informação, no que foi chamado de Plano Diretor de Tecnologia da Informação (PDI). Este documento - PDI - foi fundamental para a cidade obter financiamento inicial para o programa.

Embora as origens de Piraí Digital possam ser encontradas em 1996, o programa foi oficialmente inaugurado em 2002.

Sadao (2004, p.23) observa que há resultados visíveis derivados do programa Piraí Digital. Assim, a análise baseada no modelo e2iD procurou expandir, ratificar ou retificar as colocações de Sadao. Em outras palavras, de modo a avaliar o Programa Piraí Digital, foram analisados os elementos do modelo à luz das entrevistas coletadas.

Os resultados para cada elemento do modelo e2iD são apresentados a seguir, complementados por tabelas consolidadas (tabelas 5 a 8).

Sustentabilidade A sustentabilidade legal dos processos de inclusão digital em Piraí é suportada pelo plano municipal de adoção de TI – conhecido por PDI. Ele é a base legal para a estruturação da coordenação das ações de TI no município. Assim, a tradução inicial das premissas associadas às mudanças em Piraí foi realizada via o PDI. A existência do PDI configurou-se aspecto decisivo para a obtenção de empréstimo do BNDES. Um programa desenvolvido para modernização dos processos de administração de impostos – o PMAT – forneceu os recursos para iniciar Piraí Digital, configurando-se, também, numa translação principal associada ao contrato assinado, o qual norteou as ações municipais ao longo dos anos subsequentes.

Entre 1997 e 2007, outras ações políticas relativas à inclusão digital foram implantadas, como o surgimento do primeiro telecentro da cidade, em 2003, aprovado pela Câmara local.

Entretanto, houve dificuldade na tradução de algumas premissas, o que prejudicou a sustentabilidade do processo. Por exemplo, a Anatel não permitiu que a prefeitura municipal cobrasse dos cidadãos e empresas, acesso a serviços públicos de Internet.

A decisão de cobrar pelo acesso público à Internet se alinhava à decisão da prefeitura de criar um empreendimento autossustentável. Entretanto, essa questão permanece sem solução e o acesso universal à Internet no município não está ainda disponível. No momento, há dois provedores na cidade que oferecem acesso sem fio à Internet e através de fibra ótica.

Atualmente, a sustentabilidade financeira do acesso público aos telecentros e quiosques é garantida pela prefeitura, por meio do uso dos impostos recolhidos.

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Entretanto, a sustentabilidade econômica que seria garantida pela atração de empresas de tecnologia intensiva associadas ao uso de TI é praticamente ausente. A cidade de Piraí não parece atrair empresas dessa categoria.

A sustentabilidade política das ações de inclusão digital tem sido garantida pelo mesmo grupo político que se encontra no poder há quatro sucessivos mandatos (16 anos). O prefeito, quando da visita dos pesquisadores a Piraí, havia sido reeleito e permanecerá no poder até o final de 2012.

A sustentabilidade ética, no que tange à inclusão digital em Piraí, é avaliada positivamente, já que a aplicação dos recursos financeiros prioritariamente em educação e saúde se alinha aos propósitos do PDI, o qual é monitorado pelo seu maior agente financeiro – o BNDES. A tabela 5 consolida essas observações apresentadas.

Tabela 5: Sustentabilidade Polítiíca Presente por quase 20 anos Econômica/Financeira Legal Ética

Presente no setor público Presente: importância do PDI Presente

Infraestrutura e Acesso Este é o item mais fácil de ser analisado via o modelo e2iD. A coordenação municipal de TI prontamente forneceu números e dados associados ao acesso à rede Internet na comunidade.

Esta rede – híbrida, com pares metálicos, cabos e transmissão sem fio – atende a quase dois mil computadores, sem incluir aqueles relativos ao projeto UCA. Ela está distribuída por todos os prédios públicos, incluindo também seis telecentros e nove quiosques. Os laboratórios de informática das escolas também estão ligados a essa rede.

A constante melhoria da rede, de modo a otimizá-la, assim como o aumento da banda de acesso à Internet são constantes preocupações da coordenadoria municipal de TI. Com a incorporação dos notebooks dos alunos, o link de 6 Mbps à Internet será insuficiente. Acordos para aumento de banda para 20 Mbps se encontravam em estágio avançado de negociação, à época do trabalho de campo em Piraí.

O acesso à rede municipal está disponível em todos os edifícios públicos, escolas e pontos de acesso públicos.

A decisão de usar software livre (Linux e outros) é uma tradução claramente envolvida na rede de inclusão digital de Piraí. Torna-se claro que esses artefatos tornamse atores, como previsto pela ANT, na medida em que pode-se ver efeitos que os mesmos causam nos usuários web. Eles também impactam a capacitação dos professores, assim como os aspectos econômicos locais (como economia para a prefeitura), influenciando também outras cidades e negócios que possam se inspirar nesse exemplo.

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A tabela 6 consolida os resultados apresentados acima.

Tabela 6: Infraestrutura eAcesso Infraesetrutura

Disponível

Acesso

Disponível, pública e de graça em determinados locais; comercial para residências e estabelecimentos Educação e Conteúdo Local

No que tange à educação, há razões para otimismo. Tanto os estudantes quanto os professores da rede municipal têm se beneficiado da informatização das escolas e do novo projeto pedagógico que visa a aumentar o relacionamento entre alunos e professores.

Deve-se dizer que, não obstante a secretaria municipal de educação ter um sistema de gestão educacional, tal não ocorre nas escolas. Muito do trabalho administrativo das escolas é ainda feito com papel e lápis, sem o suporte de software de apoio ou bases de dados.

Foi prometido aos diretores das escolas e seu pessoal um sistema de gestão integrada chamado SGE, o qual ainda se encontrava em fase de desenvolvimento, sem data para entrega.

Mas as perspectivas ligadas à educação em Piraí são alvissareiras, com a rede pública integrando todos os laboratórios de informática das escolas. Além disso, há um consórcio de universidades públicas trabalhando em Piraí, com ensino a distância via Internet. Desse modo, a educação, da mesma forma que a administração pública, é um segmento que tem grandemente se beneficiado da opção digital feita pela cidade.

Um bom exemplo disso é a participação dos estudantes de Piraí no X-Cross – um projeto europeu e latino-americano de ensino à distância em Ciências. Ele foi adotado para auxiliar as escolas locais a usarem ferramentas de multimídia e Internet, de modo a melhorar a qualidade do ensino-aprendizagem em todos os níveis.

Como parte desse projeto, os estudantes produziram vídeos relacionados ao conteúdo das classes de Ciências. Esses vídeos são agora parte do conteúdo digital da cidade (ver em http://bit.ly/piraixcross). Os resultados do X-Cross abarcam o tópico de conteúdo local, que é quase ausente em Piraí. Entretanto, esforços estão sendo feitos para reforçar essa área.

A história de Piraí está na web e os serviços públicos vêm sendo também disponibilizados online. Assim, o governo local contribui para assegurar que conteúdo relevante, especialmente aquele relacionado ao exercício da cidadania, esteja disponível à população. Além disso, com a graduação da primeira turma de curso superior em Piraí, espera-se que o conteúdo produzido localmente aumente.

Um importante momento na tradução foi a transformação do desejo de usar computadores, em uma forma de atingir metas educacionais, por meio do uso da informática na educação suportada por laboratórios, capacitação de professores e projeto pedagógico.

Nas palavras da secretária municipal de Educação: “Ao invés de alunos que usam computadores repetindo os mesmos padrões de ensino, nós queremos que eles

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sejam capazes de usar planilhas ou ferramentas de busca na Internet para resolver seus problemas e aumentar seu conhecimento nos tópicos que estudam. Por essa razão, em 2002, nós capacitamos os professores, mesmo antes que os laboratórios de informática tivessem sido instalados”.

A tabela 7 consolida os resultados apresentados.

Tabela 7: Educação e Conteúdo Local Conteúdo Local

Incipiente, raramente relevante, X-Cross

Educação

Disponível, especialmente na rede municipal

Aumento da Conscientização e Demanda Existe uma dissonância cognitiva sobre a importância da TI para Piraí, entre dois segmentos da população local: a) aqueles ligados ao serviço público, incluindo a educação pública, e b) a população em geral – especialmente os comerciantes.

O primeiro grupo está consciente da importância da TI para suas ações e demandas, tais como o sistema de gestão educacional do município e as iniciativas reportadas na área de Saúde Pública.

A busca por mais eficiência administrativa via TI e as escolhas associadas ao seu uso – implantação de telefonia sobre IP e a opção por software livre, por exemplo – são indicadores da consciência positiva desse segmento.

Por outro lado, a entrevista com uma comerciante local indica que não é apenas uma questão de preconceito em relação aos computadores que impede a tecnologia de ter impacto maior no comércio local. Não obstante o intensivo uso de Internet – por meio dos seus próprios computadores e acesso – para compras, transações bancárias e informações em geral, ela não vê nenhum ganho para seu próprio negócio advindo de Piraí.

O programa não ajudou os comerciantes locais, ela diz, nem do ponto de vista de interação com o governo municipal, nem em termos de melhoria na qualificação dos seus empregados.

Avaliando-se a entrevista com o representante do Sebrae na cidade, essa atitude de desconfiança em relação ao Piraí Digital não é um caso isolado. Existe um número significativo de comerciantes locais verdadeiramente resistentes à computação e céticos em relação ao Piraí Digital. Tal sugere que o potencial de inclusão digital pode ainda ser mais intensificado na cidade, por meio da incorporação de setores da sociedade cujo engajamento hoje em Piraí Digital é insignificante.

O aumento na demanda, assim como a expansão da inclusão digital, é resultado de ações do governo municipal, embora nem sempre aceitas por toda a população, com exceção do distrito de Arrozal.

Nesse distrito do município, a comunidade se juntou para demandar que o laboratório de informática estivesse aberto também para a população local usá-lo para serviços bancários ou envio de currículos profissionais via Internet. Assim, os aspectos dinâmicos do processo de inclusão digital parecem se restringir ao setor público e à

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população diretamente relacionada a ele, como os estudantes e professores da rede municipal de ensino.

A tabela 8 consolida os resultados apresentados acima.

Tabela 8: Aspectos Dinâmicos Aumento conscientização

da Praticamente ausente na sociedade civil em geral Presente no setor público (impostos, educação e saúde)

Aumento da demanda

Praticamente ausente na sociedade civil em geral Presente no setor público (impostos, educação e saúde)

5.

DISCUSSÃO, IMPLICAÇÕES E CONCLUSÕES

Acredita-se que a combinação do modelo de infoinclusão e2iD e ANT – a última usada tanto como linguagem para descrever a formação de redes heterogêneas, quanto como método para descrever as mesmas – fornece uma ferramenta analítica abrangente para avaliar o processo de inclusão digital em Piraí, sem que haja uma excessiva ênfase em alguns poucos indicadores quantitativos associados a esse tipo de processo (como, p.ex., número per capita de computadores, largura efetiva de banda etc.), conforme sugerido por Barzilai-Nahon (2006).

A aplicação do modelo e2iD indica a presença de elementos que promovem a inclusão digital em Piraí. Entretanto, a inclusão digital não está homogeneamente implantada em todos os segmentos da sociedade local, embora seja importante lembrar que Piraí Digital tem apenas cerca de 15 anos de existência, se consideradas as principais iniciativas do programa, datadas de 1996.

Durante esse período, o programa gerou importantes mudanças no perfil da administração pública municipal, especialmente no que tange à educação.

Em Piraí, existe hoje uma rede de atores que interage via TI e Internet. Durante os últimos cinco anos, alunos e professores têm experimentado mudanças em seu relacionamento mútuo, nas suas atividades e nos artefatos incorporados ao seu dia a dia.

Um dos entrevistados, residente em Piraí desde a infância, mencionou a possibilidade atual de se estudar em Piraí, com a assistência de computadores, do ensino fundamental até o nível superior, como um dos benefícios que a sua geração não teve no seu tempo de estudante.

Atores humanos - tais como gestores públicos em geral, assim como professores e estudantes - interagem, por meio de sistemas informatizados e integrados, de forma a colher os benefícios de um cenário constantemente influenciado pela tecnologia.

A aplicação do modelo e2iD sugere que o processo de informatização da cidade foi iniciado com sucesso, embora haja pontos a serem melhorados no futuro para uma verdadeira e universal inclusão digital da municipalidade. Tal é especialmente relevante no que tange à produção de conteúdo relevante para a população local, e sua apropriação e geração por esta própria população, de forma a atender suas necessidades e objetivos como comunidade, o que se coaduna com as idéias de Pouloudi et al. (2004).

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385 Infoinclusão em Piraí Digital: Evidências Empíricas a partir da Teoria Ator-Rede

Como dito anteriormente, a pesquisa buscou avaliar o programa Piraí Digital por meio de um modelo heurístico suportado e justificado pela Teoria Ator-Rede, em lugar de tentar encontrar o racional por detrás do uso predominante e institucionalizado da tecnologia por alguns segmentos da sociedade local. Entretanto, pode ser percebido que tanto o sistema de educação pública quanto a administração pública lograram êxito em traduzir suas aspirações, assim como em inscrevê-las em pontos de passagem obrigatórios (PPOs), o que significa que o processo ator-rede tornou-se (temporariamente) irreversível (Latour, 2005; Ryder, 2007).

Por exemplo, a educação local está intrinsecamente ligada à rede digital pública, a qual conecta Piraí a projetos internacionais como o X-Cross.

Tais iniciativas projetaram a cidade de forma tal, que Piraí foi uma das quatro cidades brasileiras (e a única não capital de estado) a receber computadores oriundos do projeto federal UCA (Um Computador por Aluno).

Da mesma forma, o acesso a bases de dados relacionadas à saúde municipal está publicamente disponível. Todas essas conquistas tinham sido já observadas por Gouveia e Gouveia (2003) e Mofleh Mofleh ,Wanous e Strachan (2008), em programas similares ao de Piraí Digital.

De forma oposta, outros segmentos – especialmente o de negócios – não obtiveram sucesso em criar uma rede sustentável de atores, de modo a traduzir e atingir seus principais objetivos, o que confirma os resultados de Yang Harris & Whitfield (2009), Sarker, Sarker and Sidorova (2006) e Comber et al. (2003). Assim, esses segmentos ainda não se beneficiaram adequadamente da inclusão digital em Piraí.

Esses resultados mostram a importância chave do setor público na criação de uma verdadeira cidade digital, já que ele pode mais facilmente patrocinar os estágios de tradução e inscrição da ANT, tornando o processo de inclusão digital irreversível, como afirmado por Guerreiro (2006), Tatnall (2009) e Shareef et al. (2009).

Em suma, a inclusão digital está presente em Piraí, embora em nível insuficiente para atrair empresas de foco tecnológico ou demandar profissionais de TI. Retomando o que foi apresentado na introdução deste artigo, este estudo teve também como objetivo intermediário examinar a viabilidade de usar a Teoria Ator-Rede para avaliar programas de inclusão digital, como o desenvolvido em Piraí.

Como afirmado antes, a ANT lida tanto com atores humanos quanto nãohumanos, tais como redes de computadores, PCs, softwares etc (Hanseth & Monteiro, 1998; Comber et al., 2003).

Assim, esta nova abordagem, o uso da ANT e sua interação com um modelo de inclusão digital, pode ser considerada uma pequena contribuição da pesquisa à Academia, não obstante novos estudos usando outros métodos de pesquisa necessitarem ser desenvolvidos, para que o modelo proposto possa ser robustecido, de modo a aumentar a confiabilidade dos resultados da pesquisa em questão.

Adicionalmente, o trabalho apresenta um novo framework para avaliar os processos de inclusão digital em municípios, como no caso de Piraí.

Como já dito, a literatura associada a modelos de inclusão digital é extremamente tecnocêntrica, concentrada em número de computadores disponíveis, número de acessos à Internet pela população etc. (Barzilai-Nahon, 2006).

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O modelo e2iD desenvolvido fornece um novo caminho para a avaliação dinâmica, sistêmica e interdisciplinar de projetos de inclusão digital. Tal abordagem pode ser útil a gestores públicos e formuladores de políticas públicas, quando do desenho e avaliação de programas municipais de inclusão digital.

Como em todo o estudo, existem limitações neste trabalho, as quais devem ser citadas. Primeiramente, a pesquisa privilegiou discricionariamente o modelo heurístico de inclusão digital (2iD), como desenvolvido por Joia (2004), de modo a justificá-lo via Teoria Ator-Rede (ANT). Embora tenha sido explicado porque esse modelo específico foi usado, outros modelos de inclusão digital poderiam ter sido analisados. Tal pode ser feito em pesquisas futuras e deve ser considerado como uma limitação desta pesquisa.

Em segundo lugar, o artigo não aprofunda a investigação acerca de porque os resultados do programa Piraí Digital têm sido tão assimétricos. Em outras palavras, o artigo não conduz uma investigação aprofundada sobre as razões que levaram a educação pública e os setores administrativos municipais a abraçarem o programa tão rapidamente, enquanto os setores de negócios e turismo têm ficado tão indiferentes às possibilidades oferecidas pelo mesmo. Tal pode ser investigado em pesquisas futuras (ver, p.ex., Yang et al., 2009), devendo também ser considerado uma limitação da pesquisa.

A terceira limitação, segundo Scandura e Williams (2000) e Bertucci (2005), se refere à possibilidade de ocorrência das mais variadas interpretações da realidade pelos entrevistados, à sua tentativa – não necessariamente consciente – de passar uma boa (ou má) imagem do programa Piraí Digital, às limitações de informações disponíveis no ato da resposta e ao modelo epistemológico do respondente. Some-se a isso, a própria subjetividade dos pesquisadores na análise das respostas dos entrevistados, considerando-se que nas Ciências Sociais aplicadas, raramente o pesquisador consegue se despir de si mesmo para realizar uma pesquisa.

Finalmente, uma última limitação relaciona-se ao fato de não ter sido feita comparação dos resultados encontrados em Piraí Digital com outros programas com objetivo semelhante, porventura existentes no mundo. Muita embora, tal comparação não fizesse parte do escopo desta investigação, ela poderia ajudar a melhor entender os resultados e conclusões ora encontradas Considerando-se os resultados obtidos e as premissas da ANT de seguir os atores (ver tabelas 1, 2, 3 e 4), pode-se concluir que Piraí não é uma perfeita cidade digital com acesso irrestrito dos moradores à Internet por meio dos seus laptops e redes sem fio, a partir da sua praça principal.

Piraí é, possivelmente, apenas a mais humilde das cidades digitais, como disse Margolis (2004), num país de enormes desigualdades e com muito a ser feito em termos de disseminação de TI entre sua população.

Piraí é uma cidade que, enquanto se esforça para ser considerada como opção viável para as empresas de serviço de alta tecnologia e alta qualificação profissional, conseguiu ser a pioneira na implantação da computação 1:1 na educação pública brasileira.

Ademais, Piraí parece desafiar alguns questionamentos acerca da pertinência de se fazer investimentos em implantação de TI em países em desenvolvimento, como o questionamento acerca de se tais inversões não levarão ao aprofundamento das diferenças sociais entre aqueles que têm e os que não têm acesso digital (Avgerou, 2003; Avgerou & Walsham, 2000).

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Pelo contrário, os resultados positivos obtidos nesta pequena cidade, por meio de seu programa digital, permitem considerar que os investimentos em TI têm potencial para diminuir a brecha digital entre os cidadãos.

Com a pesquisa concluída, pode-se apenas almejar o melhor para a cidade e manter os olhos abertos para o que se passa em Piraí. De fato, há muito a ser aprendido com as experiências do programa Piraí Digital, de modo a que futuros empreendimentos semelhantes possam se beneficiar do modo como o processo de inclusão digital tem se dado na cidade.

Finalmente, os autores sugerem dois tipos de pesquisas a serem feitas, a partir do que foi exposto neste artigo: um aprofundamento acerca dos resultados obtidos em Piraí Digital, por meio do uso de outros métodos de pesquisa e/ou frames teóricos; e estudos comparativos com outras cidades que tenham buscado a integração de suas várias esferas da vida, por meio da tecnologia da informação.

A título de sugestão sobre tais cidades, é possível consultar o portal Guia das Cidades Digitais (http://www.guiadascidadesdigitais.com.br) e o portal Intelligent Community Forum (http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/).

Assim, este estudo espera ter contribuído para uma melhor compreensão de projetos de cidades digitais, de modo a que empreendimentos semelhantes possam se valer das conclusões aqui apresentadas para auferir resultados ainda melhores dos que os de Piraí Digital.

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JISTEM - Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, , pp. 391-436 ISSN online: 1807-1775 DOI: 10.4301/S1807-17752012000200010

RESULTADOS DO 9º CONTECSI – CONGRESSO INTERNACIONAL DE GESTÃO DA TECNOLOGIA E SISTEMAS DE INFORMAÇÃO OUTCOMES OF THE 9th CONTECSI – INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT Edson Luiz Riccio University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil Marici Cristine G. Sakata TECSI FEA USP, São Paulo, Brasil

ABSTRACT In this document we seek to report statistics, data and the importance of the 9th CONTECSI - International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management - Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação, held in São Paulo, Brazil, May 30th to June 1st 2012 by TECSI / EAC / FEA / USP at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. In parallel with the 9th CONTECSI the 25th World Continuous Auditing and Reporting Systems Symposium took place, which was organized in partnership with the Rutgers Business School University of New Jersey and ISACA. This report presents: 1) Statistical data of the 9th CONTECSI, 2) Justifications and Objectives, 3) Program, 4) Plenary Sessions, 5) Doctoral Consortium and Master Colloquium and Poster session, 6) 25th World Continuous Auditing Symposium, 7) Parallel Sessions, 8) Best papers 9) Committees and 10) Highlights. We reinforce the importance of the financial support received from CAPES, FAPESP and USP FEA and also the support of ISACA, AIS Association for Information Systems, Porto University/Portugal, Rutgers Business School/USA, São Paulo Convention Bureau and CCINT -FEA-USP/Brazil.

Keywords: CONTECSI, Report, International Conference, Technology Management, Information Systems.

RESUMO Procuramos relatar neste documento as estatísticas, os dados e a importância do 9º CONTECSI – International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management - Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação, realizado entre 30 de maio a 01 de junho de 2012 pelo _____________________________________________________________________________________ Address for correspondence / Endereço para correspondência Edson Luiz Riccio, Professor Livre Docente da FEA USP, diretor do TECSI/FEA/USP e coordenador do 9º CONTECSI. Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 908 FEA 3 São Paulo / SP 05508-900 E-mail: elriccio@usp.br Marici Gramacho Sakata, Mestre e Doutora em Ciência da Comunicação pela ECA USP. Pesquisadora do TECSI/FEA/USP E-mail:mcsakata@usp.br Published by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP – 2012 All rights reserved.

392

Riccio, E.l., Sakata, M. C.,

TECSI/EAC/FEA/USP na Universidade de São Paulo. Este relatório apresenta: 1) Estatísticas do 9º CONTECSI, 2) Justificativas e Objetivos, 3) Programa, 4) Sessões Plenárias, 5) Master Colloquium, Consórcio Doutoral e Sessão de Posters, 6) 25th World Continuous Auditing Symposium, 7) Sessões paralelas de apresentação de trabalhos, 8) Menção Honrosa, 9)Comitês e 10) Destaques. Salientamos a grande importância do auxílio financeiro recebido da FAPESP, CAPES, CNPq e o apoio da FEA USP, ANPAD, AIS, ISACA, Universidade do Porto, Portugal, Rutgers School/USA, São Paulo Convention Bureau e CCINT-FEA-USP. Palavras-chave: CONTECSI, Relatório, Congresso Internacional, Gestão da Tecnologia, Sistemas de Informação

1) ESTATÍSTICAS DO 9º CONTECSI: Tabela comparativa – 1º, 2º, 3º, 4º, 5º, 6º, 7º, 8º e 9º CONTECSI

Trabalhos Recebidos Total de Trabalhos Aceitos - Em Sessão Paralela, Fórum de Pesquisa, Consórcio Doutoral e Comunicações.

Participantes Sessões Paralelas/Forum Estados Brasileiros Representados Países Representados

1º 100 90

2º 146 129

3º 210 177

4º 310 219

5º 315 246

6º 265 199

7º 370 233

8º 9º 331 354 185 256*

130 24 11 8

170 29 13 7

232 42 17 15

274 42 17 15

309 42 16 13

360 47 20 12

350 47 19 14

360 44 18 10

380 47 22 18

* Nesta edição, foram aceitos trabalhos para Master Colloquium e Sessão de Posters 1º

Palestrantes Internacionais Apoio de Agência de Fomento Apoio de Instituições e Associações Profissionais

2º

2

5

0

BNDES CNPQ

6

4

3º

4º

19 (*) BNDES CAPES

4

5º 7

CAPES CAPES FAPESP FAPESP

5

7

7

6º

7º

8º

9º

10 (**)

5 (***)

9 (****)

7 (+)

CAPES CNPq FAPESP

CAPES CNPq FAPESP

7

7

CAPES CAPES FAPESP CNPq

8

7

(*) Inclui palestrantes do evento conjunto internacional 11th World Continuous Auditing Conference. (**) Inclui palestrantes do evento conjunto internacional 18th World Symposium of Continuous Auditing Systems on Financial Institutions. (***) Inclui palestrantes do evento conjunto internacional 20th World Symposium of Continuous Auditing Systems on Financial Institutions. (****) Inclui palestrantes do evento conjunto internacional 22th World Symposium of Continuous Auditing Systems on Financial Institutions. (+) Inclui palestrantes do evento conjunto internacional 25th World Symposium of Continuous Auditing and Reporting Systems Symposium

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Authors by origin and research topic - Autores por origem e temática

2) JUSTIFICATIVAS E OBJETIVOS O 9º CONTECSI International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management dá continuidade a um dos primeiros eventos desta área, focado na Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação sob uma visão multidisciplinar. O CONTECSI tem reunido, com sucesso, acadêmicos e profissionais envolvidos com a temática de gestão da tecnologia e sistemas de informação para discussão do estado da arte deste campo.

O 9º CONTECSI contou com a presença de palestrantes de renome, tendo, nesta edição, um total de 256 trabalhos apresentados em 47 sessões paralelas onde se discutiram os efeitos da Tecnologia e dos Sistemas de Informação na Sociedade e nas Organizações. Seu principal objetivo foi promover o relacionamento entre as diversas comunidades envolvidas: a que produz, a que implementa, a que utiliza, a que regulamenta e a que pesquisa o tema em questão. A presença de renomados palestrantes

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e pesquisadores nacionais e internacionais permitiu uma integração entre a comunidade acadêmica e profissional, ampliando o interesse na pesquisa, no compartilhamento de informações atualizadas e nas práticas utilizadas.

O Congresso foi aberto pelo diretor da Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade - FEA-USP, Prof. Dr. Reinaldo Guerreiro. Os detalhes sobre o desenvolvimento do evento, cujas atividades aconteceram nas instalações da FEA 1 e FEA 5 localizadas na FEA-USP, Cidade Universitária, Campus da Capital, São Paulo/SP, podem ser acompanhadas por meio do Programa do evento apresentado a seguir.

3. PROGRAMA

QUARTA-FEIRA 30 DE MAIO 9h00– 17h00 9h00– 10h00 10h00-10h30

Registration at FEA 1 Hall | Credenciamento - FEA 1 Welcome Coffee | Café de Boas vindas Congregation Hall | Sala da Congregação Opening Ceremony | Cerimônia de Abertura Welcoming Addresses | Saudações de Boas Vindas Sao Paulo State Secretary for the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities Secretaria de Estado da Secretária dos Direitos das Pessoas com Deficiencia, Prof.

Dra. Linamara Rizzo Battistella FEA Dean | Diretor da FEA, Prof Dr. Reinaldo Guerreiro Fondazione Rosselli Americas USA, Dr. Danilo Piaggesi Chair | Coordenador do CONTECSI, Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio Musical performance | Apresentação musical

Banda do 2° Batalhão de Polícia do Exército Auditorium | Auditório FEA 5 Master of Ceremony | Mestre de Cerimônia – Sr. Renato Campaña

10h30-12h00

12h00-13h00 12h30-13h30 13h00-15h15

WHAT’S COMMUNICATION GOT TO DO WITH IT? AND WHAT’S IT GOT TO DO WITH US? Keynote Speaker: Prof. Dr. Dov Te´eni, President – AIS – Association for Information Systems – Professor at Tel Aviv University, Israel Auditorium | Auditório FEA 5 Lunch at FEA 1 - 1st Floor | Almoço - FEA 1 – 1º Andar Musical Concert at Congregation Hall | Apresentação musical na Sala da Congregação Parallel sessions, research forum | Sessões Paralelas, Fórum de Pesquisa ROOMS|SALAS FEA 1 SESSION 1A - AIS Accounting and Financial Information - RF ROOM|SALA 1 Chair|Moderador: Antonio Augusto Gonçalves SESSION 1B - Social Issues in IS and IT - PS ROOM|SALA 2

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Chair|Moderador: José Gilson Almeida Teixeira Filho SESSION 1C - KMG Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence ROOM|SALA 3 Chair|Moderador Eneida Alves Rios SESSION 1D - INN IS and IT Innovation and Change ROOM|SALA 4 Chair|Moderador: Antonio Ramalho de Souza Carvalho SESSION 1E - INN IS and IT Education and Curriculum Development ROOM|SALA 5 Chair|Moderador: Alan Curcino Pedreira da Silva Mantovani SESSION 1F – HEA - PS ROOM|SALA6 Chair|Moderador: Cássio Frederico Moreira Druziani SESSION 1G – ISM - Information Systems Management - RF ROOM|SALA 6 Chair|Moderador: Enock Godoy de Souza SESSION 1H - E-COM E-business and E-commerce ROOM|SALA 7 Chair|Moderador: Francisco Severo POSTER SESSION - JANDIRA SANDRA FERREIRA 15h15-15h30

Coffee Break - FEA 1 1st Floor | 1º Andar

15h30-17h00

Parallel sessions, research forum | Sessões Paralelas, Fórum de Pesquisa ROOMS| SALAS FEA 1 SESSION 2A ICT Information and Communication Technology – Information Science - PS ROOM|SALA 1 Chair|Moderador: Luciana Ferreira da Costa SESSION 2B EDS Engineering and Software Development - PS ROOM|SALA 2 Chair|Moderador: Fernanda Kreuzberg SESSION 2C KMG Knowledge Management – RF ROOM|SALA 3 Chair|Moderador: Theodoro Agostinho Peters Filho SESSION 2D INN IS and IT Innovation and - RF ROOM|SALA 4 Chair|Moderador: Sergio Gozzi SESSION 2E AIS Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems - RF ROOM|SALA 5 Chair|Moderador: Maria Aparecida Gouvêa SESSION 2F HEA – RF ROOM|SALA 6 Chair|Moderador: Samáris Ramiro Pereira SESSION 2G ISM Information Systems Management - PS ROOM|SALA 7 Chair|Moderador: Sérgio Murilo Petri SESSION 2H ICT4DEV/GREEN ROOM|SALA 8 Chair|Moderador: Alexandre Stümer Wolf

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17h00-18h30

18h30-19h00

World Launching Of Ict4devis – International School Speakers | Palestrantes Profa. Dra. Linamara Rizzo Battistela – State Secretary SRPD Prof. Dr. Danilo Piaggesi - Fondazione Rosselli Americas, EUA Prof. Dr. Walter Castelnovo – Universitá della Insubria, Itália Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio – Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil Congregation Hall | Sala da Congregação ICT4DEVIS Launching Cocktail | Coquetel de Lançamento Congregation Hall | Sala da Congregação

QUINTA-FEIRA 31 DE MAIO

09h00-10h15

Panel| Painel – E GOVERNMENT Speaker | Palestrante: Prof. Dr. Walter Castelnovo, Universitá de Insubria, Italy Prof. Dr Miguel Juan Bacic, UNICAMP, Brasil Auditorium | Auditório FEA 5

10h15-10h30

Coffee Break FEA 1 - 1st Floor |– 1º Andar From 10h30 to 18h30 the 25th WCARS will be held at the auditorium, see program below.

Das 10h30 ás 18h30, o 25º WCARS ocorrerá simultaneamente no auditório, veja abaixo a programação.

11h00-12h00

Publishing Your Research Paper Prof. Dr. Dov Te´eni, Tel Aviv University, Israel Prof. Dr. Pertti Vakkari, Tampere, Finland Prof. Dr. Walter Castelnovo, Universitá de Insubria, Italy Congregation Hall | Sala da Congregação

12h00-13h15

Lunch at FEA 1 - 1st Floor | Almoço - FEA 1 – 1º Andar

13h45-14h45

Painel: XBRL – Implementação no Brasil - Auditorium| Auditório FEA 5 Speakers| Palestrantes: Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio, FEA USP/Coordenador do Comitê Técnico XBRL Brasil (CFC), Dr. Paulo Caetano da Silva, Universidade de Salvador- Member of XBRL Certification Board e Banco Central do Brasil, Profa.

Cecilia Geron-Praesum/FEA USP, Caetano Nobre - Member of the XII International Steering Committee (ISC) XBRL International/MZ Consult.

13h15-15h15

Parallel Sessions, Research Forum | Sessões Paralelas, Fórum De Pesquisa ROOMS | SALAS FEA 1 SESSION 3A AIS Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems – RF ROOM|SALA 1 Chair|Moderador: Marcio Antonio Hirose Fedichina SESSION 3B ESD Engineering and Software Development - PS ROOM|SALA 2

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Chair|Moderador: Janilson Antonio da Silva Suzart SESSION 3C INT- Internet -PS ROOM|SALA 3 Chair|Moderador: Regina Da Silva Ornellas SESSION 3D ITM- Information Technology Management - RF ROOM|SALA 4 Chair|Moderador: Wander Celber. M. Pereira da Silva SESSION 3E ICT- Information and Communication Technology–Information Science - PS ROOM|SALA 5 Chair|Moderador: Eliana de Souza Gavioli SESSION 3F KMG- Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence - PS ROOM|SALA 6 Chair|Moderador: Jefferson Augusto Krainer SESSION 3G ISM- Information Systems Management – PS – ROOM|SALA 7 Chair|Moderador: Mauro Araujo Câmara SESSION 3H ITM- Information Technology Management- PS – ROOM|SALA 8 Chair|Moderador: Maurício Severo da Silva SESSION 3I – DOCT I Doctoral Consortium – Congregation Hall|Sala da Congregação Chair|Moderador: George Leal Jamil 15h15-15h30

15h30-18h00

Coffee Break FEA 1 - 1st Floor | FEA 1 – 1º Andar Parallel Sessions, Research Forum | Sessões Paralelas, Fórum De Pesquisa ROOMS | SALAS FEA 1 SESSION 4A AIS Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems -PS ROOM|SALA 1 Chair|Moderador: Willian Valmorbida SESSION 4B XBRL- XBRL and Enterprise Onthology ROOM|SALA 2 Chair|Moderador: Keldjan Alves de Oliveira SESSION 4C KMG- Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence – RF ROOM|SALA3 Chair|Moderador: Graziela Oste Graziano Cremonezi SESSION 4D ITM- Information Technology Management – RF ROOM|SALA 4 Chair|Moderador: Adicinéia Aparecida De Oliveira SESSION 4E AIS Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems-PSROOM|SALA 5 Chair|Moderador: Oscar Bombonatti Filho SESSION 4F ESD Engineering and Software Development ROOM|SALA6 Chair|Moderador: Michel Lens Seller SESSION 4G ISM Information Systems Management ROOM|SALA 7 Chair|Moderador: Dalton Lopes Martins SESSION 4H ITM Information Technology Management –ROOM|SALA 8 Chair|Moderador: Luci Longo SESSION 4I – DOCT II Doctoral Consortium

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Congregation Hall | Sala da Congregação Chair|Moderador: George Leal Jamil

19h00-22h30

Official Dinner | Jantar De Confraternização Bus departure from USP 18h30 return at 22h30 | Saída de ônibus da USP às 18h30 e retorno às 22h30

SEXTA-FEIRA 01 DE JUNHO

09h00-10h30

INFORMATION SCIENCE Speaker | Palestrante: Prof. Dr. Pertti Vakkari – University of Tampere, Finland Chair | Moderador: Profa. Dra. Lucilene Cury ECA USP Auditorium| Auditório FEA 5

10h30-10h45

Coffee break

10h45-12h00

INFORMATION SCIENCE Speaker | Palestrante: Prof. Dr. Armando Malheiro, Universidade do Porto, Portugal Chair | Moderador: Prof. Dr. Marcello Bax, UEMG

FEA 1 - 1st Floor | FEA 1 – 1º Andar

Auditorium | Auditório FEA 5

12h00-13h00

13h00-15h15

Lunch at FEA 1 - 1st Floor | Almoço - FEA 1 – 1º Andar

Parallel sessions, research fórum | Sessões Paralelas, Fórum de Pesquisa ROOMS | SALAS FEA 1 SESSION 5A ITM Information Technology Management -PS ROOM|SALA 1 Chair|Moderador: Priscila Engiel SESSION 5B ICT Information and Communication Technology -RF ROOM|SALA 2 Chair|Moderador: Larissa Medianeira Bolzan SESSION 5C KMG Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence -PS ROOM|SALA 3 Chair|Moderador: Loriberto Starosky Filho SESSION 5D SOC Social Issues in IS and IT -PS ROOM|SALA 4 Chair|Moderador : Fu Kei Lin SESSION 5E SOC Social Issues in IS and IT -RF/ E-GOV E-governance and Public Policies -RF ROOM|SALA 5 Chair|Moderador Luis Gonzaga Silva de Oliveira

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SESSION 5F E-COM E-business and E-commerce -RF ROOM|SALA 6 Chair|Moderador : Oscar Dalfovo SESSION 5G KMG Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence -RF ROOM|SALA 7 Chair|Moderador Adolfo Alberto Vanti SESSION 5H AUD Systems Auditing and IT Governance -PS/ SEC IS and IT Security -PS-RF ROOM|SALA 8 Chair|Moderador : Luciano Frontino de Medeiros

15h15-15h30

Coffee break FEA 1 - 1st Floor | FEA 1 – 1º Andar

15h30-17h00

Parallel sessions, research forum|Sessões Paralelas, Fórum de Pesquisa ROOMS| SALAS FEA 1 SESSION 6A NET Virtual Communities and Social Networks -RF ROOM|SALA 1 Chair|Moderador: José Luiz da Silva SESSION 6B EDU IS and IT Education and Curriculum Development -RF ROOM|SALA 2 Chair|Moderador: Alan Curcino Pedreira da Silva SESSION 6C E-GOV E-governance and Public Policies -PS ROOM|SALA 3 Chair|Moderador: Gilberto Perez SESSION 6D SOC Social Issues in IS and IT -PS ROOM|SALA 4 Chair|Moderador:João Carlos Soares de Alexandria SESSION 6E ICT Information and Communication Technology -PS ROOM|SALA 5 Chair|Moderador: Carolina Schmitt Nunes SESSION 6F NET Virtual Communities and Social Networks -PS ROOM|SALA 6 Chair|Moderador: Wagner Lima da Silva SESSION 6G E-GOV E-governance and Public Policies -PS ROOM|SALA 7 Chair|Moderador: Leandro Rodrigues da Silva Souza SESSION 6H SESSION COMM 2 Sessão de Debate: O Plágio na Pesquisa – Prof. Marcelo Krokoscz/ Misuse of the internet by students in higher education: reasons and motivations for plagiarism Nelma T. Zubek Valente e Daielly M. N. Mantovani Co-autores Abib, D., Sakata, M. Pinto, S. Sofwares – Plágio: Empresa Turnitin – Aline Almeida

17h00-18h00

Best Paper Award & Closing Ceremony | Melhores Trabalhos Do 9º Contecsi E Encerramento Musical Performance | Apresentação Musical Auditorium | Auditório FEA 5

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4) SESSÕES PLENÁRIAS Keynote Speaker Process Mining of Event Logs in Auditing: A Field Study of Procurement at a Global Bank* Mieke Jans (Hasselt University Hasselt, Belgium) - mieke.jans@uhasselt.be Michael Alles (Rutgers Business School Newark, NJ, USA) alles@business.rutgers.edu Miklos Vasarhelyi (Rutgers Business School Newark, NJ, USA) miklosv@andromeda.rutgers.edu Spectacular failures such as at MF Global have undermined the credibility of auditors and their analytic procedures. Process mining has the potential to increase the effectiveness and scope of auditing by enabling auditors to systematically extract information from event logs recorded by a business’s enterprise resource planning system. This paper describes the process mining of actual data obtained from one of the world’s largest banks and demonstrates that by doing so it is possible to identify audit relevant information that was not detected by internal auditors examining that same data using standard audit procedures. This paper is the first application of process mining to accounting data and its results provide a strong argument for process mining to be considered for addition to the audit toolkit.

Keywords: Process mining, ERPs, auditing, event logs.

Dr. Michael Alles is a professor at the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Rutgers Business School. Prior to Rutgers, he taught at the University of Texas at Austin, New York University and Southern Methodist University. His specialties are the design of strategic control systems, continuous auditing, management accounting and corporate governance. He is widely published in all these areas. Dr. Alles holds a PhD from Stanford Business School and a First Class Honors in Economics from the Australian National University. He has served on the executive committee of the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association, was co-chair of the 2004 mid-year Management Accounting Research Symposium and has helped organize numerous other conferences around the world on corporate governance and continuous auditing. He is now the editor of the International Journal of Disclosure & Governance, published by Palgrave Macmillan in London.

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Predictive or Retroactive Audit? A Change in Paradigm Miklos Vasarhelyi (Rutgers Business School Newark, NJ, USA) miklosv@andromeda.rutgers.edu There is a need for total revamping of business measurement and assurance schemata.

The past measurement and assurance compromises and tradeoffs do not work anymore under extant information technology. A conceptual revolution is needed, better that is not forced by catastrophic events. Measurements must change to full cycle and preemptive. Audit Automation can be of three natures: Progressive (P1), Predictive and Predictive and Preventive (P3). These approaches require a change of attitudes and definitions on what audit is, its rules, and its implementation. A dual frame of standard setting must be put in place to allow for the progressive development and implementation of measurement and assurance in the digital era.

Dr. Miklos A. Vasarhelyi Miklos A. Vasarhely (http://raw.rutgers.edu/Miklos) is KPMG Professor of Accounting Information Systems, Graduate School of Management, Rutgers University; and Technology Consultant, E-Commerce Solutions Group AT&T Laboratories. He has his BS degrees from the State University of Guanabara (Economics) and Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Electrical Engineering) his MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Management and his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (Management Information Systems).Prof. Vasarhelyi's current research interests deal with the area of continuous auditing/ control monitoring, electronization of business, and agents in electronic commerce. He has taught in accounting and system topics both at the graduate and executive programs in the US, Europe and South America. Has consulted on accounting and computer matters for the government and major firms in the US, Europe, and Brazil. He received research grants from the FASB, the Touche Ross Foundation, the Peat, Marwick and Mitchell Foundation, the American Accounting Association, the Accounting Education Change Commission, the Institute of Internal Auditors, Ernst & Young, and others. Prof. Vasarhelyi is the Director of the Rutgers Accounting Research Center as well of the Continuous Audit and Reporting Laboratory (CARLAB).

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Evaluating interactive information retrieval systems Pertti Vakkari (School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland) pertti.vakkari@uta.fi - http://www.info.uta.fi/vakkari/vakkari.html An extended methodology for evaluating interactive information retrieval is proposed. It is based on principles presented in core evaluation literature to define the goals of the system or tool to be assessed, and infer from that measures and criteria of success in attaining the goals.It is proposed that in assessing a search tool it is analyzed to what extent it benefits users by increasing their ability to search, and consequently, contributes to the quality of the result list. In addition to the quality of the result list, it is important to assess to what extent the search process and output contribute to the ultimate goal of a search, the activity to be supported by information.

Pertti VAKKARI is Professor of Information Studies at the University of Tampere, Finland. He was the coordinator of the National Doctoral Program in Communication and Information Studies (1994-2002), President of the Research Network for Studies in Education (1998-2002), Member of the Nordic Council Information of the Nordic School (2003 -2007) and Program Committee member of an international conference on Information seeking in context (ISIC) 2000. He has been involved in collaborative research projects Scandinavian and European, and has been a member in committees, conference program in several studies and information as Colis ISIC. He is a member of the editorial board of the journals: "Information Processing & Management", "Arquivística" and "Jornal de Documentação".

Internet for retrieval of information | a procura da informação na internet Armando Malheiro da Silva (Universidade do Porto, Portugal) - malheiro@letras.up.pt Na sequência do que tem sido habitual nas Sessões Plenárias dedicadas à Ciência da Informação foi escolhido um tema específico para a sessão da presente edição do CONTECSI que tem bastante a ver com uma área core da Biblioteconomia e Documentação, disciplinas prático-profissionais, hoje cada vez mais integradas na disciplina cientifica transdisciplinar da Ciência da Informação, em especial a que vem sendo ensinada e desenvolvida na Universidade do Porto, Portugal. A Procura de Informação na Internet traz consigo a prática ancestral de busca da informação contida em diversos tipos de documento/suporte por quem dela precisa e, ao mesmo tempo, as técnicas de mediação que se foram criando e aperfeiçoando, sobretudo a partir de meados do séc. XIX; técnicas essas relacionadas com o modo de descrever com crescente exatidão os elementos físicos e intelectuais dos documentos postos à

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disposição dos diversos e potenciais usuários. Estamos a referir-nos à catalogação de monografias, periódicos e outros materiais não-livro, e à classificação (CDU, Facetada, etc.) e à indexação (elaboração de thesaurus) dos conteúdos. Mas também, sabemos que as Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação e, muito especialmente, a “Galáxia da Internet”, desde o último quartel do séc. XX, estão a colocar desafios novos e surpreendentes ao tipo de mediação que os profissionais da informação podem assumir perante uma exigência cada vez mais radical e extensa de usuários espalhados pelos sete cantos do Mundo. Nesta sessão pretende-se, a partir da ótica da CI, abordar alguns desses desafios e mostrar como devemos entender e explorar as estratégias e atitudes de procura de informação que vêm sendo desenvolvidas através da internet, concretamente através dos mais conhecidos motores de busca, à cabeça dos quais encontramos o Google. A forma como estes motores operam e respondem às necessidades informacionais das pessoas é, em si mesmo, uma temática ampla e complexa que constitui o foco desta sessão mas não pode ser ignorada pelos palestrantes convidados.

Armando Malheiro da Silva is associated Professor of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto and member of the coordinating committee of the Information Science degree taught by the Arts and Engineering Faculties of the University of Porto.

Born in Braga, he graduated in Philosophy by Philosophy Faculty of the Catholic University of Braga and in History by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto. He obtained the diploma of the course of Librarian-Archivist of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra. On 17th of May of 1999 defended his doctorate degree in Contemporary History in the University of Minho. He was from 1990 until 2000 collaborator of the course of Documental Science Specialization of the Literature of Arts of Coimbra. Member of the Center for Studies in Technology, Arts and Communication Sciences (CETAC.Media). Collaborates also in other investigation unities and is associated to several scientific and cultural entities.

Interagency cooperation in local government: a gov 2.0 approach Walter Castelnovo (Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences University of Insubria, Italy) - walter.castelnovo@gmail.com In the last few years a “Second Generation E-Government Paradigm” has emerged that maintains that to achieve greater value in service delivery and reduce costs, integration and redesign of government organizations and processes is a necessity. This result is particular difficulty to achieve in countries characterized by a high administrative fragmentation and by the prevalence of small municipalities. In this qualitative paper I will discuss the conditions that make it possible to achieve the horizontal integration among municipalities, as a way to enhance intermunicipal cooperation and to allow small municipalities to manage innovation and to deliver high quality services to citizens and enterprises through the sharing of resources. More specifically, I will argue JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp.391-436

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that intermunicipal cooperation can be enhanced through the use of social computing and cooperation tools to support trust building processes, thus strengthening the relationships among the partners of the cooperation. Finally, with reference to the case of One Stop Shop for enterprises in Italy, I will show how the social computing and cooperation tools can be used to support interorganizational workflows, even in case they concern critical processes involving interorganizational risk management.

Keywords: interagency cooperation, government, gov 2.0, intermunicipal cooperation

Walter Castelnovo, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Organization at the University of Insubria (Italy). His research interests concern technological and organizational innovation in Public Administration and Interorganizational Information Systems. He is one of the founders of the Research Center for “Knowledge and Service Management for Business Applications” of the University of Insubria and he is a member of the Scientific Committee of the “Interdepartmental Center for Organizational Innovation in Public Administration” of the University of Milan. He served as member of the committee for many international conferences on E-Government and ICT evaluation and he is the General Chair of The 5th European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation, which will be held in 2011 at the University of Insubria. He is also member of the Department of Institutional Reforms, E-Government and Institutional Federalism of the Association of the Municipalities of Lombardia (Italy).

What’s communication got to do with it? And what’s it got to do with us?

Dov Te´eni (Mexico Chair of Information Systems, President, AIS Association Information Systems, Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University, Israel) http://www.tau.ac.il/~teeni How do you design knowledge sharing in a community such as ours? I view the community as many circles of discourse and socialization, and examine the roles of theory in design of systems that support communication and knowledge sharing. I then show examples of new designs in our community. And then kick the ball into your court for new ideas.

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Dov Te'eni is Professor of Information Systems in the faculty of management at TelAviv University, Israel. He is also the chairman of Meital - Israel’s Higher Education Elearning center. He studies several related areas of information systems: humancomputer interaction, computer support for communication, knowledge management, systems design and non-profit organizations. His research usually combines model building, laboratory experiments and development of prototypes like Spider and kMail.

Dov Te'eni serves as Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly and associate editor for Journal of AIS, Information and Organizations, and Internet Research. He has published in journals such as Management Science, MISQ, Organization Science, Communications of the ACM, and in more specific journals of HCI such as IJHCS, Behavior and Information Technology, Computers in Human Behavior and IEEE Transactions. He is conference co-chair of ICIS2008 (International Conference on Information Systems) to be held in Paris. He is also co-author of a new book on human-computer interaction for organizations to be published in 2006 by Wiley.

Publishing your research in academic journals Chair Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio, FEA USP, Brazil Speakers Prof. Dr. Dov Te´eni Prof. Dr. Pertti Vakkari Prof. Dr. Valter Castelnovo The symposium on Publishing your Research is designed for PhD students and Researchers. Speakers will discuss the transition between a thesis and a publication, the decision between book and article publication and their experience on publishing research in academic journals, such as how to chose a journal and how to prepare a manuscript.

Support: JISTEM Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management http://www.jistem.fea.usp.br Qualis CAPES - Indexation: Scielo, Dialnet, DOAJ, ProQuest, Ebsco, Periódicos CAPES, Portal de periódicos USP.

ICT4DEVIS – International Launching Information and Communication Technologies for Development International School - A bridge between technology and development Danilo Piaggesi, Managing Director of the Fondazione Rosselli Americas (FRA).

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Edson Luiz Riccio, Associate Professor of Information Systems at the University of São Paulo (USP) at São Paulo, Brazil.

Walter Castelnovo, Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences University of Insubria, Italy.

Invited Speaker; Professor Linamara Rizzo Battistella, State Secretary for the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities – São Paulo State Government - São Paulo, Brazil.

There is a widely shared expectation that ICTs can help fostering development in the least developed countries (LDC); thus contributing to reduce, if not solve, some of the world’s most severe challenges to human well-being and development. ICTs are considered by ICT4DEVIS the most promising tool to help peoples and countries leapfrog from low-access and low-income situations to knowledge-based markets that bring about greater inclusion and more immediate opportunities to make socioeconomic gains. Harnessing ICTs to achieve this result is not an easy matter; it requires the understanding of a multitude of disciplines and fields, from moral and ethics, cultural differences, politics, sociology, systems thinking, finance, project management and, of course, the world of the Knowledge Society and related Economy with their evolving and convergent issues. Students coming out of traditional academic courses who want to engage in a professional career devoted to international development are not likely to possess all the skills required to cope with these complexities. University education has a tendency to greater and greater specialization, while development work is becoming ever more complex and inter-disciplinary. Mainstream academic education in this field would benefit from supplementary training aimed at rounding up a student’s education with practical, job-related, additional capacity-building, for the purpose of improving their effectiveness in a development context.

This is the aim of the ICT for Development International School (ICT4DEVIS) that is conceived as a hands-on, practice oriented, cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary course intended for students and practitioners who want to pursue a professional career in deploying ICT as a means for international development.

ICT4DEVIS is a joint initiativeof Fondazione Rosselli Americas (FRA), USA; Università dell’Insubria, Italy; Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Brazil. Other Universities and Institutions have confirmed their interest in joining ICT4DEVIS, among which, as of February 2012, are:  Dongguk University, Korea.  Universidad del Rosario, Colombia.  Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Ghana.  Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Mexico.

All these institutions have been involved in the discussion and development of the initial project of ICT4DEVIS in a collaborative effort enabled by the online platform AKNOS (e-Academy for Knowledge Society), a virtual communication platform, jointly developed and managed by the Research Center “Knowledge and Service Management for Business Applications” of the University of Insubria and Fondazione Rosselli. ICT4DEVIS will be shaped by contributions from a hand-picked cluster of high-level academic, and NGO institutions around the world, fueled by a will to excel in their respective academic contexts, and willing to engage in an innovative process that will use all the benefits of the existing technology to develop what could be a new model for academic course design and implementation. ICT4DEVIS will work under a “hubs and spokes” system, giving the students the possibility to attend the

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school, at different locations worldwide, from their own academic bases but in direct contact with the School and with each other. http://ksm.dicom.uninsubria.it/ict4devis/ Speakers Dr Edson Luiz Riccio is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the University of São Paulo (USP) at São Paulo, Brazil, where he also serves as Chairman at the International Cooperation Office FEA/USP, and Director of TECSI - Laboratory of Technology and Information System. Dr Riccio holds a PhD and Master of Science degree in Business and Associate professorship in Information Systems from the University of São Paulo, at São Paulo, Brazil, and SEP from Stanford University, USA. His recent research focuses the use of Information Technology, such as ERP, in different corporate settings. He carries out research work on Education in Latin America, Brazil and Europe. Dr Riccio has contributed with articles to several academic conferences in the United States and Europe. He is an Advisory Committee Member for the Asian Pacific Conference on International Accounting Issues. Riccio´s past experience includes his position as CIO for JI Case Com pany Brazil and Cummins Diesel Company, Brazil and other large multinational companies in Brazil.

Danilo Piaggesi is Managing Director of the Fondazione Rosselli Americas (FRA) and a member of Fondazione Rosselli’s Board. FRA focuses on Knowledge Society, ICT and innovation for development. His professional training is in remote sensing; digital image processing and analysis; technical cooperation project formulation and appraisal; telecommunications and ICT, innovation and Knowledge Society for development. He was Knowledge Economy Coordinator in the Vice Presidency of the Inter American Development Bank (IADB), in Washington D.C, from 2007 to 2009 and Chief of the Information and Communication Technology for Development Division (ICT4DEV) at the IADB, from 1999 to 2007.Mr. Piaggesi also consulted for the European Union in Brussels, evaluating project proposals for funding in the field of telecommunications and environment and worked for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at different duty stations in Africa and Latin America in the field of technology transfer for development.

Walter Castelnovo, PhD., is Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Organization at the University of Insubria (Italy). His research interests concern technological and organizational innovation in Public Administration and Interorganizational Information Systems. He is one of the founders of the Research Center for “Knowledge and Service Management for Business Applications” of the University of Insubria and he is member of the Scientific Committee of the “Interdepartmental Center for Organizational Innovation in Public Administration” of the University of Milan. He served as member of the committee for many international conferences on E-Government and ICT evaluation and he is the General Chair of The 5th European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation, that will be held in 2011 at the University of Insubria. He is also member of the Department of Institutional Reforms, E-Government and Institutional Federalism of the Association of the Municipalities of Lombardia (Italy).

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Invited SPEAKER Linamara Rizzo Battistella, MD, PhD, State Secretary for the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities – São Paulo State Government - São Paulo, Brazil. Honorary President of the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine - ISPRM (20082012). Member of the Board of Governors of Brazilian Association of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation - ABMFR (2008-2010). Professor at the Medicine School, University of São Paulo. Main Publications: 149 articles published in periodicals; 8 published or organized books; 42 published book chapters.

Link to Plataforma Lattes, the Brazilian Academic Curriculum System: http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.jsp?id=K4780282E6&idiomaExibic ao=2

5.

CONSÓCIO DOUTORAL

No escopo de atividades da 9ª. Edição do Contecsi foram realizadas, no dia 31 de maio, as atividades do Masters Colloquium e Consórcio Doutoral. O Consórcio Doutoral, em sua quarta edição, contou com as seguintes apresentações de pesquisadores brasileiros e do exterior: 1) La auditoría continua, una herramienta para la modernización de la función de auditoría en las organizaciones y su aplicación en el control fiscal colombiano Por: Francisco Javier Valencia Duque da Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2) Comunidades de prática como ferramentas no gerenciamento de conhecimento em empresas orientadas a projetos Por: Ana Daneida Villanueva-Llapa da Escola Politécnica – USP 3) Qualidade da informação contábil sob a perspectiva da Ciência da Informação Por: Nelma T Zubek Valente da ECA USP 4) Desarrollo de un programa de extensión universitaria para incrementar el crecimiento del capital humano en las organizaciones del valle de toluca utilizando principios de gestión del conocimiento Por: Eva Martha Chaparro Salinas, apresentada por Julio Alvarez Botello, da Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México 5) Diseño de un modelo y programa de implantación de sistemas de gestión integral para instituciones de educación superior (ies) en méxico basados en la gestión del conocimiento (km), caso de estudio facultad de contaduría y administración (FCA), UAEM. Por: Julio Alvarez Botello da Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México Nestas apresentações, como tem ocorrido desde a sua primeira edição, tivemos por objetivo contribuir com o foco das pesquisas em andamento, observando a construção de objetivos, discussão de metodologias aplicadas e as oportunidades de alcance de resultados, bem como os riscos inerentes aos projetos em si.

No caso dos trabalhos já em fase de conclusão, as contribuições dos avaliadores se destinaram a aprimorar os resultados em obtenção, bem como orientar as possíveis

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repercussões dos trabalhos em publicações, novos estudos, novos modelos de pesquisa e difusão geral dos conhecimentos.

O Masters Colloquium, realizado pela primeira vez no âmbito de atividades do CONTECSI, contou com as seguintes participações: 1) Reflexões sobre a gestão do conhecimento organizacional Por: Ângela Melo, do Mestrado em Administração da Faculdade de Pedro Leopoldo-MG. 2) A importância da adaptação de um modelo de governança para a competitividade empresarial, Por: Júlio Cesar Da Silva, da Faculdade Novos Horizontes de Belo Horizonte.

3) Avaliação de riscos envolvidos no processo de gestão de custos operacionais em empresa de energia elétrica Por: Rafael Herden Campos, da Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos 4) Observatório da educação: uma análise da inovação tecnológica na educação Por: Luiz Henrique Da Silva, da FURB, de Blumenau.

As discussões, também em regime de bancas simuladas, permitiram aos participantes compreender melhor a abrangência de suas dissertações, definir e aprimorar o foco das pesquisas, o detalhamento de contribuições e fontes de literatura variadas, as definições de conceitos e formas futuras de compartilhar o conhecimento gerado, através de publicações e apresentações dos resultados. No Colloquium, conseguiu-se também alcançar o objetivo maior de contribuir definitivamente com trabalhos de Mestrado, ainda em andamento, ao permitir que os mestrandos fossem sabatinados e aconselhados pelos presentes.

Ambos os eventos realizam aquilo que é uma das principais metas e resultados perceptíveis do CONTECSI: gerar níveis excelentes de relacionamento social, acadêmico, científico e profissional com pesquisadores e empreendedores do Brasil e do Exterior. Estes eventos retornarão no próximo ano, com edições marcantes, pois se trata da 10ª. Edição do CONTECSI. Coordenador do Masters Colloquium e do Consórcio Doutoral: Prof. Dr. George Leal Jamil Participação e Apoio: Prof. Dr. Cesar Augusto Biancolino

6.

25º WORLD CONTINUOUS SYSTEMS SYMPOSIUM

AUDITING

AND

REPORTING

O 25º. Simpósio Mundial de Auditoria Contínua de Sistemas foi realizado, pelo sétimo ano consecutivo, com o tema “Sistemas de Auditoria Contínua como instrumento de Automação do Controle Empresarial”, juntamente com o 9º CONTECSI. Reuniu em torno de 80 pessoas no Auditório da FEA/USP, no dia 31/05/2012 e levou para discussão assuntos de interesses acadêmicos e profissionais, tais como: tendências da auditoria e monitoramento contínuo; as novas regras do JISTEM, Brazil Vol.9, No. 2, May/Aug. 2012, pp.391-436

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SPED – Sistema público de Escrituração; a evolução do XBRL no Brasil; foram também apresentados estudos de casos de projetos de Auditoria Contínua, já implantados em empresas brasileiras de grande porte do setor de construção civil e energia elétrica.

O Simpósio contou com a participação de palestrantes experientes no âmbito acadêmico e profissional. Como destaques, houve a presença dos professores Michael Alles e Miklos Vasarhelyi da Rutgers University. Também representativas foram as participações de empresas que trabalham com a implementação de auditoria e monitoramento contínuos: Tech Supply e SPL Soluções Fiscais.

Durante as apresentações, percebeu-se o grande interesse dos participantes em relação aos assuntos abordados, considerando a variedade de questões advindas do público formado por profissionais e estudantes presentes.

O Simpósio também contou com um painel de debates, com profissionais e pesquisadores do tema, cujas discussões levaram à tona os principais desafios dos projetos de implantação de auditoria e monitoramento contínuos.

Como considerações finais, observou-se que os maiores desafios para se chegar ao estado da arte da Auditoria Contínua é conseguir o acesso aos dados e à obtenção de uma infraestrutura tecnológica compatível com as necessidades das organizações.

Também se pôde concluir que, com a implantação do SPED (Sistema Público de Escrituração Digital), as empresas têm a ganhar um conjunto de dados que poderão ser usados para outros tipos de monitorações contínuas sobre seus processos críticos de negócios. Percebeu-se que a Auditoria Contínua tornou-se a principal ferramenta para as corporações que têm a necessidade de aumentar a abordagem da auditoria interna, mantendo a tempestividade dos reportes e o nível desejável da Governança Corporativa.

25th WCARS - World Continuous Auditing and Reporting Systems Symposium Auditorium|Auditório FEA5

Thursday May 31st | Quinta-Feira 31 de Maio 10h15-10h30

Welcome Coffee| Café de boas vindas Andar

FEA 1 - 1st Floor | FEA 1 - 1º

10h30 às 10h45

Abertura do 25th World Continuous Auditing and Reporting Systems Symposium FEA 5 Auditorium

10h45 às 11h45

Tendências mundiais da auditoria e monitoramento contínuos Palestrante: Prof. Dr. Michael Alles, Department of Accounting & Information Systems, Rutgers Business School Debatedor: Prof. Dr. Miklos Vasarhelyi, Director of CARLAB– Rutgers Accounting Research Center & Continuous Moderador: Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio – Professor da FEA da Universidade de São Paulo

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11h45 às 12h45

Auditoria contínua fiscal: como manter as empresas atualizadas com as novas obrigações do SPED - sistema público de escrituração digital Palestrante: Luciano Silva – Diretor da SPL Soluções Fiscais Moderador: Prof. Dr. Jorge Rady de Almeida Jr – Professor da Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo

12h45 às 13h45

Almoço

13h45 às 14h45

Painel: XBRL – implementação no Brasil Palestrantes: Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio, FEA USP/Coordenador do Comitê Técnico XBRL Brasil (CFC), Dr. Paulo Caetano da Silva, Universidade de SalvadorMember of XBRL Certification Board e Banco Central do Brasil, Profa. Cecilia Geron-Praesum/FEA USP, Caetano Nobre - Member of the XII International Steering Committee (ISC)XBRL International/MZ Consult.

14h45 às 15h45

Como sensibilizar a alta administração com os resultados da auditoria contínua Palestrante: José Francisco Moraes – Ex-Global Internal Audit - Director - Bunge Group – Consultor do The IIA - The Institute of Internal Auditors para assuntos relacionados à Quality Assurance da Auditoria.

Debatedora: Carmem Ozores – Presidente do ISACA Information Systems Audit and Control Association Moderador: Prof. Msc. Washington Lopes da Silva – Gerente de Auditoria de TI da Redecard

15h45 às 16h00

Coffee Break|Café

16h00 às 16h30

Estudo de Caso: o uso efetivo do software ACL nos processos de auditoria contínua da CPFL Palestrante: Hélio Ito – Diretor de Auditoria Interna da CPFL Moderador: Gilda Manetti – Diretora Executiva da Tech Supply – Representante da ACL no Brasil

16h30 às 17h00

Estudo de Caso: auditoria contínua nos processos da Camargo Correa Palestrante: Luis Antonio Cavalheiro Pires – Gerente de Auditoria e Compliance da Camargo Corrêa Moderador: Prof. Dr. Napoleão Verardi Galegale – Diretor da Galegale

17h00 às 18h00

Painel: auditoria contínua como uma área de inteligência de negócios Palestrante: Prof. Dr. Miklos Vasarhelyi, Director – Rutgers

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Accounting Research Center & Continuous Debatedores: Vasco Jr Monteiro Martins – Superintendente de Auditoria do Banco Itaú Unibanco Gilda Manetti – Diretora Executiva da Tech Supply Representante da ACL no Brasil Moderador: Prof. Msc. Washington Lopes da Silva – Gerente de Auditoria de TI da Redecard 17h30 às 17h45

Encerramento Coordenadores do Evento

19h00 às 20h30

Jantar de Encerramento Transfer FEA/USP sairá às 18:30

Friday June 1st | Sexta-Feira 01 de Junho 09h00-10h30

7.

Tutorial em Auditoria Contínua -Prof. Dr. Miklos Vasarhelyi, Director of CARLAB– Rutgers Accounting Research Center & Continuous

SESSÕES PARALELAS DE APRESENTAÇÃO DE TRABALHOS

Para embasar o relatório relativo aos resultados das sessões de apresentação de trabalhos, a coordenação do CONTECSI solicitou que todos os moderadores de sessões preenchessem um formulário referente ao andamento da sessão comentando sobre a atualidade dos temas, a interação entre os presentes, os questionamentos levantados, comentários adicionais e demais questões relevantes sobre o desenvolvimento e resultado de cada sessão.

A comissão organizadora do 9º CONTECSI agrupou os trabalhos aprovados pela comissão avaliadora do congresso, em 47 sessões, de acordo com a área temática. Em alguns casos, houve necessidade de subdividir uma mesma área temática em duas ou mais sessões, em razão da grande quantidade de trabalhos relacionados a um mesmo tema ou assunto. Por suas valiosas contribuições para o andamento das sessões paralelas de apresentação dos trabalhos cujos registros e comentários foram fundamentais para a elaboração deste relatório, a coordenação do CONTECSI agradece a todos os moderadores do 9th CONTECSI. Apresentam-se a seguir, ordenados por data de ocorrência, os principais destaques e comentários a respeito das sessões paralelas de apresentação de trabalhos, registrados pelos moderadores das sessões, onde ocorreram as apresentações dos referidos trabalhos: Na sessão 1(A), cujo tema central foi AIS – Accounting and Enterprise Information, e moderação de Antonio Augusto Gonçalves, foram apresentados os trabalhos: Intellectual capital disclosure: a study of administration reports of

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telecommunications sector in 2009-2010, de Paola Fernandes Belatto, Sandra Rolim Ensslin, Sandra Mara Iesbik Valmorbida; Developments In The Generation And Distribution Of Added-Value: An Analysis Of The New Market During The 2006 to 2010 Period, de Lisandra Theolina Gehrke, Darci Schnorrenberger, Diane Rossi Maximiano Reina; Instruments Characteristics For Determining The Disclosure Index Of Accounting Information, de Rodrigo Angonese, Ilse Maria Beuren; Accountant Information System And Rural Management: A Study Of Rural Property The 31st Departament Of Regional Development Of Itapiranga – SC., de Fernanda Kreuzberg, Ari Söthe, Jorge Ribeiro De Toledo Filho; Practices Of Voluntary Disclosure In Brazilian Banks: An Analysis Through Informational Entropy, de Andréia Carpes Dani, Geovanne Moura, Tarcita Ghizoni De Sousa, Paulo Roberto Da Cunha.

Na sessão 1(B), que teve como tema SOC-PS Social Issues in IS and IT, e moderação de José Gilson de Almeida Teixeira Filho, apresentaram-se os seguintes trabalhos: An Investigation Of Online Movies Acquisition In Brazil By Extended Technology Acceptance Model, de Ana Paula Franco Paes Leme Barbosa, Alexandrino Lucas Dos Santos, Bernadete De Lourdes Marinho; A Catalog Of Modeling Formalisms For Domain-Specific Modeling Languages Design, de Sergio Martins Fernandes, Selma Shin Shimizu Melnikoff. Segundo o moderador da sessão, as discussões foram sobre aspectos metodológicos. Em sua maioria os temas demostraram atualidade. As pesquisas trouxeram contribuições importantes na área de TI e administração. Um dos trabalhos tratou da elaboração de um catálogo para Linguagens de domínio específico, o outro trabalho foi sobre uma investigação dos filmes onlines relacionados com a aquisição no Brasil com definição de variáveis e análise com Survey.

A sessão 1(C), moderada pela Profa. Eneida Alves Rios, com o tema 1C KMGPS Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence, teve os seguintes trabalhos apresentados: The Acquisition Process In Knowledge Engineering: Extraction And Elicitation Techniques, de Debora Cabral Nazario, Mauricio José Ribeiro Rotta, Roberto Carlos Dos Santos Pacheco, Sé Leomar Todesco; The Institutionalization Of Knowledge Management In Companies Operating In Brazil: Study Of Multiples Cases, de João Paulo Santos Netto, Silvio Aparecido Dos Santos, Márcio Shoiti Kuniyoshi; Consumers In Value Co-Creation Network , De Julio César Da Costa, Theodoro Agostinho Peters Filho; Management Graduate Programs In Business Field Built From The Brazilian System (Capes) And The United States System (Aacsb), De Emerson Antonio Maccari, Martinho Isnard Ribeiro De Ameida, Thomas Brashear, Edson Luiz Riccio Colab. Segundo o moderador, o nível das discussões foi satisfatório. As principais questões levantadas e debatidas foram a respeito do processo de institucionalização da questão do conhecimento, que tem sido fator decisivo no processo competitivo das empresas. Além disso, durante as discussões foram levantados questionamentos de como co-criadores de valor podem influenciar também no processo de instituocionalização da gestão de conhecimento.

A sessão 1(D), moderada pelo Prof. Antonio Ramalho de Souza Carvalho, com o tema INV-PS IS and IT Innovation and Change, teve os seguintes trabalhos apresentados: Project Management Maturity: A Study In Firms Of Software For Digital Games In The City Of São Paulo, De Maria Cristina Pereira Pimentel, Keysa Manuela Cunha De Mascena, Cesar Alexandre De Souza, Fernando Carvalho De Almeida; Tax Incentives For Technological Innovation: Disclosure And Accounting Recognition By Public Companies In Brazil, De Joshua Onome Imoniana, Rinaldo Nery Dos Santos, Anisio Cândido Pereira; Services That Incorporate Knowledge In The

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Telecommunication Sector Production Chain, De Alair Helena Ferreira; Characteristics Of Open Innovation: Case Studies Applied In Industrial Enterprises, De Gislaine Cristina Viana, Clause Catozzo Guimaraes, Marcio Antonio Hirose Fedichina, Sergio Gozzi, Leandro José Morilhas. Segundo o moderador, foram apresentados quatro artigos, que numa feliz ordenação de apresentação, demostraram um sequenciamento do processo inovativo. O primeiro demostrando a maturidade no gerenciamento de projetos, onde apresenta com exatidão o perfil nacional de maturidade e o posicionamento das empresas pesquisadas nesse perfil. Após, tem-se o segundo artigo que destaca os incentivos fiscais para a inovação tecnológica. O terceiro artigo vê como ocorre a incorporação do conhecimento na cadeia produtiva. E o quarto artigo faz uma forte exploração das características da inovação aberta, como se estivesse completando o terceiro artigo.

A sessão 1(E), moderada pelo Prof. Alan Curcino Pedreira Da Silva, com o tema EDU-PS IS and IT Education and Curriculum Development e com os trabalhos: Adoption Of Free Source Software In Nonprofit Colleges , de Edmir Parada Vasques Prado , Clovis Luiz Galdino ; The Roots Of The Systemic Abording Of Ludwig Von Bertalanffy: Contemporary Reflexs On His Followers Among Different Branches Of Science , De Silvana Karina De Melo Travassos , José Isidio Freitas Costa , Aldemar De Araújo Santos; Quality Tools Applied To Corporate Courses In Distance Education, De Luís Felipe De Souza Salomão, Alfredo Colenci Júnior; Institutional Development Plan Of Brazilian Federal Universities, De Cristian Baú Dal Magro, Rita Buzzi Rausch . Segundo o moderador, as discussões representaram o alto nível dos trabalhos apresentados. Sobre a atualidade e emergênica da temática educacional e desenvolvimento de currículo em SI e TI. Os trabalhos focaram em Educação a distância baseada em computador, não esquecendo a suas origens tradicionais. Debateuse sobre o uso de software livre e/ou proprietário em instituições públicas (universidades/faculdades) e do 3º setor, suas peculiaridades e impactos. Foi, ao final, sugerida a extensão das pesquisas no contraste com dados de instituições e realizada sugestões de referências. Registro a brilhante presença do Profª Vilza Borges Martins, percursora da EAD no Brasil, com 20 anos de trabalho.

A sessão 1(F) com tema HEA-PS IS and IT in HealthCare teve como moderador o Prof. Cássio Frederico Moreira Druziani e os trabalhos apresentados foram: Analysis Of The Correlation Between Tremor, Cellular Degeneration And Aging, De Paulo Henrique Garcia Mansur, Júnio César De Lima, Marcos De Moraes Sousa; The Use Of Information Technology (It) And Competitive Advantage Of Firms In a Value Network In The Healthcare Industry, De Macir Bernardo Oliveira, Fernando José Barbin Laurindo; Information Security In Health: Electronic Patient Record, de Samáris Ramiro Pereira, Paulo Bandiera Paiva; Determinants Contingency Contributing To The Effectiveness Of The Costs System In Hospital: A Case Study In a Valley Hospital ITAJAÍ-SC – BRAZIL, De Marcia Zanievicz Silva, Jorge Eduardo Scarpin, Adriano Dinomar Barp, Dirceu Rodrigues Dias; Factor Analysis-Based Assessment Of Hospital Information Systems: A Survey Of Hospitals In The Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Area, de Antônio Artur de Souza, Douglas Rafael Moreira, Emerson Alves Da Silva, Anna Carolina Corrêa Pereira, Colab. Alessandra Grazielle Xavier, Amanda Lucchesi laRa, Ana Claudia Linhares Terra, Ligiana Ferreira De Oliveira. Segundo o moderador, as discussões envolveram metodologias adotadas com participação dos ouvintes. Devido ao horário da palestra, os apresentadores foram remanejados para manter o programa previsto. Conforme os apresentadores foram comparecendo ao local, foram reordenadas as apresentações. Em resumo, ocorreu conforme almejado dentro do horário previsto.

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A sessão 1(G) com a temática ISM-RF Information Systems Management e a moderação de Enock Godoy de Souza teve a apresentação dos seguintes trabalhos: The Use Of Competitive Intelligence As A Strategic Advantage In IES: A Vision Of The Sistemas De Informação Observatório Da Educação (Sioe), De Gabriel Zuchna Muller, Oscar Dalfovo, Luiz Henrique da Silva, Rion Brattig Correia; Strategic Alignment And Business Process Automation Using Bpms Suite Technology And Architecture: Payroll Implementation, de Marcos Antônio Da Silva, Fernando Hadad Zaidan; Adoption Of Cloud Computing In Small Business: A Study About Accounting Offices, De Dmir Parada Vasques Prado, Bruno Afonso Souza Brito, Gabriela Cristianini; Using A Wiki To Support Project Management With Scrum Agile Method, de Valdemir Degan, Mario Yoshikazu Miyake; Information Systems Evaluation: Perceptions From Users Of The Physical Control System (Siscofis) In a Military Organization, de Claudio de Almeida Cruz, Flavio Perazzo Barbosa Mota; Organizational Transformation Through Lean Manufacturing And The Use of Information Technology, de Veronica Altheman, Claude Machline, Luis Hernan Contreras Pinochet.

A sessão 1(H) com o tema ECOM-PS E-business and E-commerce teve a coordenação do Prof. Francisco Severo e contou com a apresentação dos seguintes trabalhos: Signaling quality in e-commerce: a comparative analysis between luxury eretailers and mass e-retailers using the service quality scales, de Camila Assis Martins, Marcos cortez Campomar, Ana Akemi Ikeda; 2nd generation of electronic invoice in Brazil - new paradigm based on events, de Newton Oller Mello, Eduardo Mario Dias; Market segmentation applied to online retail, de Henrique U. D. S. Verissimo, Maria Aparecida Aouvêa; Customer-enterprise integration as success factor in the personalization strategy, de Kumiko o. Kissimoto, Dernando J. B. Laurindo. Segundo o moderador, os trabalhos apresentados promoveram excelentes discussões sobre as temáticas abordadas. Além disso, os autores foram pontuais na sessão.

Na sessão 2(A), sobre ICT-PS Information and Communication Technology, que teve como moderador a Profa. Luciana Ferreira da Costa, os temas apresentados foram: New Public Management And Functional Illiteracy: An Analysis In Perspective Of Users Of Information, De Joao Carlos Hipolito Bernardes Nascimento, Adriano Marcos Dantas Da Silva, Wellington Dantas De Sousa, Fabio Rodrigues Magalhaes, Juliana Da Silva Reis Colab ; The Purpose of The Use Of A Foreign Trade’ Simulator Software In The Higher Education Of Two Universities From Santa Catarina; Natalie Aurélia Cidral, Andre Budag, Maria José Carvalho De Souza Domingues. Apenas dois trabalhos foram apresentados. Houve questionamento aos apresentadores. A sessão transcorreu com audiência e platéia.

A sessão 2(B), sobre PPM EDS-PS Engineering and Software Development, moderada pelo Prof. Cássio Frederico Moreira Druziani, teve a apresentação dos seguintes temas The Management And Engineering Of Knowledge Allied In Modeling Of Knowledge - A Case Study Of The Repository In Web, De Cássio Frederico Moreira Druziani, Vinicius Medina Kern, Araci Hack Catapan; A Tool For Automating Acceptance Tests Based On Language Leta, De Rogerio Iokoi, Paulo Sérgio Muniz Silva; Software Product Lines: An Analysis Of Tools That Support Application Requirements Engineering’s Phase, De Tarcísio Couto Pereira, José Gilson De Almeida Teixeira Filho; Service Modeling Using Soaml, De Caroline Paim, Eneida Rios, Paulo Caetano Da Silva. Segundo o moderador, todos os ouvintes participaram das discussões e problemas apresentados. Estavam presentes alunos e professores das áreas de ciência

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da computação, análise de sistemas, gestão e engenharia do conhecimento e programação de computadores. As questões levantadas foram as metodologias, técnicas, lineagens, modelos, aplicações, soluções e propostas apresentadas. Os participantes consideram atuais e relevantes as propostas apresentadas e consideram que trazem contribuições para as respostas nas áreas de aplicação.

Na sessão 2(C), dedicada ao tema KMG-RF Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence, a moderação foi feita pelo Prof. Theodoro Agostinho Peters Filho e contou com os seguintes trabalhos: Newborn Screening Program Of Minas Gerais: Study Of Performance Indicators In The Transactional System And The Bi, De Wesley Afonso Polesca De Souza, Jeferson Gonçalves De Oliveira, Fernando Hadad Zaidan; People In Measuring Services Logistics Performance, De Paulo Sergio De Arruda Ignacio, Miguel Juan Bacic; The Strategic Use Of Information Technology To Support The Knowledge Management, De Debora Cabral Nazario, Gertrudes Aparecida Dandolini, João Artur De Souza; Modeling Business Processes And Knowledge Management:Case Study Of A Process Modeling And Dissemination Of Knowledge Through A Wiki, De Joao Paulo Lopes Muniz, Fernando Hadad Zaidan; Identification Of Intellectual Capital Of A Supermarket: Analysis By Means Of The Perception Of Its Employees And Customers; De Francisca Francivania Rodrigues Ribeiro Macêdo, Geovanne Dias De Moura, Paulo Roberto Da Cunha; Information Behavior In Online Social Networks Contexts: A Research Proposal, De Leandro Libério Da Silva, Armando Malheiro Da Silva . Segundo o moderador, a reunião foi bastante proveitosa, com a presença de autores dos 6 artigos. A apresentação se estendeu por 30 minutos adicionais, apesar do controle de 15 minutos para cada artigo, em função da audiência.

Audiência de 15 a 20 pessoas enriqueceram a sessão. A principal questão foi a aplicação de questões de diferentes áreas (definição, delimitação, aplicabilidade) e seus desafios Na sessão 2(D) cujo tema foi INV-RF IS and IT Innovation and Change, a moderação ficou a cargo do Prof. Sergio Gozzi para coordenar as apresentações dos seguintes trabalhos: The Interaction Between The Institute Of Science And Technology And Industry: The Strategic Context For Development Projects, De Antonio Ramalho De Souza Carvalho; Ligia Maria Soto Urbina, José Henrique De Sousa Damiani; “Strong Arm Brigade”: A Brazilian Army Project Based On Complex Information Systems, De José Carlos Cavalcanti, Clayton Alves Da Silva; Ranking Brazil Index Of Innovation (Ibi) In The Industrial Activities And Extracts From The Region South Of Brazil, Fernanda Kreuzberg, Franciele Beck, Viviane Theiss, Nelson Hein; Competitive Advantage Achieved By Using The Free Software And Low Costinteractive White-Board, Ivo Pedro Gonzalez Junior, Fabio Madureira Garcia. Os temas e assuntos abordados nos trabalhos permitiram atingir um nível elevado de discussão, com questões relevantes para o público alvo. A sessão 2D começou exatamente conforme o horário de programação tendo uma elevada audiência. O espaço de tempo remanescente foi aproveitado para debate e esclarecimentos. Atualidades temáticas debatidas resultaram em significativas contribuições para a área.

Na sessão 2(E) cujo tema foi AIS-RF Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems, a moderação ficou a cargo da Profa. Maria Aparecida Gouvêa para coordenar as apresentações dos seguintes trabalhos: Innovation Disclosure In The Management Report On Tecnology Firms Listed Bm&Fbovespa, Terezinha Vicenti, Loriberto Starosky Filho, Jorge Ribeiro De Toledo Filho; The Impact Of Information Systems In Accounting Considering Its Integration With Business Processes, De Michel Alessandro Leme, Rosana Carmen De Meiroz Grillo Gonçalves; The Emotion’s Interference On The Decisions And Perception Of Risk: An Essay About Research On The Finance,

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Accounting And Business Areas, Ricardo Lopes Cardoso, Tamar Klein Alvarenga, José Carlos Tiomatsu Oyadomari. De acordo com a moderadora, as apresentações foram bem conduzidas e suscitaram debates enriquecedores para o aumento do conhecimento Na sessão 2(F) cujo tema foi HEA-RF IS and IT in HealthCare, a moderação ficou a cargo da Profa. Samáris Ramiro Pereira para coordenar as apresentações dos seguintes trabalhos: Clinical Form, A Case Study On Computing Of Medical Records, Murilo Wadt, André Covic, Aline Nishiyamamoto Mendes, Sumika Mori Lin; Evaluation Of The Implantation Of Enterprise Resource Planning (Erp) On The Perspective Of The Users Of A Federal Brazilian University Hospital, De Francisco Carlos Fernande, Ieda Margarete Oro, Rosemar José Hall, Silvio Aparecido Teixeira; Implementation Process In A Integration Management System: Case Study In Samaritano Hospital, De Luis Hernan Contreras Pinochet, Claudia Raffa Galvão, Everaldo De Oliveira Do Prado, Rodrigo Collado Moreno; Innovations And Trends In Applied Information And Communication Technologies In Health Management, De Luis Hernan Contreras Pinochet, Aline De Souza Lopes, Jheniffer Sanches Silva. De acordo com a moderadora, os trabalhos foram muito bem apresentados. Entretanto, os autores prepararam apresentações para tempos bem maiores do que o previsto.

Na sessão 2(G) cujo tema foi ISM-PS Information Systems Management, a moderação ficou a cargo do Prof. Sérgio Murilo Petri para coordenar as apresentações dos seguintes trabalhos: Selection Of Efficient Evaluation Function For Othello, De Yousef Al-Ohali, Lolowah R. Alssum, Basit Shahzad; The Case Of Inca´S National Bank Of Tumors Management System (Sisbnt) From Brazil, De Antonio Augusto Gonçalves, Claudio Pitassi, Valter Moreno De Assis Jr.; Information Systems In MetalMechanic Sector Of Itajubá, de Jonas Douglas de Paula, Adriana Prest Mattedi, Elizabete Ribeiro Sanches Da Silva. De acordo com o moderador, a primeira apresentação foi bem rica, mais ilustrada do que o próprio artigo. Havia outros materias não contidos no trabalho original. Na segunda, a apresentação ficou restrita ao artigo, seguindo questionamentos respondidos em inglês. Na terceira apresentação, somente em portugês; sugestão de aperfeiçoamento.

Na sessão 2(H) cujo tema foi ICT4DEV/ GREEN a moderação ficou a cargo do Prof. Alexandre Stürmer Wolf para coordenar as apresentações dos seguintes trabalhos: Outsourcing And Innovation In Industrial Sme From Bahía Blanca, Argentine, De María Verónica Alderete; Green It: The Perception Of It Professionals About Their Use In A Financial Institution, De Wander Pereira Da Silva, Taís Cristina Vieira De Sousa; Assistive Technologies And Universal Design For Strategic Alignment, De César Augusto Biancolino, Edson Luiz Riccio, Marici Cristine Gramacho Sakata, Emerson Antônio Maccari. De acordo com o moderador, os assuntos abordados instigam as pessoas a novos assuntos, formas de pensar, novas coisas a discutir.

31 May / 31 De Maio (Thursday / Quinta-Feira) A sessão 3(A), com o tema AIS-RF Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems, teve como moderador o Prof. Marcio Antonio Hirose Fedichina e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos Costing System In Agro Industries: An Application Of Cost Management In A Small Winery, Ari Söthe, Clésia Ana Gubiani, Fernando Marx; The Effect Subliminal In Situations Decisions On Stock Purchase, Jandira Sandra Ferreira, Ricardo Lopes Cardoso, Octavio Ribeiro Mendonça; Accounting Information Quality: Evidence From Different Economic Sectors, De Nayane Thais Krespi, Sodemir

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Benedito Carli, Francisco Antônio Bezerra, Roberto Carlos Klann. Segundo o moderador, a apresentação dos trabalhos pautou-se pela excelência das apresentações.

Os autores procuraram alavancar os principais elementos que norteiam suas pesquisas, contribuindo para temas relacionados com o controle de custos em pequenas empressas e a abordagem comportamental na tomada de decisão contábeil, que foram detalhadamente exlplorados.

A sessão 3(B), com o tema AIS-RF Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems, teve como moderador o Prof. Janilson Antonio da Silva Suzart e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos Data Processing Using A Charging Process In The Database Based On Etl Tool (Extract, Transform And Load), De Larissa Clemente De Oliveira, Paulo Cristiano De Oliveira, José Abel De Andrade Baptista, Marcelo Rabelo Henrique, Paulo Ramirez; Application Of The Nfr-Framework And Iso/Iec 15504 To Promote The Reuse Of Software Process Profile; De Gianni Ricciard, Paulo Sérgio Muniz Silva; Recovery Software Requirements In The Reverse Engineering Of Legacy Systems, De Fernanda Vergani Santos Luiz, Vagner Luiz Gava, The 3c Cooperation Model Applied To The Classical Requirement Analysis, De Vagner Luiz Gava, Mauro De Mesquita Spinola, Antonio Carlos Tonini, José Cardenas Medina. Segundo o moderador, as discussões correram em bom nível, havendo intervenções contrutivas. As principais questões levantadas foram: utilização de ferramentas de análise da qualidade de dados, a norma ISO/iec 15.504, identificação dos requisitos dos softwares ligados e a análise clássica de softwares.

Na sessão 3(C), cujo tema foi INT-PS Internet, a moderadora foi o Profa. Regina Da Silva Ornellas e foram apresentados os seguintes trabalhos Analysis Of Connectivity Level Of Ipv4 Internet Vs Next Generation Ipv6 “Island” In Brazil, De Samuel Henrique Bucke Brito, Francisco Baccarin, Rafael Fernando Diório; Technology For Training Delivery: Current Issues, De Daielly Melina Nassif Mantovani, Maria Aparecida Gouvêa; Relationship Marketing: Customer Loyalty And The Internal Marketing Of Organic Products Industry; De Graziela Oste Graziano Cremonezi, Nadia Kassouf Pizzinatto, Valéria Rueda Elias Spers, Isabela Oste Graziano; The Internet As An Agent Of Transformation Of The Relationship Between Companies And Customers: A Case Study Of Deployment Of E-Business And Web 2.0 In A Company From The Manufacturing And Services Industries; De Michel Lens Seller, Fernando José Barbin Laurindo Da Cunha; Motivation And Resistance To The Use Of Information Technology: A Study Among Teachers, De Edson Wilson Torrens , Giancarlo Gomes , Paulo Roberto. Conflict Of Generations In The Workplace: A Study Conducted In The Public Sector, De Sanete Irani De Andrade, Patricia Mendes, Dalila Alves Correa, Mariselma Ferreira Zaine, Angela Trimer-De-Oliveira. Segundo a moderadora, o nível das discussões foi excelente, desde questões técnicas relacionadas a sistemas de informação até questões de marketing. Foram abordadas tecnologias emergentes como IPV6, novas ferramentas de pesquisas, cursos de EAD. Houve várias contribuições para a área: pesquisa de novas tecnoloigas, web 2.0 e etc. Somente houve um artigo que não havia conexão com a temática (em que falava de marketing de relacionamento e, nesse, as questões foram realizadas apenas pela moderadora). Todos os autores foram pontuais, preparados e todos tiveram contribuições da platéia ( elogios ou questões). Em algumas ocasiões, a moderadora iniciou uma provocação para as discussões as quais foram conduzidas de forma interessante pela assistência à sessão.

A sessão 3(D), com o tema ITM-RF Information Technology Management, teve como moderador o Prof. Wander Celber. M. Pereira Da Silva e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Risk Factors Mapping In Distributed Software Development

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Projects, De Keldjan Alves De Oliveira, Cristine Martins Gomes De Gusmão, Edson Costa De Barros Carvalho Filho; Behavior Factors Related To It Governance: A View From Within The Organization, De Carlos R C Alves; A Roadmap To Improve Software Development Process In Companies That Do Not Adopt Regulations Or Market Standards, De Ana Lucia Perez Antar, Henrique Montanha; A Perspective For The Development Of Infrastructure Projects Supported By Itil, De Bruno Zorzetto, Meiry Ane Acciole Gomes, Adicinéia Aparecida De Oliveira; The Use Of Information Systems In A Board Of Control Of The State Administration, De Ademir Macedo Nascimento, Maria Conceição Melo Silva Luft. Segundo o moderador, as dicussões eram interessantes, com alto grau de aprofundamento, tanto pelo apresentador como pela platéia. O tema de processo de desenvolvimento de SW foi o mais comentado.

A sessão 3(E), com o tema ICT-PS Information and Communication Technology, foi moderada pela Profa. Eliana de Souza Gavioli e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Integrated Search System And Metadata Harvesting Using The Interoperability Protocols Oai-Pmh And Sru: A Proposal For A Centralized Portal For Academic And Scientific Content, De Willian Valmorbida, Alexandre Stürmer Wolf, Ana Paula Lisboa Monteiro; Open Archive Initiatives And Federated Information Systems: Fundamentals Of Information Architecture For Data Analysis From The Portal Of Scientific Literature In Communication Sciences Univerciencia.Org, De Dalton Lopes Martins, Sueli Mara Soares Pinto Ferreira; The Border Between Information Systems And Cognitive Sciences. An Investigation From The Perspective Of The Conceptual Migration, De Fernando Skackauskas Dias. Segundo a moderadora, houve uma discussão bastante rica, decorrente dos pontos de intersecção entre os temas abordados.

Na sessão 3(F), com o tema KMG-PS Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence, que teve como moderador o Prof. Cássio F. Moreira Druziani, e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Application Of Adaptive Model Fodness And Murray The Evaluation Of Passenger Satisfaction In Augusto Severo International Airport Using Multivariate Regression, De Teófilo Camara Mattozo, Jose Alfredo Ferreira Costa, Gutembergue Soares Da Silva, André Pedro Fernandes Neto; Competitive Intelligence: Bibliometric Research On Early Signals, De Patricia Viveiros De Castro Krakauer, Fernando Carvalho De Almeida, Martinho Isnard Ribeiro De Almeida; Knowledge Management In The Largest Industries Of Santa Catarina, De Dante Marciano Girardi, Kelly Cristina Benetti Tonani Tosta, Júlia De Freitas Girardi, Humberto Tonani Tosta; Knowledge Management: The Influence Of Tacit Knowledge In The Strategy Formulation Process, De Jucele Grando, Katia Margareth Anami Segundo, Rosalia Aldrci Barbosa Lavarda. O moderador relatou que todos os participantes da sessão acadêmica de pós-graduação buscaram discutir os métodos e resultados apresentados. Os participantes consideraram relevantes e atuais os temas abordados e que houve contribuições para as áreas de pesquisa nas quais atuam.

Na sessão 3(G), com o tema ISM-PS Information Systems Management, que teve como moderador o Prof. Mauro Araujo Câmara e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: A Literature Review On The Main Factors That Contribute To Escalation In Information Systems Projects , De Enock Godoy De Souza , Nicolau Reinhard ; The Decision-Maker In Santa Catarina’s Textile Cluster: Foundations For A Systematic And Integrative Model; De Rion Brattig Correia , Oscar Dalfovo , Armando Malheiro Da Silva, Luiz Henrique Silva; Database Management Systems (Dbms) And Horizontal Partitioning In Tables: Performance Analysis In A Steel Company, De Priscila De Jesus

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Papazissis Matuck, Marcos Vinícios Da Silva, Daniel Jardim Pardini; Heuristic Evaluation: A Comparison With The User Perception, De Ricardo Hisao Watanabe, Luís Felipe De Souza Salomão; Assessment Of Regional Economic Growth Through Value Added Tax In The Municipalities Belonging To The Regional Development Council – Corede In The Region Of Production In The State Of Rio Grande Do Sul, De Eduardo Belisário Finamore, Marco Antonio Montoya, Nadia Mar Bogoni. O moderador relatou que houve uma troca rica de informação, não apenas entre os apresentadores, mas também entre os presentes. Foram cerca de 10 perguntas que foram esclarecedoras, completando o conteúdo apresentado, até mesmo de um tema um pouco fora do contexto geral. Contribuiu por tratar de temas bem atuais. Um dos autores apresentados estava fora do contexto dos demais temas, mas não deixou de ser questionado, trazendo contribuições para os demais.

Na sessão 3(H), cujo tema foi ITM-PS Information Technology Management, a moderação foi realizada pelo Prof. Maurício Severo da Silva, e ocorreram as apresentações dos seguintes trabalhos: The Banking Industry And The Strategy Of Investiments In Ti: Influence In Strengthening Of Brazilian Private Banks – Bradesco Case, De Oscar Bombonatti Filho , Marcos Antonio Gaspar; Factors That Lead Organizations To Adopt Or Not It Outsourcing , De Gislaine Fernandes , Rita De Cássia Da Silveira Marconcini Bittar , Oswaldo Luiz Agostinho; Evaluation And Development Discussions Of Information Technology (It) , De Luci Longo, Fernando De Souza Meirelles. Segundo o moderador, as temáticas discutidas se mostraram fundamentalmente atualizadas e contribuiram para a ampliação do entendimento. Após as apresentações, houve um debate, conseguindo conectar todos os trabalhos e o resultado foi muito bom.

A sessão 4(A) com o tema AIS-PS Accounting and Enterprise Information System, teve como moderador o Prof Willian Valmorbida, e a apresentação dos artigos: Analysis Of Correlations Between The Characteristic Variables Erp System And Its Results In Construction Companies, De Jefferson Augusto Krainer , Christiane Wagner Mainardes , Alfredo Iarozinski Neto ;The Participation Of The Taxes Management In Erp Implementation:Study Of Multiple Case, De Sergio Roberto Da Silva , Marcelo Henrique Rabelo , Ivan Ricardo Peleias , Cecilia Carmem Cunha Pontes; Decision Support System For Operational Costs In Energy Distributing, De Adolfo Alberto Vanti, Marcio Roberto Mello, João Luiz Becker, Daniel Porto; Mode Of Act And Think Management Anchored In The Use Of Erp System, De Ana Patrícia Pessoa Brito, Gilson Ludmer; Cost Management Practices In A Higher Education Institution: An Analysis In The Light Of The Agency Theory, De Vinicius Costa Da Silva Zonatto, Adilson Cordeiro, Jorge Eduardo Scarpin. Segundo o moderador, as melhorias para os ERP foram abordadas por todos, devido à falta de cédulas para sustentar determindas áreas como construção civil e elétrica. Abordou-se também a importância na utilização de ERP para a gestão, assim como problemáticas provenientes da dependência causada pela ferramenta.

Na sessão 4(B), com o tema XBRL-RF/PS XBRL and Enterprise Onthology, o moderador foi o Prof. Keldjan Alves de Oliveira para a apresentação dos trabalhos: Mapping The Researches On Xbrl Language: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Scientific Literature In English; De Janilson Antonio Da Silva Suzart; Model Of Social And Environmental Planning Based The Sustainability Indicators Data Base In The Context Of The Local Development, De Takeshy Tachizawa, Hamilton Pozo; Ontoreg-D: Regulatory Knowledge Modeling In The Sector Of Electricity Distribution, De Murialdo Loch , José Leomar Todesco, Fernando Alvaro Ostuni Gauthier; Helen Fischer Günther

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; Xbrl And Accounting In Digital World , De Eduardo Phillipe Mineo , Edson Luiz Riccio (Colab); Bookkeeping Tax Digital (Efd): Advantages And Disadvantages From Selected Literature;, De Bárbara Heidrich Seibert, Koettker Sérgio Murilo Petri , Maria Denize Henrique Casagrande , Luana Ramos Figueiredo Petri , Luiz Felipe Ferreira (Colab). Segundo o moderador, os artigos foram apresentados dentro do prazo programado e, após as apresentações, as perguntas foram abertas ao público presente, que se mostrou sempre interessado e participativo.

Na sessão 4(C), com o tema KMG-RF Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence, a moderação foi realizada pelo Profa. Graziela Oste Graziano Cremonezi que coordenou a apresentação dos trabalhos Competence-Based Management And Knowledge Management: Characteristics And Human Resources Area, De Mauro Araujo Câmara, Tathiana Stemler M. De Queiroz; Competitive Intelligence: Analysis Of Present And Future Of Micro And Small Enterprises, De Regina Da Silva Ornellas; Knowledge Sharing Among Agents In A Distance Education Undergraduate Course At Universidade Federal De Santa Catarina, De Carolina Schmitt Nunes, Sabrina Rebelo, Marina Keiko Nakayama, Paulo Mauricio Selig, Andreza Lopes Da Silva; The Perception Of Organizational Learning In The Public Sector Information Technology, De Cássio Frederico M. Druziani, Andrea Valéria Steil, Araci Hack Catapan; Convergence Media: Trends And Notes For The Use Of Technology In Higher Education, De Kelly Cristina B. Tonani Tosta, Kamil Giglio, Roseli De Souza Oliveira, Fernando José Spanhol, Humberto Tonani Tosta. Segundo a moderadora, os trabalhos apresentados foram muito interessantes e contribuiram bastante para a área, pois são trabalhos que abordaram a atualidade. O 1º trabalho apresentou as principais características entre modelos de gestão por competências, aplicados à gestão do conhecimento. O 2º trabalho focou na inteligência competitiva, no intuito de revelar como ela afeta o processo decisório. O 3º trabalho abordou a gestão do conhecimento entre os agentes de uma universidade. O 4º trabalho estudou a percepção da grandeza organizacional dos funcionários de uma empresa do setor de tecnologia. O 5º trabalho demostrou uma análise da convergência midiátrica na educação superior.

A sessão 4(D), cujo tema foi ITM-RF Information Technology Management, teve como moderadora a Prof. Adicinéia Aparecida De Oliveira e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos IT Governance And Soa: Management Changes In The Service Oriented Architecture Using Cobit, Itil And Iso 27002., De José Rogério Poggio Moreira, Paulo Caetano Da Silva; Benefits Of The Use Of Information Technology In Production Planning And Control: The Case Of A Ceramic Industry Of Russas - Ce – Brazil, De José Welton Da Silva Gonçalves, Ana Maria Magalhaes Correia; Diagnosis Of Information And Technology Management Systems In The Hospitals Of São Luís – Maranhão, De Claudia Maria Da Costa Archer, Antonio José Balloni, Will Ribamar Mendes Almeida, Matheus Foureaux Abras, Sérgio Gomes Martins; Competency Management And The Selection Of It Managers In Brazilian Legislative Branch, De João Eduardo Siqueira Lopes, Wander C.M. Pereira Da Silva; A Risk Breakdown Structure For Multiple Project Software Environments, De Kenelly Almeida, Cristine Gusmão, Júlio Venâncio. Segundo a moderadora, todas as apresentações programadas foram devidamente apresentadas e o nível das discussões foi excelente. As perguntas foram pertinentes aos autores que apresentaram. Todas as apresentações tratavam de temas atuais, levando a vários questionamentos.

Na sessão 4(E), com o tema AIS-PS Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems, moderada pelo Prof. Oscar Bombonatti Filho foram apresentados os

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trabalhos: The Influences Of The Importation Process In The Management Of A Sulmineira Company That Imports Computer Industry, De Leandro R. Teixeira Nogueira , Deon Bomfi , Antônio Carlos Dos Santos, Nilton Dos Santos , Maria Aparecida Curi; Adoption Of International Accounting Rules In Brazil, Derivatives Disclosure After The 14th Cpc, De Araceli Farias De Oliveira , Debora Gomes Machado , Jorge Toledo Ribeiro Filho ; Change In Business Process And Fitness Of It On Business As A Result Of Implementation Of The Sped: A Multiple Cases Study In The State Of Pará. , De Eloi Prata Alves Junior , Marcos F. M. De Medeiros , Manoel Veras Sousa Neto ; A Study About The Perception Of Management Of Medium Companies In Recife Metropolitan Region About The Utilization And Importance Of The Accountancy Inf. In The Fss , De Darlan Oliveira Bezerra , Aldemar De Araújo Santos , Luiz Carlos Miranda; Decision-Making Through The Use Of Management Indicators In A Federal University Hospital , De Rosemar José Hall , Leossânia Manfroi , Jorge Eduardo Scarpin.Segundo o moderador, as discussões ocorreram ao final de cada apresentação. O nível de discussão foi bom, todos presentes apresentaram alguma questão. Ficou bastante claro as dificuldades existentes no processo de importação, a necessidade de uma demostração mais clara quanto aos derivativos, o sucesso e vantagens da implantação do SPED. Quanto à aplicação da Contabilidade nas médias empresas, ficou claro que o processo existe e é forte internamente. Os temas apresentados são bastante atuais.

A sessão 4(F) com o tema EDS-RF Engineering and Software Development foi moderada pelo Prof. Michel Lens Seller e contou com os trabalhos: E-Learning, De Alexandre Stürmer Wolf, Maria Elizabete Bersch, Maurício Severo Da Silva; Adequacy Of The Profile Of The It Professional In Development Of Software , De Eliana De Souza Gavioli, Napoleão Verardi Galegale, A Test Plan For Validation Of A Subframework To Semantic Analysis Of Formulas, De Rodolfo Adamshuk Silva, Evandro Westphalen Carlos Gomes, Simone Nasser Matos. Segundo o moderador, as discussões foram ricas e agregadoras para o grupo e autores.

Na sessão 4(G), cujo tema foi ISM-PS Information Systems Management, a moderação foi realizada pelo Prof. Dalton Lopes Martins que coordenou a apresentação dos trabalhos: The Redundancy Implied In The Traditional Relational Model: A Brief Introduction To Essential Modeling, De Max Cirino De Mattos ; Generating Management Panels From Data Marts: An Experience Report, De Fabio Zanardi, Marcio Seiji Oyamada, Clodis Boscarioli; An Use Case About Event-Based Systems Applied To Services-Oriented Architecture At Serasa Experian, De Carlos Neves Júnior, Hans Kurt Edmund Liesenberg; Use Of Project Management To Develop Technological Innovations - Case Study Company Armtec , De Elayne Cristina Rocha Alencar , Eliseu Castelo Branco, Alberto Sampaio Lima. Segundo o moderador, o nível das discussões foi bem elevado e as apresentações bastante inovadoras.

A sessão 4(H), com o tema ITM-PS Information Technology Management , teve como moderadora a Profa. Luci Longo e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Motivation And Resistance To The Use Of Information Technology: A Study Among Teachers , De Edson Wilson Torrens , Giancarlo Gomes , Paulo Roberto Da Cunha ; Application Of The Val It Framework: A Case Study In A Banking Company., De Nádia Thatiana Aragão Machado , Jocildo Figueiredo Correia Neto , The Leadership Used By Nasa Teams Applied To Strategic Alignment Of It And Business, De Evandro Fábio Stephan. Segundo a moderadora, as discussões foram ótimas, houve interação e troca de experiências entre os participantes.

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June 1st / 01 de Junho (Friday / Sexta-Feira) Na sessão 5(A), cujo tema foi ITM-PS Information Technology Management, a moderadora Profa. Priscila Engiel coordenou a apresentação dos trabalhos: Evaluating the alignment effect of it management, information systems and business in the performance of organizations, de Saeed Ayat, Sodeif Farajkhah; Identification of organizational metaphors in brazilian companies using fuzzy clustering, de Angel Cobo Ortega, Rocio Rocha, Adolfo Alberto Vanti, Gustavo Schneider ; An exploratory study on convergence in ICT using patent analysis; de Eunhee Kim, Jaejon Kim , Joon Kho. Segundo a moderadora, houve a discussão de questões sobre a metodologia utilizada e o cenário de aplicação dos estudos/experimentos; temáticas atuais, muito distintas. Acredita que as temáticas mais próximas oferecem maior discussão. Integração de autores de vários países. Autores brasileiros apresentaram em inglês para “agregar” os estrangeiros; houve a sugestão de que todas as apresentações deveriam ser em inglês, já que se trata de um congresso internacional.

A sessão 5(B) , teve como tema ICT-RF Information and Communication Technology – Information Science, e contou com a moderação da Profa. Larissa Medianeira coordenou a apresentação dos trabalhos: Efficiency of use and satisfaction of user: usability design of the site, de Janiele Lopes dos Santos, Luciana Ferreira da Costa, Francisca Arruda Ramalho, Alan Curcino Pedreira da Silva; Information security apply on mobile devices with focus to bluetooth technology, de Matheus r. v. Exnalto, Giovanni f. l. Oliveira, Thyago t. c. Marques, Adriano c. Santana; Education mediated by information technology and communication: an empirical investigation of the performance of distance education via we, de Francisco Alberto Severo de Almeida, Armando Malheiros da Silva, Carla Conti de Freitas, Antônio Teodoro Ribeiro Guimarães; Generalization applied to information organization in relational models de Max Cirino de Mattos, Beatriz Valadares Cendón; Science education: theory and practice de Antonio José Silva Oliveira, Ana Maria Nélo, Carlos Cesar Costa. Segundo a modeadora, houve grande homogeneidade de amostra, uso de questionários validados, diferenças entre bibliografia e bibliometria. Os trabalhos da sessão foram muito bem aceitos e contribuiram muito.

Na sessão 5(C) , com o tema KMG-PS Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence, a moderação ficou sob a responsabilidade do Prof. Loriberto Starosky Filho e foram apresentados os seguintes trabalhos: Barriers To Implementation Of Knowledge Management In Public Organizations de Sabrina Rebelo, Larissa Beatriz Waskow, Carolina Schmitt Nunes, Marina Keiko Nakayama, Paulo Mauricio Selig; System Of Information Retrieval By Searching Compared, Using As Descriptors Multiwords Expressions Obtained Using A Technique That Evaluates The Structure Of The Document, De Edson Marchetti Da Silva, Renato Rocha Souza; Electronic Bidding To Control Opportunism In The Public Bidding Process, De Mauricio Massao Oura, Carlos Mamori Kono, Leonel Cezar Rodrigues. Segundo o moderador, apesar do público ser limitado, apresentadores e ouvintes participaram do debate. Questões relacionadas com ao tema apresentado visaram melhorar os trabalhos, apresentando e abrindo novas possibilidades de trabalho.

A sessão 5(D) , com o tema SOC-PS Social Issues in IS and IT, teve como moderador o Prof. Fu Kei Lin e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Intuition On Instantaneous Decision-Making De Fernando Kuhn Andriotti, Henrique Mello Rodrigues De Freitas, Cristina Dai Prá Martens; Virtual Territory: A Proposal For A Study In Organizational Context, De Ariel Behr, Henrique m. R.de Freitas, Kathiane

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Benedetti Corso; Protocols For Evaluating Web Accessibility With The Participation Of Functional Illiterate Users De Eliane Pinheiro Capra, Simone Bacellar Leal Ferreira, Denis Silva Da Silveira, Aline Silva Alves; Autonomy In Software Companies From South Brazil:Study Based On Managers' Opinions De Cristina Dai Prá Martens, Henrique Mello Rodrigues De Freitas, Raquel Janissek-Muniz, Jean-Pierre Boissin; Enterprise Software Negotiation Process Influence Factors Under System Vendor Perception De Adilson Carlos Yoshikuni, Louremir Reinaldo Jeronimo, Napoleão Verardi Galegale. Making Clear Communication Clear Communication Breakdows in the Interaction of the Deaf Bilingual in Communication Breakdows in the Deaf Bilingual in corporate Information System On The Webs, de Aline da Silva Alves, Simone Bacellar Leal Ferreira, Viviane Santos de Oliveira Veiga, Denis Silva da Silveira, Eliane Pinheiro Capra. De acordo com o moderador, as apresentações possuiram uma boa qualidade quanto aos referenciais teóricos e/ou experiênicas. Por outro lado, a diversidade temática dos trabalhos tornou difícil realizar certos links entre as pesquisas.

Na sessão 5(E), com o tema SOC-RF/EGOV-RF Social Issues in IS and IT, a moderação foi realizada pelo Prof. Gilberto Perez e foram apresentados os seguintes trabalhos: Strawberry Productive Chain In The Region Of Pouso Alegre, Mg: Possibilities Of Contribution Of The Information Technology, De José Luiz Da Silva; The Voice Of City Council President On Accountability, Transparency And Participation In Electronic Portals, De Fabiano Maury Raupp, José Antonio Gomes De Pinho; Transparency In The Electronic Publishing Of Municipal Information Available On Web Pages: An Analysis Of The Municipalities Belonging To Corede Produção / Rs, De Sandra Regina Toledo Dos Santos, Giovani Luiz Castoldi; Methodology For Project Management Software Development, De Carla De Almeida Martins Basso, Valdicir Anzolin; Itil – A Proposal For The Management Of It Support Services, De Carla De Almeida Martins Basso, Rejane Dedomenico. Segundo o moderador, as apresentações foram boas e as perguntas complementaram o conteúdo de cada tema apresentado.

A sessão 5(F), com o tema ECOM-RF E-business and E-commerce, teve como moderador o Prof. Oscar Dalfovo e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Group Buying System (Site, Consumers And Merchants): A Current Overview Of The Brazilian Context, De Gabriela Alencastro, Alexandre c. Tondolo, Fernando f. De Melo, Adriano c. Santana; The Perception Of Entrepreneurs Of Francisco Beltrão On The Effectiveness Of Electronic Commerce In Business, De Angela Maria Cavilha, José Roberto Alves, Kellerman Augusto Lemes Godarth, Nathan Bruno Cofferri; A Solution For Product Recommendation In Business To Consumer (B2c), De Fernando Felix, José De Jesus Perez Álcazar; Assessing Internet Sites: A Propostal To Take Experience Into Account De Tatiana Pagotto Yoshida, Cesar Akira Yokomizo, Hamilton Luiz Corrêa; A Picture Of Information Security In Public Institutions Of Scientific Research In Brazil De João Carlos Soares De Alexandria.

Na sessão 5(G), que teve como tema KMG-RF Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence, o moderador foi o Prof. Adolfo Alberto que coordenou a apresentação dos trabalhos: Business Intelligence (Bi): An Exploratory Study On Bi Usage To Achieve Competitive Advantage, De Cláudio José Stefanini, Rodrigo Cordeiro Cruz, Marisa Kishimoto Piratelli; Conflict Of Generations In The Workplace: A Study Conducted In The Public Secto, De Sanete Irani De Andrade, Patricia Mendes, Dalila Alves Correa, Mariselma Ferreira Zaine, Angela Trimer-De-Oliveira; Knowledge Management From The Perspective Of Managers (Leaders) In A Company Of

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Provision Security Services And Vehicle Tracking, De Nadia Mar Bogoni, Leandro Serena, Rodrigo Dal`Forno Camargo, Cesar Buaes Dalmaso; Relationship Between The Variables Of Hi-Tech & Complex Product Development Projects And The Leadership Profile More Appropriate To These Projects Success: A Literature Review, De Dinah Eluze Sales Leite, Claudiano Sales Araujo. Segundo o moderador, os trabalhos alcançaram um bom nível de discussão, porém apresentaram limitações em estado de arte e contribuições para a área.

Na sessão 5(H), que teve como tema AUD-PS/SEC-PS-RF Systems Auditing and IT Governance, o moderador foi o Prof. Luciano Frontino de Medeiros que coordenou a apresentação dos trabalhos: Benefits Identified In The Implementation Of Practice For It Governance: A Case Study, De Ênio Sanhudo Morais, Raquel Janissek-Muniz, Everton Da Silveira Farias, Marinês Steffanello. Proposed use of the COBIT Framework as a Facilitator For The Strategic Aligment Between Information Technology and Business , de Anderson César Silva Viera, Adraine Maria Arantes de Carvalho.Symptoms of ineffective IT governance: a study in Four Brazilian Federal Research Institutes , de Antônio Eduardo de Albuquerque Junior, Ernani Marquer dos Santos; Information Security: a Study on the Perception Of Accounting Information Users, de Wagner Lima da Silva, Gilberto Perez, Ana Maria Roux V. Coelho Cesar , Alberto de Medeiros Junior. Optimization Of the Supply Of Production Lines Using Concepts Of Leran Manufacturing With RFID. Leandro Rodrigues Da Silva Souza, Marcio Aurelio Ribeiro Moreira, Claudio Henrique Da Costa, Fabiano Teodoro Cunha, Eduardo Maurício Zalamenas. Segundo o moderador, na sessão ocorreu um alto nível dos questionamentos, com boa participação dos congressistas (28 no total), além de uma inter-relação entre os trabalhos, sinergia, entre os 3 primeiros trabalhos.

A sessão 6(A), com o tema NET-RF Virtual Communities and Social Networks, teve como moderador o Prof. José Luiz da Silva e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Quality Indicators For Technology Mediated Education. A Discussion About Organizational And Technological Networks, De Alessandro Marco Rosini, Ana Cristina Limongi-França; Social Networks Applied To Knowledge Management In Organizations: A Literature Review, De Douglas Paulesky Juliani, Danielle Faust Cruz, Aline França De Abreu, Jordan Paulesky Juliani; Building Virtual Networks And Communities In The Third Sector: The Experience Of Latin American Congress Against Child Labour Exploitation, De Fu Kei Lin, Graziella Comini, Thania Lemke, Wanderson Lima; Information And Measures In Social Network Analysis, de Marcos Luiz Mucheroni e Gonçalo c. Ferreira.

A sessão 6(B), com o tema EDU-RF IS and IT Education and Curriculum Development, teve como moderadora a Profa. Daielly Melina Nassif Mantovani e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Use Of Audio On E-Learning, De Sandra Rachel Moscati, José Dutra De Oliveira Neto, Ulisses Ferreira De Araújo, Gil Da Costa Marques; Scientific Production In The Area Of Technology And Information Systems: A Bibliometric Analysis, De Bruna Camargos Avelino, Ricardo Rodrigues Barbosa, Igor Pires Soares; Pedagogical Cybernetics: Digital Divide And Virtual Learning Environments, De Lucilene Cury, Carmen Gattás, Ligia Capobianco; The Effect Of Collaboration On Knowledge Creation And Production Of Goods, De Igor Pires Soares, Marta Macedo Kerr Pinheiro, Bruna Camargos Avelino. Segundo a moderadora, as discussões foram ótimas, houve interação e troca de experiências entre os participantes.

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Na sessão 6(C), o tema EGOV-OS E-governance and Public Policies, teve a moderação do Prof. Napoleão Verardi Galegale e contou com a apresentação do trabalho: Websites Of Santa Catarina’s Small Municipalities’ Councils: Electronics Murals Or Accountability Construction, Transparency And Participation Promoters?, Fabiano Maury Raupp, José Antonio Gomes De Pinho; Smart Cities And Smart Territories: International Trends And Challenges For Colombia, De Margarita Maria Bautista Martinez; An Exploratory Study On The Design For Public Service Process Model Understandability, De Priscila Engiel, Renata Mendes Araujo, Claudia Cappelli; Possibilities Of Participation In The Municipal Legislative Through Electronic Portals, De Fabiano Maury Raupp, José Antonio Gomes De Pinho; Benefits Of The Adoption Of Mobile Technology: An Application Of Public Service Provider In Rio Grande Do Sul, De William Darlan Da Silveira, Ariel Behr, Kathiane Benedetti Corso. Segundo o moderador, as discussões foram muito boas, houve grande interação e troca de experiências entre os participantes. Todos os autores estvam presentes.

A sessão 6(D), com o tema SOC-OS Social Issues in IS and IT, teve como moderador o Prof. João Carlos Soares de Alexandria e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Determinants Of The Use Of Information And Communication Technologies

By Behaviour Analysis Of Servers In A Higher Education Institution, De Larissa Medianeira Bolzan, Kelmara Mendes Vieira , Mauri Leodir Löbler, Daniel Arruda Coronel; The Influence Of Trust And Participation In The Budget In An Health Institution, De Loriberto Starosky Filho, Dirceu Rodrigues Dias, Carlos Eduardo Facin Lavarda. Segundo o moderador, as discussões foram ricas e agregadoras para o grupo e autores.

Na sessão 6(E) , o tema ICT-OS Information and Communication Technology – Information Science, foi moderado pela Profa. Carolina Schmitt Nunes e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Prediction Of Protein Backbone Structure By Preference Classification With Svm, De Kai-Yu Chen, Chang-Biau Yang, Kuo-Si Huang; Information Security: Positioning And Profiling The Isso, De Jean-Luc Pillet, Daniel Lang, Jean-Louis Ermine; Characteristics Of Scientific Production On Governmental Transparency Published In International Journals, De Robson Zuccolotto, Edson Luiz Riccio; An Exploratory Study On Convergence In Ict Using Patent Analysis, De Eunhee Kim , Ejon Kim Joon Kho; Application Of Indicators Webometrics In Post-Graduate Courses In Engineering Recommended By The Capes, de Ilaydiany Cristina, Oliveira Da Silva, José Alfredo Ferreira Costa, Nadia Aurora Vanti Vitullo. Segundo a moderadora, os trabalhos eram de temáticas bem diferentes; um abordou mapeamento genético através da modelagem e o outro abordou transparência governamental. As discussões foram de nível básico para ambos os grupos/autores A sessão 6(F), teve como tema NET-OS Virtual Communities and Social Networks, teve como moderador o Prof. Cézar Augusto Biancolino e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Integration Of Social Networks And Web Socialization Study As A Front For Teachers Perception Of Technology And Its Applications Teaching, De Fabiano De Oliveira, Maria José Carvalho De Souza Domingues, Nelson Hein; Roi In Social Media, De Luis Gonzaga Silva de Oliveira, Daniel Estima de Carvalho, James T. C. Wright; Motivational Factors for the Use of Social Networks Tools for Professional Purposes, de Maria Cristina Pereira Pimentel, Marcelo Henrique De Araujo, Yngrid Nicoletti Azevedo Singh, Samuel Otero Schmidt, Bernadete Lourdes Marinho, Maria Aparecida Gouveâ; Information And Communication Technologies In Education: A Bibliometric Study In The Period Of 1997-2011, De Tatiana Marceda Bach, Maria José Carvalho De Souza Domingues, Silvana Anita Walter; Main Factors

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In The Acquisition Of Products At Internet In Collective Buying Websites, De Gilberto Perez, Bruno Andrade Peirão, João Marcelo Cattaldo Amorim, Leandro Armellini Procópio. Segundo o moderador, todos os autores compareceram e as perguntas foram realizadas no final das apresentações.

Na sessão 6(G), COMM 2, a moderação foi realizada pelo Prof. Leandro Rodrigues da Silva Souza e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: The Enterprise Maturity On Adoption Of Corporate Performance Management, de Adilson Carlos Yoshikuni, Louremir r. Jeronimo; Teachers' Attitudes Towards Using Smart Classrooms, De Waheed Al-Hindi, Sultan Almutairy; Development Of The Value System Of The Portuguese Insurance Sector And The Role Of Information Systems, De Bruno Alexandre Ribeiro Marques; Economic Value Added (Eva®) As A Condition Factor For The Stock Returns Of Brazilian Public Companies, De Andréia Carpes Dani, Paulo Sérgio, Almeida-Santos, Roberto Carlos Klann, Francisco Antônio Bezerra.

Segundo o moderador, os trabalhos apresentaram um nível de questões elevado.

Entretanto os condicionamentos na organização/ logística impediram maior participação do público e maior eficácia das apresentações A sessão 6(H), Comunicação de Pesquisa COMM 1, teve como moderador o Prof. Robson Zuccolotto e contou com a apresentação dos trabalhos: Development Of Simulation Tool For Supply Chain, De Julio Cesar Batista Pires, Bruno Nunes Machado, Júnio César De Lima, Paulo Henrique g. Mansur, Marcos De Moraes Sousa; Knowledge Creating And Economic Development: Tourism Professional Training In Goias, De Carla Conti De Freitas, Yara Fonseca De Oliveira E Silva; E-Mail Marketing Effectiveness:Using A Data Mart In An On-Line Job Search Company, De Marcelo Drudi Miranda, Marcio Romero, Renato José Sassi; Knowledge Management Driven Approach For The Productivity Improvement Of Xp Agile Software Development, De Sheila Grave, Reginaldo Arakaki. Segundo o moderador, os trabalhos apresentados discutiram temas atuais e pertinentes às reflexões do evento, suscitados em discussões e colaborações teóricas e metodológicas. Além disso, não houve atraso na sessão e os apresentadores demostraram domínio do conteúdo.

SESSÃO DE POSTERS Pela primeira vez no CONTECSI, foi realizada uma sessão de posters para alunos de graduação.

SESSION/ SESSÃO

TITLE / TITULO

POSTER SESSION

Chair / Moderador JANDIRA SANDRA FERREIRA

AUTHOR/AUTOR/COLAB

KLAPPER 1.0: PRÁTICAS INTERDISCIPLINARES NA FORMAÇÃO DO TECNÓLOGO DE INFORMÁTICA E GESTÃO DE NEGÓCIOS

JEFFERSON BIAJONE

INTERDISCIPLINARIDADE NA FORMAÇÃO DO TECNÓLOGO DE INFORMÁTICA: INTEGRAÇÃO DE SABERES ENTRE LINGUAGEM DE

JEFFERSON BIAJONE

PST 1

PST 2

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DIEGO KLAPPER PAULINO

LIZEU ALBINO DA SILVA

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PROGRAMAÇÃO, CÁLCULO NUMÉRICO E FILOSOFIA E LÓGICA

JÚNIOR AIRAN ARINÊ POSSAMAI CRISTIAN TADEU VON DER HEYDE, CAMILA DA SILVA SCHMITT

PST 3 OBSERVATÓRIO DO EMPREENDEDORISMO: O USO DO SOFWARE AMBIENTE EMPREENDEDOR

MAÉLI SCHMIDT OSCAR DALFOVO MARIANNE HOELTGEBAUM MAÉLI SCHMIDT ALEXANDRA CARBALLO DOMINGUEZ

PST 4 A PRODUÇÃO CIENTÍFICA INTERNACIONAL SOBRE OS LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (LMS)

AIRAN ARINÊ POSSAMAI OSCAR DALFOVO MARIANNE HOELTGEBAUM VINÍCIUS PLETSCH ALEXANDRA CARBALLO DOMINGUEZ

PST5 SISTEMAS DE INFORMAÇÃO OBSERVATÓRIO DA EDUCAÇÃO: DESENVOLVIMENTO DA ÁRVORE DE CONHECIMENTO

8.

MAÉLI SCHMIDT OSCAR DALFOVO

MENÇÃO HONROSA NO 9º CONTECSI-2012 :

O 9º CONTECSI também se preocupou em destacar os melhores trabalhos apresentados no evento, tanto do ponto de vista acadêmico quanto prático. Para tanto, foram levados em consideração os pareceres dos membros do comitê científico do evento para a classificação dos três melhores trabalhos. Assim, receberam menção honrosa, os seguintes autores com os respectivos trabalhos: System of Information Retrieval by searching compared, using as descriptors multiwords expressions obtained using a technique that evaluates the structure of the document Edson Marchetti da Silva (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, MG, Brasil) Renato Rocha Souza (Fundação Getulio Vargas, RJ, Brasil) The 3C Cooperation Model Applied to the Classical Requirement Analysis Vagner Luiz Gava (IPT- Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnologicas do Estado de São Paulo)

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429 Resultados do 9º. CONTECSI Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação /Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia de Informação e Sistemas de Informação

Mauro de Mesquita Spinola, Antonio Carlos Tonini, José Cardenas Medina (Universidade de Sao Paulo) Identification of Organizational Metaphors in Brazilian Companies Using Fuzzy Clustering Angel Cobo Ortega e Rocio Rocha (Universidad de Cantabria, Spain) Adolfo Alberto Vanti e Gustavo Schneider (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos)

9. DIVULGAÇÃO DE LIVROS, LANÇAMENTOS E ENCONTRO COM AUTORES (Por Ligia Capobianco) O 9º CONTECSI dispôs de um espaço no estande para anunciar o lançamento de livros dos autores presentes, relativos aos assuntos relacionados ao evento. Assim, todos os autores puderem divulgar e lançar seus livros no congresso. O espaço em questão não foi destinado à venda, mas à divulgação das referidas obras.

A organização do estande no 9th CONTECSI revelou possibilidades surpreendentes e inusitadas que colaboram para aumentar a visibilidade do evento e sugerem a formação de um ambiente propício a fim de motivar a amizade entre os participantes. Os consequentes desdobramentos destas relações podem fundamentar ainda mais o brilhantismo e a proeminência do evento.

Objetivos Entre os principais objetivos da iniciativa, destacaram-se a possibilidade de promover os livros dos participantes e de estabelecer um local no qual os autores pudessem interagir com o público de modo informal.

Benefícios O estande foi organizado com uma mesa e quatro cadeiras, vários exemplares dos documentos oficiais dos CONTECSI anteriores, diversos livros (para) de autores que participam do evento, folhetos e revistas. No decorrer do evento, o estande tornouse também um local de encontro e de confraternização dos congressistas.

A localização privilegiada e facilidade de identificação do estande contribuíram para que se tornasse um ponto de referência. Observou-se que muitos participantes utilizaram as facilidades locais para realização de reuniões breves. Os temas tratados nestes encontros abordaram, principalmente, a confluência de linhas de pesquisa. Este aspecto principal revelou que existe a necessidade subjacente de propiciar a formação de ambientes nos quais os participantes possam vivenciar processos de socialização menos formais, que possibilitem o exercício criativo e inovador característico das fases nas quais se instauram situações comunicativas, com a intenção de formação de alianças.

Certamente, os resultados dos diálogos poderão ser observados nos próximos eventos.

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Tais considerações merecem destaque, pois o estande foi estruturado visando, em primeiro lugar, à divulgação dos trabalhos dos participantes do evento. No entanto, destacaram-se, principalmente, o seguinte resultado: 

Formação de um ambiente propício à socialização.

Conclusão Os resultados da organização do estande de livros dos autores no 9th CONTECSI de 2012 evidenciaram a importância da iniciativa que colaborou tanto para a divulgação de trabalhos dos autores como também para a formação de um ponto de encontro dos participantes.

TEMÁTICA DO CONTECSI AIS AUD EDU SOC ESD ICT INT INV ISM ITM KMG SEC XBRL ICT4DEV E-GOV E-COM GREEN NET HEA POSTER DOCT COMM

Accounting and Enterprise Information Systems / Sistemas de Informações Contábeis e Empresariais Systems Auditing and IT Governance / Auditoria de Sistemas e Governança em TI IS and IT Education and Curriculum Development/Educação e Curriculo em SI e TI Social Issues in IS and IT / Questões sociais em SI e TI Engineering and Software Development / Engenharia e Desenvolvimento de Software Information and Communication Technology – Information Science /TICs e Ciência da Informação Internet IS and IT Innovation and Change / Inovações e mudanças em SI e TI Information Systems Management / Gestão de Sistemas de Informação Information Technology Management/ Gestão de Tecnologia de Informação Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence / Gestão do Conhecimento e BI IS and IT Security / Segurança em SI e TI XBRL and Enterprise Onthology / XBRL e Ontologia empresarial ICT4DEV – Information and Communication Technologies for Development & Disability/ TICS para Desenv. e Tecnologias Assistivas E-governance and Public Policies / Governo Eletronico e Políticas Públicas E-business and E-commerce / Comércio Eletrônico Green IS and IT / TI e SI verde Virtual Communities and Social Networks / Comunidades Virtuais e Redes Sociais IS and IT in HealthCare / SI e TI em Saúde POSTER Session / Sessão de Posters - Graduação Doctoral Consortium / Consórcio Doutoral - Master Colloquium Communication papers / Comunicações de Pesquisa

PS - Parallel Session/Sessão Paralela RF - Research Forum/Forum de Pesquisa ENG - Full Session in English

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431 Resultados do 9º. CONTECSI Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação /Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia de Informação e Sistemas de Informação

9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT 9º CONGRESSO INTERNACIONAL DE GESTÃO DA TECNOLOGIA E SISTEMAS DE INFORMAÇÃO UNIVERSITY OF SAO PAULO UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO Prof. Dr. João Grandino Rodas Rector | Reitor Prof. Dr. Hélio Nogueira da Cruz Vice-Rector | Vice-Reitor SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTANCY FACULDADE DE ECONOMIA, ADMINISTRAÇÃO E CONTABILIDADE Prof. Dr. Reinaldo Guerreiro Diretor | Dean Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio President of CCInt - International Cooperation Office - FEA USP TECSI Director - University of São Paulo Organization | Organização FEA USP - Universidade de São Paulo TECSI – Information Systems and Technology Management Lab CCInt FEA Support | Apoio FEA USP - Universidade de São Paulo CAPES – Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico FAPESP – Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo Participation | Participação AIS – Association for Information Systems CARLAB - Rutgers Business School, The State University of New Jersey, USA CETAC - Centre for Studies in Technologies, Arts and Communication Sciences, Porto Univ., Portugal São Paulo Convention & Visitors Bureau Centro de Pesquisas Renato Archer ISACA – Audit and Control Association ANPAD – Associação Nacional de Programas de Pós-Graduação em Administração Governo do Estado de São Paulo – Secretaria dos Direitos das Pessoas com Deficiência Fondazione Rosselli Americas University of Insubria, Italy

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE| COMITÊ CIENTÍFICO A. A. de Souza, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil A. A. Vanti, University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil A. Carlos dos Santos, Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil A. de Medeiros Júnior, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil A. Fischmann, University of São Paulo, Brazil A. J. Balloni, Centro de Pesquisa Renato Archer, Brazil A. Malheiro da Silva, Universidade do Porto, Portugal A. Rosini, Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil A. Sangster, University of Middlesex, UK B. Quinio, Paris Ouest, Nanterre, France

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C. Benavant, Paris Ouest, Nanterre, France C. D. Prá Martens, Nove de Julho University, Brazil C. D. Santos Jr, University of São Paulo, Brazil D. A. Rezende, Catholic University of Paraná, Brazil D. Piaggesi, Fondazione Roselli Americas, USA E. Brusseau, Paris Dauphine, France E. L. Riccio, University of São Paulo, Brazil E. M. Chaparro Salinas, Universidad Autónoma del Estado del México, Mexico E. M. Luciano, Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil E. Maccari, Nove de Julho University, Brazil F. Colmenero Ferreira, University of Madeira, Portugal F. J. Laurindo, University of São Paulo, Brazil G. L. Jamil, Education and Culture Foundation of Minas Gerais, Brazil G. Lino, University of São Paulo, Brazil G. Perez, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil G. Schwartz, University of São Paulo, Brazil H. Freitas, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil H. N. Rito Ribeiro, College of Technology and Management, Portugal I. Custódio, University of São Paulo, Brazil J.A. Botello, Universidad Autóma del Estado del México, Mexico J. A. F. Costa, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil J. D. Oliveira Neto, University of São Paulo/RP, Brazil J. G. D. A. Teixeira Filho, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil J. O. De Sordi, Catholic University of Santos, Brazil J. P. Alcázar, University of São Paulo, Brazil J. Pimenta Matos, Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo, Brazil J. Rodrigues Filho, Federal University of Paraiba, Brazil L. C. Rodrigues, Nove de Julho University, Brazil L. de Faria Lopes, Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil L. Quoniam, University of Paris 8, France M. Alles, State University of New Jersey, USA M. A. Gouvêa, University of São Paulo, Brazil M. A. Hirose Fedichina, Centro Universitário de Jales, Brazil M. C. Machado, Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica, Brazil M. G. Sakata, University of São Paulo, Brazil M. J. Bacic, University of Campinas, Brazil M. J. Bacic, University of Campinas, Brazil M. N. Bessagnet, Universite de Pau, France M. R. S. Peters, Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation, Brazil M. Vasarhelyi, Rutgers University, USA N. Azoury, Holy Spirit University of Kraslik, Lebanon N. Galegale, University of São Paulo, Brazil N. Reinhard, University of São Paulo, Brazil O. R. de Mendonça Neto, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil R. C. Penteado Filho, Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária, Brazil R. G. Gonçalves, University of São Paulo/RP, Brazil R. L. Cardoso, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil R. M. C. Figueiredo, University of Brasilia, Brazil R. Pacheco da Costa, University of São Paulo, Brazil

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433 Resultados do 9º. CONTECSI Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação /Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia de Informação e Sistemas de Informação

S. A. dos Santos, University of São Paulo, Brazil S. R. P. Alves, Instituto Politécnico de Leiria, Portugal T. A. Peters Filho, Faculdade de Engenharia Industrial, Brazil V. Branco de Holanda, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil V. Slomski, University of São Paulo, Brazil W. Castelnovo, University Dell´Insubria, Italy

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE | COMITÊ ORGANIZADOR Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio President of CCInt FEA USP –TECSI Director University of São Paulo Prof. Dr. Miklos Vasarhelyi Director of Rutgers Accounting Center Rutgers Business School, The State University of New Jersey, USA Prof. Dr. Luc Quoniam Université Paris 8, France TECSI Researcher Prof. Dr. Armando Malheiro da Silva CETAC Centre for Studies in Technologies, Arts and Communication Sciences Porto University, Portugal Prof. Dr. Christophe Benavent CEROS Centre d’études et de recherches sur les organisations et sur les stratégies Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, France Prof. Dr. Dov Te´eni - INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKER President of AIS Tel Aviv University, Israel Prof. Dr. Danilo Piaggesi – INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKER Fondazione Rosselli Americas, USA Prof. Dr. Michael Alles - INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKER Rutgers Business School Newark, NJ, USA Prof. Dr. Pertti Vakkari - INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKER University of Tampere, Finland Prof. Dr. Walter Castelnovo - INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKER University of Insubria, Italy SUPPORT ORGANIZING COMMITTEE| COMITÊ ORGANIZADOR DE APOIO Profa. Dra. Marici Gramacho Sakata

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TECSI FEA USP Researcher, Brazil Profa. Nelma Terezinha Zubek Valente Equipe TECSI/ FEA/ USP Prof. Dr. George Leal Jamil Doctoral Consortium Organizer- Fumec University, Brazil Washington Lopes da Silva 25th World Continuous Auditing and Reporting Systems Symposium Marcos de Azevedo Iriarte, Patricia Ishibashi, Adeline Irigoyen, Aline Rabelo, Margarita Bautista Martínez, Vinicius Delgado Ramos Equipe TECSI/ FEA/ USP

EVENTOS CULTURAIS - MÚSICA NO 9º CONTECSI O 9º CONTECSI contou também com a presença e apresentação dos seguintes grupos culturais e musicais: Apresentação de abertura - 30 de Maio BANDA DE MÚSICA DO COMANDO MILITAR DO SUDESTE, ADIDA AO 2º BATALHÃO DE POLÍCIA DO EXÉRCITO A Banda de Música do Comando Militar do Sudeste é constituída por militares do 2º Batalhão de Polícia do Exército, com Quartel em Osasco-SP e traz em suas origens as tradições da Banda de Música do extinto 2º Batalhão de Guardas.

Sua missão em tempo de Paz é apoiar as Organizações Militares sediadas no Comando Militar do Sudeste na Capital, Grande São Paulo e interior, além de desempenhar um importante papel na comunicação social, integrando o Exército Brasileiro com a sociedade paulistana, participando de Desfiles, Solenidades e Apresentações Musicais ao público civil.

Nos campos de batalha, a Banda de Música recebe a nobre missão de elevar o moral da tropa, executando marchas e canções militares, despertando no militar, entusiasmo, vibração, sentimento de amor à Pátria e o verdadeiro espírito de combatente, forjado na alma do Soldado Brasileiro.

Composta por músicos oriundos das mais diversas regiões de nosso país tem como seu atual Regente o 1º Tenente Regente Músico ADALCIMAR COELHO DA CRUZ, sendo auxiliado pelo Subtenente Mestre de Música LUIZ CARLOS FRANCO CÂNDIDO.

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Nesta ocasião está sendo conduzida pelo 1º Sargento Músico LAUDIEL DA SILVA. REPERTÓRIO:      

AQUARELA BRASILEIRA – Ary Barros SWEET CAROLINE – Baseada no Arranjo de Ray Connif - Arranjo do Capitão Leme BRASILEIRINHO – Waldir Azevedo – Arranjo Subtenente Wladimir EUROPA – Seleção de Temas de Filmes – Arranjo Cabo Leão STARS AND STRIPES (AMERICANO) - John Philip Sousa AMERICAN PATROL – F. W. Meacham

Apresentação - 31 de Maio CONJUNTO DE MÚSICA

Marina Beraldo - Flauta transversal Felipe Siles - Piano e Acordeon Ricardo Garcia - Percussão Mariana Corado - Violino Pedro Bruschi – Violão *Cochichando (Pixinguinha) *Remexendo (Radamés Gnatalli) *Sensível(Pixinguinha) *Feira de Mangaio (Sivuca) *Galo de Ouro (José Menezes) *Show Xote (Felipe Siles) *Flor e o Espinho (Nelson Cavaquinho) *Santa Morena (Jacob do Bandolin) *El Choclo (Angel G. Villoldo, letra: Enrique S. Discépolo) *Por Una Cabeza (Carlos Gardel) *Cadência (Joventino Maciel) *Duas Épocas (Édson Rodrigues) *É com esse que eu vou *João e Maria (Chico Buarque) *Araponga (Luiz Gonzaga) *1X0 (Pixinguina)

Apresentação de encerramento - 01 de Junho BATERIA DA FEA USP

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FOTO Prof. Dr. Dov Te´eni e Prof. Dr Edson Luiz Riccio

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JISTEM Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação Vol.9, No.2, May/Aug, 2012, pp. 437 ISSN online: 1807-1775

Congresso / Conference

10th CONTECSI International Conference on Information Systems and Technology Management May 22th to May 24th, 2013 USP/São Paulo/SP FEA USP São Paulo, Brazil The 9th International Conference on Technology and Information Systems Management CONTECSI is an event focusing Technology and Information Systems Management under a multidisciplinary view. CONTECSI aims at putting together academics and professionals involved in IT and Systems management for a state-of-theart discussion. International researchers are expected to contribute for the integration between the academic and the professional communities.

The Conference welcomes papers submission for presentation and panel discussions. Major topics on interest include, but are not limited to: Information Society, Open Systems, Systems Interfacing and Integration, Wireless Computing, Entrepreneurship in IT and IS, Accounting Information Systems, E-Commerce / E-Business, Software Engineering, ERP Systems, Financial Management in Information Systems, IT Strategic Management, etc. Submit online a full paper and abstract in English, Spanish or Portuguese by December, 30th 2012. All papers will be subject to a blind review process and full papers will be published (CD) in the Conference Proceedings.

More information: http://www.tecsi.fea.usp.br/eventos/contecsi Coordination: Prof. Edson Luiz Riccio. PhD – FEA USP and TECSI Contact: contecsi@usp.br

10º CONTECSI Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação 22, 23, 24 de Maio, 2013 USP/São Paulo/SP FEA USP São Paulo, Brasil

O 9º Congresso Internacional de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação CONTECSI visa reunir acadêmicos e profissionais envolvidos com a temática de gestão para discussão do Estado-da-arte deste campo. Atualmente este campo encontra-se disperso em áreas específicas, carecendo de uma visão holística e integrada do assunto. O CONTECSI contará com a presença de palestrantes de renome, bem como estará aberto para a recepção de trabalhos para serem apresentados em sessões paralelas e painéis.

Assim como compareceram nos anos anteriores, são esperados personalidades, professores e pesquisadores do Brasil e do exterior, principalmente de Universidades da França, Inglaterra, Espanha, México, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colômbia, Uruguai, Venezuela entre outras.

Os foco de interesse deste congresso inclui todas as abordagens referentes à gestão de Tecnologia e dos Sistemas de Informação nas instituições publicas e privadas e na sociedade em geral. Data final para envio de trabalhos: 30 de Dezembro de 2012.

Mais informações no site: http://www.tecsi.fea.usp.br/eventos/contecsi Coordenação: Prof. Dr. Edson Luiz Riccio – FEA USP e TECSI Contato: contecsi@usp.br

JISTEM Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management Revista de Gestão da Tecnologia e Sistemas de Informação ISSN online: 1807–1775

Every four months/Quadrimestral

1) Paper Submission Guidelines Register at "Online Submissions" and submit your paper accordingly to JISTEM guidelines. www.jistem.fea.usp.br a) Manuscript style Articles must be submitted in English, Spanish, Portuguese or French in MS-Word format. Authors must translate the final version of the article to English.

First page must present: title of the article, author's full name, affiliation, full address, telephone, email, fax and a brief curriculum vitae. Limit of 3 co-authors per article.

Second page must present: title of the article, abstract in the original language of the article of about 100 words, title, area and 5 key words (if accepted an abstract in English and keywords will be required), Articles must be limited to 30 pages in double-space, Arial or times new roman, 12 points; Authors must include figures and graphics in high-resolution 300 dpi (jpg or gif). They must be numbered (Arabic) and with the complete title. References to each table or figure have to be made in the text.

Authors must submit the questionnaires and research results to the editor and review purposes.

Acknowledgments to institutions regarding financial support can be included only in the final accepted version. b) Structure Style Articles should clearly present the Abstract, Introduction, Objectives, Justification, Question, literature review, research method, results, conclusion, recommendation and limitation, plus references; References are to follow the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines. More detailed explanations and examples of these guidelines can be found at the following locations: http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html or Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed., 2010) American Psychological Association (APA).A list of reference must be presented in alphabetical order.

A glossary can be included in the end of the article if needed.

2) Book Review Book review should be sent by Prof. Edson Luiz Riccio at jistem@usp.br

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1) Instruções para submissão de artigo Cadastre-se no sistema e submita seu artigo de acordo com as normas editoriais www.jistem.fea.usp.br a) Quanto à Formatação Os artigos submetidos para publicação, em inglês, espanhol, português ou francês, devem ser enviados em formato MS-Word. Depois de aceito, os autores devem traduzir o artigo para o idioma inglês.

Na primeira página do artigo deve constar: título, subtítulo (se houver), tema, nome, instituição, departamento, endereço, telefone, fax e e-mail do autor e co-autores (máximo de 3 co-autores) e breve curriculum que indique sua formação, instituição/empresa a que pertence e sua área atual de trabalho.; Na segunda página do artigo deve constar: título, subtítulo (se houver), tema e resumo na língua original do artigo, com 100 palavras aproximadamente e 5 (cinco) palavras-chaves. Se o artigo for aceito para publicação será solicitado o envio do título, abstract e palavras-chave em inglês; Os artigos deverão ter no máximo 30 páginas em espaço duplo, fonte arial ou times new roman, tamanho 12; As figuras e gráficos devem estar em alta qualidade com resolução de 300 dpi (figuras) e extensão jpg e/ou gif no artigo. Cada ilustração deve conter numeração e legenda. Deve ser feita referência à figura ou tabela no corpo do texto.

Questionários e resultados da pesquisa devem ser enviados para a avaliação do Editor e pareceristas.

Agradecimentos a órgãos de financiamento da pesquisa devem ser incluídos apenas na versão final do artigo, após o aceite. b) Quanto à Estrutura Os artigos enviados devem conter em seus tópicos os seguintes itens: Resumo, Introdução, Objetivos, Justificativa, Problema/Questão, Revisão da Literatura, Metodologia, Resultados, Conclusão, Recomendações, Limitações e Referência Bibliográfica; As citações e referências devem seguir o estilo da APA (http://www.apastyle.org/l) As referências deverão ser apresentadas no corpo do texto, incluindo o sobrenome do autor, a data de publicação e o número de página (se for o caso), conforme normas da APA. Referências bibliográficas completas do(s) autor (es) citados deverão ser apresentadas em ordem alfabética, no final do texto, de acordo com as normas da APA. Para maiores informações: American Psychological Association (APA).

(2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC Poderá ser incluído um glossário ao final do artigo, caso o autor julgue necessário; 2) Sugestões de livros para Resenha Resenhas devem ser enviadas para o Prof. Edson Luiz Riccio pelo e-mail: jistem@usp.br

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