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Organizations must focus on increasingly complex and customized products and production processes integrated into technological and digital evolution. Thus, shop floor operators have a more significant number of complex tasks with responsibility for their quality control, looking for high productivity levels. However, there are human limitations to deal with the increased amount of information/data resulting from the integration of new technologies. As such, the main research objective is to answer the following research question “How can the combination of recent smart technologies with the human factor contribute to employees' involvement at the shop floor level and thus improve quality control?”

This study follows a qualitative research approach by developing a singular case study in CPMG PSA Group – Peugeot Citroën, where two innovative information technology (IT) projects were implemented following the continuous improvement methodology PDCA cycle (Deming, 1986).

This work contributed to highlighting the human-centered approach in the discussion of Quality 4.0 development. The main theoretical contribution of this research is the identification of a set of key elements that should be present in the integration of the information technologies in quality control, namely: Prioritizing the quality problems supported by the fundamentals knowledge and tools of traditional quality management (QM); building multidisciplinary teams at different organization levels; following approaches that promote continuous improvement; developing the human-centered and user-friendly perspective; implementing solutions as directly as possible in the workstation; finally, enabling an effective communication and motivation strategies.

The research addresses a singular case study and solely explores the vertical integration process of Quality 4.0.

The projects presented may inspire other organizations to integrate information technologies solutions in quality control, following the implementation process and the essential elements described in these examples. Thus, this research stresses that one should customize these projects with the involvement of shop floor operators in a human-centered and user-friendly perspective, both at the preliminary and succeeding stages.

This research presents two original and customized projects, bridging the technological perspective with the human factor in the digital transformation era, supporting the worker, not replacing it.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

As of 2020, London's Financial Times had ranked Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC) as one of the world's leading executive education institutions and the top such institution in Latin America for 15 consecutive years. In 2011, FDC was also ranked fifth on the Financial Times' list of the 40 most respected business schools in the world. For FDC itself and for its co-founder, Emerson de Almeida, this recognition was a wonderful way of celebrating the 35th anniversary of an institution that has become a leader in applied management education in Brazil.

How did this young Brazilian institution achieve this? As is the case for any great undertaking, many people played crucial roles in its creation and consolidation. However, its history is closely tied to the life of its co-founder, Emerson de Almeida.

Emerson was FDC's Chief Executive from its foundation in 1976 until 2012, when he became President of its Board of Governance.¹ He is primarily an innovator and drew his inspiration from visits to world-renowned business schools. Once he understood the needs arising from executive thinking processes, he was able to adapt these schools' best practices to suit the Brazilian culture and context.

‘You must always try the impossible’, he says. This case study presents the story of an exceptional institutional intrapreneur who championed and led the transformation of executive education in Brazil.

This chapter examines the professional identities of Brazilian journalists. It does so through an analysis of the growing professional autonomy of journalism from 1950 to 1990 through the life stories of 10 intellectual-journalists, individuals whose journalistic activities have crossed over into other intellectual fields.

This study applies a symbolic interactionist framework to understand how these actors managed their reputations and careers within the intellectual world. The narratives were taken from qualitative semi-structured interviews, and supported by additional research such as interviews, biographies, and articles which have been published about their lives.

The life stories were compared to the extensive structural changes affecting the world of journalism and the world of intellectuals in Brazil. This comparison revealed gaps between these two spheres of practice, within which the ambivalent form of journalists’ identities have been constructed.

This chapter offers two contributions to the study of Brazilian journalists. From a theoretical and methodological viewpoint, it advances beyond other studies that focus more on the prevailing representations of journalists’ professional identities and their role in society. From an empirical standpoint, it describes the complex negotiations between the worlds of journalism, culture and politics. This chapter also reexamines the current dominant explanation for the changes in Brazilian journalism. It shows that building careers and new levels of interpersonal cooperation for intellectuals and journalists has been a slow process. Ultimately, this development has left some behind, especially those actors stretched between multiple professional identities such as those who self-identify as intellectual-journalists.

The purpose of this study is to identify factors that approach and that separate the Brazilian bureaucracy from the model advocated by Max Weber. Efforts were concentrated on the discussion of aspects of historical and social foundations of society and the Brazilian state that influence its bureaucracy and in the reforms undertaken in the state apparatus. The authors selected some of its iconic moments, within the framework of patrimonialism, seeking to identify evidence of its influence in Brazilian public administration.

This study is qualitative and has interpretative background with descriptive purposes. The whole process of research was based on the literature. The interpretation of data relied on content analysis based on Bardin.

The study reveals that the prevailing bureaucratic model in Brazil, although it contains some characteristics of rational-legal model, is not yet produced the expected disenchantment, at least in public administration. In addition, it was noted that the patrimonialism bases, in which society and the Brazilian State still rely, seems to prevent the bureaucracy that was advocated by Max Weber from installing fully.

Studies dealing with bureaucracy in the context of public administration are still welcome and necessary in Brazil. This is because this country still does not admit the bureaucracy to function according to the model advocated by Max Weber.

The central hypothesis of the chapter is that Brazilian colonialism and slavery produced different material conditions or different governmentalities, from those at the base of the disciplinary project of the Global North, conditions that re-signified the penitentiary reform proposal. This chapter is structured into five sections: the first section introduces the hypothesis that the houses of correction were not the institutions that originated the Brazilian penitentiary system. The following section develops this idea based on an analysis of the social and economic dimensions of Brazil’s colonial formation. Unlike the global North, which officially envisioned the penitentiary as the institutional foundation of a democratic society, the penitentiary in Brazil was first envisioned as a mere symbol of modernity, then as an instrument for preserving order. The third section describes how the first prisons emerged without industrialization and how the material conditions for a prison reform discourse based on discipline remained absent. The fourth section indicates the inapplicability of the original conception of discipline in a context without Protestantism, presenting the Jesuit experience as the one closest to a project of moral reform and constraint to work. Being absent the category of disciplinary power in its original form, at least regarding its economic dimension, the national penitentiary project was born from the dungeons where public and private power overlapped for the corporal punishment of the enslaved. The last section analyzes the importation of the penal reform discourse and its adaptation in the context immediately following the abolition of slavery in 1888.

This paper aims to discuss the impacts of sports events, considering these: from the perspectives of residents (in terms of self-esteem, increase of social problems, car traffic, cultural self-development and entertainment); and for the host territory (in terms of economic development, price level, destination image and environment). The paper analyzes the case study of a hallmark event of the European Rally Championship – the Azores Rally.

During the Azores Rally of 2014, 669 inhabitants on São Miguel Island answered a survey. The questionnaire assessed 12 items that are ex ante quality of life (QOL) indicators, ten items of event attributes and overall satisfaction with the event and nine items of event impact perceptions.

The satisfaction with the event is positively influenced by the host destination’s overall QOL, particularly by the entertainment and local gastronomy and is reinforced by the event-management mix. On other hand, the QOL attributes rather than the event performance indicators determine the perceptions of the promotion of image destination and economic development. The event spectacle level has a particular influence on the residents’ self-esteem.

The paper discusses the implications for public decision-makers, tour operators and event managers, focusing on the community as an important driver for placemaking.

This type of event has an impact on residents’ self-esteem, thus enhancing their QOL and hospitality.

This study supports the role of a peripheral island’s community as an active stakeholder, which interacts with the event organization’s key success factors.

Purpose – Changes in the environment – political, economic, social, educational and technological – have demanded changes in many areas of work, most particularly in the roles and tasks of those involved in the preservation and transmission of cultural heritage, and interpersonal information intervention. Sending, storing and receiving digital information are commonplace activities, and now formally constructed digital libraries constitute an important component of this virtual information environment. Similar to traditional physical libraries, digital libraries are constructed for particular purposes, to serve particular clienteles or to collect and provide access to selected information resources (whether text documents or artefacts). Information intermediaries – or digital librarians – in this transformed information environment must learn new skills, play different roles and possess a new suite of competencies.

Design, methodology and approach – Myburgh and Tammaro have, for several years, examined the new knowledge, skills and competencies that are now demanded, in order to design and test a curriculum for digital librarians which has found expression in the Erasmus Mundus Master's in Digital Library Learning (DILL), now in its sixth year.

Findings – The chief objective of the Digital library program is to prepare information intermediaries for effective contribution to their particular communities and societies, in order to assist present and future generations of digital natives to negotiate the digital information environment effectively. This includes, for example, the necessity for digital librarians to be able to teach cultural competency, critical information literacies and knowledge value mapping, as well as understanding the new standards and formats that are still being developed in order to capture, store, describe, locate and preserve digital materials.

Research limitations – In this chapter, we propose describing the work we have done thus far, with special reference to the development of a model of the role of the digital librarian, including competencies, skills, knowledge base and praxis.

Social implications – Amongst the various issues that have arisen and demanded consideration and investigation are the importance of a multidisciplinarity dimension in the education of digital librarians, as information work is orthogonal to other disciplinary and cultural categorisations; that a gradual convergence or confluence is being identified between various cultural institutions which include libraries, archives and museums; the new modes of learning and teaching, with particular regard to knowledge translation and the learner-generated environment or context; and possibly even a reconsideration of the role of the information professional and new service models for their praxis.

Originality/value – The chapter tries to evidence the present debate about digital librarianship in Europe.