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The aim of this article is to contribute to the field of social businesses, particularly considering the dimension of social innovation.

The authors adopted a qualitative approach, whose purpose is to gather in-depth insights into a problem to understand its contextual elements and interrelations. The authors used an exploratory descriptive design and a multiple case study, which allows the identification of similarities and differences in the research subjects. They developed a scale that enables the classification of the operation logic of the social businesses analyzed.

It became evident that social businesses present a few differences in their modus operandi: those based on a social logic are more concerned with the generation of socio-environmental value, however with small-scale innovation; in contrast, social business guided by a market logic do not intend to generate socio-environmental value in different dimensions and are more concerned with the wider range of their innovations.

This research analyzed social businesses from a founder and manager perspective and did not comprise all stakeholders. The purpose of this study was not to measure the effective impact generated by innovation, but to understand its potential to generate socio-environmental value.

The generation of socio-environmental value and the strategies to expand practices of social innovation are associated with the operation logic of social business.

The created scale allowed the classification of social businesses in terms of operation logic (greater emphasis on market or social aspects) and proposes a few dimensions to evaluate a socio-environmental innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the determining factors in the performance of integrated vocational education schools, in addition to management characteristics and specificities.

By means of a descriptive study with a qualitative approach, a case study was conducted in two schools located in the cities of Cotia and São Roque.

The following factors were identified: engagement and commitment of teachers; motivation and focus of teachers and students; team of professionals; commitment and focus of students; family involvement; leadership and climate and selection of students. The following characteristics were observed: participative leadership associated with the use of management tools; pedagogical leadership in partnership with the school community; monitoring of student performance; performance assessment and training of teachers related to career plan; selection of students and actions along the community.

The results reflect the vision of the schools' managers and teachers and not that of the managing institution. There is no intention whatsoever to obtain generalization to other ETECs but rather inferences that could shed light on future studies.

This research ratifies what has already been proven in the literature, showing that there are no isolated factors that interfere with performance, but an interrelationship among them, given the characteristics and peculiarities of each school.

This study is expected to contribute to guiding school managers and teachers in the search for quality education, whether vocational or regular basic education.

This paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the 1995 administrative reform proposal announced by the Brazilian government. The reform proposal, described in the Directive Plan on the Reform of the Governmental Apparatus – a document publicly released by the Brazilian authorities – argues that the need for reform springs from a “crisis of the state”, involving three aspects: a fiscal crisis resulting from the incapacity of the government to face current public services costs; the collapse of interventionist governments within a global economy; and the failure of the bureaucratic model in the delivery of public services. Adopting the theoretical reform strategy framework developed by Matus in 1996, this paper focuses on eight aspects of the reform in discussing strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the paper discusses the similarities of the reform proposal to the administrative reform undertaken by the Brazilian government in 1967, the effects of the current political environment on the reform proposal and the role of administrative reform in governmental policies. The overall conclusion is that, in addition to the lack of a clear implementation strategy, the administrative reform proposal over‐emphasizes the solving of the fiscal crisis and ignores the role of reform in addressing problems of inequality. Consequently, the reform may lack purpose if it is not strategically connected to wider and encompassing policies aimed at ameliorating acute social problems.