The relatively good recycling performance in Brazil is associated to material recovery chains involving a huge number of informal waste collectors. Over the past decades, social activists have supported grassroots recycling cooperatives and these organizations have spread around the country becoming consecrated in the National solid waste policy as a legitimate form to organize recycling. This article analyses the emergence of “solidarity recycling” in Brazil, addressing the cultural and political relations and processes that have led to its legitimation. Cross-fertilizing Bourdieu’s sociological approach and the strategic action fields perspective, a qualitative, retrospective, and longitudinal study was conducted using secondary and primary data from various sources. Evidence shows that the emergence of solidarity recycling has resulted from both structural convergences and strategic actions unfolding across multiple fields, indicating the complementarity of the used approaches and the importance of accounting for the interconnection of arenas.
The financialization of the economy has been extensively studied in economic and organizational sociology. This literature focuses on changes in organizations associated to the shareholder value culture and on how financialization influences several domains of life. Based on the literature from this broad scope of social impacts of financialization and on sociological approaches to old age, this paper analyzes the predominant conceptions of old age diffused by the Brazilian business press in the context of increasing longevity of the population and their relation with the emergence of the financialized economy in Brazil. To address the issue, we carried out a content analysis of the 636 issues of Exame, the main Brazilian business magazine, comprising the period from 1990 to 2014. A corpus of 230 articles was then selected and systematically assessed. The results were analyzed combining ideas from the Reflexive Sociology of Bourdieu and the Pragmatic Sociology of Boltanski. Four ideas or aspects prevailed in the material assessed: i.) planning for retirement; ii.) rationalized life and financial approach to old age; iii.) population aging and its micro and macroeconomic impacts, and; iv.) generational demarcation and disputes in organizations. Economic logic was dominant, reflecting in more or less explicit proposals of a financial model to frame life.
O Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) é uma maneira de empresas manufatureiras alcançarem flexibilidade. Este é um elemento-chave para diferenciação e potencialização da competitividade. Há poucas pesquisas empíricas cujo tema permeia micro e pequenas empresas (MPEs) e flexibilidade da produção, o que pode impactar a apropriação dessa abordagem por esses importantes atores da nossa economia. Este artigo objetiva demonstrar os resultados de uma pesquisa de campo que utilizou o QRM para propor ações capazes de reduzir o lead time da linha de termoelétricos de uma pequena empresa familiar do interior paulista. Foram propostos a) o equilíbrio dos throughputs das operações lentas, reduzindo 50% dos lotes de produção seguido de reduções gradativas; b) a implantação da manufatura celular e melhorias da gestão dos estoques intermediários, utilizando o sistema POLCA e gestão visual; c) a implantação de um planejamento integrado de vendas e operações e regras para priorização de pedidos. Identificou-se que a proposta geraria uma redução de lead time de 39 para 21,3 dias e uma redução inicial de 51% no custo do estoque de matéria prima, podendo chegar até 69%. Notaram-se: a) problemas de gestão, capacidade de investimento e relação com fornecedores, frequentes em MPEs familiares; b) o QRM pode ser adaptado para as necessidades de MPEs; c) a importância da interação entre o conhecimento desenvolvido na academia e as pequenas empresas familiares.
Important research efforts have been developed to account for power in the analysis of supply chains. This paper argues that further gains may arise by considering organizations as social constructions mediated not only by power relations, but also by cultural representations intrinsically intertwined to it. Its purpose is to discuss the dynamics of stability and change in supply chains based on the Strategic Action Fields (SAFs) approach. A theoretical essay was elaborated discussing some of the main implications of this perspective to the study of supply chains and presenting propositions to enable the construction of research objects and guide empirical studies in the area. Propositions emphasize how ongoing cultural-political relations circumscribed to different fields, including the organization, with its internal disputes.
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