PurposeThe maintenance of process improvement programs within organizations is not an easy task. Some processes do not maintain the results achieved with the improvement project and again present low performance shortly after completion of the project. This paper aims to identify the socio-technical causes responsible for the loss of process performance after applying improvement projects, in order to support the mitigation of the problem.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review of the literature was carried out, which allowed the selection of 28 articles. The empirical stage used the benchmarking technique, along a large Brazilian mining company with an international standard of production and quality. This organization has been using improvement projects for more than ten years.FindingsThe research complements the literature regarding the prioritization of the 26 identified failures and the identification of seven new failure factors and two resources. Findings in this study can be an inspiration for other organizations, considering the similarity of methodological aspects of improvement projects since internationally standardized methodologies such as Six Sigma, Lean, Kaizen and 5S are used.Originality/valueThe research presented a proposal of guidelines that corroborate to the mitigation of loss of process performance after improvement project.

Goal: Raise in the literature of project and process management the critical success factors needed to implement a competitive strategy aiming to rank them and to recommend guidelines for a successful competitive strategy implementation. Design / Methodology / Approach: In order to reach the desired objectives, a research was carried out in the literature, enabling the creation of the questionnaire applied as a data collection instrument and the use of relative frequency analysis and measure of central tendency, mode, as the statistical treatments. Results: All the 42 requirements raised in the literature were considered as critical success factors for competitive strategy implementation and the analysis of the professionals' answers made it possible to include a further 12 critical success factors. Limitations of the investigation: The size of the sample, which was conditioned to the number of respondents of the questionnaire distributed by electronic means. And because the size of the population is unknown it is not possible to realize generalizations. Practical implications: A recommendation for companies was prepared through four priority actions in the competitive strategy implementation. The research concluded that beyond the pillar’s strategy, processes and projects, people, in the figure of client or employees, need to be included as one of the bases for competitive advantage. Originality / Value: The scheme ranking the requirements relevance for competitive strategy implementation is a way to support companies to promote actions to adapt the corporate environment so that all of productive links are aligned with the strategic objectives.

The aim of the paper is to analyze how agile management practices are being adopted by specialists from software development technology companies in Brazil, identifying actions that contribute to the success of software implementation, aiming to ensure the survival of organizations in the market. The study counted with a literature review to support the field research with software development specialists who use the agile methodology and work in Brazil in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The results were analyzed through a descriptive statistics and content analysis. The research identified that the companies that adopt agile software management methodology in Brazil prefer the Scrum method and the development teams may be geographically distributed. The main positive points identified when adopting agile methods were the process speed, team involvement, maximization of results, involvement with the client, and simplicity. Most experts identified problems in the implementation of the agile methodology and as points of attention: management of distributed teams, scope estimation and communication. It was possible to identify the existence of a positive financial result by adopting the agile method for software development projects, as well as actions that contribute to the success of these projects, such as controlling quality using different testing techniques, project management, time, stakeholders, scope, and have agile communication, with feedback and good leadership. On the other hand, it was observed in the statistics that, although efficient, this method is still not being widely used. This research can contribute to the managers of software development companies in the use of agile methods as well as improving management decision-making.

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This article aims to identify the contribution that the Social Network Analysis (SNA) can offer to the construction of the scientific production in postgraduate programs in Federal Institutions of Higher Education in Brazil. For that, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 184 dissertations of a stricto sensu postgraduate program of the Federal Fluminense University, during the period from 2015 to 2016, was carried out, emphasizing its network of relationships focused on knowledge areas and on the respective teachers as counselors, participants and guests of the thesis defenses, using the Ucinet software. Based on the literature review, a detailed analysis of the academic work of these two years was also elaborated based on the data registered in the Capes Platform, Sucupira database and on the website of the Laboratory of Technology, Business Management and Environment of the Fluminense Federal University (LATEC / UFF). The themes of the areas of knowledge, trends, and evolution were also analyzed over the periods studied. It is concluded that the results of this system applied in a case, demonstrated the feasibility of the evaluation of the individual attributes and also of the networks as a whole, offering a comparative of their evolution in these two periods explored, thus demonstrating the valuable contribution of SNA in scientific production. This study revealed, at the time of the research, the construction of a first academic social network in this postgraduate program.

Knowledge Management in the organizational sphere brings new perspectives to the business, since it generates value for the processes that is fundamental for the development of products and services. Within this context, this study aims to analyze, in a polysemy perspective, the fundamentals, characteristics and applications of knowledge management in organizational development and demonstrate how through competitive intelligence, built on knowledge and informational competence, it is possible to achieve good results and improve the positioning in the market, using the proposed model of organizational competitive intelligence generation. Based on the literature analysis, it was verified that perception of the alignment between Knowledge Management and organizational objectives is important to ensure adjustment of actions with the strategic objectives of the company constituting, therefore, a competitive differential in organizations. In addition, Knowledge Management systematized by the PDCA tool, implemented in continuous actions andprocesses, brings good results, such as the involvement of the organization's strategic level, which, with technology as a tool, creates a platform for the communities of virtual practices.

Este estudo bio-bibliométrico tem como objetivo mapear a evolução da rede de colaboração e o acúmulo do capital científico do retratado - Cesar Gomes Victora ao longo de 40 anos. Optou-se pela base de dados bibliográficos Scopus como fonte principal para composição do corpus das redes de autores composto (n=502) artigos de periódicos, separados em quatro coleções por décadas 1977-1986;1987-1996;1997-2006 e 2007-2016 para configuração das redes de colaboração e do acúmulo de capital científico em uma linha do tempo. Os resultados mostraram o crescimento expressivo do número de publicações e de colaborações nas quatro décadas. O número e a força de ligação ocorreram com maior expressão nos últimos 20 anos. A década mais produtiva foi de 2007 a 2016. O acúmulo do capital científico tanto institucional, como específico foram construídos em contextos local e global conferiram ao Cesar Gomes Victora autoridade internacional no campo materno-infantil.