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The erosion of the Portuguese minimum income protection scheme
Get PDFWhile minimum income protection (MIP) is central on a European level, as demonstrated by the European Pillar of Social Rights, national policies display huge variations, reflecting different domestic guidelines and political and socio‐economic dynamics. The literature has shown that the adequacy of MIPs and their role in social protection systems varies significantly, not only between countries but also over time. However, as most studies adopt large-N comparative perspectives, it is not possible to identify whether policy changes affect the programs’ generosity or how. This article bridges this gap by taking Portugal as a specific case study and examining the degree of generosity of its MIP—the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI), later renamed Social Insertion Income (SII). GMI/SII has outlasted other schemes and is unique within the Southern European welfare regime, partly because, since it started, it has undergone several transformations, which have impacted its ability to provide adequate coverage. The article applies a hypothetical simulation approach to assess the impact of policy change on the generosity of GMI/SII over time. The results demonstrate that alterations introduced over time have had negative effects on different aspects of the adequacy of GMI/SII—and to varying degrees.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Decline processes in technological innovation systems: Lessons from energy technologies
Get PDFTechnology decline is gaining attention in sustainability transitions because it can accelerate the adoption of sustainable alternatives and mitigate the lingering impacts of polluting technologies. However, a systematic analysis of the processes driving the decline of established technologies remains absent. This paper addresses this gap by introducing the concept of “decline functions,” inspired by the functional analysis of technological innovation systems (TIS). While traditional TIS functions make emerging systems thrive, decline functions contribute to the unravelling of faltering systems. Four decline functions are suggested: delegitimation, guidance toward exit, market decline, and resource demobilization. These functions are applied to four energy-technology cases: incandescent light bulbs, oil-based heating, nuclear power and internal combustion engine cars. Data were collected through a directed literature review. Our analysis reveals that all four decline functions were present and played important roles across the cases. These functions offer a systematic framework for analyzing and comparing cases of declining TIS and can provide actionable insights for policymakers to accelerate sustainability transitions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Protocol: Attitudinal factors related to the use of digital technologies in health by older adults: Protocol for an overview of reviews: A systematic review
Get PDFThis is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objective is as follows: to consolidate the available evidence on attitudinal aspects related to the utilisation of digital technologies in health among older adults. More specifically, we will summarise and systematise the existing reviews findings to identify attitudinal factors that interfere with the use of digital technologies in health in advanced age and to determine whether these factors act as facilitators or barriers. We will also compare the influence of attitudinal factors on technology use behaviour, considering the type of technology in question, and the purpose and context of its use. The overview of reviews questions are the following: (1) What are the attitudinal factors related to the use of digital technologies in health by older adults? (2) Which of these factors facilitate the use of digital technologies in health, and which make it difficult? (3) Are the attitudinal factors that facilitate and make difficult the use of digital technologies in health different for different types of technologies? (4) Are the attitudinal factors that facilitate and make difficult the use of digital technologies in health different for different purposes and contexts of use of these technologies?info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
SA-MAIS: Hybrid automatic sentiment analyser for stock market
Get PDFSentiment analysis of stock-related tweets is a challenging task, not only due to the specificity of the domain but also because of the short nature of the texts. This work proposes SA-MAIS, a two-step lightweight methodology, specially adapted to perform sentiment analysis in domain-constrained short-text messages. To tackle the issue of domain specificity, based on word frequency, the most relevant words are automatically extracted from the new domain and then manually tagged to update an existing domain-specific sentiment lexicon. The sentiment classification is then performed by combining the updated domain-specific lexicon with VADER sentiment analysis, a well-known and widely used sentiment analysis tool. The proposed method is compared with other well-known and widely used sentiment analysis tools, including transformer-based models, such as BERTweet, Twitter-roBERTa and FinBERT, on a domain-specific corpus of stock market-related tweets comprising 1 million messages. The experimental results show that the proposed approach largely surpasses the performance of the other sentiment analysis tools, reaching an overall accuracy of 72.0%. The achieved results highlight the advantage of using a hybrid method that combines domain-specific lexicons with existing generalist tools for the inference of textual sentiment in domain-specific short-text messages.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Constructing smarter and more sustainable urban ecosystems: A dynamic analysis of challenges and initiatives
Get PDFCities’ weaknesses have been revealed by their struggle to respond to current challenges (e.g., pandemic crises and population and urbanization exponential growth). Urban planners are thus increasingly concerned about implementing initiatives in their metropolises that favor a better present and future quality of life. In this context, cities need to become enablers of economic and social development and increased prosperity through the integration of technologies into projects promoting smarter and more sustainable urban ecosystems. These ecosystems are, however, highly complex due to their specificities and multifaceted nature, which makes analyzing them a difficult endeavor. Based on a constructivist and complementarity logic, this study sought to develop a multicriteria analysis model to support relevant decision-making processes in this study context. A panel of experts was recruited to create the analysis system using a combination of cognitive mapping and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory technique in an neutrosophic context. This approach overcomes various flaws identified in previous related research. The entire procedure focused on enhancing the experts’ learning through participation not only to structure the problem under analysis but also to identify and prioritize the factors and/or determinants of smartness and urban sustainability. The model provides a holistic, solid, and clear vision of the decision problem that fosters appropriate choices when creating and evaluating smart, sustainable urban ecosystems.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Mapping DevOps capabilities to the software life cycle: A systematic literature review
No full textContext:
Many IT organizations are looking towards DevOps to make their software development and delivery processes faster and more reliable, while DevOps revolutionized the industry by emphasizing collaboration between development and operations teams. Nonetheless, there still exist challenges in harmonizing cultural, technical, measurement and process capabilities for its successful adoption.
Objective:
To research improving DevOps adoption, this study explores DevOps Capabilities relevant to the Life Cycle Processes (LCPs) of the IEEE 2675-2021 DevOps standard. Aiming to provide valuable information on increasing efficiency and outcomes by mapping DevOps Capabilities in each phase of the LCPs. Whereas previous research identified and classified 37 DevOps Capabilities, this study aims to determine which capabilities can enhance each of the 30 phases of the LCPs.
Methods:
Out of 102 documents identified in the Systematic Literature Review (SLR), relations among DevOps Capabilities and LCPs have been synthesized and organized. An in-depth analysis of data was conducted over the connections across various categories. The mapping revealed how they relate in terms of their application and impact.
Results:
The SLR shows technical DevOps Capabilities and technical LCPs strongly correlated. DevOps measurement capabilities have a significant impact on agreement processes. Using an impact scale classification, the study identifies eight capabilities that have exceptional impact on LCPs and eleven capabilities that have a very high impact on the supply process, requirements definition, integration process, and validation process.
Conclusion:
The study demonstrates how DevOps Capabilities together with LCPs can improve software delivery, quality, and reliability. It presents a structured approach for improving processes, as well as evidence of DevOps integration in software development and maintenance. The findings help to assess DevOps Capabilities and LCP relations, which is expected to improve successful adoption. Future research should focus on researching practical cases of DevOps integration into LCPs, while overcoming adoption challenges.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
The collaboration of higher education with the business: The barriers to employers’ engagement
Get PDFWe examine employers’ perception of the collaboration of higher education (HE) with business and the barriers to employers’ engagement. A sample of 162 employers from Portugal filled an original survey, in 2020, designed to examine the relationship between HE and the world of work. The employers differ in the perception of the collaboration of HE with business, and this is reflected in their engagement. Some employers indicate that HE should focus on general skills, and therefore should be autonomous from business (64.8%). Those employers do not report any barriers. Others blame HE for being an ivory tower that disregards their skill needs and imposes cultural barriers on engagement, namely lack of business knowledge, difficulties to communicate with organisations and respond to immediate skills need, and mismatch between the motivations of HE and organisations (24.1%). Finally, some firms acknowledge the excessive focus of HE on academic courses and complementarily undertake the responsibility to resolve their skill problems by means of own training resources (11.1%). We can infer from our findings that not all employers expect ready-to-work graduates and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for skill problems. Firms have agency and implement appropriate strategies. The discourse against HE should therefore be reassessed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Mind the gap! LGBTQ + population’s perceptions of discrimination and of legal innovation
Get PDFIntroduction
Homosexuality was decriminalized in Portugal in 1982, and several legislative changes have emerged since the beginning of the twenty-first century. However, 2010 marked the beginning of the approval of fundamental laws for the life of LGBTQ + people, such as same-sex marriage, access to parenthood and the right to self-determination of gender identity. Despite these advances, discrimination is still present in Portuguese society.
Methods
The aim of this investigation is to study the processes and experiences of discrimination of LGBTQ + people in their daily lives, analyzing the perception of the discrepancy between legislation and the experiences of participants. Its aim is also to analyze the strategies suggested by the participants to reduce this discrepancy. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 LGBTQ + participants, of various sexual orientations (six gay men, three lesbian women, six bisexual persons, five pansexual individuals, and one who identified as “other”) and gender identities (six transgender participants, including two trans men, two non-binary persons, one trans woman, and one genderqueer participant).
Results
Content analysis of these interviews resulted in 828 units of analysis coded in 30 categories. The participants reported that they have gone through multiple experiences of discrimination in different contexts and that they recognize forces of resistance to legal innovation.
Conclusion
There is a gap between legal advances and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in Portugal, who still report discrimination experiences in many domains of daily life.
Policy Implications
Implications for research and public policies are presented, particularly considering the need to inform and provide training to both strategic audiences and stakeholders and to inform the larger population to promote social change.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Tracing the evolution of digitalisation research in business and management fields: Bibliometric analysis, topic modelling and deep learning trend forecasting
Get PDFResearch on digitalisation trends and digital topics has become one of the most prolific streams of research within the fields of business and management during the course of the past few years. The purpose of this study is to provide a general picture of the intellectual structure and the conceptual space of this research realm. To this purpose, 6067 publications related to digital topics, indexed in the business and management categories of Web of Science (WoS), and dated from 1990 to 2020 are explored based on the approaches of bibliometric analysis, topic modelling and trend forecasting. The results of the bibliometric analysis comprise insights into the publication and citation structure, the most productive authors, the most productive universities, the most productive countries, the most productive journals, the most cited studies and the most prevalent themes and sub-themes on digitalisation in business and management. In addition, the outcomes of the topic modelling give new knowledge on the latent topical structure along with the rising, falling and fluctuating trends of this literature. In addition, the results of the trend forecasting enable readers to have a glimpse of how the underlying trends of the literature will probably change within the next years until 2025. These results provide guidance and orientation for both academics and practitioners who are initiating or currently developing their efforts in this discipline.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio
The role of work engagement and psychological safety in how socially responsible human resources management affects employee voice behaviour
Get PDFPurpose
This study aims to explore the role of socially responsible human resource management (SRHRM) as a key driver of employee voice behaviour. The hypotheses included that these human resources management (HRM) practices strengthen employees’ motivation to voice their opinions by increasing their work engagement (WE), thereby encouraging them to share their ideas and concerns about their organization more actively. The hypotheses also proposed that this effect is especially pronounced when employees experience a heightened sense of psychological safety.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey-based correlational study was conducted with a sample of 289 participants to analyse the proposed relationships between the selected variables.
Findings
The results indicate that SRHRM and WE are significantly associated with both promotive and prohibitive voice behaviour among employees. In addition, the moderated mediation model revealed that employees who perceive their organization as adopting SRHRM practices display higher levels of WE, which in turn increases these individuals’ likelihood of engaging in both types of voice behaviour. This relationship is particularly strong for promotive voice when employees experience high levels of organizational psychological safety.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are limited by the cross-sectional research design, which restricts causal inference.
Practical implications
By adopting people-centred HRM practices, organizations can foster psychologically safe environments that enhance employees’ willingness to engage in behaviour beneficial to their organization, such as WE and voice behaviours.
Originality/value
The results highlight the critical role of SRHRM and offer evidence-based insights into how interventions can foster positive employee behaviours and attitudes, including WE and voice behaviour.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio