Library Research Support Services

This chapter addresses library research services at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC), an institution engaged with science and technology that clearly emerges as a research university. Due to the attributes of the UPC, its library, publications, and archives services differ from traditional libraries and have been transformed over its lifetime to offer services to researchers that fit their current and future needs. Librarians are actively seeking personalized solutions to meet researchers' needs. The Research Service Charter of the UPC libraries includes a range of assets related to UPC researchers as producers of new scientific output and as primary agents of its dissemination.

A comparison of collaborative compliance agreements between taxpayers and revenue authorities : lessons for South Africa

Conventional methods to close the tax gap and increase government revenue by facilitating and enforcing taxpayer compliance have been all but exhausted. New opportunities to mend the taxpayer’s relationship with the revenue authority do exist through the establishment of collaborative compliance agreements. This research investigated global cooperative-compliance enhancing taxation policies and strategies. After assessing the aptitude of South Africa’s taxation infrastructure to assimilate new compliance policies and then ascertaining and applying the recommendations of relevant experts, compliance strategy proposals were suggested for adoption locally. The study focused on four major tax compliance themes of transparency, education, responsive regulation and reintegrative enforcement, together with their associated compliance strategies, which could improve the taxpayer-authority relationship. A qualitative research methodology was adopted and fifteen interviews were conducted with relevant experts who could provide knowledgeable opinions on the issues raised. The respondent tax experts confirmed the importance of these themes as well as the need to introduce the eight compliance strategies, which were proposed. The study concluded by recommending the following strategies: Simplified Personal Taxpayers Receipt, the publication of Compliance Statistics, tax Enculturation and Aptitude development to form part of the Economics and Management Sciences curriculum, a Taxpayers’ Week, the development of a Responsive Service Charter, a Compliance Rewards System, and the introduction of Reintegrative Shaming to rehabilitate non-compliant taxpayers.

Collaborative learning: Businesses and HE co-create

This novel research pivoted around a collaborative cyclical learning experience between businesses in a City Centre scape and a local Higher Education Institution. This concept provided for a dual aspect to learning; third level MBA students in parallel with business operatives in a City. The students were tasked with addressing a business problem in cooperation with City Hall and to write a ‘service charter for this city’, while being assessed for progression for their MBA. This Collaborative experiential learning (Kolb, & Kolb, 2017) centred on a group of 22 MBA students while they interacted with 20 businesses in a European City to research, develop and write a service charter. Details of the development of the charter per se are not dealt with in this paper, just the experience of its development by the students and business alike. Finding novel ways to assess third level students is always a challenge for Higher Education Institutions. Imagine the opportunity of being placed at the fulcrum of learning and business development through a dual aspect collaborative learning challenge and experiential learning. An experimental approach was afforded to MBA level 9 students when they were tasked with writing a ‘Service Charter ‘for their City – while in parallel, being assessed through ‘problem solving’ for 5 ECTS credits with the third level partner. The dual aspect of learning and co-creation between businesses and college began when the students sought to solve a problem for City businesses and find a solution to their problem and reflect on it, and the second, when a recommendation came from the research that the businesses needed to undertake further training in order to implement the plan of the final City Service Charter.

Indicadores de desempenho da Aduana do Brasil: em busca de uma abordagem equilibrada

A aquisição de insumos produtivos no mercado internacional é prática corrente em cadeias de suprimentos globais, com as operações logísticas incluindo atividades de importação e exportação. Assim, a aduana é um elo que deve ser considerado na gestão global de cadeias de suprimentos. Tais atividades são normalmente complexas, uma vez que estão sujeitas a requisitos aduaneiros diferenciados por país. Neste contexto, a aduana brasileira é posicionada como de baixa competitividade em vários rankings produzidos por organismos internacionais. São escassos os estudos sobre administração aduaneira (aduana) no Brasil, sendo que não existem pesquisas abordando medição de desempenho neste contexto. Sendo assim, este trabalho objetiva apresentar indicadores de desempenho utilizados por administrações aduaneiras em todo o mundo, bem como compará-los com a realidade da aduana do Brasil e discutir potenciais benefícios ao país na adoção de uma nova abordagem alinhada com as melhores práticas internacionais. Como pesquisa qualitativa do tipo exploratória, foi feita uma comparação dos indicadores de desempenho utilizados como melhores práticas e os indicadores brasileiros. A coleta de dados utilizou indicadores de desempenhos levantados por organizações internacionais. Por parte da aduana brasileira, foi feita consulta pública ao Ministério da Fazenda, utilizando-se da Lei de Acesso à Informação, além de Relatórios de Gestão da Receita do Brasil, órgão responsável pela administração tributária e aduaneira. Esta temática se mostra particularmente relevante no Brasil, pois os indicadores utilizados até então privilegiam a arrecadação e os controles (com práticas relacionadas ao enforcement) e não o nível de serviço prestado ao contribuinte (com práticas relacionadas ao compliance e ao service charter), tal como utilizado em países com elevado desempenho aduaneiro. Como resultado, a análise dos indicadores utilizados no Brasil evidencia a necessidade de reforma do sistema aduaneiro, privilegiando uma abordagem equilibrada no enforcement e no compliance, de modo a contribuir para ganhos de competitividade em cadeias internacionais que passam pelo país.

A Critical Review of New Public Management Reforms in Korea

This paper argues the limits of New Public Management reforms. More precisely, it examines the process of introducing pulic service charters in Korean local governments simply benchmarking fom western countries. Having elaborated two opposing models, the Jupiter and Hercules models, this paper defines public service charter as a reform based on the Hercules model, which goes against Korean public administration based on Jupiter model. From this theoretical viewpoint, I examine the way of introducing this reform and discuss its questionable cost and effectiveness.