Submitted by Kleber Silva (kleberbs@ufba.br) on 2017-05-31T19:45:42Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Versão final - Carol Passos.pdf: 2786576 bytes, checksum: 51176f0a4d3c8a2ac70f4fa2b6818b2c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vanessa Reis (vanessa.jamile@ufba.br) on 2017-06-06T14:52:01Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Versão final - Carol Passos.pdf: 2786576 bytes, checksum: 51176f0a4d3c8a2ac70f4fa2b6818b2c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-06T14:52:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Versão final - Carol Passos.pdf: 2786576 bytes, checksum: 51176f0a4d3c8a2ac70f4fa2b6818b2c (MD5) / Many theories in health care and business administration seek answers to the fundamental question of why people behave the way they do. They aim to understand the beliefs underlying an intention or behavior. These theories are currently used to find out how people progress from intention to practice in business environments. In this dissertation, we focus our attention on understanding belief systems behind software engineering practice. Our work aims to characterize a belief system applying behavioral theories in software project teams in terms of the influence factors, such as beliefs, attitude, organizational culture and values, subjective norms, team confidence and autonomy, that actually impact on software practices in industrial settings. Our research went through two cycles, comprising three years of study in Brazilian software companies. A long-term ethnographic case study was conducted, employing participant observation, interviews, and document analysis. A set of interviews on origins and impacts of beliefs was performed with professionals from different project teams and companies. Conceptual frameworks were built based on behavioral theories models to focus and bound the collection of data and guide the synthesis of the results on the research questions posed. The results showed the strong influence of past experiences and organizational contexts on the software development practices of project teams. Based on the findings of the research, it became clear that beliefs alone do not lead project teams to action and behavior. Factors such as attitude toward behavior have a significant influence on practice. New information about something contribute to shape an opinion or predisposition to act and have the potential to affect the attitude depending on the strength of related beliefs, which leads to behavior intention. Another important issue is how consonant are the beliefs of a project team. Common strong beliefs are reflected into practices that project teams actually adopt. However there are beliefs without attitude that do not result in action, as well as team conflicts that hinder the adoption of new practices. All these findings motivated a search for behavioral theories that could explain and conceptualize human behavior. The study showed that it is possible to characterize belief systems in software project contexts within a behavioral perspective. We were able to provide rich narrative accounts for software engineering research and our approach has led to practical and useful recommendations for companies. The main contribution of this dissertation is to deepen relevant knowledge and experience on the characterization of beliefs in organizational contexts and how they and other influence factors actually impact practices, processes and decisions in software industry projects.

When an individual goes from employee to leader, they are forced to go through a role-formation process. The first-time leader faces new challenges from both employees and organizations that he or she must deal with. The first-time leader may either need to create a new relationship with the employees or already have a relationship which changes during role formation. The aim is to highlight, through interviews with seven first-time leaders in Sweden, the factors that are relevant to role formation and the challenges the leader faces.The empirical material is analyzed through Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory and Hersey och Blanchard's leadership theory. The concepts of Symbolic Perspective and Role Exit are also central to the study. The results show that experiences, culture and values are factors that can influence individuals in the formation of a new role. It also shows that the leadership style is both shaped by role formation but also helps to create the role. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the first-time leader needs selfawareness to identify development opportunities and meet the requirements and expectations that exist.

The diploma thesis deals with company culture and work engagement and it aims to explore the relationship between these two concepts in the field of psychology of work and organization. The theoretical part describes in detail the topic of company culture, its relationship with other aspects of the work environment and the possibility of measuring it with a focus on the Competitive Value Model (CVF). The next part presents work engagement, methods of its measurement, connection to work behaviour and other consequences. The empirical part presents quantitative research, in which answers were collected from 126 respondents who came from 10 different companies. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between company culture and engagement at the individual level. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) was used to examine company culture, and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) was used to obtain information on the level of engagement. The hypotheses verified the existence of a relationship between engagement and individual types of company culture and the difference between the degree of engagement concerning the dominant type of company culture. The results were analyzed by a combination of Multiple factor analysis, Chi-square test and correlations. The results...