Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Nesta dissertação temos como foco de investigação os processos comunicacionais que articulam as ações e lutas de movimentos sociais populares, atuantes no município de São Gonçalo, cidade de periferia urbana, localizada no leste metropolitano do Rio de Janeiro. Através dos meios de comunicação e mídias, produzidos e ou apropriados por alguns movimentos listados, especialmente em se tratando de associações de moradores e amigos de bairro, buscamos pistas sobre como o direito à educação vem sendo implementado no município. Para tanto, temos como fonte documental a Lei N056/2006 que implantou o Plano Municipal de Educação de São Gonçalo (PMESG), estabelecido para o decênio 20062016, os Planos Nacionais de Educação (2000 e 2011), entre outros documentos legislativos que direcionam a garantia desse direito. Do ponto de vista metodológico, fazemos um levantamento das associações de moradores e amigos de bairro do município, e dos meios de comunicação e mídias utilizados por esses movimentos em suas lutas relativas ao direito à educação de qualidade social, tais como: ofícios, cartazes, jornais comunitários, blogs, sites, etc. Compreendemos que abordar tais meios produzidos pelos movimentos sociais populares de São Gonçalo, tendoos, como mecanismo contrahegemônico de luta política, significa também, recuperar a vigência do popular nos estudos históricos, resituando o lugar do popular como parte da memória na constituição do processo histórico pelos movimentos sociais nas lutas pelo direito à educação.

This dissertation follows the analysis of communication processes established in the discipline Calculus Differential and Integral I of course degree in mathematics at the Center for Distance Higher Studies, Federal University of Sergipe, partner institution of the program Open University of Brazil. This is a qualitative research, case study with a phenomenological approach, with the use of elements ethnographic. The subjects were students, tutors and teacher discipline coordinator bound to Calculus I course in the school period 2010/2 of that institution. The dissertation focused on the following problem: how were established communication processes between the group tutor-student- teacher discipline coordinator in the context of the Calculus I discipline and how it interfered in the process of teaching and learning of this group. We tried to build a clash of ideas from studies of Vygotsky (1991, 1996), Morin (2005, 2009, 2010) and Peters (2003, 2004) regarding communication and interrelationships with the teaching and learning. In view of the aspects analyzed the study pointed out that the processes of communication between subjects occurred in a discontinuous manner and in the case of student-tutor occurred via e-mail or individual messages, and that the guidelines were articulated from written language only, so you could see that some of the difficulties with regard to learning content was related to the difficulties presented in the displacement of a teaching-learning developed from language "spoken " trampled to another predominantly written language. Due to this fact, some students have resorted to private tutors not linked to the UAB program. Another point worth mentioning is that the efficiency in relation to communication processes established between students-teachers- cut across the responsibilities of persons involved and into the limits of the tasks of a number of professionals who advised. / Esta dissertação decorre da análise dos processos de comunicação estabelecidos na disciplina Cálculo Diferencial e Integral I do curso de licenciatura em matemática do Centro de Estudos Superior a Distância da Universidade Federal de Sergipe, instituição parceira do programa Universidade Aberta do Brasil. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, estudo de caso com uma abordagem fenomenológica, com a utilização de elementos de natureza etnográfica. Os sujeitos foram os alunos, tutores e professor coordenador de disciplina vinculado a disciplina Cálculo I no período letivo 2010/2 da referida instituição. A investigação centrou-se no seguinte problema: de que maneira foram estabelecidos os processos de comunicação entre o grupo aluno-tutor- professor coordenador de disciplina no contexto da disciplina Cálculo I e como isso interferiu no processo de ensino-aprendizagem deste grupo. Buscou-se construir um embate de idéias a partir dos estudos de Vygotsky (1991, 1996), Morin (2005, 2009, 2010) e Peters (2003, 2004) no que concerne comunicação e as inter-relações com o ensino-aprendizagem. Diante dos aspectos analisados o estudo apontou que os processos de comunicação entre os sujeitos ocorreram de forma pontual, sendo que no caso de aluno-tutor ocorreu por meio de mensagens individuais. Os orientações foram articuladas a partir de linguagem exclusivamente escrita, sendo possível constatar que parte das dificuldades no que concerne a aprendizagem de conteúdos estava relacionada às dificuldades apresentadas no deslocamento de um ensinoaprendizagem desenvolvido a partir de linguagem oralizada para um outro calcado em linguagem predominantemente escrita. Em decorrência desse fato, alguns alunos recorreram a professores particulares não vinculados ao programa Universidade Aberta do Brasil. Outro ponto que vale destacar é que a eficiência em relação aos processos de comunicação estabelecidos entre alunos-tutores-professor coordenador de disciplina perpassam as responsabilidades dos sujeitos envolvidos e adentra os limites das incumbências de uma série de profissionais que os assessoraram.

Many organizations needed to have a remote workplace during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to many organizations now having a hybrid workplace after the pandemic. To understand this phenomenon, there is an importance of understanding the structures that appear within organizations that have a hybrid workplace. The aim of this study was to understand which social structures are created by communication processes in an organization, that for the first time is a hybrid workplace. The aim of the study is answered by these two questions:  How are communication processes adapted in a hybrid workplace?How are structures maintained in a hybrid workplace? The theoretical approach of the study is the Theory of Structuration by Anthony Giddens. This is a case study of one organization that has a hybrid workplace. The used method was semi structured interviews, which were analyzed through a thematic analysis.  The result showed that the Organization formed new structures due to new digital tools, the flexibility, the hybrid rule and the team's different actions. Since the employees of the Organization have begun to act on these aspects, new structures have been created. As they continue to follow these rules, the structures are maintained.  The study has contributed to an understanding of the hybrid workplace in Sweden, which nowadays is a relatively broad phenomenon. Because the phenomenon is relatively new, it is difficult to discern how a hybrid workplace should be structured at such an early stage of a change process.

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Thèse réalisée en co-tutelle avec le Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris. / Cette thèse opère principalement à deux niveaux, un niveau ethnographique et un niveau communicationnel. Je m’intéresse ici à l’étrange cas des jungles de garage nord-américaines et aux dizaines de milliers d’animaux dits « exotiques » qui les composent. Au cours de l’année 2011, j’ai parcouru plus de 25 000 kms à travers le continent, à la rencontre précisément de ces espaces postnaturalisés qui constituent désormais une part non négligeable (et pourtant souvent négligée) de nos paysages écologiques contemporains. Plus tout à fait sauvages, ni pour autant complètement domestiques, ces modes d’existence pionniers hantent désormais une zone grise de nos savoirs zoologiques, de nos avoirs culturels. En effet, ces humanimalités en devenir ne vont pas sans brouiller certaines de nos conceptions dichotomiques traditionnelles (telles nature/culture, humain/non-humain, proie/prédateur, dominant/dominé, émetteur/récepteur). À une époque où l’animal est régulièrement objet de débats théoriques, légaux, sociaux, politiques ou encore épistémologiques, la prise en compte renouvelée de ces singularités animales fournit ici d’importants précédents en matière d’adaptation, d’évolution et d’émergence. En livrant de la sorte les résultats d’ethnographies transpécifiques originales, j’offre ainsi à la discussion un matériel éthologique inédit touchant à la vie d’animaux a priori connus, mais dont les modalités existentielles actuelles restent encore largement méconnues. Ainsi, plutôt que de considérer l’animal d’un simple point de vue substantialiste ou bien encore depuis une stricte perspective hylémorphique, c’est-à-dire s’attachant essentiellement à des questions de forme et de matière (un tigre né et élevé en captivité, nourri de viande de supermarché et sous pilule contraceptive est-il toujours un tigre ?), je me concentre plutôt sur ces mouvements complexes d’information et de communication qui donnent forme à la matière et matière à la formation (et font du tigre d’aujourd’hui non plus l’alter ego du roi de la jungle, mais l’égal du chat de gouttière). Dans une perspective simondonienne, je conceptualise alors une certaine logique de l’individuation animale, que je rapporte à la part d’indétermination que comprend tout processus de communication. J’émets ainsi l’hypothèse que l'animalité, bien plus qu'une simple collection d’attributs, constitue en réalité un enchevêtrement toujours mouvementé de relationalités transductives. Ici, teckné et anima opèrent de manière disparate mais conjointe, pour alimenter partie de nos processus anthropogéniques. En puisant constamment dans un tel réservoir de differentialités, notre espèce ne cesse ainsi de se réinventer. Dès lors, les biomedia ne seront plus considérés comme la dernière itération de notre modernité technologique, se déplaçant lentement de matérialités inorganiques en potentialités organiques, mais bien plutôt compris tel un nouveau registre d’écriture du vivant opérant au cœur d’un potentiel d’inscription animatif continuellement remis en je(u). Parce que nos relations avec les animaux ont toujours été inséparables de nos devenirs respectifs, la manière dont nous sommes aujourd’hui aux prises avec certains de nos (anciens) prédateurs dit beaucoup, me semble-t-il, de notre à-venir et de cet animal-medium que nous logeons tous. Ici conceptualisées, ces jungles de garage renvoient à de puissants champs expérientiels, non pas dénaturés mais renaturalisés, au cœur desquels certains organismes démontrent, en réaction précisément à des pressions sélectives renouvelées, non seulement des réponses adaptatives surprenantes, mais initient aussi des processus innovants impliquant plusieurs niveaux d’individuations créatrices. / This thesis operates mainly on two levels: one is ethnographical, the other is communicationnal. I explore the curious case of North American jungle backyards in which « used-to-be-wild » animals are experiencing « almost-domesticated » existences while their daily lives are merged with that of Homo sapiens. As pets, guinea pigs or postnatural totems, these pioneer organisms not only feed the third most important black market in the world, they also blur our traditional zoological and philosophical apparatus (often driven by dichotomies between nature/culture, human/nonhuman, prey/predator, dominant/dominated, transmitter/receiver). In 2011, I traveled 16 000 miles all around the continent to explore some of these contemporary humanimal modalities. Hence, I examine important transpecific aspects of these modified ecological landscapes, in which known living organisms experience unknown reorganizations of life. In a Simondonian perspective, I reconceptualize animality and communication activities in order to readdress, along with the question of the animal, individuation processes and their inherent indetermination qualities – the kind, yet unseen, that contemporary jungle backyards silently nurture. At a time when animal rights and bioethics are regularly at stake (and indeed a serious preoccupation for societies that strive to leave behind medieval practices, but also attempt to cope with their biotechnological becomings), jungle backyards provide an original ethological dataset based not only on what an animal is or should be, but rather on what real animal existences actually consist of. In that respect, I offer firsthand material that may help to better navigate our common Ark, possibly facing a new environmental flood. Instead of considering animals from a reductive substancialist point of view or from a strict hylemorphic perspective, focusing on matters of form or forms of matter, I concentrate on movements that give form to matter and matter to form. I then suggest that animality, more than a simple collection of mere attributes or even a basic manifestation of an elaborate biochemical complex, constitutes an enmeshment constantly in motion made of transductive relationalities. Here, biomedia are not considered the latest bourgeon of our technological modernity, slowly shifting from inorganic materialities to organic potentialities, but rather an ancient deviation of natural forces (too quickly restricted to domestication). Instead teckné and anima operate jointly and disparately to propel what I call aniculture and which I consider to be not only a part of our anthropogenic processes, but also a mutagenic pool of differentialities from which humanity constantly draws in order to reinvent itself. Then, along with a specific textual mode of organization (as transpecific as its topic), writing is here even envisaged as another possible expression of animality, maybe even a powerful re-intensification. Because our traditional dealings with animals have always been inseparable from our becomings, the (yet untold) ways we are now dealing with some of our ex-predators and preys reveal a great deal about our postnatural futures and that “animal-medium” we all inhabit. In fact, jungle backyards are less denaturalized places than renaturalized spaces in which animals demonstrate not only adaptive responses to selective pressures but initiate creative processes at a number of levels from which fertile lines of thought can eventually stem.

Cette thèse opère principalement à deux niveaux, un niveau ethnographique et un niveau communicationnel. Je m’intéresse ici à l’étrange cas des jungles de garage nord-américaines et aux dizaines de milliers d’animaux dits « exotiques » qui les composent. Au cours de l’année 2011, j’ai parcouru plus de 25 000 kms à travers le continent, à la rencontre précisément de ces espaces postnaturalisés qui constituent désormais une part non négligeable (et pourtant souvent négligée) de nos paysages écologiques contemporains. Plus tout à fait sauvages, ni pour autant complètement domestiques, ces modes d’existence pionniers hantent désormais une zone grise de nos savoirs zoologiques, de nos avoirs culturels. En effet, ces humanimalités en devenir ne vont pas sans brouiller certaines de nos conceptions dichotomiques traditionnelles (telles nature/culture, humain/non-humain, proie/prédateur, dominant/dominé, émetteur/récepteur). À une époque où l’animal est régulièrement objet de débats théoriques, légaux, sociaux, politiques ou encore épistémologiques, la prise en compte renouvelée de ces singularités animales fournit ici d’importants précédents en matière d’adaptation, d’évolution et d’émergence. En livrant de la sorte les résultats d’ethnographies transpécifiques originales, j’offre ainsi à la discussion un matériel éthologique inédit touchant à la vie d’animaux a priori connus, mais dont les modalités existentielles actuelles restent encore largement méconnues. Ainsi, plutôt que de considérer l’animal d’un simple point de vue substantialiste ou bien encore depuis une stricte perspective hylémorphique, c’est-à-dire s’attachant essentiellement à des questions de forme et de matière (un tigre né et élevé en captivité, nourri de viande de supermarché et sous pilule contraceptive est-il toujours un tigre ?), je me concentre plutôt sur ces mouvements complexes d’information et de communication qui donnent forme à la matière et matière à la formation (et font du tigre d’aujourd’hui non plus l’alter ego du roi de la jungle, mais l’égal du chat de gouttière). Dans une perspective simondonienne, je conceptualise alors une certaine logique de l’individuation animale, que je rapporte à la part d’indétermination que comprend tout processus de communication. J’émets ainsi l’hypothèse que l'animalité, bien plus qu'une simple collection d’attributs, constitue en réalité un enchevêtrement toujours mouvementé de relationalités transductives. Ici, teckné et anima opèrent de manière disparate mais conjointe, pour alimenter partie de nos processus anthropogéniques. En puisant constamment dans un tel réservoir de differentialités, notre espèce ne cesse ainsi de se réinventer. Dès lors, les biomedia ne seront plus considérés comme la dernière itération de notre modernité technologique, se déplaçant lentement de matérialités inorganiques en potentialités organiques, mais bien plutôt compris tel un nouveau registre d’écriture du vivant opérant au cœur d’un potentiel d’inscription animatif continuellement remis en je(u). Parce que nos relations avec les animaux ont toujours été inséparables de nos devenirs respectifs, la manière dont nous sommes aujourd’hui aux prises avec certains de nos (anciens) prédateurs dit beaucoup, me semble-t-il, de notre à-venir et de cet animal-medium que nous logeons tous. Ici conceptualisées, ces jungles de garage renvoient à de puissants champs expérientiels, non pas dénaturés mais renaturalisés, au cœur desquels certains organismes démontrent, en réaction précisément à des pressions sélectives renouvelées, non seulement des réponses adaptatives surprenantes, mais initient aussi des processus innovants impliquant plusieurs niveaux d’individuations créatrices. / This thesis operates mainly on two levels: one is ethnographical, the other is communicationnal. I explore the curious case of North American jungle backyards in which « used-to-be-wild » animals are experiencing « almost-domesticated » existences while their daily lives are merged with that of Homo sapiens. As pets, guinea pigs or postnatural totems, these pioneer organisms not only feed the third most important black market in the world, they also blur our traditional zoological and philosophical apparatus (often driven by dichotomies between nature/culture, human/nonhuman, prey/predator, dominant/dominated, transmitter/receiver). In 2011, I traveled 16 000 miles all around the continent to explore some of these contemporary humanimal modalities. Hence, I examine important transpecific aspects of these modified ecological landscapes, in which known living organisms experience unknown reorganizations of life. In a Simondonian perspective, I reconceptualize animality and communication activities in order to readdress, along with the question of the animal, individuation processes and their inherent indetermination qualities – the kind, yet unseen, that contemporary jungle backyards silently nurture. At a time when animal rights and bioethics are regularly at stake (and indeed a serious preoccupation for societies that strive to leave behind medieval practices, but also attempt to cope with their biotechnological becomings), jungle backyards provide an original ethological dataset based not only on what an animal is or should be, but rather on what real animal existences actually consist of. In that respect, I offer firsthand material that may help to better navigate our common Ark, possibly facing a new environmental flood. Instead of considering animals from a reductive substancialist point of view or from a strict hylemorphic perspective, focusing on matters of form or forms of matter, I concentrate on movements that give form to matter and matter to form. I then suggest that animality, more than a simple collection of mere attributes or even a basic manifestation of an elaborate biochemical complex, constitutes an enmeshment constantly in motion made of transductive relationalities. Here, biomedia are not considered the latest bourgeon of our technological modernity, slowly shifting from inorganic materialities to organic potentialities, but rather an ancient deviation of natural forces (too quickly restricted to domestication). Instead teckné and anima operate jointly and disparately to propel what I call aniculture and which I consider to be not only a part of our anthropogenic processes, but also a mutagenic pool of differentialities from which humanity constantly draws in order to reinvent itself. Then, along with a specific textual mode of organization (as transpecific as its topic), writing is here even envisaged as another possible expression of animality, maybe even a powerful re-intensification. Because our traditional dealings with animals have always been inseparable from our becomings, the (yet untold) ways we are now dealing with some of our ex-predators and preys reveal a great deal about our postnatural futures and that “animal-medium” we all inhabit. In fact, jungle backyards are less denaturalized places than renaturalized spaces in which animals demonstrate not only adaptive responses to selective pressures but initiate creative processes at a number of levels from which fertile lines of thought can eventually stem. / Thèse réalisée en co-tutelle avec le Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation has as its theme the communication processes developed organizations in the digital media / corporate blog, which is enclosed in the examination of socio-technical strategies of visibility and legitimacy undertaken in 16 blogs the corporate Medium-Large Business and Large Business of the blogsphere Brazilian. The overall objective is to develop an array of strategies for socio-technical visibility and legitimacy for corporate blogs with the intention of responding to problem: what strategies sociotechnical practiced organizations in promoting corporate blogs that search visibility and legitimacy '. The methodology uses empirical research proposal mediated computer (Johnson, 2010), from two main methods for research qualitative: the hidden field observation and non-participatory and triangulation methodological techniques. The theoretical approach and methodology developed in this research focused on the finding that 68.75% of companies are conspicuous by their field of study sociotechnical strategy of visibility positioned at the level of relationship intermediate and 75% by sociotechnical strategy of legitimacy positioning also returned to the relationship and intermediate level. The positioning of relationship besides having preferably is at intermediate level and therefore absorbed in the socio-technical strategies of visibility and legitimacy in more than half corporate blogs the field of study. / A presente dissertação tem como tema os processos comunicacionais desenvolvidos pelas organizações na mídia digital/blog corporativo, que é delimitado no exame das estratégias sociotécnicas de visibilidade e legitimidade empreendidas em 16 blogs corporativos das Médias-Grandes Empresas e Grandes Empresas da blogosfera brasileira. O objetivo geral é desenvolver uma matriz de estratégias sociotécnicas de visibilidade e legitimidade para os blogs corporativos com o intento de responder à problemática: quais estratégias sociotécnicas praticadas nos blogs corporativos pelas organizações promovem a busca de visibilidade e legitimidade?. A metodologia utiliza a proposta de pesquisa empírica mediada por computador (JOHNSON, 2010), a partir de dois principais métodos para pesquisas qualitativas: a observação de campo encoberta e não participativa e a triangulação de técnicas metodológicas. O percurso teórico e metodológico desenvolvido nessa pesquisa incidiu na constatação de que 68,75% das empresas do campo de estudo primam pela estratégia sociotécnica de visibilidade com posicionamento de relacionamento no nível intermediário e 75% pela estratégia sociotécnica de legitimidade com posicionamento também voltado ao relacionamento e com nível intermediário. O posicionamento de relacionamento além de ter preferência se encontra em nível intermediário e, portanto, absorvido nas estratégias sociotécnicas de visibilidade e legitimidade em mais da metade dos blogs corporativos do campo de estudo.

Sustainability has become increasingly important in global debates and in world politics, where the UN has formulated 17 sustainability goals. This has led to increased pressure on companies to focus more on sustainability. However, sustainability is a broad and difficult concept, where there is a lack of understanding of sustainable working methods. The purpose of the thesis is thus to study how companies transforms strategic approaches into something concrete and how it is communicated to organizations. Through a case study of a sustainability-leading IT consulting company, the research questions; "How does management translate sustainable strategies into concrete initiatives for communicating sustainable approaches?" and "What can be understood about the challenges of communicating sustainable ways of working through the organisations internal communicative processes?", is being answered. Based on the theoretical framework of the thesis, on Sensemaking and Double Loop Learning, the communication process has been mapped within the company, through semi-structured interviews supplemented with qualitative document analysis. The results show three main challenges: (1) to concrete sustainability and sustainable working methods; (2) to communicate and establish a unified understanding of sustainability and sustainable working practices throughout the organization; (3) to establish systems thinking for sustainable working methods.

The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on the relevant aspects involved in knowledge management and organisational learning, and to assess the maturity level of knowledge management within the South African steel industry. Various aspects of knowledge, knowledge management and organisational learning with specific relation to sustainable competitive advantage are discussed in the literature study. During the literature research several factors which either promote or hinder the effective management of knowledge were identified and a list of lessons learned by other successful knowledge focused companies, are discussed. The critical success factors for a successful knowledge management program are also discussed. Knowledge can create a sustainable competitive advantage within an organisation, if successfully applied to make value adding decisions and to enable learning, and if it is applied to make decisions which are superior to that of its rivals across the supply chain. An integrated approach needs to be followed when KM is pursued and the knowledge must be applied to make value added decisions and facilitate learning across all processes in the value chain. The focus must be to retain an organisation’s tacit knowledge as this is a key success factor to ensure a sustainable competitive advantage. The study includes research on whether knowledge management is effectively used as a sustainable competitive advantage in the South African steel industry. The maturity level of the application of knowledge and learning principles implemented within the South African steel industry is assessed and compared to the maturity level of ArcelorMittal, Monlevade, located in Brazil. A survey was designed and distributed to determine the knowledge management and organisational learning maturity levels at two steel facilities of ArcelorMittal in South Africa and one facility in Brazil. The key problem areas as identified through the empirical research are discussed and it is concluded that South African facilities do not effectively use knowledge management as a sustainable competitive advantage. The maturity level of knowledge management in ArcelorMittal, South Africa is low compared to the maturity at Monlevade and rival companies such as Tata and Posco steel. A significant effort needs to be made in order to allow the effective creation, acquisition, sharing and leveraging of knowledge within the South African steel facilities. The key factors which constrain effective knowledge management is related to ineffective Human Resource policies, organisation structure, lack of knowledge exchange forums, collaboration and communication, coaching, and a lack of incentives to share tacit knowledge. It is also evident that knowledge is not seen as a sustainable competitive advantage by many respondents and that they perceive they do not have the time or capacity to transfer knowledge. Ten practical design principles were constructed and a knowledge management framework was developed to guide South African steel companies during the design and execution of a knowledge management programme which will ensure that knowledge management will result into a sustainable competitive advantage. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on the relevant aspects involved in knowledge management and organisational learning, and to assess the maturity level of knowledge management within the South African steel industry. Various aspects of knowledge, knowledge management and organisational learning with specific relation to sustainable competitive advantage are discussed in the literature study. During the literature research several factors which either promote or hinder the effective management of knowledge were identified and a list of lessons learned by other successful knowledge focused companies, are discussed. The critical success factors for a successful knowledge management program are also discussed. Knowledge can create a sustainable competitive advantage within an organisation, if successfully applied to make value adding decisions and to enable learning, and if it is applied to make decisions which are superior to that of its rivals across the supply chain. An integrated approach needs to be followed when KM is pursued and the knowledge must be applied to make value added decisions and facilitate learning across all processes in the value chain. The focus must be to retain an organisation’s tacit knowledge as this is a key success factor to ensure a sustainable competitive advantage. The study includes research on whether knowledge management is effectively used as a sustainable competitive advantage in the South African steel industry. The maturity level of the application of knowledge and learning principles implemented within the South African steel industry is assessed and compared to the maturity level of ArcelorMittal, Monlevade, located in Brazil. A survey was designed and distributed to determine the knowledge management and organisational learning maturity levels at two steel facilities of ArcelorMittal in South Africa and one facility in Brazil. The key problem areas as identified through the empirical research are discussed and it is concluded that South African facilities do not effectively use knowledge management as a sustainable competitive advantage. The maturity level of knowledge management in ArcelorMittal, South Africa is low compared to the maturity at Monlevade and rival companies such as Tata and Posco steel. A significant effort needs to be made in order to allow the effective creation, acquisition, sharing and leveraging of knowledge within the South African steel facilities. The key factors which constrain effective knowledge management is related to ineffective Human Resource policies, organisation structure, lack of knowledge exchange forums, collaboration and communication, coaching, and a lack of incentives to share tacit knowledge. It is also evident that knowledge is not seen as a sustainable competitive advantage by many respondents and that they perceive they do not have the time or capacity to transfer knowledge. Ten practical design principles were constructed and a knowledge management framework was developed to guide South African steel companies during the design and execution of a knowledge management programme which will ensure that knowledge management will result into a sustainable competitive advantage. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.