A organização que aprende e sua relação com práticas Soft Lean: uma análise das atividades fins de uma instituição de ensino superior

Abstract

One of the issues that has been discussed in several segments (construction, industry, commerce, among others) is the performance of the end activities of an organization and how to increase it without wasting resources, that is, with greater efficiency. Within the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is no different, but here there is a need for improvement in quality, since the end activities of these HEIs are different in relation to other sectors. According to the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDB), these institutions have as objectives teaching, research and extension. Thus, it is necessary that they improve their processes aiming at these three objectives. For this, two philosophies can be applied, that of the Learning Organization and that of Lean. The first is characterized by facilitating learning to improve performance (XIE, 2020). The second can be described as a set of management tools, principles and practices to improve efficiency in different sectors (Danese et al, 2018). In this work, both will be related to the human factor of the Institution. In this sense, the general objective of the work is to evaluate the causal relationships between dimensions of the organization that learns, Soft Lean practices and activities end of an HEI. As specific objectives: a) Evaluate the influence of dimensions of the organization that learns about soft Lean practices; b) Measure the perception of performance of HEIs regarding their purpose activities; c) Evaluate the influence of soft Lean practices on the activities of HEIs; and d) Develop an integrated model for evaluating the activities of HEIs. To achieve the objectives, a questionnaire was applied, with a sample of 267 professors from a Higher Education Institution, and then the modeling of structural equations for data analysis was performed. The results indicated that the practices of the Learning Organization have a positive and significant impact on the Soft Lean ̧ practices and that these positively influence the teaching and extension/services activities of an HEI. Still, no significant relationship was found between Soft Lean practices and research activity. Among the contributions of the research is the confirmation that servers are very important for the development of the activities of a Higher Education Institution and that it is necessary to think of actions that focus on learning opportunities, involve these people so that they improve their processes. Then, the HEI will be able to have a better quality in its teaching and extension activities.