Search results

The use of standards is currently characterized by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as essential for the efficient development of products, processes, services and systems in organizations; that is the norm-profit-measuring methodology Toolkit. From an impact-analysis perspective, the purpose of this paper is to compare the existing published standards in the area of archival science and documentation in Brazil, by the hand of the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT); Portugal (NP), by the Portuguese Institution of Quality (IPQ); and in Spain (UNE), by the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification (AENOR). Finally, this paper aims to observe the convergences and divergences among these countries with respect to the first country standards organization, United Kingdom (UK), by the British Standards Institution (BSI). This paper is an extract of a deeper investigation about behaviors, uses and impact of ISO’s standards.

The methodology consists in a qualitative and quantitative comparative study, carried out through the analysis of the technical contents of the standards present in the catalogs available on the ABNT, IPQ, AENOR and BSI websites. It compares the main existing divergences in adoption, collaboration, elaboration, volume, working-group dynamism, editing schedules, costs and groups of standards.

The analysis allowed to observe the relevance of the technical standards in the studied countries and the advantages of the adoption of ISO for the dissemination of contents. For instance, the use and application of these standards for the development of archival and records management activities is considered to benefit the professionals to decrease the time of implementation and execution of the archival activities and allow continuous assessment. Besides ensuring quality in the archival processes, standardization evidences the complexity within organizational environments inherent to the metamorphosis of each’s functional context.

This paper contributes with an original analysis of how the technical standards of the Archival and Records Management area are published and used in Brazil, Iberian Peninsula and the UK.

This study aims to present the environmental management system implemented at UNISINOS and demonstrate some of the main results obtained in more than 15 years carrying out the environmental management of the campuses in São Leopoldo and Porto Alegre. The focus is on the main environmental impacts: electricity consumption, water consumption and solid waste management.

Sustainable development of universities has gradually become a common practice, as the knowledge shared in the higher education institutions reflects in the behavior of society. In a university, an environmental management system is used to plan, implement and manage processes referring to the environmental, social and economic aspects, so as to improve their performance and comply with legal requirements. For this, national or international standards and/or methodologies can be followed, which serve as a guide for the institution to reach sustainability in a staggered manner, according to the availability of data and resources for environmental management.

After 16 years of certification, based on the monitoring performed, positive performance was observed, reflecting a better and attentive university, with an environmental policy that goes beyond the borders of the campuses and transmits solid concepts of environmental education to the academic community, under the rigid control of the ISO 14001 tool.

In 2004, UNISINOS became the first Latin American university with an ISO 14001 certification. In 2018, the certification was extended to the UNISINOS Campus in Porto Alegre, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. All the support activities conducted and implemented in the campuses (São Leopoldo and Porto Alegre) follow the same rules implemented by the UNISINOS environmental management system. After the experience of implementing the ISO 14001 requirements, UNISINOS included other normative requirements in 2013, adopting an integrated management system.