DIÁRIO DE ESTUDO DE VERÃO

SUMMER RESEARCH DIARY

From June 2nd to August 22nd (total of 12 weeks)

1st Week

On monday, the first day of project, there was a discussion with the adviser John and the second member of this project, Juliana. In this talk it was introduced our main ideas and intentions towards the research, which will be in academic style with industrial application, according to availability and acceptance from companies here in the UK. As there are many students doing placement on some industries around Derby, it may be easier to get in contact with their Human Resources department. The adviser will try to help with his contacts in them as well. As Juliana and I had quite the same idea, but in a way that one completes the other, it was split up so that Juliana is supposed to work on the rewarding part and I am with the meritocracy part, including the modelling of a new one according to british companies necessities.

On the second day, I started the strategic planning, doing a calendar with all the dates, from the first to the last day, in order to have a full view of the project and divide the activities properly. This way I can manage to get the end of the 12 weeks with results accomplished and the required report done. Also, I got in touch with a friend in Brazil, who is a human resources professor, asking for reading suggestion about meritocracy and she will do so in the next days.

On Wednesday, I started to detail the following steps of the project and the next ones are:

- Define meritocracy (according to a couple authors and dictionary);

- Look for some articles about it (pros and cons);

- Look for meritocracy models in market, checking differences and similarities, what is the company opinion and the staff as well about it (agreement or disagreement?), its importance for the organisation (does it help? In which ways?)

- See british companies opinion about it (do they apply? Or would like to?)

On Thursday I read about meritocracy definition and its history background. It is known since Confusion, however, the expression was first introduced to the world by Michael Young in 1958 in the UK. There are many points of view of the meritocracy system, specially in the politics environment, many pros and cons. There are a lot of historical aspects on it and so many things that started to scape from the focus on this research. Anyway, it was good to read and acquire this knowledge.

On Friday I looked for some articles and a great time was spent on reading the summary of them in order to choose and select the more related ones. Then, on the next week I will dedicate the time to read them and do part of the literature review.