Knowledge management: practices for improvements in administrative contracts at a federal university

Abstract

The supervision/management of administrative contracts aims to provide adequate delivery of goods and services contracted with public resources, supporting the performance of the final activities of the Universities. However, there are several gaps in the practical routine that hinder, requiring tools and practices that Knowledge Management (KM) can provide for procedural
improvements. Thus, this research aimed to identify: main difficulties in the routine of these processes, and main deficiencies in KM practices that could mitigate these gaps. To this end, a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory research was carried out, with data collection through interviews, using the Content Analysis (thematic) methodology of Bardin (2016). As a result, it
was identified that the main difficulties are related to knowledge, instruction, organizational and specialized support, response time, standardization, turnover and transparency, among other deficiencies that result in feelings of fear and concern among the agency's employees. Regarding the lack of GC practices: absence of knowledge base, data, information, manuals,
(formal) sharing, availability of information, frequently asked questions, flowcharts, and faceto-face meetings. It was concluded that there are signs of collaborative actions among the agency's inspectors/contract managers, which contributes to the implementation of GC practices and can bring improvements to routines, but that these employees lack greater institutional support to succeed in their initiatives.