The qualitative systemic analysis and communicational effects: the process of evaluation of bachelor’s degrees in the insular Portuguese Universities

Introduction:
The qualitative systemic analysis based on a critical interpretation of Palo Alto School and its pragmatical approach to the communication process is ideal for analysing institutional communication, as this qualitative approach aims to put in evidence a "logic"of a communication system and its structural effects.
Goals and Methods: The main goal of this communication is to present, in the framework of the qualitative systemic analysis of communications, an exploratory study of the evaluation process, made by the Portuguese National Agency A3ES, of bachelor’s degrees in the field of social sciences within insular Portuguese Universities. Following the methodology of qualitative systemic analysis we are going to put in evidence the recurrent categories present in this context (using MaxQDA), their “règles du jeu” (“game rules”), and the logic of the communication system in the context of the evaluation process.
Results:
As the evaluation process of bachelor’s degrees imposes a “rule of the game” and configures a “logic of the system”, we can infer the “ideal behavior of all the actors” prescribed by the Portuguese Agency (“imperative injunctions”) produces organizational and communicational effects over the system.
The primary results pointed for different effects according to the level of this exploratory analysis.
Conclusions:
The qualitative systemic analysis is an innovative approach to organizational communication that allows us to understand how vital the communicational approach of organizations is. Therefore this exploratory study of the effects of “imperative injunctions” in the system, by the national agency of evaluation, may serve to assess how the main goals of the development of the insular Universities, in the Azores and Madeira, are fulfilled in the context of Portuguese Universities.