Abstract
Recent studies conclude that human capital should be a high priority because it is a key growth input, particularly in an increasingly knowledge-based economy and an important lever of social cohesion policy. However, country-specific studies involving human capital and economic performance are scarce both for Portugal and for other countries. The small number of such studies is explained to a large extent by the increased complexity and difficulty of estimating continuous time series for human capital stock giving data paucity. This article tries to facilitate the emergence of further empirical works on the relation between human capital and long-term economic growth by providing an improved measure of the stock of human capital for the Portuguese economy from 1960 up to 2001. © Intellect Ltd 2005.

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Having in mind the inner value of the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture itself this paper explores the introduction of the time perspective into the framework by using GRAI-grid decision centres concept The introduction to both these concepts paves the way to their combination in following paragraphs illustrating the Zachman / GRAI-grid conceptual integration for the analysis of a network of enterprises, finally illustrated with a case study.

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In the global market, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face increasing competition from large corporations for the control of the more profitable business areas. These corporations compensate for their lower agility and flexibility with easier access to information, resources and economies of scale. The virtual enterprise model of a business organization is thus often seen as one of the best strategic moves for SMEs to achieve a global reach without compromising their independence. This emerging business paradigm certainly brings new challenges to many areas of the enterprise, one of which is the quality assurance of external processes and contracted products and services. This paper introduces and discusses the issue of quality assurance within the scope of virtual and networked enterprises, and presents a novel methodology for the integration of quality management into enterprise modelling and for quality certification of the virtual enterprise. This is especially important because quality certification is becoming mandatory in nearly all markets and the well-established certification methods do not cover all the aspects of the virtual enterprise. ISO 9001:2000, the most widely used quality management system standard in the world, is presented as an interesting starting point for virtual enterprise quality management system implementation and certification. Further requirements include broadening the scope of the quality management system to include the whole enterprise life cycle, i.e. from its creation to decommission. Current auditing procedures will have to be adapted to this new business environment and, to meet such a requirement, a continuous real-time third-party auditing mechanism-fully integrated into the virtual enterprise--model is proposed. A pilot/simulator, implemented in a small virtual enterprise, in the occupational safety and health-care business, is used to illustrate the new environment as well as the novel requirements that quality systems will have to meet in the future.

Abstract
Internet and information technologies have changed the way people interact and make business all over the world. Unfortunately, this is not completely true in the sense that the fast progress fostered by more dynamic economies has in fact been contributing to widening the so-called digital divide between rich and poor. This is a particularly true for small and medium enterprises in remote communities that face a number of obstacles and difficulties due to their family business structure, limited access to information and communication infrastructure. This paper presents a P2P infrastructure for a distributed e-Marketplace that aims at bringing together tourism operators, players of crafts and agro-eco-cultural tourism sectors living in remote communities, in order to provide them the opportunity to join, at a reduced cost, to the information society and reach new markets.