In this issue of the Cadernos EBAPE.BR, we have decided to sign off on the Editorial as a team to stress that, even though the journal is now under new leadership, the focus will continue to be on the high quality and analytical content of the articles it publishes. Our view is still that it is only through a fully democratic debate on different currents of Administration, according to different paradigms, that a scientific journal such as this can fulfil its democratic mission to be open to debate on different lines of research, always in deference to the principles of freedom of thought and expression.
We recognize the importance of any research that adopts a coherent methodology, presents it appropriately and offers an analytical contribution to a specific field of knowledge. Furthermore, well-founded theoretical essays that offer consistent arguments and findings of relevance to the field of Administration also deserve, in our view, to be highlighted and discussed. We seek to publish studies of a superior scientific quality that are based on a variety of different paradigms and that provide well-founded results. All the articles we publish have one thing in common in that they preach the same values as we do: democratic freedom; the strength of ideas; and consistent analysis. Although we tend to favour critical thinking, any articles with a proven scientific quality that are based on alternative forms of theoretical approach, and which make a significant contribution to Administration as a whole, are also welcome.
We believe that freedom of choice and the pleasures of intellectual discovery are born of the scientific debate between ideas and theories, of the contradictory and of there being different perspectives of knowledge. Innovation in a specific subject comes from free access to different points of view, ones that have been proven by means of practical findings or been based on theoretical essays.
We are currently experiencing a period of uncertainty and socioeconomic crisis in Brazil and indeed, in the world at large. Structured research can offer us new roads and new possibilities and help reaffirm certain important values, which include the democratisation of human relations, the freedom of expression of ideas and the social contribution of scientific knowledge.
As previously mentioned, in this issue we mark a transition in the editorial leadership of the Cadernos EBAPE.BR, which passes from Fernando Guilherme Tenório to Isabella Francisca Freitas Gouveia de Vasconcelos. Both of us have much in common and the idea is to continue in the same vein of publication as before.
Something that we do share, aside from the aforementioned values, is our interest in exploring the possibilities of structured communication within organisations based on the Habermas Theory of Communicative Action - a sign of hope in the development of fairer labour relations and in improving human relations within organisations. Values such as sustainable development, social justice, social inclusion, questions linked to ethics in companies and to corporate social responsibility are just some of the issues we believe to be fundamental. This is especially true in a country like Brazil, which is marked by major social contrasts, with cutting-edge development in some sectors and regions, and abysmal backwardness in others. In the informational society of today, social and technological innovation should also be sustainable and indeed the preservation of the environment is a value that is increasingly present in the field of Organisational Studies, whether from a critical point of view, or in terms of proposed innovative solutions.
Education and research reveal unknown realities based on solid data and scientific methodology, proposing and allowing for the development of an ability to analyse and for the education of more conscientious citizens. An increase in the level of education tends to make the population more conscientious and reduce inequalities, thereby encouraging greater social inclusion. Those scientific journals that offer a combination of education and research do, therefore, play an important role in this context.
In addition to our commitment to publishing articles that express Brazilian reality, we are also committed to expanding the internationalisation of the Cadernos EBAPE.BR by further promoting the journal throughout Latin America, Europe and the US.
Currently, the journal is classified by CAPES (the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) as a Qualis A2 publication. In addition to our regular editions, we also publish special-thematic issues and a programme of publication of special issues in other languages. We publicise forums of debate on relevant subjects (Opinion Section) as well as the work of researchers from other countries considered relevant and of a high level of scientific quality.
We have revitalised our Scientific Committee: in addition to cutting-edge researchers from across the country, we now also have international researchers working with us. We take our role to further develop the field of Administration in Brazil very seriously. We contribute to this by giving coverage to high quality Brazilian research abroad and we publicise international research that is relevant to our field and that is based on the aforementioned values.
With all this in mind, we now follow with a brief summary of the articles included in this issue.
The article "The constitution of the identity of professors in advanced degree courses of two higher education institutions: a study based on the relations of power and the roles in organizations", by Marcos Vinícius Pereira Correa and Mariane Lemos Lourenço, looks at the constitution of the identity of stricto sensu graduate programme professors in one public university and in one private university. The article makes it clear that the identity of faculty is permeated by meanings that are absorbed through socialisation over the course of their academic careers, so that the choice of a faculty career and the meanings that are attributed to teaching and research are primarily formed through the day-to-day interaction with other professors and students.
The work by Eda Castro Lucas de Souza and Renato Ribeiro Fenili, offers a study of organisational culture using management practices, from the perspective of Bourdieu's theoretical framework. To this end, analysing the state of the art of works of research that use this approach is presented as a secondary goal. The focus of the article is then, the practice of management, understood as a cultural manifestation of the organisation through which normative, symbolic, semantic and value aspects are brought to the fore.
The article entitled "The social representation theory in Brazilian organizational studies: a bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2014", by Priscilla de Oliveira Martins-Silva, Annor da Silva Junior, Guilherme Gustavo Holz Peroni, Carolina Porto de Medeiros and Nádia Ortolan da Vitória, shows how the Theory of Social Representations (TSR), as proposed by Serge Moscovici during the 1960s, has gone through a process of modification and expansion. It has passed from being a mere body of knowledge contained within the field of Social Psychology, to one that now extends to many different areas of knowledge. The article provides the results of a bibliometric survey on scientific production using the TSR in Organisational Studies.
In "Organizational mission: what does critical discourse analysis reveal?", an article by Hélio Arthur Reis Irigaray, Gustavo Ximenes Cunha and Bruno Anastassiu Harteu, the authors offer a critical analysis of the political and ideological content that underlines the business discourse of the declared mission statements of the largest companies in Brazil. The authors analyse the missions published on the institutional homepages of the 64 companies that make up the theoretical portfolio of the Bovespa share Index (Ibovespa), and the results reveal the structure that underlines the discourse of these mission statements. This offers one the possibility to identify the specific profiles of these companies, according to their discursive characteristics and their functions of manipulation and legitimisation.
The article entitled "I, Alex, from the Guarani Ethnic Group: the indigenous student's testimony of an administration undergraduate program and his double belonging", by Marcio Pascoal Cassandre, Wagner Roberto do Amaral and Alexandro da Silva, shows that the presence of students with an indigenous background in Brazilian public universities is a recent phenomenon, only going back as far as 2002, with the unprecedented enrolment and permanence of these students at institutions in the state of Paraná. The trajectory of these students in different graduate programmes reflects the existence of a dual state of belonging: being both of an indigenous origin and an academic at the same time. The narrative of this article reveals certain challenges, limits and possibilities faced over the course of an academic programme in Administration by students of indigenous origins.
The authors Wescley Silva Xavier and Alexandre de Pádua Carrieri, in their article entitled "Discourse and cities: a study of Cataguases - MG based on the modernistic literature of Revista Verde ", argue that the adoption of cities and towns as the object of research has become increasingly prevalent in the field of Administration, especially in Organisational Studies. The article seeks to better understand the dialectic relationship between the literary discourse on cities, and questions of a material order existing within them. More specifically, the authors analyse these relationships in the texts of the Revista Verde, an important modernist publication of the 1920s, which had its origins in the town of Cataguases, in the state of Minas Gerais.
The work entitled "The 'hedonistic citizen': dialogues on consumption and participatory citizenship in contemporary society", by Josiel Lopes Valadares, Ana Alice Vilas Boas, Daniel Carvalho de Rezende, Aline Pereira Sales Morel and Júlia Moretto Amâncio, seeks to understand the challenges to citizenship brought about by the advent of the phenomenon of hyperconsumerism in Brazilian society, from the perspective of those theories that attempt to clarify the implications of the centrality of consumption at the current time. One of the criticisms is aimed at those policies that argue that consumption helps people become socially included, minimising the effects resulting from social inequality and contributing to a perception that exercising one's rights as a citizen is a mere monetary inclusion into the consumer market in this country. The belief is that citizenship and social inclusion have a meaning that goes far beyond mere consumption.
"Academic productivism based on a Habermasian perspective", by authors Fábio Vizeu, Marie Anne Macadar and Alexandre Reis Graeml, looks at utilitarianism in academic practice on the basis of the ideas of discursive ethics put forward by Jürgen Habermas, exploring anxieties regarding the subject of productivism in Brazilian research. Methodologically, a theoretical approach is used as an argumentative procedure, in order to construct a less formal and a less provocative text, and to help launch a degree of reflection and debate on the subject. More specifically, one can see the problem of the quantitative valorisation without the qualitative consideration of the academic work in gauging academic activity, as well as a lack of proper consideration of the ethical and moral values involved within the scientific and educational context in Brazil.
Authors Marcelo de Souza Bispo and Francisco José da Costa look at how one can evaluate or assess students taking disciplines that are part of stricto sensu graduate programmes in Administration in "Papers as student assessment in graduate courses: educative tool or a sub-system of assembly line?". In addition to providing a critique, they also try to present some evaluation options and discuss the best alternatives for an education process at this level of education.
The article entitled "The crisis, the State, and the mistakes of political administration in contemporary capitalism", by Reginaldo Souza Santos, Fábio Guedes Gomes, Thiago Chagas Silva Santos, Elizabeth Matos Ribeiro and Luiz Marques de Andrade Filho, looks at the crisis of modern-day capitalism and discusses, on a theoretical basis, the different interpretations of the crisis, with the aim of presenting new perspectives. The authors also try to examine, on a structural level, the role played by the State in this crisis, and how it has been central and functional in the political administration of present-day capitalism in Brazil and around the world.
The work entitled "Outsourcing and resistance to it in Brazil: Bill No. 4,330/04 and the actions of collective actors", by Filipe Augusto Silveira de Souza and Ana Heloísa da Costa Lemos, deals with historical and legal aspects relating to the growing flexibilisation of labour relations in Brazil, especially from the 1990s onwards. The article looks primarily at the outsourcing of productive activities and the new legal scenarios that deal with such relations in this, the 21st Century.
In completing this issue, the article "Administrative science and public management: a criticism of the primacy of private over public", by Raphaela Reis Conceição Castro Silva and Clenia de Mattia, suggests that public management receives a strong scientific influence from the field of Administration: many different models applied in the public context originated in the field of business management.
All the articles published in this issue are also freely available in English version to all our readers.
We wish you all very pleasant reading!
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Dec 2016
