EBAP and ISEB in search of a Brazilian Administration: an Immersion into the 1950’s to Illuminate the 21st Century

Abstract

Administration is currently the most offered course in Brazil, responsible for 20% of undergraduate students. Therefore, educators have a big responsibility to reflect on the content of the courses. The reflection proposed here is an immersion into the 1950’s, when the first graduation schools were created. It is a reflection based on a dialogue between documents of that time and three sources of testimonies of former students and former professors of the Brazilian School of Public Administration (EBAP): a) journals of that time; b) testimonies collected for a book published to celebrate the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration’s (EBAPE) 50th anniversary; and c) interviews with students and professors who attended EBAP in the 1950s. The science of administration in the 1950s was associated to development. It rejected the apriorism of the scientific management received from the US, it also sought - through the social sciences - to critically promote content that fostered the adaptation of imported techniques to our reality. In this quest to represent the local context, EBAP approached the propositions of the Superior Institute of Brazilian Studies (ISEB) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The apprehension of the local context is critical to form good professionals. Looking at the efforts of EBAP in order to build a Brazilian administration field in the 1950s, and the contributions that ISEB and ECLAC gave to this endeavor, can help to find ways to (re)connect the science of administration to the national context and, consequently, provide relevant content to our graduates.

Keywords:
ECLAC; Development; EBAP; History of Brazilian administration; ISEB.

Resumo

O curso de administração se tornou o maior do Brasil e forma hoje um em cada cinco concluintes de curso superior. Dessa maneira, aumenta nossa responsabilidade como educadores em refletir sobre o conteúdo que ministramos. Nossa proposta de reflexão é um mergulho nos anos 1950 − momento da criação das primeiras escolas de graduação −, com base num diálogo entre documentos daquele período e três fontes de depoimentos de ex-alunos e ex-professores da Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública (EBAP): em periódicos da época, depoimentos para o livro comemorativo dos 50 anos da Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública e de Empresas (EBAPE) e entrevistas atuais com alunos e professores da época. A ciência da administração que se construía na década de 1950 era vinculada ao desenvolvimento, rejeitava o apriorismo da gerência científica recebida dos EUA e buscava, a partir das ciências sociais, promover de maneira crítica conteúdo que propiciasse a adaptação das técnicas importadas à nossa realidade. Nessa busca por representar o contexto local, a EBAP se aproximou das proposições do Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB) e da Comissão Econômica para a América Latina e o Caribe (CEPAL). A apreensão do contexto local é fundamental para a formação de bons profissionais. Resgatar os esforços produzidos pela EBAP nos anos 1950 para a construção de uma administração brasileira, e as contribuições que ISEB e CEPAL deram nesta empreitada, podem ajudar a nos mostrar caminhos de como (re)conectar a ciência da administração com o contexto nacional e, consequentemente, fornecer conteúdo relevante para nossos egressos.

Palavras-chave:
CEPAL; Desenvolvimento; EBAP; História da administração brasileira; ISEB

Resumen

El curso de Administración se transformó en el mayor de Brasil, y hoy es responsable de la formación de uno de cada cinco graduados de la educación superior. Por eso, como educadores, aumenta nuestra responsabilidad de reflexionar sobre el contenido que impartimos. Nuestra propuesta de reflexión es una inmersión en los años 1950, cuando se crearon las primeras escuelas de graduados, fundamentada en un diálogo entre documentos de la época y tres fuentes de testimonios de exalumnos y exprofesores de la Escuela Brasileña de Administración Pública (EBAP): periódicos de la época, testimonios del libro conmemorativo del 50º aniversario de la Escuela Brasileña de Administración Pública y de Empresas (EBAPE), y entrevistas actuales con estudiantes y profesores de la época. La ciencia de la administración que se construía en la década de 1950 estaba relacionada con el desarrollo, rechazaba el apriorismo de la gestión científica recibido de EE.UU. y, con base en las ciencias sociales, promovía de manera crítica contenido que propiciase la adaptación de las técnicas importadas a nuestra realidad. En esa búsqueda para representar el contexto local, la EBAP se aproximó a las proposiciones del Instituto Superior de Estudios Brasileños (ISEB) y de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL). La aprehensión del contexto local es fundamental para la formación de buenos profesionales. Rescatar los esfuerzos realizados por la EBAP en la década de 1950 para la construcción de una administración brasileña, y las contribuciones que el ISEB y la CEPAL aportaron a esta iniciativa, pueden ayudar a mostrarnos cómo (re)conectar la ciencia de la administración al contexto nacional y, consecuentemente, proporcionar contenido relevante a nuestros estudiantes.

Palabras clave:
CEPAL; Desarrollo; EBAP; Historia de la administración brasileña; ISEB

INTRODUCTION

The 2016 census of higher education made clear the importance of the graduate programs in administration. Graduate programs related to management and administration are the number one in students in Brazil, with 1,348,616 students enrolled (17.23% of the total students enrolled in higher education in 2014). Students in administration consisted of 19.84% of the students starting and 22.36% students completing their graduation in Brazil. This means that 1.1 out of every 05 graduates studied management and administration in 2014 (INEP, 2016). The number of enrollments indicates that this proportion of 1/5 will continue in the near future. The ‘gigantism’ of administration studies happens at the same moment in which several authors suggest that this is the most North American of the fields (BERTERO, 2006). In addition, research have indicated that the content studied in graduate programs in administration is disconnected from the national context (BERTERO, VASCONCELOS and BINDER, 2003; BIGNETTI and PAIVA, 2002), and it is predominantly Anglo-Saxon (SARAIVA and CARRIERI, 2009). This is a paradox that must be faced in the field: the graduate programs in administration have the largest number of students in Brazil, and they seem to be offering education that is disconnected from the country’s context.

This research aims to face and overcome this paradox, by studying the past in order to clarify future paths. Several authors have already presented the historiography of the first graduate schools in administration. The Higher School of Business Administration (ESAN) was the first school and it is the one with less information available. Inspired by the Chicago School, Padre Saboia created ESAN in the early 1940s (CARNEIRO and BARROS, 2015). The two schools of Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) - the Brazilian School of Public Administration (Ebap) and the School of Administration of the State of São Paulo (Eaesp) were created in the 1950s. Ebap was established in 1952 and was the first school of public administration in Latin America, graduating 180 students by the end of that decade (MACHADO, 1966, p. 40), while Eaesp was established in 1954, offering an intensive program in administration, as a specialization. Eaesp only started offering a graduate program in 1959 (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2012). As for the Faculty of Administration and Economic Sciences of the Federal University of Minas Gerais - Faculty of Economic Sciences (UFMG/Face), the institution created the schools of public (1952) and business (1954) administration, and graduated 60 students by the end of that decade - 41 in public and 19 in business administration (MACHADO, 1966, p. 83). Therefore, Brazil had 240 graduates in administration during the 1950s, counting the students graduated from Ebap and from Face.

In addition to the graduate schools in administration, other private and public institutions promoted the dissemination of ‘management’ from the US context to the Brazilian context. One of the pioneers was the Institute for the Rational Organization of Work (Idort), created in 1931 in São Paulo, which was “the first civil society organization created in Brazil in order to disseminate and debate the ideas of Taylorism and other classical doctrines of management” (VIZEU, 2008, p. 139). At that time, during the period known as Estado Novo (New State), the government of President Getúlio Vargas carried out an administrative reform, creating in 1938 the Administrative Department of Public Service (Dasp). The department was inspired by the US government model and was thus created to carry out “the roles of both the Civil Public Service Commission and the Budget Bureau, in the same way as F. D. Roosevelt had done in the US” (FURTADO, 1985, p.48). Both Idort and Dasp promoted courses to train technicians and produced publications that helped to promote the field of management in Brazil (VIZEU, 2008; WAHRLICH, 1983).

The spread of graduate schools in administration in Brazil, however, occurred only in the 1960s, as a result of the agreement PBA-1, signed in 1959 between the US and Brazilian governments (FISCHER, 1984). Thus, administrators who graduated by the mid-1960s represented a small group, a fact that led us to formulate the research question: what was the “administration science” taught to the graduates of the 1950s?

This article revisits the 1950s looking at the construction of administration science with the aim of pointing out future paths that indicate how to (re)connect the administration courses with the national reality. This work analyzes documents produced at the time, uses interviews with former students and former professors of Ebap and reflects on the relationship reported by the interviewees between Ebap and the Superior Institute of Brazilian Studies (Iseb).

Ebap was chosen for its pioneering spirit and Iseb because some authors mentioned its influence on the development of administration science (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2012, 2014) and affirmed that this institution would have influenced the education of the first administrators in Brazil (BERTERO, 2006). However, the authors did not indicate the role of Iseb in the construction of administration science, nor if it would have directly acted in the education of technicians and administrators, in strong relationship with Ebap (WANDERLEY, 2015a). In any case, understanding the closeness of Iseb to Ebap can help to explain what administration science in the 1950s was like, and thus point out future directions. In addition, all the interviewees mentioned the importance of Iseb in this period, as well as mentioning the performance of the Economic Commission for Latin America (Eclac), which was included in the data analysis.

The next section shows the context of Brazil in 1950s, giving an idea of the atmosphere where administration science flourished. After this, the research methodology is presented, succeeded by analysis and discussion of the data. The discussion is divided into three parts: discussion of what administration science was like in the 1950s; the relationship between Iseb-Ebap; and the contributions of Eclac. The last section presents the final considerations.

A JOURNEY INTO THE 1950S IN BRAZIL: FROM GHIGGIA TO PELÉ, OR FROM THE ‘MONGREL COMPLEX’ AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT TO THE UTOPIA OF BRASILIA, THE CAPITAL CITY.

This section’s purpose is to present the context of Brazil during the 1950s, a period in which the quest for modernity was reflected in politics, economics and culture. Songs, issues and documents of this period are used here, intertwined with current research on the period, in order to give a sense of the atmosphere in the country at that time.

Considering that “each time has its specific mark, defined by the actions of historical subjects and by the values ​​that conform it”, it is possible to say that Brazil in the 1950s was marked by the “belief in the transformation of the present with the objective of building an alternative future to that very present” (NEVES, 2001, p. 170-171). This alternative future could be represented by the words of Manuel Bandeira on the project of Lúcio Costa for the city of Brasilia (the project designed a city in the form of an airplane. Brasilia became the capital of Brazil in 1960): “an airplane on route to the impossible Utopia, {but the project} soon gives the initiative - that seemed an adventure - an aspect of possibility” (LUCIO COSTA, 1957). The construction of the new capital in record time and its inauguration on the expected date, 21 April 1960, represent the materialization of the dream of a great Brazil that was lived in the 1950s, and an important trait of our biography (SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015).

However, if Brasilia means the concrete reality - in actual concrete and steel - of the 1950s utopia, it is possible to mark the beginning of that time by the Brazilian national tragedy of losing the 1950 FIFA World Cup hosted in the country. Defeated by Uruguay with the final goal scored by Alcides Ghiggia in the stadium of the Maracanã - a match known as Maracanazo - remains in the popular memory (HEIZER, 2010). And so, it could not fail to be remembered in the 2016 FIFA World Cup, also hosted in Brazil, when Germany defeated Brazil in what was then called Mineirazo (after the name of the stadium where the match happened, Mineirão). For sportswriter and playwright Nelson Rodrigues, Maracanazo was the start of Brazilians “mongrel complex... a characteristic of Brazilians, voluntarily considering themselves as inferior to the rest of the world. This complex is observed in all sectors and, above all, in soccer” (RODRIGUES, 2007, p. 116).

Therefore, to establish the limits of the 1950s as beginning with the Maracanazo and finishing with the inauguration of Brasilia, is to describe this decade as started with the mongrel complex (RODRIGUES, 2007), and finished with a celebration translated by the words of a Brazilian song “nobody can beat the Brazilian” (MAUGERI, MÜLLER, MAUGERI SOBRINHO et al., 1958). In spite of the lapse of only 10 years, a lot happened in a short time. This notion was present in the slogan of President Kubitschek “lets have fifty years in five”. It was also defined by Vinícius de Moraes in the song “Sinfonia da Alvorada” (Symphony of the Dawn) composed together with Tom Jobim for the inauguration of Brasilia: “it was necessary to convene all the living forces of the Nation, all men who, willing to work and with confidence in the future, could erect, in a new time, new Times...” (MORAES and JOBIM, 1961). This was the belief permeating the whole period, the belief that “new Times” would be within reach, which would only depend on the effort to understand “our time in the perspective of Brazil and to understand Brazil in the perspective of our time”, in the words of the intellectuals of the Brazilian Institute of Economics, Sociology, and Politics (Ibesp) - predecessor of the ISEB - many of whom simultaneously worked in Ebap (1953, p. 1-2)

The election of Getúlio Vargas, a few months after being defeated by Uruguay, represented the return of hope to the population. This could be described by the most played song (one of the so-called “marchinhas”) at the 1951 Carnival: “put up the old man’s portrait again, put it in the same place, old man’s smile makes us work” (ALVES, 1951). However, before Getúlio took office and before the Carnival, the country’s attention was focused on the premiere of radio soap opera “O Direito de Nascer” (The Birthright), which was aired until September 1952 on Rádio Nacional (PRE-8 radio transmitter). At the time, the radio had a prominent place in the room of every Brazilian home and, “in the golden years, the waves of Rádio Nacional made the cultural and political integration of Brazil” (AGUIAR, 2007, p. 129). Although television broadcasting was launched in the early 1950s, Rádio Nacional’s leadership remained untouched throughout the period. “- Attention listener, This is Reporter Esso speaking, an eyewitness to history...”; that was how Heron Domingues opened his daily program on Rádio Nacional from 1944 to 1962, the most respected news in the country, or the equivalent of the today’s Jornal Nacional (daily news of the Globo TV Network). Heron Domingues was the first to announce, in an extraordinary edition of the radio show, the suicide of Getúlio Vargas, reading to the entire nation the final letter left by the President. The penetration of Rádio National was so great that, “throughout the country, lacking political leadership that would lead to its revolt, the people took to the streets, depredating anti-Getúlio newspapers and American banks and firms” (AGUIAR, 2007, p. 121).

The revolt targeting American firms embodied the nationalism that characterized the 1950s. If the Maracanazo symbolized national unity in the tragedy, the “Petroleum Campaign” embodied the defense of the country’s sovereignty and became one of “the largest movements of public opinion of the nation” (SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015, p. 402). The law establishing Petrobrás spent almost two years’ negotiation in Congress and was sanctioned by Vargas at the end of 1953, during which time the “Campaign” swept the country. The creation of Petrobrás was the main symbol of national developmentalism that marked the period, based on the view that “the construction of a new society depended on the will of the state and the collective desire of a people who would have finally found their place and destiny” (SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015, p. 417).

The greatest presence of the State in the economy was theorized based on the recognition of the condition of underdevelopment, a concept created in the 1950s. Its main scholar was the Brazilian economist Celso Furtado, Eclac’s development director, from 1951 to 1957, and the main disseminator of the commission’s economic theories in Brazil. According to the theories, to overcome the condition of underdevelopment, the active participation of the state in the promotion of industrialization was necessary. These conceptions had a strong impact on public policy in the 1950s and served as the basis for President Juscelino Kubitschek’s “Plan of Goals” (BIELSCHOWSKY, 1988; SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015), and were widely disseminated both in Iseb and Ebap (WANDERLEY, 2015a).

The rapid industrialization of the country during the 1950s and the search for national roots could be observed in several ways in the cultural field. For example, the play Orfeu da Conceição, presented in 1956 at the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro, combined the creation of Vinícius de Moraes and the orchestration of Tom Jobim with the performance by the Teatro Experimental Negro (Black Experimental Theater) - TEN (SANTOS, 1997) . TEN had been created in the previous decade by Abdias do Nascimento to represent “a theatrical organism open to the protagonism of Black people, where being Black is not an “adjective” or a “folkloric” condition, and Black people are subjects and heroes of the stories they represent” (NASCIMENTO, 2004, p. 201). Abdias, in the same year as Orfeu’s presentation, defended the thesis (in Iseb) “The sociological value of the Black Experimental Theater in Brazil”, advised by Alberto Guerreiro Ramos (WANDERLEY, 2015a), who also participated in the TEN and, attended the show. Orfeu represents the cultural effervescence of the 1950s and the communion of the search for new paths in the theater, in music, in sociology and in the representation of a new Brazil that was discovered and that yearned for self-knowledge. Orfeu represented daily life in a favela in Rio de Janeiro and won a film adaptation at the hands of French director Marcel Camus, who won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (SANTOS, 1997).

In 1958, the Teatro de Arena group presented the play “They do not wear black tie”, showing the daily life of factory workers, defending the right to strike and highlighting the power of capital. The play was “a success and opened the door to a new dramaturgy with a Brazilian feature” (SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015, p. 418). This was the ‘industrial Brazil’ manifesting in the arts, both through the revelation of the areas of poverty and of the daily life in the new factories.

In cinema, a new language appeared with the launch of “Rio zona norte” (Rio North Zone) in 1957, directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, followed by “Rio, 40 graus” (Rio, 40 Degrees), by the same director. The movie “Rio, 40 graus” presented, “without prejudice and in tone of realism until then unprecedented”, the reality of the daily life of a favela in Rio, the capital of Brazil (SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015, p. 419). While shooting “Rio zona norte”, Glauber Rocha met with Nelson Pereira, and they both gathered “Leon Hirszman, Cacá Diegues, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade and Paulo César Saraceni, forming what would be known as ‘the Rio group’ {...} which outlined the guidelines of what would become the New Cinema” (SILVA, 2016, p. 33-34).

In architecture, the representation of the national features was not limited to the achievements of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, who revealed themselves to the world through the curves made in concrete, in Brasilia. In 1957, the architect from Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Rodrigues, created the “Poltrona mole” (Soft armchair) that, among other creations, revolutionized the furniture made in Brazil. In 1961, Poltrona mole won an award in Italy (under the name of ‘Sheriff’), and became well known worldwide. Rodrigues incorporated the avant-garde experimentalism of the time and gave “a greater emphasis on Brazilian materials... especially the jacaranda wood and leather, seeking to express through the furniture, the sensation of relaxation, informality, arising from the new ways of being and sitting” (SANTOS, 2000, p. 32); after all, the bossa nova crowd needed a new room that would match their dissonant chords. The cultural effervescence of the period was also revealed in the invention of bossa nova that, from the south of Rio de Janeiro, would spread around the world in the following decade (SANTOS, 1997).

However, before the bossa nova crowd could enjoy the new guitar beats by João Gilberto in his first recording on Elizeth Cardoso’s album in 1958 (SANTOS, 1997), the country went through tragic moments in 1954. The suicide of Getúlio Vargas in August was the most remarkable tragedy, but it was not the only one, and it was the third consecutive moment of national commotion that year. In July, Bahia-born Marta Rocha was second in the Miss Universe contest in a loss that brought as much commotion as the loss of the FIFA 1950 World Cup. The ghost of the mongrel complex was still haunting Brazilians: second place again. The loss by Marta Rocha was particularly painful because in June of that year Brazil had been eliminated early in the quarterfinals of the FIFA 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, by Ferenc Puskas’ powerful Hungary national team. Perhaps this sequence of disastrous events in 1954 catalyzed the population’s commotion after Vargas’s suicide, which led a million people to accompany his body from Catete Palace to Santos Dumont Airport (SANTOS, 1997; SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015). So, if 1958 was “the year that should not end” (SANTOS, 1997), 1954 was the “year to be forgotten”; 1954 was the year that consolidated the ‘mongrel complex’ in Brazilian society.

It was only in the FIFA 1958 World Cup in Sweden that Brazil started to get rid of these ghosts and revealed to the world its genius soccer players such as Pelé and Garrincha, who brought the country the Jules Rimet cup. With the cup, “Brazilians ceased to be ‘mongrels’ among other people and Brazil ceased to be a ‘mongrel’ among the nations” (SANTOS, 1997, p. 15). This was Brazil in the 1950s, who used the crooked legs of Garrincha to dribble its complexes and build the big Brazil, propelled by the atmosphere of “modernity and development” of President Kubitschek’s government, which “blew and inspired the country towards the dream” (SANTOS, 1997, p. 21).

Thus, during the 1950s, Brazil recognized its condition of underdeveloped country, and worked to overcome the mongrel complex. Inspired by Orfeu, Pelé and President Kubitschek, the country paved the way to modernity. It is in this context, impregnated “by a discourse and an imaginary with a strong nationalist content” (NEVES, 2001, p. 193) that the administration science was developed and the programs to prepare administrators were structured. The role of administrators in order to build the great Brazil dreamed in the 1950s are translated in the words of the speaker of Ebap’s class graduated in 1959, Reynaldo de Barros. He says, “Once it is understood that Brazilian development is something that happens around the orbit of the state and under its direct guidance, the role for the administrator in general and the professional administrator in particular becomes clear” (SEMANARIO, 1959, p. 6).

The 1950s was so singular that, at the end of the golden years, the “bossa nova” president, Juscelino Kubitschek, elected by popular vote, handed over the presidency to the next elected president, Jânio Quadros after completing his mandate. Only after forty years, another president elected by popular vote, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, completed his mandate and handed over the presidency to another equally elected president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. (SCHWARCZ and STARLING, 2015). The period that followed was also a period of development and (re)discovery, as the 1950’s had been.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

The methodological challenge faced in this research was to allow a deep understanding of the 1950s from studying the actors who lived in that decade, seeking to find out what administration science was then. Considering that administration science was little known until the mid-1960s, this study researched documents produced by Ebap and by students and former students, as well as by professors and former professors of the administration school, which was, theoretically, a center par excellence of the development and application of administration science. A first important document is the book celebrating the school’s 50^th anniversary (under the name of Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration - Ebape), which features interviews with a number of former faculty members and students, and presents the whole range of courses and professors since the institution’s first year (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002).

The interviews published in the 50^th anniversary book provided names of other potential interviewees, as well as pointed out new documents worth to be researched. For example, the interview with former professor Nelson Mello e Sousa recommended the newspaper O Semanário, published in the 1950s, which presented the section “Núcleo de estudos brasileiros - Nebras” (Center of Brazilian Studies), produced by students from Ebap and Iseb. The section was then consulted at the digital newspaper library of the National Library of Brazil, and all articles published there between 1958 and 1959 were analyzed. O Semanário was part of what was called ‘the nationalist press’ at that time and its content was aimed at the propagation of the “idea that national development must not concede to foreign capital” (BRITO, 2010, p. 88). This was the main reason the newspaper was depredated and closed after the military coup of 1964, and its journalists were pursued (BRITO, 2010).

The study also investigated the publications by Benedicto Silva, director of Ebap between 1953 and 1959. Some of his articles were published in the Revista do Serviço Público (Journal of Public Service), which is available at the Mario Henrique Simonsen Library (BMHS) of the Fundação Getulio Vargas. In addition, the study consulted all issues of the Cadernos de Administração Pública (CAP) (Journal of Public Administration) published by Ebap available at BMHS. CAP was an initiative of Professor Silva, published from 1954, in order to promote the production of content in Portuguese. Among the issues published - cahiers as Professor Silva used to refer to them - there are issues that would become the first book of introduction to public administration in Portuguese (AMATO, 1958). These issues, together with the issue number 02 of CAP - published by Roberto Campos (1954) - have proved to be important sources of research.

About the Superior Institute of Brazilian Studies (Iseb), evidence of the importance of the institution was found in sources produced by the government and available in the Brazilian National Archives, such as official speeches from presidents Getúlio Vargas and Juscelino Kubitschek, and law number 37,608 of 14 July 1955 - and its respective explanatory statement - that created Iseb. The basic documents to understand Iseb were the report on its first five years of activity (ISEB, 1960) and 02 theses written about the institution (ABREU, 1975; OLIVEIRA, 2006). It is important to stress that the interviews carried out for this research reinforced the importance of Iseb in building the field of Brazilian administration science during the 1950s, considering that all interviewees mentioned the organization.

The interviews were conducted between October 2015 and April 2016, and the advanced age of the potential interviewees - all of them over 80 years old - was a difficulty to be overcome. The research adopted open interviews, using the oral history approach, focusing on the parts of the interviewees’ life that cross the objective of the research (ALBERTI, 2005). The challenge was to go beyond the information already collected in the interviews presented in Ebape’s 50^th anniversary book (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002). The first interviewee, Professor Mello e Sousa (I1), was featured in the referred book and the researchers sought to explore elements that were still unpublished. The other interviewees were Cândido Mendes (I2), who was professor at Ebap between 1952-1968; and two former Ebap students, Jorge Hori (I3), class of 1956, and Hermes Tavares (I4), class of 1959.

Thus, by studying former students’ and professors’ testimonials collected from the three sources - the Ebape’s 50^th anniversary book, the articles published by students and professors in the section Nebras in O Semanário, and the 04 interviews - this research builds a dialogue among the actors in order to understand the development of the Brazilian administration field in the context of the 1950s.

The testimonials and the other documents researched form the corpus that base the narrative presented in this article. It is important to recognize that we as researchers are part of this narrative, and that history must not be confused with the past. We do not understand the past as a fixed construction that is waiting to be reconstructed, from its traces, as it was. The understanding here is that one can only construct a mosaic, in a bricolage process from sources that are similar to the past, not the past itself (CURADO, 2001). In the narrative that follows, we are present as researchers who, influenced by the present moment, describe - in our own way - something that has already happened and that cannot be described in its completeness.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION: “SCIENCE OR ART”? ADMINISTRATION SCIENCE IN THE 1950S

At that time the discussion was whether it {administration} was science or arts... 80% of the students were worried with the formal diploma in order to officialize their career. The corporatist spirit was dominant (HORI, I3).

The data analysis was organized in three parts, according to the research question and the themes that emerged from documents and interviews: a) what administration science was in the 1950s; b) the relationship Iseb-Ebap; and c) the contributions of Eclac. Like Iseb, Eclac emerged from the phase of data collection as an active institution in the 1950s, influencing the construction of administration science. It is important to note that the three institutions, Ebap, Iseb and Eclac, operated in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil’s capital until 1960), and were located close to the main agencies of the federal government.

THE CONNECTION WITH DEVELOPMENT AND THE ROOTS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES. SEEKING A BRAZILIAN ADMINISTRATION SCIENCE

When it comes to the 1950s, it is interesting to remember president Vargas’ speech at the opening of the first legislative year of that decade. The president indicated the creation of the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes), saying (BRAZIL, 1951, emphasis added):

The Brazilian education system does not serve the country’s needs in terms of specialized working force. Our high-education system lacks teaching and research institutions in areas such as economics and administration science, with adequate equipment and in sufficient number to supply the demand. The government intends to implement a large program to prepare technical work force and to train and improve personnel, not only to cope with personnel deficiencies in the Public Administration, but also in the private sector.

Providing higher-education for these professionals, would be a strategy to face the “depletion of the government administration”, which prevented the state from assuming its new roles in the process of economic development of the country (BRASIL, 1951). The creation of both the undergraduate teaching institutions in the 1950s and Iseb’s “Curso Regular” (a program for graduate applicants established to prepare technicians and managers) aimed to fulfill this mission of preparing professionals able to promote national development (BRASIL, 1955a).

Therefore, the first aspect that emerged from the deep study of the 1950s was the strong relationship between the development of administration science and the development of the country. Using the testimony of Paulo Motta (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 238): “The United Nations has spread the idea that the administration of developing countries should be more advanced than society itself and serve as a promoter of development”. This overlap of ‘administration’ with ‘development’ is clear in the discourse of Ebap’s class speaker for 1958 - the first class to go through the four-year curriculum - (MACHADO, 1966), Reynaldo de Barros (SEMANÁRIO, 1959, p. 6):

Once it is understood that the Brazilian development is something that happens around the orbit of the state and under its direct guidance, the role for the administrator in general and the professional administrator in particular becomes clear”. If Brazilian development is a problem that has to do with the state above all, who is responsible for this task if not those that operate the state, i.e., the administrators? Effectively, the administration is responsible for drawing the lines of development, making sure the guidelines are followed and to adequate them when it is necessary.

Considering the exposed above: what was this “administration science” of the 1950s like? What was the administration science that President Vargas mentioned in his speech transcribed above, the administration the president said was needed to support the state in its new roles to promote development (BRASIL, 1951)? These questions were illustrated in the speech by Reynaldo de Barros, written in OSemanário (1959). From his speech, it is possible to observe that the professionals trained at the time had “a reasonable knowledge of social sciences, with a global vision of Brazilian society”, which would place them in an “intermediary position between the technician and the social scientist”, rejecting “the classical laws of the economy, forged in countries of structures entirely different from ours” (SEMANÁRIO, 1959, p. 6). These “professional administrators” saw their role as helping the state in the process of planning the economy to meet the needs of Brazilian society; that is, a clear connection between administration and development.

Despite this clearer view of the role of the administrator, Barros’ speech shared the difficulty in presenting to society what was in fact the administrator’s role (SEMANÁRIO, 1959, p. 6):

What does a diploma in professional administration mean? What is the role of the professional administrator? These are questions that will surely be posed to many souls (and, why not?) perhaps to ourselves.... The youngster enters Law, Medicine, Engineering Graduate Schools and have the same doubts, the same problems. Everybody knows what an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor will do. But few know what the tasks of a professional administrator.

Still in the early 1960s, this misunderstanding of what administration is, is illustrated in the testimony of Paulo Motta, who entered Ebap as a graduate student in 1961 (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 240):

“Administration, what is that? You are crazy!” I had to explain what the school was, what I was doing here. We spent a long time explaining because nobody knew what studying administration meant. The idea at that time was that people would pursue a career as an engineer or a doctor, and, at the end, they would be directors of hospitals or companies. Then they would become administrators.

“At the time, no one knew about this profession, that’s the truth”, said Mello e Sousa, a professor who joined Ebap in 1954 (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 34). He reaffirmed in the interview (I1):

Nobody knew what administration was, nobody had a clue about administration studies. Administration was understood as something… like breathing. It was absolutely natural; everybody administrates everything, their own house, the state. That is the way administration was understood. Thus, studying administration was like studying how to breath, it made no sense.

Due to this misunderstanding about the profession of the administrator at Ebap, and because it was a new project in education, “the constitution of the first class of students was difficult... and to overcome the difficulty it was necessary to develop, in 1952 and 1953, a strong campaign to attract a sufficient number of candidates”. In the following year, the school launched a scholarship system to attract students (MACHADO, 1966, p. 37). The alternative that Ebap found to form classes was to send professors to the states to recruit students:

The school professors were sent to regions all over the country… Professors were recruiters. I myself went to several states to recruit students”, said Mello e Sousa. (I1).

Both Jorge Hori (I3) in São Paulo and Hermes Tavares (I4) in Bahia confirmed that they were visited by Ebap’s recruiting professors in their respective home states. This, however, does not seem to have been the preponderant factor in attracting students:

I decided to try because they offered scholarships and tickets to travel to Rio. The scholarship was enough to guarantee a life as a student in Rio, it was a minimum wage at that time, said Tavares (I4).

The attractiveness of the scholarship was clear for the recruiting professor Mello e Sousa (I1):

...and, if you were approved and you accepted, you had the scholarship to adapt to life in Rio de Janeiro. Then the kids got excited very quickly.

Hori (I3) stated that his decision for administration was made, in fact, for lack of other options. Hori confirmed that it was the scholarship that allowed him to stay in Rio de Janeiro during the four years of the graduate program: “I would say it was an accident, or rather, for a lack of opportunity. I got involved with student political movements and at the time of the college entrance exam I was not prepared”.

Despite all this effort, according to Mello e Sousa (I1), “every year, we did not know if we were going to have enough students for a full class”. That is, even with professors visiting the states and with the offer of scholarship, the barrier of ignorance as to what administration was at the time made it difficult to form classes.

And what was the training in administration science offered by Ebap? The school curriculum throughout the 1950s had a solid background in the social sciences, which was later modified in the mid-1960s. According to Paulo Motta’s (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 239) statement:

In the two first years, we studied psychology, anthropology, public law, classic social sciences - political science, history, sociology - and a bit of mathematics, statistics and languages: Portuguese, English, French; only in the third year, the courses on administration were taught.

In the interview, Mello e Sousa (I1) made clear this division of the graduate course in two stages of two years each, the first being totally dedicated to education on humanities and, the last two years, to the specialization:

They {students} had two years of education on humanities, in which they practically did not discuss administration. The only course in administration in these first two years was history of administration, presenting the most important scholars, so the student was familiar with the subject. But it was a course of history. The courses in this first part of the studies were all on sociology, anthropology, psychology, work relationship, labor law, etc. Administration was practically not discussed. In the last two years, because of the course in history of administration (that used to give a general idea of aspects such as the budget, management of personnel, administration of materials) the students could choose where to specialize. Therefore, the students had a solid base on humanities and good specialization.

This model offered by Ebap - with the first part of the graduate course focused on social sciences, and after that on specialized courses - was attractive for students such as Hori (I3):

What interested me about Ebap’s course was the program’s connection with social sciences, but also the anthropology, the economy. This was good, but there were moments when we asked ourselves: when are we going to learn about administration? But it was an eclectic education for a public administrator. I am not saying eclectic in ideological terms, but in terms of general knowledge. This multidisciplinary base is very important. It is important to be holistic.

The emphasis on the social sciences and the proposal to prepare leaders and managers are present in other testimonies that were collected for the book celebrating Ebape’s 50^th anniversary (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002). A student of the 1955 class, Gilnei Mourão Teixeira, confirmed that “in the first two years, the school had a curriculum as few social science faculties had ... At that time no one else studied cultural anthropology or political science in this country” (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 90).

According to Motta, the goal of the school was to form “great leaders; they were not in a school to be technicians in administration” (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 239). A fact also corroborated in the testimony of Diogo Lordello de Mello, who became professor at the school in 1956: “the original idea of Ebap’s creation was the preparation of an elite of civil servants” (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 25). However, it seems that this pretension of the school was not confirmed in practice, according to Tavares (I4):

{...} something that was very much mentioned, “here you are learning to be managers, to be bosses. In truth, you learned how to be a boss for bureaucratic things, to put things in the right boxes.

Fact corroborated by Hori (I3):

But Ebap did not manage to fulfill its objective of preparing the leaders for the public administration of the country... in the sense that the alumni from Ebap would achieve high positions in public administration… No one was ever a minister or a high-level state manager.

Above all, the administration science that Ebap sought to create was something connected to the local context, which would be different from the science produced in the US. One of the founders and director of Ebap between 1953 and 1959, Benedicto Silva (1959, p. 29), acknowledged the US superiority in “perfecting administrative techniques and methods”, but pointed out that the “US administrative efficiency will only serve as a model in countries of this continent {South America}, if it is Latinized”. According to Silva (1959, p. 29), the US teaching in administration:

... is so embedded in the institutional American context that it would be difficult to find something useful for other countries of the continent. The American administrative virtuosism, wealthy and varied, will only become reproducible in Latin American countries if it passes through a critical filter for adaptation.

Thus, in the 1950s, the main school of public administration in Latin America, represented by its director at the time, Benedicto Silva, recognized the US as the main source of modern “administrative techniques and methods”. At the same time, however, he argued that these techniques and methods would not be directly applicable, specifically, to Brazil. In other words, at least at Ebap in the 1950s, an unconditional acceptance of the US-suggested management model was rejected and a Brazilian Administration was to be built.

Corroborating Silva’s position (1959, p. 29) that “many American compendiums on administration fail to meet the goals of the study of this discipline in Latin countries”, and in order to use a “critical filter of adaptation” in these Latin American countries, Ebap began to edit in 1954 the “Cadernos de Administração Pública” (Journal of Public Administration). The objective was to produce in Brazil the didactic material necessary for its programs, “considering that there is not enough works on public administration that can be adopted as guides written in the students’ mother tongues - Portuguese and Spanish” (SILVA, 1954, p. 1).

The article by Hori (I3), then a student at Ebap, entitled “The administrator in the national development”, sums up the discussions made so far (SEMANÁRIO, 1958, p. 4):

Ebap’s role in preparing administrators

Multiple studies on Administration showed that its systematic teaching is possible. Studies also showed that preparing administrators can only be done at the university level when the knowledge on social sciences is required, because this knowledge allows the apprehension of the Brazilian reality, without which the administrator will be a machine with little use. This level is imposed by the need to create a Brazilian Administration. The process of development demands an order and rationalization of the economic activities within planning and active participation of the state. Therefore, one of the biggest tasks of our development is in preparing professionals in public and business administration, who today find many opportunities. It is in this sense that Ebap has great importance.

It is possible to observe that there is an attempt to justify the “systematic teaching of administration”; that this systematic teaching aims at “training technicians to support the state in the process of development planning”; and that “knowledge in social sciences in order to understand Brazilian reality” is what would give the differential so that the administrators did not become merely “machines of little use” (SEMANÁRIO, 1958, p. 4).

Therefore, Ebap seeks to build a Brazilian administration, based on the social sciences and connected to the country’s economic development. Iseb participated with Ebap in this effort, which led to the construction of a vision of Brazil (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2014) that rejected the apriorism of scientific management inspired by the USA (SILVA, 1959). The courses taught by Ebap and Iseb, despite their different proposals, aimed to train technicians and managers “to fill deficiencies in administration personnel, both in public and private activities” (BRASIL, 1951) and to “collaborate in solving basic problems of economic development and welfare state of the country”, as pointed out in the FGV statutes in the 1940s (FGV, 1995, p. 7).

Thus, the creation of business schools and the emergence of Iseb’s postgraduate program, beginning in the 1950s, are the result of the same process of linking administration with economic development and the consequent need for technicians and managers.

FROM EBAP TO THE BASEMENT OF ISEB

Because of some of the professors, we decided to from a study group that gathered in the “basement of Iseb”. It was a room in the basement of a house on the Palmeiras street. It was there that the students nurtured the idea (students from Ebap) of saving Brazil (HORI; I3).

The mentions made to Iseb in all the interviews were especially interesting in order to explore what Iseb’s interaction was with Ebap, and what its role was in shaping the administration thinking (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2012). Iseb was born as a school of government whose basic mission was to “train technicians and managers” (BRASIL, 1955a) and to produce research that would support government “in planning and elaborating an administrative program” (BRASIL, 1957). Iseb was created as a “permanent program” (BRASIL, 1955b) and promoted a year long “Curso Regular”, a program for graduate applicants, established to prepare technicians and managers, which required the presentation and defense of a thesis at the end (ISEB, 1960): “it required a research work that, at that time, was already similar to the ones required in postgraduate courses”, according to Cândido Mendes (I2). Between 1956 and 1960, a total of 205 professionals graduated with the presence of officials from various ministries and public agencies (WANDERLEY, 2015a). According to Mello e Sousa (I1):

Iseb was created based on the model of the School for Advanced Studies in Paris. It was created as a Brazilian version of that school. It was a group of intellectuals, the best in the country, that wanted to be together to reflect on Brazil, to study the country. This was the objective that led to Iseb’s foundation.

Economic development implied that the state should take on new roles and, for that, the formation of a new type of careers of technicians and managers was necessary. It is precisely for these reasons that the government of President Kubitschek, which inherited Iseb as a teaching institution set up in the short-term government of President Café Filho, supported it rather than abandoned it, as might be expected given the change of government. We do not want to state here that Iseb was born as a school of administration like the others created during the 1950s. Iseb represented the government’s alternative for preparing technicians and managers to perform in the public administration, mainly, and also in private administration, which made sense considering the context posed in that decade (WANDERLEY, 2015a).

The focus of Iseb’s teaching and research practices was on “teaching and disseminating the country’s development project”. To achieve this objective, basic measures were adopted: “concentration of efforts in the study, research and planning of everything related to the Brazilian reality; search and construction of a historical understanding of the country; investment in a methodological approach focused on national characteristics” (OLIVEIRA, 2006, p. 204). Iseb’s program was strongly concentrated in the social sciences as a way of understanding the national reality, which coincided with the focus of the first two years of Ebap’s program. In addition, Iseb was the center par excellence for the formulation of the concept of national development (OLIVEIRA, 2006). These were then the main attraction factors for professors and students of the two institutions. According to Tavares (I4), what attracted him to Ebap’s program “was not the technical part, it was the part of social sciences, the nationalism and the possibility of interaction with Iseb”. The interviewee refers to a nationalism that runs through the entire 1950s.

How did the influence of Iseb on Ebap occur? Ebap was created in Rio de Janeiro in 1952, the same year that a group of intellectuals known as the “Itatiaia Group” started to gather, forming the ‘embryo’ of what would later be Iseb (ABREU, 1975; OLIVEIRA, 2006). When Iseb moved in 1957 to a house in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, at 55 Rua das Palmeiras (ABREU, 1975), the institute was located very close to Ebap’s house, on Botafogo Beach: “there was a tram that went through the road Voluntários da Pátria, or we could just walk. It was a good walk. At that time, for young people, 3 km was not much”, said Hori (I3), which was supported by Tavares (I4): “there was the tram, which went straight there. It was very close”. When Tavares joined Ebap in 1959, he was naturally drawn to Iseb, as “the former students advertised it”, which makes it clear that Iseb’s ideas circulated fully in the corridors of Ebap.

Professor Guerreiro Ramos is the best-known case of a professor who worked simultaneously in both institutions: Ebap’s professor from 1953 until the mid-1960s (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002), Ramos participated in the discussions of the Itatiaia Group before becoming professor at Ebap (WANDERLEY, 2015a). Therefore, it was natural to expect that Ramos was one of the main cross fertilizers between Iseb, originated from the Itatiaia Group, and Ebap. Ramos selected students from Ebap to participate in internships in Iseb, developing several research projects at the Study Center of the Sociology Department (ABREU, 1975). These research, with the resources of the Center of the Industries of the State of São Paulo (Ciesp) - obtained as a result of Iseb’s support to a campaign of the industrialist Mattarazzo - were coordinated by Ramos, the economist Gilberto Paim and the demographer Mario Magalhães (ABREU, 1975), who had taught at Ebap in 1953 (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 392). Both professors, Paim and Magalhães, would then work in one of Ebap’s schools in the 1960s, the Inter-American School of Public Administration (EIAP, 1967). According to Mello e Sousa (I1), Paim worked actively at Ebap and Iseb: “Gilberto Paim was a journalist, he was not a professor, he did not even have a university degree, but he was a really competent researcher. He would pick up all that data and supply the courses. He also used to make traditional texts of which he did not take ownership, but they were his work.”

A case that lasted longer than that of Guerreiro Ramos is the one of Professor Cândido Mendes, who worked at both Ebap and Iseb. Like Ramos, Professor Mendes is one of the historical figures of Iseb, he was involved since the period of the Itatiaia Group. Cândido Mendes entered Ebap the same year as Ramos, 1953, but remained after Ramos departure, and acted uninterrupted until 1968 (BONEMY and MOTA, 2002). In addition, in a historical coincidence, it was Cândido Mendes who took the university chair “Introduction to Brazilian development” when it was included in Ebap’s graduate program in 1964, having taught this course until 1966 (BONEMY and MOTA, 2002). That is, the concept of development forged in Iseb, being taught in Ebap. Cândido Mendes is mentioned by students and professors of the time as a reference of Ebap in that period as much as they mentioned Guerreiro Ramos. Professor Mendes is remembered for his rhetoric, “his highly elaborated gongoristic style” (see BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 114). For Cândido Mendes (I2), this was “a period of intellectuals in search of national identity”. He says:

The line of thought that was present already in Ibesp {Brazilian Institute of Economics, Sociology and Politics, Iseb’s predecessor} is a thought of opinion, or to get to an idea of nation for itself. I mean, not for others. This would give the notion that it is not possible to think about this {the idea of nation} without entering into the thesis of nationalism. That is to say, and obviously it is necessary to understand that to carry out this economic, social, political and cultural process… (and at that time we discussed the “total social fact” without understanding that, in the simple inertia of a change, its structural modification is not really reached) and development is that situation which involves a founding moment, where the founder is interdisciplinary; it cannot be said that it is only economic. And then, Guerreiro Ramos had a lot of influence.

About professors who worked simultaneously in both institutions, it is worthwhile mentioning Michel Debrun and Themistocles Cavalcanti - the latter also taught at the Eiap in the 1960s (EIAP, 1967) - despite the short time they taught simultaneously in both institutions. Debrun, as visiting professor, taught between 1958 and 1960, and published (by Iseb) the book Ideology and Reality (ABREU, 1975). Cavalcanti was a member of Iseb’s Board of Trustees and lectured in extra-curricular courses both at Iseb and Ibesp (CADERNOS DO NOSSO TEMPO, 1955), as well as being an Ebap professor in Ebap’s first two years (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002). Cavalcanti participated in meetings in the US and in Brazil that led to the creation of Ebap, and taught classes on Ebap’s pilot program (MACHADO, 1966, p. 21). Cândido Mendes and Themistocles Cavalcanti, among others, were professors honored at the graduation of Ebap’s first class in 1954 (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 100). Iseb’s main founder, Helio Jaguaribe, also had a strong presence in Ebap, according to Hori (I3):

Hélio Jaguaribe went {to Ebap} several times. Álvaro Vieira Pinto went sometimes. Werneck Sodré did not go very often, he went sometimes. Hélio, Guerreiro {Ramos} and Cândido Mendes were the ones that went more often, they were professors of both institutions.

Therefore, it is clear that there is a close relationship between Iseb and Ebap, at least throughout the 1950s, which was a nodal moment in the construction of the administration science in Brazil. This proximity can be illustrated by the fact that, in the first full year of Ebap (1953), out of the 16 courses that were taught (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002), 04 counted on professors who worked simultaneously in the organizations that preceded Iseb (Itatiaia Group and Ibesp). An important confirmation of this proximity between Iseb and Ebap is the testimony of Professor Mello e Sousa. When asked if “relations between Ebap and other institutions that used think about the country were close” at the time he entered the school, Professor Mello e Souza responded (BONEMY and MOTTA, 2002, p. 38; emphasis added):

More than close relationships, there was an ‘interpenetration’. Cândido Mendes, Guerreiro Ramos and Roland Corbisier, for instance, were professors at Ebap and Iseb - Roland was not one of our professors, but he had an active presence in conferences organized by the students. This resulted in a great interaction between us. I, myself, was not a professor at Iseb, but I helped in research conducted by the institute. In addition, I was responsible for a section in a nationalist newspaper, O Semanário, called NEBRAS, or Center for Brazilian Studies. Our students prepared the texts, in harmony with the group from Iseb and with great penetration in the National Union of Students (UNE). There was an institutional relationship connecting Iseb, Ebap and UNE.

Above all, the amalgam in this institutional relationship between Iseb and Ebap was the commitment to prepare technicians and managers able to promote national development, professionals who were profoundly knowledgeable of the Brazilian reality, and of the techniques imported to transform this reality, able to adapt the techniques according to the national context. The knowledge of the social sciences taught in these two schools was what would give this differential to promote the adaptation of imported techniques, and that would allow the differentiation of a real professional administrator from a machine that simply reproduced the knowledge received from outside.

ECLAC VS “SCHOLASTIC ECONOMISTS”

As well as mentioning Iseb, the interviewees made references to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac), an agency of the United Nations (UN) created after World War II. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Eclac formulated theories that faced apriorism of scientific management imported from the US, and that has much to contribute to organizational studies (WANDERLEY, 2015b). Eclac’s positions in the 1950s generated a conflictive relationship with the US authorities and marked a distinctive way of analyzing the development of Latin America. According to Eclac, the development of the region should be guided by the strong performance of the state through economic planning, which for the US authorities was dangerously similar to the communist countries’ centralized planned model (POLLOCK, 1978).

An example of the spread of Eclac’s ideas in both Ebap and Iseb, was Guerreiro Ramos’ speech at Iseb entitled “The ideological control of economic programming”, published in the section NEBRAS of the O Semanário (1958, p. 58):

{...} nor will it be worth advising with “specialized” economists, that is, men who are limited to the economic-financial dimensions, within a line of orthodox reasoning, losing sight of the historical-social reality as a whole. Precisely, this is the central thesis of the text presented by Nebras to the readers’ reflection. Economic planning cannot be “the delight of scholastic economists”, as put by Guerreiro Ramos.

If the “scholastic economists” should be avoided, the section made clear which economists should be followed: “Celso Furtado, Ignacio Rangel and Gilberto Paim must necessarily appear in the library of every Brazilian who is interested in national problems” (SEMANARIO, 1958, p. 4). Furtado was the main Brazilian representative in Eclac (BIELSCHOWSKY, 1988); and as Gilberto Paim and Ignácio Rangel, Furtado also participated in teaching activities at Iseb (ABREU, 1975). This edition of OSemanário (1958) presented, as an advertisement, the image of the cover of Guerreiro Ramos’ book “A Redução Sociológica” (The Sociological Reduction) (1958), published by Iseb, with the suggestion that it should be included, together with “Estudos de Economia” (Studies of Economics) by Furtado, Rangel and Paim, in the list of readings “for every Brazilian who is interested in the national problems” (SEMANÁRIO, 1958, p. 4).

It is possible to observe, therefore, that both Ebap and Iseb presented a rejection of the liberal economy and there was an adherence to the assumptions of the structuralist economy defended by Eclac. In the case of Ebap, this comes as a surprise, given that the Fundação Getulio Vargas’(FGV) school of economics - the Brazilian Institute of Economics (Ibre) - clearly followed the liberal line led by Gudin (BIELSCHOWSKY, 1988). According to Mello e Sousa (I1), there was even resistance from Ebap’s students to the Ibre’s staff: “the students had a certain irritation with them, the students were hostile to them”. It was clear that there were two competing worldviews, “this structuralist line was Prebisch vs Gudin”, according to Hori (I3) or, in the words of Tavares (I4), “was center-periphery {Eclac’s concept}, via Iseb. Also Iseb partnered with Eclac”. In this competition, the group of Mello e Sousa (I1) had a clear position alongside the thinking of Iseb and Eclac, and contrary to the Gudin/Ibre group, which he calls the Chicago school:

We had a group that had connections with Eclac, with Iseb and with other groups of professors of economics or sociology that defended a completely different thesis. {Gudin/Ibre} Defended a thesis without the stimulation from the state, without the state’s support or protection. Without investment led by the state our industry would collapse, it would not be able to cope with international competition. Without tax protection, it would not cope and it would not develop, it would not be possible. This was the path for Brazil´s industrialization. This was what we defended.

Consequently, Iseb did not adopt the liberal economic view, but the Eclac’s structuralist economic view, which was taught in Iseb’s “Curso Regular” that influenced Ebap and shaped the administration science and the first classes of administrators (BERTERO, 2006). These facts illustrate the importance of Iseb in the construction of the administration science and help explain why Iseb influenced ‘administration thinking’ in Brazil (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2012). It is clear that throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the public administration program that Ebap sought to build was much closer to the content of Iseb courses than to the program taught at Eaesp. It is also clear that the economic content taught in Ebap was closer to Eclac and Iseb than to the FGV’s school of economics (Ibre), which followed the ideas of liberal economics that were opposed to Eclac’s structuralism. However, throughout the 1960s, with the acceleration of the Americanization process - markedly after the signing of the PBA-1 agreement with the US government - Iseb and Ebap would follow quite different routes.

Final Considerations

In the 1950s, Brazilians ‘incorporated’ the “mongrel complex” and the condition of underdevelopment, in order to find the path to (re)discovering the country through a nationalism that led to the route to the ‘impossible’ utopia of Brasilia, the capital city. Brazil lost the FIFA 1950 World Cup in Maracanã, but came back and won the World Cup in 1958, in Sweden. The National Radio spread commotion nationwide narrating Bahia-born Marta Rocha´s loss in the Miss Universe contest, and informing the tragedy of President Getúlio Vargas’ death. In theater, the population celebrated plays such as “Orfeu Negro”, the hero coming from a favela of Rio de Janeiro. With the play “Eles não usam blacktie” (They do not wear blacktie), the theater also exposed the new daily life of the factories, the industries producing the new Brazil. The first experiences of “Cinema Novo” (New Cinema) showed the country at a new angle, its areas of poverty, while bossa nova exalted Ipanema’s “salt, sky, sun and south”. It was in this full cultural, political and economic effervescence of the period, with Brazil questioning itself in the search for self-knowledge, that the administration science flourished in the country.

In this environment of search for national roots, the desired professional administrator had to have a deep knowledge of the national reality. They were the leader to take the country to a new level of development and society, using their knowledge and ability to plan. The immersion made here in the 1950s to investigate the origins of the administration science in Brazil used documents produced at the time and testimonials of former professors and students of Ebap. The objective was not only to (re)visit the past, but also to shed light on the future of the graduate programs in administration, which is currently the area with the most students enrolled in the country. This research showed that the administration science emerged in the country closely linked to the theme of national development, as well as to the intention of planning this development.

Recognizing this mission, the administrator should be someone who rejected the apriorism of scientific management received from the United States, and sought in the social sciences the best way to adapt imported instruments to the operational context. It was this search for a Brazilian administration that generated in Ebap the argument advocating that American administrative efficiency would only be a model to Latin America, if it were ‘Latinized’. This process of building a science of Brazilian administration in the 1950s was strongly influenced by Iseb and Eclac. In Iseb, the social sciences formed the basis for understanding the national reality and the means to transform it. It was this support in the social sciences as an instrument of understanding and providing means for building a new Brazil that brought Ebap closer to Iseb. Both institutions supported the theoretical contributions of Eclac, which diagnosed the underdevelopment of the periphery as inherent to the development of the center, and which predicted industrialization with state support and induction as a means of overcoming the underdevelopment.

The search for a Brazilian administration had as its background the national developmentalism, which permeated the 1950s, and that had in the Petroleum Campaign, at the beginning of the period, the strongest materialization of its spirit and, in the construction of Brasília, its concretization.

Today, we may be more occupied in mastering imported techniques than in apprehending our reality. It is necessary to reverse this order: first, to know our reality, to dominate the social sciences and the contributions of the authors that have helped to understand Brazil, for example. Then, and only then, to pursue the knowledge and to be able to adapt the techniques needed to change the reality. The mere replication of imported content and techniques without proper critical evaluation turns us into “machines of little use” (HORI, I3), machines that we may be replicating in large numbers in the legion of students in graduate programs of management that are out in the market every year. In 2014, 229,722 students graduated in “management and administration” (INEP, 2016).

From the massification of education programs in administration in this century, our responsibility as educators increases even more. We must then reflect not only on the connection of what we teach with the national context, but also on the compatibility between the education given to these undergraduates and the profession they will carry out. For teaching, it is possible to say that the influence of the US in the expansion of programs from the 1960s is still present. For example: in the marketing area, Philip Kotler is the author with the highest number of books sold; in the area of strategy, we had a strong impact from the theories of Michael Porter and Jay Barney. Even in the area of ​​organizational studies, with a more critical bias, the Anglo-Saxon knowledge predominates. We can assume that authors such as Kotler, Porter and Barney developed their theoretical models predominantly for the US industry. If these models are still the main ones within the administration graduate programs, are we adequately preparing our students for the labor market? The fact is that industry is no longer the main labor market for graduates; since, in 2015, this sector accounted for less than 10% of the country’s GDP.

Therefore, our immersion in the 1950s to shed lights on the twenty-first century should remind us of the words of the director of Ebap Benedicto Silva (1959, p. 29) who sought a genuinely Brazilian administration: “American administrative virtuosity, rich and varied, will become transplantable to Latin American countries if it passes through the critical filter of adaptation.”

In addition, it is crucial to reflect whether in the last decades our graduates have moved to work in other sectors, while the trend in teaching has consolidated with the focus on the industry, under the influence of the US. That is, in addition to the lack of connection with the local context and the strong foreign influence, is the content taught in graduate programs in administration also separated from the roles that graduates will take in the labor market? A question that we will certainly have to face in order to prepare the graduate programs so they provide the students with relevant knowledge.

Finally, the exercise of rescuing the efforts made by Ebap in the 1950s to build a Brazilian administration, and recognizing the contributions that Iseb and Eclac made in this endeavor can help us find ways of (re)connecting the administration science with the national context and, consequently, to provide relevant content for our graduates to continue on their own paths to the impossible utopia.

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  {Translated version} Note: All quotes in English translated by this article’s translator.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Jan 2018

History

• Received
  16 May 2015
• Accepted
  12 Apr 2017