Abstract
In the last decades of economic liberal hegemony or, as some would like to call, neoliberal, market determinism stands to society. Such reading of the world – as market not as an enclave of society, but intending to replace it – has influenced greatly higher education institutions, especially those dedicated to applied social sciences, such as Administration. Wishing to abandon the prevailing slump in academic texts, we use the aesthetics from Robinson Crusoe and Germinal novels to infer that the central thesis of these fictions – individualism and collectivism – may facilitate the interpretation of curriculum matrices practiced in higher education institutions dedicated to teaching and research in Management. It seems to be, with the usual exceptions, that the teaching and research in this area of expertise, has strengthened the master-slave relationship to the detriment of noticing the employee as a social being, therefore political, with decision-making potential in the production process. Robinson Crusoe, as master of this love of Friday, is coherent with contemporary management practices as opposed to the emancipating desire to Étienne Lantier. God Market, with its fetishistic potential that turns everything in commodity through exchange value, must be exorcised through inter-subjectivity of social beings, referenced by value in use. Thus, in the text, Robinson and Étienne characters are antithetical without, however, recognize that the first expresses the reality of the labor world, the system, and the second outlines a shared managerial society from the world of life.
Keywords
Management education; Economic issue; Social issue and being social