American missionaries in Bahia: the undergrad course in administration at the UFBA Administration School

Abstract

This work uses historiography to analyze how the US foreign aid supported the creation of UFBA School of Administration. The FGV’s São Paulo School of Business Administration (EAESP) contributed in the initiative, and was considered as the disseminator of the American model for schools of administration in Brazil. After reading the documents produced by the American mission in Bahia, as well as other historical sources, especially the book on Bahia’s school of administration’s history (SANTOS, BARRETO and BARRETO, 2009) we concluded that the American strategy faced many obstacles. The missionaries were not aware of the idiosyncratic structures in Brazilian universities. They also had to deal with the local interests towards a program that had different characteristics from the EAESP’s model experienced before, especially the characteristics of a Bachelor’s degree in public administration and the role of the Brazilian state in regulating education and economy.

Keywords:
Americanism; Management & Cold War; Management history

Resumo

Por meio de uma historiografia, este trabalho analisa como os Estados Unidos apoiaram a criação da Escola de Administração da UFBA, contando ainda com o apoio da Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo (EAESP), vista como disseminadora do modelo estadunidense de escolas de negócios no Brasil. Após a leitura dos documentos produzidos pela “missão” estadunidense na Bahia e de outras fontes históricas, especialmente o livro sobre a história da Escola de Administração da UFBA (SANTOS, BARRETO e BARRETO, 2009), concluímos que os estadunidenses enfrentaram vários obstáculos não antevistos. Concluímos mostrando como os “missionários” não sabiam lidar com as idiossincrasias das universidades públicas brasileiras e como tiveram também de lidar com interesses locais relativos especialmente à introdução de um bacharelado em Administração Pública e ao papel do Estado na regulação do ensino e da economia.

Palavras-chave:
Americanismo; Administração e Guerra Fria; História e Administração

Resumen

Por médio de una historiografia, este trabajo analiza cómo Estados Unidos apoyó la creación de la Escuela de Administración de la UFBA. La Escuela de Administración de Empresas de São Paulo (EAESP) también formó parte de la empresa, vista como el difusor del modelo americano para escuelas de negocios en Brasil. Después de leer los documentos producidos por la misión americana en Bahía y otras fuentes históricas, sobre todo el libro sobre la historia escolar de Bahía (SANTOS, BARRETO y BARRETO, 2009) concluimos que la estrategia americana se enfrentaba a muchos obstáculos. Los misioneros no eran conscientes de las estructuras idiosincrásicas de las universidades brasileñas. También tuvieron que lidiar con los intereses locales hacia un curso que tenía características diferentes del modelo de la EAESP, especialmente aquellos concernientes a un grado en la administración pública y el papel del estado en la regulación de la educación y en la economía brasileña.

Palabras clave:
Americanismo; Gestión y Guerra Fría; Historia de la gerencia

INTRODUCTION

In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States created the Point Four Program, through which foreign aid was offered to Latin American countries, including Brazil. In many of the program’s initiatives, the US sent technicians and scientists in knowledge-sharing missions. The Point Four Program aimed at expanding and consolidating the US influence in the region during the Cold War. At that time, “development” was part of a narrative promoted both by the US and the USSR. The first advocated that the path to development was via capitalism and market economies. As for the USSR, development was to be achieved via socialism, building a communist society. In Brazil, the dominant ideology was the national-developmentalism, which emerged in the 1930s - during the dictatorial period of President Getúlio Vargas - and continued until the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s (BRESSER-PEREIRA, 2011). The decline of the national-developmentalism in Brazil only began when the national and international contexts led to its exhaustion. This ideology was, however, a milestone in Brazilian life, and significantly influenced the country’s economic and social spheres.

Management and its worldwide expansion is a phenomenon that can be explained by the dynamics of economic development in the United States (FRENKEL and SHENHAV, 2003; HEDMO, SAHLIN-ANDERSSON, and WEDLIN, 2005), during the second half of the nineteenth century. This body of knowledge, however, would not have the same dissemination worldwide if the US were not the superpower it became. Also, the dissemination of management owes particularly to the Cold War (LOCKE, 1996) and, therefore, it is possible to say that the characteristics of management reflect an instrumental approach to the phenomena and processes of administration. This approach worked as an important tool in the diffusion of the cultural influence of the United States, and as an ideological ‘weapon’ during the Cold War (KELLEY, MILLS and COOKE, 2009).

The dissemination of teaching Administration in Brazil is an outcome from the interaction between several actors and institutions. This article discusses the role of the American mission that went to the Brazilian state of Bahia with the objective of helping to disseminate ‘administration,’ as understood by the Americans, throughout Brazil. The Americans’ understanding allows a dual interpretation of their role in disseminating higher education programs in administration in Brazil. On the one hand, the establishment of new programs met local demands, from elites in the government, of expanding administrative capacities and improving the training of new managers. On the other hand, the dissemination of the administration, according to the models advocated by US institutions, served the understanding of this field of ​​knowledge as an instrument in the US dispute for the leadership of the “free world.”

This article discusses the role of the educational institutions involved in this issue. It points to the difference between the expectations and the implementation of a new school of administration in Bahia. Also, the article stresses the different points of view of the actors (Americans in the MSU missions and the professors in Bahia) involved in the implementation of the bachelor’s degree in administration at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and the creation of the university’s School of Administration (EAUFBA). The work contributes to the discussions on the dissemination of the bachelor’s degrees in Administration in Brazil, while pointing out the existence of different possible narratives to understand the processes that led to the implementation of the programs - although it is possible to say that these processes were developed particularly under the narrative of national-developmentalism and Americanism. It is important to say that both narratives are not one-dimensional and served to deepen and to stress the process of implementation of higher education in administration in Brazil.

In the case of the university mission in Bahia, the world scenario and the Brazilian expectations converged to welcome the aid from the Americans, who had the goal of implementing administration university programs in Brazil (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2014; BARROS and CARRIERI, 2013). At that time, despite the repeated frictions among the two countries, Brazil believed it deserved a special relationship with the USA (DALIO and MYAMOTO, 2010; HAINES, 1989). Also, the economic success of the US legitimized the American management techniques, even though they carried out traits and ideologies that brought to light some clashes with management methods and the ideas in force in Brazil.

METHODOLOGICAL NOTE: HISTORY AND ADMINISTRATION

More recently, history tended to set aside partially its traditional methodology and adopted a new approach becoming more of a social science. It was also considered a positive science, and the French school of the Annals (École des Annales) and the American tradition of quantitative history exemplify this tendency (BURGUIÈRE, 2006). From this perspective, the historian’s narrative must present data and sources, considering that the development of the various philosophical conceptions of history certainly had their place and importance.

The twentieth century introduced the ‘interpretation’ to the understanding of history, i.e., the contribution of hermeneutics. The assumption is that one cannot access the past, and therefore, it is impossible for history to be a positive science. The accumulated sources and literature serve the historian as evidence that allows reconstruction of the past. As Weatherbee (2012) stresses, past and history are not synonymous and the author plays a preponderant role in the interpretation and construction of the narrative.

Therefore, we recognize the role of the author and reject the assumption of objectivity, when objectivity means the reconstruction of the past as it happened. This article is based on our interpretation when reading the reports of the Michigan State University’s (MSU) mission, started in São Paulo and expanded to Bahia and other states. Our interpretation does not affirm the leadership role of the mission and a leading influence of the lessons learned from the experience of the São Paulo School of Business Administration (EAESP) of the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in the dissemination of schools of administration in Brazil. However, it emphasizes that there were significant contributions as a result from the mission and the experience of EAESP. In the case of the expansion of the mission to Bahia, as will be shown throughout this article, there are divergences between the perspective of the actors in the state of Bahia and what was registered in the reports of the MSU mission. The Professors in Bahia recognize that there was greater autonomy in the project in the state, and the MSU mission and the experience of EAESP would have played a small role. This research was carried out based on the reports of the MSU mission, from where we identified recurrent themes - as done by Alcadipani and Bertero (2014) - building the historiography presented in the next sections.

The work is aligned with the discussions that point to the possible gains of approaching administration and history, in a ‘historiography of the administration’ (COSTA, BARROS and MARTINS, 2010; ROWLISON, HASSARD and DECKER, 2014). This study contributes to other works of historiography that have discussed the establishment and development of bachelor’s degree programs in administration and higher education institutions dedicated to these programs (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2012, 2014; BARROS and CARRIERI, 2013; CARNEIRO, 2015; FISCHER, 1985). There are also other relevant works, such as Vizeu’s thesis (2008) that discusses the role of the Instituto de Organização Racional do Trabalho (IDORT) (Institute for Rational Organization of Labor) in the dissemination of administrative knowledge and rationalization of Public Administration, under the responsibility of the Departamento Administrativo do Serviço Público (DASP) (Public Service Administrative Department) (VIZEU, 2008; COELHO, 2006), and the dissemination of management in Brazil (VIZEU, 2010).

Also, public administrators and public administration were important for the establishment of the field of Administration in Brazil (COELHO, 2006). Almost all the first institutions of higher education in Administration had their attention divided between companies and public service, which is also the case observed in Bahia. It is possible to say that the formalistic way of teaching administration is partly due to this interrelation, as pointed out in Silva’s pioneering study (1958).

At the same time, since the 1950s, there has been increasing pressure for administration programs to incorporate the rules of production and dissemination of scientific-university knowledge (MARCH, 2007; KHURANA and SPENDER, 2012). The same movement is spread throughout Brazil, and commercial schools that focus on practical aspects are giving way to higher education programs in administration (BARROS and CARRIERI, 2013; COELHO, 2006), which allegedly consider the program of FGV EAESP as a disseminating center (ALCADIPANI and BERTERO, 2014). FGV EAESP was supported by the Ford Foundation with grants for operational costs and started to invest more in spreading the administration program after the Korean War, as another way of containing the advance of communism (ZIMMERMAN, 2001).

During the 1950s, in addition to the schools of administration of FGV in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, only the Escola Superior de Administração e Negócios (ESAN) (School of Administration and Business) and the Faculdade de Ciências Econômicas of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) (Faculty of Economic Sciences of the Federal University of Minas Gerais) had higher education programs in administration. Using resources of the Point Four Program, the US government invested in changing this scenario through the 1959 agreement on special technical services (BARROS and CARRIERI, 2013; FISCHER, 2001). This agreement covered technical services for the Schools of FGV, UFBA and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) - in UFBA and URGS, the agreement involved the creation of the programs in these universities (MACHADO, 1966). The technical services initiative was an understanding between both federal governments and, was considered as foreign aid from the US to Brazil, a country considered allied to the US in the Cold War.

In order to carry out this work, two sources were used: the annual reports of the university mission of Michigan State University (MSU) and a book about the EAUFBA written to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary (SANTOS, BARRETO and BARRETO, 2009). That is, in the first case, we used a primary source and, in the second case, a secondary source.

The annual reports were formal communications evaluating the progress of the agreement between EAUFBA and EAESP. It was possible to access the documents consulting the FGV archives, as the school received a copy of the communications between the “missionaries” and MSU. We digitized the documents related to the mission in Bahia and organized the themes they dealt with after careful reading. In the citations referring to the annual reports there is reference to a query, which was the page number of the digitized file containing the cited excerpts related to the involvement of the mission and FGV EAESP in the creation of EAUFBA, and with the offer of executive education programs to the business community of Bahia.

THE STATE OF BAHIA, AS THE GATE FOR THE BRAZILIAN NORTHEAST

The MSU mission in Brazil lasted from the early 1950s until 1964 when some activities were in place but in a process to end. This period was a troubled time in the country’s history as Brazil had become a more complex society becoming a middle-income nation. Internationally the moment was of consolidation and expansion of the dispute between the USA and USSR. Although Latin America was far from the Cold War “center,” after the Cuban Revolution, the conflict became part of the ideological horizon in the subcontinent.

Economic development was accelerated, marked by the establishment of the automotive industry and President Juscelino Kubitschek’s Plan of Goals, summarized in the motto “fifty years in five.” During the period of the MSU mission, the country went through a politically difficult but economically favorable time, with the so-called national developmentalism. This model emphasized the protection and growth of industrialization, and the consequent urbanization (BRESSER-PEREIRA, 2011). For Bresser-Pereira (2011), the national-developmentalism declined when the model was exhausted, i.e., after a certain level of industrialization, it was unable to maintain the level of capitalist evolution. Also, the author attributes the decline of the model to factors such as the emergence of dependency-oriented interpretations, which weakened the intellectual movement related to developmentalism, and the sovereign debt crisis.

In this context, the Northeast region of Brazil was the focus of attention, both for Brazilians and US foreign policy. The Northeast concentrated approximately one-third of the Brazilian population and was considerably less developed economically than the Southeast and South and less integrated with capitalism. The national-developmentalism appointed the industrialization as the strategy to fight the underdevelopment and poverty of the region. At the same time, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) continued to operate social assistance programs in the area (RIBEIRO, 2006).

The Brazilian northeast seemed to be a place favorable to the development of revolutionary movements and even guerrilla centers. The existence of Ligas Camponesas (Peasant Leagues) was a reality that could not be ignored. These elements altogether made the region an important focus for the US hemispheric politics, usually accommodated between a patronizing conservative paternalism and eventual interventionism. Against this backdrop, the MSU mission, as explained below, certainly saw in the “expanded program” (taking the mission to other regions and offering training for Brazilian professors prior to traveling to the US to attend graduate degree programs) an important complementary instrument of US policy, taking the teaching and research in business administration to other regions of the country.

THE MSU MISSION AND ITS ACTIVITIES IN BRAZIL

The Michigan State University (MSU) mission worked in Brazil for more than ten years. It was established in the early 1950s with a contract with FGV EAESP that was terminated in October 1964. The mission’s goal was to implement a Business Administration program in Brazil, a task that was trusted to MSU, a growing university in the USA. The university was aligned with the US government policies and willing to engage in international missions, an activity that would contribute to improving MSU’s position in the scenario of the American universities.

The Brazilian government chose FGV, created in 1944, to host the MSU mission and establish a school of business administration in São Paulo, at that time the second biggest Brazilian city to Rio de Janeiro in population, but on a rapid rise to become the largest and most important economic center of the country. This decision originated the São Paulo School of Business Administration FGV EAESP. During the 1950s, São Paulo was the largest industrial center in Latin America, which made it the right place to start the mission and also to host the first branch of FGV. Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s capital at that time, the foundation had already created the Brazilian School of Public Administration (EBAP) and had been offering programs in public administration since 1951 (BARROS and CARRIERI, 2013).

The MSU mission was made up of several professors of business administration, not all of them working at the American university but the mission was always under the coordination of a MSU professor. The mission’s progress reports indicate that the members were clear about their condition as “missionaries.” They were considered the “carriers” of knowledge that would help Brazil to improve business management and facilitate access to a better economic situation. The missionaries showed an attitude of perplexity and impatience with the “cultural clashes.”

The tasks of the MSU mission implied taking responsibility for the academic management of the FGV EAESP program. Professors would draw up curricula and disciplines to be taught, without violating Brazilian law so that a Bachelor’s degree in business administration would be awarded after a four-year program. They also trained FGV’s young and newly contracted Brazilian professors to be sent to MSU and obtain a Master’s degree in business administration. When returning to Brazil, these young professors would take over the place of the FGV EAESP missionaries. The mission also sought to approximate and connect the business community in São Paulo, a task evidenced with the creating of the FGV EAESP Board of Directors, with seats occupied by local business people. Before the beginning of the degree program, the foundation offered training courses for the business community, which are nowadays called Executive Education programs.

In the late 1950s, the mission leaders decided to expand the activities to other cities and states, looking at strategic regions to work around the country. At the end of the decade, the MSU mission evaluated its performance and the development of its activities as successful. FGV EAESP in São Paulo was already in the process of consolidation, although there was much still to be done. The school already had an Executive Education training program in place, promoting good relations with the local business community; a Bachelor’s degree program was started; and an active group of young Brazilian professors had returned from the United States with MBA degrees, ready to take on teaching functions. This scenario stimulated a new look to the operation in the country, considering expanding the program to other regions.

The decision to expand the activities was connected to the situation in Brazil and the US foreign policy for the region. The United States did not see Brazil as a firm ally. The relations between the countries have had tense moments and often led to disappointment on both sides (HILTON, 1989; HIRST, 2009). The context of the Cold War and the impact of the Cuban revolution and its alliance with the USSR led the USA to increase its presence and improve measures to stop the dissemination of communism in Latin America. The mission had decided that the project previously limited to São Paulo would be expanded to the South, Northeast and the state of Minas Gerais. In the South, the partner would be the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and in the Northeast two options were considered: the states of Pernambuco and Bahia. In Minas Gerais, the partner would be the Federal University of Minas Gerais, but the university refused to participate at the last minute of the negotiation preventing the possibility of replacement, which led to the exclusion of the state in the mission’s expansion plans (SIEGEL, 2010). The decision to take the mission to the Northeast region was a response to initiatives that the Brazilian government had taken to develop the region. The creation of Banco do Nordeste do Brasil (BNB) (Brazilian Northeast Bank) and the Superintendência do Desenvolvimento do Nordeste (SUDENE) (Development Superintendency for the Northeast), when President Juscelino Kubitschek was in office, was an initiative aligned with national-developmentalism, which advocated state intervention and leadership in order to overcome the vicious circle of underdevelopment.

These initiatives were evidence of the concerns toward the situation of the Northeast and marked a new approach in facing the problems of that region. What had prevailed since the times Brazil was a Monarchy was a welfare perspective, with an emphasis dealing with the damages caused by the region’s adverse climatic conditions marked by seasonal droughts and consequent perpetuation of poverty (RIBEIRO, 2006). In line with a developmental economic policy, the solution would be the industrialization of the Northeast, believing that the industry would be the dynamic focus that would leverage the region’s economy. For that, investments in the Northeast would be channeled through the provision of tax incentives. Although Brazil already had a development bank operating nationwide (BNDES), the government decided to create a bank specifically focused on the region, the BNB.

The first option to expand the mission would be the state of Pernambuco. The Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), however, did not show enthusiasm with the mission’s proposal. According to Taylor (1968), the refusal on the part of UFPE was due to the resistance of the students regarding the agreement proposed by the American institutions. The Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), in turn, was interested and willing to accept the ideas proposed (SANTOS, BARRETO and BARRETO, 2009).

Despite Bahia’s desire to host the MSU mission, the state was not a replica of São Paulo. The UFBA School of Administration (EAUFBA) was created in September 1959. The recently created EAUFBA had among its staff some people working as consultants for the US Point Four Program (Query, p. 10, Annual Report, June 1958/July 1959, p. 19). The School of Administration and UFBA’s professors had contacts and relationships with members of another group of North American professors, from the University of Southern California, who worked at FGV EBAP, now EBAPE, in Rio de Janeiro. Although the records of the MSU mission show the commitment to transform the Bahia project into an “extension” of what had been done at FGV EAESP, the result was different from the expected. The climate was tense at UFBA, particularly because of the newly established School of Administration:

The crisis that the Federal University of Bahia went through in June 1960 reveals the environment in which the School of Administration of that university was created and where it currently tries to operate. Although the strike began in protest against the reservation of dormitory places made by the President of the university to host students of the New York University as part of an exchange program called “Junior Year in Brazil,” exchange program, the demonstration challenged the President and his administration.

While the mission in São Paulo was focused only on the creation of a business administration program, in Bahia the mission included creating a public administration program. UFBA, its School of Management, and the business community had enthusiastically received the proposal to start a business administration program in the state’s capital, Salvador. The mission approach indicates that, just as had been done in São Paulo, the intention was to get both the support of the academic community and the business world, simultaneously. Thus, in January of 1960, the First Special Course in Business Administration was launched, lasting four weeks, with 6 hours of classes per day for two groups of participants (3 hours for a group in the morning, and 3 hours for the other in the evenings).

The “First Special Course in Business Administration” started this type of activity (approximation with the local business community) in January. The course was four weeks long and was taught by FGV EAESP professors every morning (for 26 participants) and in the evenings (for 29 participants). The course was successful in all aspects. Financially the fee charged covered all costs, with a surplus for EAESP. The competence demonstrated by EAESP’s professors impressed the business community favorably, and the interest in business administration was greatly stimulated. With this result, it is expected that other programs will be carried out in the future (Report sent to FGV EAESP, 1960).

This experience was a compact version of the first program offered in São Paulo, the Administration Intensive Course (CIA), which lasted for four months and on a full-time basis. Even though the name of the course in Bahia was in English, it was taught by FGV EAESP’s Brazilian professors, in Portuguese (Query, p. 4, Semi-Annual Report, July/December 1960, p.20). Before that, in 1959, there is a record of five weekly conferences on business administration organized with the business community of the state, showing that there was an approximation with the business community in Bahia. The conferences were held at the Salvador Chamber of Commerce and among the lecturers was a professor of the MSU mission, Dole Anderson, and a professor that was one of the EAESP’s founders, Luiz Felipe Valle da Silva (Query, p. 3, Annual Report, June 1958/July 1959, p. 19).

In 1959, UFBA became the second Brazilian public institution to offer a Bachelor’s degree in administration, after the public and business administration programs of UFMG, which were created respectively in 1952 and 1954 (BARROS and CARRIERI, 2013; MACHADO, 1966). EAUFBA offered a bachelor’s degree in public and Business Administration, the latter being the focus of the MSU mission’s expansion.

Sometimes the attempt to keep the programs in public and business administration proved problematic. However, in Brazil, several initiatives have maintained both programs in the same school or faculty. In the case of EAUFBA, two-thirds of the places were allocated to the business administration students, due to the low demand for public administration.

It was more difficult for the MSU mission to influence the UFBA. In the case of FGV EAESP, the mission had great academic control: it established curricula, trained professors, taught classes, developed and supervised the preparation of teaching material. Also, FGV EAESP was an isolated school of business administration, which was crucial for the degree of influence the Americans had. FGV EAESP established a program on public administration only after the end of the mission in the late 1960s.

EAUFBA was a unit of a federal university subject to the organizational, legal and institutional limits of the Brazilian university system. The link between this system and the Ministry of Education made it part of the direct administration, which meant a great administrative complexity. The university agility and flexibility were lower in comparison to FGV, which was at that time a little more than fifteen years old. Also, the salary was an acute problem in EAUFBA, which had difficulties hiring qualified professors to teach the courses related to Administration.

In Bahia, there was a group already acting in the field of public administration, who likely did not have the same relationship with the mission as the professors of FGV EAESP. The connections between FGV EBAP and the University of Southern California (USC) faculty delineate the difference in the relationship. USC had in EBAP a role similar to that of MSU in EAESP. EBAP’s Brazilian teachers were recruited, trained and obtained academic degrees at USC. EBAP became an important reference for EAUFBA teachers in the area of public administration (SANTOS, BARRETO and BARRETO, 2009).

EAESP AS 'TRAINING CENTER'

Despite the differences between São Paulo and Bahia, the MSU mission sought to develop a business administration program using the experience accumulated in São Paulo. This was done with the adoption of a curriculum for the Bachelor’s degree program that was based on EAESP’s and also on the training and development of a faculty. As Alcadipani and Bertero (2012) point out, from the beginning, EAESP had been designed as an institution that would work to disseminate directly or indirectly a model of administration program. Through what was known as an “expanded program,” the school in São Paulo provided training before the departure of Brazilian professors to graduate programs at MSU. Also, professors from the US have directly assisted in the creation of the EAUFBA curriculum and the drafting of course syllabuses.

The curriculum of the Bachelor’s degree approved and used at the beginning of the program of the School of Administration in 1959 was partially proposed by consultants of the Point Four Program. For the first semester, they proposed six disciplines to be taught by UFBA professors (not yet allocated in the newly created School of Administration) (QUERY, p. 5, Annual Report, July 1958/June 1959, p.19). The report states that the mission’s professors based their recommendations on the curriculum developed for FGV EAESP.

As for FGV EAESP, the role that was designed for the institution by the MSU mission was not fully performed. The young school’s faculty was overloaded. The first professors, returning from MSU, where they had completed a Master’s degree, were overwhelmed with the consolidation of the school’s Bachelor’s degree program and the need to produce educational material adapted, as far as possible, to the Brazilian reality. The permanence of EAESP’s professors in Salvador for long periods only occurred sporadically. Throughout the period only two EAESP’s professors stayed for longer periods, such as a semester and in one sporadic case for a couple of years. The greatest contribution of the professors from São Paulo was in the Executive Education courses, which targeted the business community of Bahia and were offered over a few weeks.

The use of EAESP as a training center for the business administration faculty of EAUFBA was another activity carried out by the mission. At the beginning of the 1960s, EAESP opened a graduate program (CPG), inspired by the MSU mission, which should be the first step for a future Master’s degree in business administration to be developed in Brazil. In the meantime, the newly created CPG would be a space to teach business administration to people who graduated in areas other than administration. It would also be a platform for the preparation of the professors from Bahia before travel for their Master’s degree in MSU.

The mission had a genuinely ambitious project for the country, which perhaps did not last long because of changes in the US foreign policy. In the list of the EAESP’s assignments for the project of establishing business administration programs at the federal universities of Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul, the following obligations were included, according to the mission’s report:

1) offer its facilities to train Brazilian professor of business administration to prepare them for admission to the Master’s program of Michigan State University; 2) designate Brazilian professors from its faculty to assist the North American professor who would go to the two federal universities, object of said Expanded Program; 3) lead the translation of teaching material into Portuguese; 4) organizing and participating in seminars for professors and business people in which there are discussion and exchange of ideas and experiences regarding teaching material, curricula, teaching methods and other issues of general interest (QUERY, p. 15, Annual Report, July 1958/June 1959, p. 19).

Despite the mission’s proposals to involve EAESP in the expansion project, the São Paulo school’s participation was not as expected. This happened not only due to problems of EAESP itself, but also due to the resistance of UFBA and UFRGS professors regarding their colleagues from São Paulo. The preference was to count on the EAESP professors in Salvador and in Porto Alegre, to the extent that the expansion requested their presence, and not for a long time or permanently. The same difficulty was observed regarding the use of business administration teaching material already developed in São Paulo (QUERY, p. 16-17, Annual Report, July 1958/June 1959, p.19). Excerpts from the Report are illuminating about those difficulties. The Agreement to extend the activities of the Mission to Salvador and Porto Alegre established that:

[...] Brazilian technical assistants would be sent to participating universities (UFBA and UFRGS) mainly to advise and support, such as their American peers did in the case of EAESP, and not necessarily to teach. EAESP was not yet fully accepted by Brazilian federal universities. However, this did not prevent a Brazilian professor from EAESP being warmly received as an invited professor in special programs (executive education) to help create an interest in the business community training programs in the local community.

Another apparent difficulty between the two universities included in the expanded program and EAESP is recorded in the information that, in the second half of 1959, the mission made efforts to have a meeting of all professors involved in the program to discuss experiences, goals, and problems. By the end of that year, there had been no response or initiative from the parties involved regarding the proposed meeting.

THE PERSPECTIVE FROM BAHIA

The School of Administration of the Federal University of Bahia was created in 1959 and, on the date of its 50th anniversary, in 2009, members of its faculty produced a book about its history (SANTOS, BARRETO and BARRETO, 2009). Reading the book and comparing it with the reports of the Michigan State University mission led to different perspectives. The mission reports consider the initiatives of Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul as part of a program expanding the activities experienced previously in FGV EAESP. We used the mission reports as the source of data for this article. However, the book written by the professors of EAUFBA gives the impression that the School of Administration in the Northeast was a relatively native and local endeavor, referring to the MSU mission and the Point Four Program only in some parts regarding specific activities.

According to the book, the whole process was driven by local initiatives, particularly thanks to the commitment and foresight of the then University President, Professor Edgard Santos, and the directors of the School of Management, among which emphasis is given to Professor Lafayette Pondé. The fact, as informed in the mission’s report, that EAESP was considered a training center, used as a platform to prepare professors from Bahia to study in MSU. Also, the book by Santos, Barreto, and Barreto (2009) did not mention the use of didactic materials produced in São Paulo and the work of EAESP professors in Bahia.

One possible interpretation for this discrepancy or emphasis on different aspects of the same issue is that EAUFBA, from the beginning, presented a reality different from the one that the mission found in São Paulo. An important point that marked EAUFBA was the existence of a group of professors dedicated to public administration and connected to the national-developmentalist model. Here is a revealing quote:

In a broader scenario, however, there was an increase in the regional development, led, among others, by Rômulo de Almeida, who in May 1955 took office at the government’s Conselho de Desenvolvimento Econômico da Bahia (CONDER) (The Council for Economic Development of the State of Bahia) and at the Comissão de Planejamento Econômico (CPE) (Economic Planning Committee), during the mandate of Governor Antônio Balbino Government. Technical cooperation agreements were signed between the Federal University of Bahia and the state government, in order to promote the industrialization of the state’s economy, which lasted from 1954 to 1959 (SANTOS, BARRETO and BARRETO, 2009, p. 73).

Thus, the perspective and intentions of the mission were partially implemented in Salvador, unlike in São Paulo. A possible connecting point between the professors and academic managers of Bahia and the members of the mission is that the state was the gateway for the Brazilian northeast. The general expectation was that Bahia was the state that should lead the regional development. Its economy was in accelerated growth, in part due to the oil produced in the area of the Recôncavo Baiano, which until the beginning of the exploration of the Campos Basin, was the most important source of Brazilian crude oil, leading to the creation of the first Brazilian petrochemical center in the state.

It was not possible to identify in the documents researched who were the professors already working in UFBA and teaching in its newly created School of Administration. It would be interesting to know the profiles and the training of the professionals who taught in the first Bachelor’s degree in administration offered in Bahia. It is reasonable to infer that they were not from the field of business administration. They are likely to have taught courses that, in the curriculum implemented, could be considered propaedeutics, such as economics, sociology, psychology, mathematics, statistics, and accounting. We found references to an initial research effort that included social scientists. The book mentions an article by João Ubaldo Ribeiro, who worked at the institution as a young researcher. This document was later published in the journal Organizações e Sociedade (RIBEIRO, 2006 [1969]). Although this document is from 1969, its existence indicates that there was a group of academics interested in public administration in the school, even though when the Bachelor’s degree started, the number of candidates for business administration was higher. The decision made by the School’s coordinators to open the same number of places for both programs, however, was an attempt to ensure the continuity of the public administration program.

In Bahia and São Paulo, the program in public administration had the support and involvement of the state governments. In São Paulo, there was a request from the state government for a Bachelor’s degree, with the state covering most of the costs incurred to implement the program. In the case of Bahia, there were also several agreements with the state government for training courses, including at the graduate level (SANTOS, BARRETO and BARRETO, 2009).

EAUFBA is currently an integrated school operating in three areas: business and public administration, and social (or third sector) administration. This profile was established in the 1980s when the school updated and expanded its activities. It helps to understand today’s school connection with the field of public administration, which has been present since its inception.

In Bahia, there were difficulties in hiring professors who would travel to attend the Master’s degree program at MSU, which led the mission to send professors who did not have a contract with UFBA. This situation was of great importance at the time. All FGV’s professors at the beginning of their careers and in most of the public institutions had an employment relationship when embarking, which guaranteed their support while abroad. Therefore, the first professors of EAUFBA who went to study at MSU had to have their own resources to support themselves, since they did not have a salary in Brazil. USAID paid the tuition and provided a stipend that was insufficient to cover all daily expenses. Facing this context, professors in the area of ​​business administration established flexible working relations with EAUFBA. The fact that some of the professors launched their own private school of business administration was evidence of this flexibility.

At the same time, the experience in Bahia faced other problems. FGV EAESP did not manage to keep the enthusiasm of their young professors to go to teach in Bahia in the same way Americans were to teach in São Paulo. As for the perspective of the program in Bahia, to host professors from São Paulo to teach on the Bachelor’s degree programs (using educational material and methodology from Michigan and São Paulo, and always coming from São Paulo), was not so appealing. Thus, for the school in Bahia, it was preferred to have professors from São Paulo teaching short courses for the business community of Salvador.

CONCLUSION

The interpretation presented here allows some conclusions about the first moments in which the American model of business administration (so-called management) was introduced in the Brazilian educational context. “Management” was not a term used throughout this article because it was not part of the terminology used by the professors who were part of the MSU mission, which indicates that the word was imported after the period where the facts studied here happened. This observation is interesting and supports the importance of studies on waves of American influence in the Brazilian field of administration.

For the MSU mission, the project represented an adequate strategy to help in building a country willing to develop. In this sense, it is possible to observe a direct connection with the narrative that characterized the period Post World War II, which led to initiatives such as the Point Four Program designed by the American President Harry Truman as a driver of US foreign policy. In this international context, the members of the mission were recognized as “missionaries,” according to the reports consulted. They believed they had the knowledge and skills necessary to help Brazil, and that they came to the country to transmit them.

Before the beginning of the “expanded program,” the mission had at least five years of successful activities in São Paulo. The Intensive Course of Administration focused on the business community of São Paulo, was offered regularly every semester. The Bachelor’s degree, created in 1957, was already close to graduate its first class. The Brazilian professors got their Master degree from MSU and had already returned to Brazil, teaching and replacing the “missionaries.” Also, an adequate amount of teaching material was produced. Nothing more intelligible, therefore, than to seek the expansion of the initiative, based on the successful experience of São Paulo.

The experience in Bahia was not able to replicate what had happened in São Paulo. The fact that the School of Administration was inside a federal university was a core differential element. EAESP was an independent school maintained by FGV, an institution that fully supported the mission’s activities and enjoyed greater agility and flexibility when compared to a federal public university. In Bahia, there were difficulties in hiring young professors and then sending them to MSU to obtain a Master’s degree, and professors that were already in a contract with the university and had not been selected or trained by the Mission, ended up teaching in the first year of the Bachelor’s degree in administration of EAUFBA. While in São Paulo the course focused on business administration, in Bahia the emphasis, from the beginning, was on offering business and public administration programs. In Bahia, there was an institutional past and in São Paulo only the present and the hope of a future. Therefore, the present and future, in Bahia, should consider its past.

The comparison of the mission’s reports with the book written about the experience of EAUFBA shows a difference of perspectives. Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul appear in the reports of the mission as extensions of the successful project still underway in São Paulo. The interpretation that stands out from the book is that the Bahia program with its School of Administration, as well as the direction taken by the program from the beginning and throughout the following decades, were outcomes from dynamics, decisions, initiatives, and singularities of the state of Bahia. In this sense, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the project in Bahia was almost autochthonous, with some contribution from professors from São Paulo and some support from professionals related to the American Point Four Program and USAID. The book also mentions the relationship with EBAP in Rio de Janeiro for issues related to public administration, but nothing that could be considered tutelage, such as the relationship the mission intended to establish.

A final observation is that EAUFBA was the second Bachelor’s degree in administration in the country to offer a program in public administration. Two other pioneer schools started with only one option, EBAP with public administration, and EAESP with business administration. UFMG had the two programs, public administration, created in 1952, and business administration, created in 1954. Half a century after being created, EBAP becomes EBAPE - Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, and EAESP, although it does not change its abbreviation and name started offering a program in public administration in 1969. Business management and public administration in the same schools or under the same roof is a Brazilian characteristic, different from what is observed in Europe or the United States, where these programs are in separate schools. This peculiarity of Brazil deserves more attention. Finally, future research could deepen the analysis of the similarities and differences in the expansion of teaching administration according to the model of the United States in different institutions of higher education in Brazil.

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• [Translated version] Note: All quotes in English translated by this article’s translator

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Jan-Mar 2019
• Date of issue
  Mar 2019

History

• Received
  25 Nov 2016
• Accepted
  26 Feb 2018