This study proposal is based on a historic thesis which today has taken on new meanings and has become a panacea. It deals with the relationship among education, development and modernization of society, a triad which demands on an ever greater scale the encouragement of education, innovation and social inclusion. The empirical support for this analysis was extracted from technical documents from the CNI (National Confederation of Industries) and considered emblematic for making explicit the configuration of the propositions and meaningful traits of the system of corporate beliefs and values of Brazilian industries. Despite the conjunctural singularities, the result showed evidence of a continuum in the relationship between education, innovation and development, and also of the role that this business sector seeks to play in the economy, in the constitution, and in the organization of the labor market and in the processes of social modernization.
Education; Labor; Development; Company institutions; Ford ethos