Cadernos EBAPE.BR: consolidating and expanding communitiesThe journal Cadernos EBAPE.BR has become a diverse and influential platform for debates in administration and management in Brazil, alongside other leading journals and scholarly outlets. Since the early 2000s, it has built respectful and responsible connections with the various communities that make up the field of administration, as well as with the different expressions of human life. With renewed enthusiasm and a heightened sense of responsibility, we take on the editorship of Cadernos EBAPE.BR, aware that the most crucial aspect of our work is to preserve what has been established, strengthen what is emerging, and create opportunities and pathways so that the many communities that bring this journal to life through various forms of participation and collaboration can find themselves reflected in its pages and other channels of communication and learning.
Cadernos EBAPE.BR is the result of the creative, imaginative, disciplined, and responsible efforts of many individuals, involving a growing and dynamic community of authors, readers, reviewers, partners, and members of both the editorial and administrative teams. Its living history is an essential part of our practices and should be revisited and retold during this period of transition.
In a context characterized by large-scale national and international projects aimed at establishing a single mode of thought worldwide, the late Marcelo Milano Falcão Vieira (editor from 2003 to 2009) embraced the multifaceted field of Organizational Studies (Carrieri & Correia, 2020). He motivated different communities to prioritize rigor and open debate as core principles shaping the journal’s identity (Vasconcelos et al., 2018).
Subsequently, during the crisis of financial capitalism led by the United States and Europe, whose social and political effects continue to unfold, Ana Lucia Guedes (2010-2012) took on the editorship, reaffirming and renewing this foundational (though not strictly foundationalist) identity. She maintained the quality of editorial processes while expanding the internal support base and the external cohesion needed to meet the pressures from large multinational corporations and national and international ranking and funding agencies that shape the complex world of academic publishing.
Fernando Tenório’s tenure (2013-2016) coincided with institutionalized attacks on democracy. He sustained the journal’s commitment to pluralistic thought and democratic debate, while reconfiguring its transformative identity through the diversification of engaged communities. These communities brought together multiple traditions of critical knowledge and alternative ways of knowing, being, and living, both within and at the margins of the field of administration.
In a context marked by the normalization of restrictions on academic pluralism worldwide, this tradition of engagement with diverse communities was continued by Isabella Vasconcelos (2016-2019). During her tenure, she promoted a culture that values both intra- and inter-community dialogue through an inclusive approach to expanded critique. It was also during this period that the role of co-editor, assumed by Hélio Arthur Irigaray, was introduced to address emerging governance challenges in Brazilian academic journals, driven by the significant increase in the volume and diversity of submissions and publications.
Between 2020 and 2025, Irigaray expanded the journal’s reach, establishing it as a bilingual publication that adopts a situated approach to internationalization. This approach is characterized by dynamic interactions of both compliance and resistance, reshaping its core commitment to rigor and openness to debate. With the support of co-editor Fabrício Stocker (2021-2025), the journal experienced significant growth in both scope and thematic diversity.
While each of these successful and memorable editorial periods addressed specific contexts shaped by increasing challenges, we recognize that their most significant legacy is in fostering a (self-)transformative identity, one rooted in engagement with and driven by multiple communities. Through this evolving and transformative identity, the journal has become a consistent community space for developing, sharing, and maturing ideas. Cultivating a culture that values rigor, open debate, and dissent has helped reduce the impact of an academic ecosystem that hegemonically expands by systematically excluding and co-opting new, provocative, or insurgent ideas. This status quo often marginalizes authors, perspectives, and traditions arbitrarily deemed dissonant or retrograde.
This path of community development and intellectual maturation bears the marks of multiple contexts and stages in the journal’s history. We have learned that this pattern of growth and achievement does not ensure the future. Since Cadernos EBAPE.BR was first established, the world of academic journals has been significantly shaped by billionaire corporations and privileged institutions embedded in colonial, racial, and patriarchal forms of capitalism (Grosfoguel, 2005). Academic journals have thus become part of conservative efforts that seek to regulate academia on a global scale, generating forces that largely aim to prevent this academic world from being led by its diverse communities (Costa & Goulart, 2018; Guedes, 2018).
The imperative to publish at any cost has normalized a predatory culture of dehumanizing hyper-competition, shaped by logics akin to social Darwinism. These forces limit imagination, shut down possibilities, distort alternatives, and marginalize collective ways of knowing, living, and being that challenge enduring dynamics of objective institutionalization and subjective internalization, where there is only one “true” way of being human and a singular culture representing the peak of civilization (Wynter, 2003). This imperative has been institutionally codified in the anglicized dictum “publish or perish” and has become a normalized aspect of academic life (Abdallah, 2025). It continues to shape the logic of scientific work in management, especially since the early 2000s, although it is influenced by national power dynamics.
At the same time, we learn to desire and imagine, under conditions of (im)possibility, the collective reactivation of possibilities that have been suppressed or interrupted, but not defeated. With Paulo Freire, we learn the term “esperançar,” meaning “the practice of hope” or “active hoping.” Creative dissents and diverse expressions of human life persist, and academic communities continue to cultivate substantive transformations under conditions of (im)possibility through disciplines, pedagogies, and journals (Abadalla & Faria, 2017).
This commitment to an idea of co-created possibilities, rather than fixed certainties, has been present since the journal’s inception, even as it has faced constant pressure from the forces and institutions of epistemic coloniality. Operating under increasingly restrictive conditions, Cadernos EBAPE.BR has nonetheless become a successful journal precisely because it has been supported by both its editorial and administrative teams and the multiple communities that have energized it from the beginning. We especially acknowledge the ongoing support of FGV, as well as the contributions of CNPq and SciELO, institutions that play a central role in developing Brazil’s academic publishing system.
The number of submissions and published articles has increased; geographic reach and influence have broadened; and the community of authors and reviewers has become more diverse, as has the range of themes and groups that enrich the journal by submitting bold ideas to public debate. We also want to recognize the outstanding and multidisciplinary work of Fabiana Braga Leal, who is stepping down for personal reasons after a long and impactful contribution to the journal.
We aim for the journal to continue inspiring and generating contributions that help us understand, transform, and explain the diverse societies that make up social life, especially their connections with management and organizational studies. We remain dedicated to engaging both well-established debates and new or emerging perspectives in the field, including critical discussions on the assumed universality of management and its limitations, as well as the constraints posed by self-referential, monocultural, and closed forms of knowledge shaped by binaries like us/them and superior/inferior. We also address parochialism that refuses to engage with difference. The journal offers space for private companies, public organizations, civil society groups, social movements, and other organized expressions of human life (Serva, 2017). Most importantly, it provides a platform for the people who create these realities and the knowledge they produce and share in their everyday practices.
We also seek to strengthen debates on management and administration education, as well as on the conditions of the academic field where this knowledge is created and maintained (Barros & Carrieri, 2013). Although several journals are increasingly engaging with this area, it remains underrepresented in Brazil. Therefore, we plan to invite diverse teaching communities to deepen these discussions within the journal.
We aim to develop a deeper understanding of the needs of the communities and subcommunities that the journal seeks to engage and support. On a practical level, we will encourage the co-development of authors, reviewers, and editors through ongoing dialogue, strengthening shared identity markers and an ethos focused on rigorous and humanized scientific discussion. The journal must remain a space for the creative acknowledgment of the humanities and social sciences and for the flourishing of diverse expressions of human life, not merely a venue for publishing articles as commodities.
We will continue refining our processes by involving associate editors, the editorial board, authors, and reviewers in the collective creation of this imagined yet tangible space. We are supported by a dedicated internal team that understands the complexities of academic publishing and the needs of our communities, with special recognition for the diligent and creative work of Jackelyne de Oliveira da Silva and Bruno Eduardo Andrade de Carvalho. In this space, researchers can find interlocutors who engage with their ideas both rigorously and respectfully. Multiple communities can work together to advance knowledge on the diverse topics of administration and management, organizations, and the practices through which such knowledge is created and shared.
In addition to the challenges previous editors successfully handled, we will face new ones, including major changes in publishing practices and possibly in the fundamental concept of authorship. These changes are being shaped by the rise of new and debated technologies increasingly integrated into research processes and by critical and creative reflections on their ontological, epistemological, gnoseological, material, and political implications.
We aim to continue earning the trust and collaboration of everyone, especially the numerous communities that have supported Cadernos EBAPE.BR for more than two decades
References
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Abdalla, M. M., & Faria, A. (2017). Em defesa da opção decolonial em administração/gestão. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 15(4), 914-929. https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395155249
» https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395155249 -
Abdallah, C. (2025). Against mastery: epistemic decolonizing in the margins of the Business School. Management Learning, 56(2), 389-400. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076241236341
» https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076241236341 -
Barros, A. N., & Carrieri, A. P. (2013). Ensino superior em administração entre os anos 1940 e 1950: uma discussão a partir dos acordos de cooperação Brasil-Estados Unidos. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 11(2), 256-273. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1679-39512013000200005
» https://doi.org/10.1590/S1679-39512013000200005 -
Carrieri, A. P., & Correia, G. F. (2020). Estudos organizacionais no Brasil: construindo acesso ou replicando exclusão? Revista de Administração de Empresas, 60(1), 59-63. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0034-759020200107
» https://doi.org/10.1590/S0034-759020200107 -
Costa, C. F., & Goulart, S. (2018). Capitalismo acadêmico e reformas neoliberais no ensino superior brasileiro. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 16(3), 396-409. https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395165788
» https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395165788 - Grosfoguel, R. (2005). Hybridity and mestizaje: sincretism or subversive complicity? Subalternity from the perspective of the coloniality of power. In A. Isfahani-Hammond (Ed.), The masters and the slaves: plantation relations and mestizaje in american imaginaries (pp. 115-129). Palgrave Macmillan US.
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Guedes, A. L. (2018). Repensando a gestão editorial de periódico acadêmico no campo da Administração. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 16(spe), 486-491. https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395173200
» https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395173200 -
Serva, M. (2017). Epistemologia da administração no Brasil: o estado da arte. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 15(4), 740-750. https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395173209
» https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395173209 -
Vasconcelos, I. F. F. G., Irigaray, H. A. R., & Leal, F. B. (2018). A trajetória e a evolução da editoria científica em administração no Brasil: a proposta democrática do Cadernos EBAPE.BR. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 16(spe), 494-499. https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395177451
» https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395177451 -
Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation - An argument. CR: The new centennial review, 3(3), 257-337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015
» https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015
