This paper aims at analyzing the possession of an academic title as a form of power manifestation in the Brazilian organizational space. Based on Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's Raízes do Brasil (1936) and Gilberto Freyre's Sobrados e Mucambos (1936) we proceed a historical-sociological analysis of the phenomenon in the order to investigate: (1) the agricultural aristocracy of the XIX century in Brazil, (2) the colonization and its influence in Brazil, and (3) the overvaluation of an academic degree by colonizers. In this sense, the reading of these classics using the lens of "the power of the bachelor" in a segregated society in transition from agricultural to urban allowed to understand the "bacharelismo" in the Organization Studies in Brazil as a conditional power (GALBRAITH, 1999). The ownership of such a particular type of power represents capital stock that legitimates the exercise of authority upon those who are not provided with nobleness and/or academics distinctions.
Brazilian organizational space; bacharelismo; power