Abstract
Administration is currently the most offered course in Brazil, responsible for 20% of undergraduate students. Therefore, educators have a big responsibility to reflect on the content of the courses. The reflection proposed here is an immersion into the 1950’s, when the first graduation schools were created. It is a reflection based on a dialogue between documents of that time and three sources of testimonies of former students and former professors of the Brazilian School of Public Administration (EBAP): a) journals of that time; b) testimonies collected for a book published to celebrate the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration’s (EBAPE) 50th anniversary; and c) interviews with students and professors who attended EBAP in the 1950s. The science of administration in the 1950s was associated to development. It rejected the apriorism of the scientific management received from the US, it also sought - through the social sciences - to critically promote content that fostered the adaptation of imported techniques to our reality. In this quest to represent the local context, EBAP approached the propositions of the Superior Institute of Brazilian Studies (ISEB) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The apprehension of the local context is critical to form good professionals. Looking at the efforts of EBAP in order to build a Brazilian administration field in the 1950s, and the contributions that ISEB and ECLAC gave to this endeavor, can help to find ways to (re)connect the science of administration to the national context and, consequently, provide relevant content to our graduates.
Keywords:
ECLAC; Development; EBAP; History of Brazilian administration; ISEB.