O campo dos estudos em administração no Brasil pós anos 90: reconfiguração de léxicos e temáticas na produção acadêmica nacional

Abstract

The context of the financialization of the global economy and the corresponding world-class organizations have posed major challenges to the 21st century managers. Those responsible for their professional education - including professors and Business Schools - have faced uncertain and complex contexts. The validity of management education programs has been increasingly questioned. This study aims to investigate the changes in the Business Administration field in Brazil after the 90 s; more specifically, it focuses on the knowledge involved in management education and on the agents and their respective institutions that provide this knowledge. This includes specifically the activities of professors and researchers engaged in Master's and Doctoral programs in Business Administration at Higher Education Institutions affiliated with the government agency called CAPES, a foundation whose central purpose is to coordinate efforts to improve the quality of higher education in Brazil. Therefore, this research was conducted based on the analysis of the structure of the field of these professors and researchers in Business Administration in Brazil after the 90 s. Pierre Bourdieu s theoretical and methodological apparatus was used due to the possibility of relational understanding of social space, where the agents - whose power is asymmetrically distributed - occupy and fight over positions. Several studies demonstrate the predominance of American authors in the Brazilian scientific production, which is, therefore, basically functionalist. On the other hand, around the 90 s, the American hegemony became refuted, especially by researchers who started to demonstrate greater intellectual independence to that traditional mainstream epistemology. This emerging group has been inspired by the Critical Management Studies (CMS), originated in the UK. The conclusion of the present study allowed the understanding of part of the oppositions and affinities that organize this field, its transformations, and the strategies of two rival groups of agents, constituting the arena of the organizational studies. On the other hand, although weakly adherent of the 'new entrants' denomination, the changes that took place after the 90 s can be said to be easily identified and often institutionalized. This study also revealed the intensified debates and systematization towards the construction of a particular epistemology of this discipline, which not only contribute to the improvement of the administrative theory, but also provides means to promote the future development of Business Administration.