Organizational and Brazilian Culture Revisited: A Hermeneutic Update of the Brazilian Quandary

Abstract

In this article we present a critique to the studies on Brazilian organizational culture. From an hermeneutic approach, we seek to retake the classic works from the Brazilian social thought, focusing on the three main culturalist interpreters from Brazil: Gilberto Freyre, Sergio Buarque de Holanda and Roberto DaMatta, setting them under test with the critical sociology and afterwards presenting their main consequences for the studies about the national reality. In this manner, starting from the idea that the main works about Brazilian organizational culture are based on these authors, the aims of this work are: to present the critic to the essentialism inserted in these publications and suggest an amplification of the culturalist analysis including the institutional and material dimensions of the Brazilian reality, and then to revive the discussions around the culture studies. Thus, the interfaces between Brazilian culture and organizational culture can be re-articulated considering the update of these interpreters and the inclusion of other interpretations about Brazil. The result of this is the possibility of a re-interpretation of the Brazilian organizational dilemma and a broader organizational theorization.