Análises etnográficas sobre o poder disciplinar em uma organização em processo de falência

Abstract

This research aims at building a perspective on management pratices from ethnography; this perspective is explained by power relationship. The power is everywhere, so it could have been captured in several different places, that is to say, my meanings could be screened in various relationships. I have focused executive board relationships. I want to transfer the look for the moments when and where power realizes the complex structure daily, highlighting the subjects meanings and assimilations in the presence of power structure; meanings and assimilations that excite them to action. As Costa Filho (2008) has considered, my approach relies on behaviors, social experiences and objectivations that produce group identities (we can called it social group). For this purpose, ethnography should be as a research product. For this, the ethnography had to be a theoretical and methodological conjunction, it means the ethnography was a processes build by participant observation, theoretical apprehension and ethnographic description. This process occurred during twelve months. The organization was considered the largest in Brazil in the sector in which it operated. In February 2012, the company filed for bankruptcy, ending up with its operations. With inspirations in Foucault, I believe that in the society built within management there were multiple power relations that crossed, characterized and constitute the social body, and these power relations could not dissociate, establish or operate without a production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of symbolic elements constructed by the subjects that constitute the social body. Such relationships were perhaps among the most hidden things in the social body. I believe, therefore, that power was the element that kept existing all company reality. So, if I had to summarize in a few words what would be management, I'd say: management is nothing more than the ability of an agent to build power relations which result in the assimilation and, whereas, assumption, constituents of consensus, of goals considered collective, as the goals of the collective was best for each one individually; goals that actually are nothing more than sights and goals of power disguised as objective and collective good.