A coevolução entre governo, universidade e indústria no desenvolvimento da gestão da qualidade no Brasil

Abstract

This study analyzes the quality boom that Brazil experienced in the early 1990s from a new perspective: with the lens of a co-evolutionary perspective and institutional entrepreneurship, in order to understand how the university, government and industry co-evolved in this period and which mechanisms stimulated this interaction, through a longitudinal case study. A framework is proposed, based on studies that addressed institutional entrepreneurship and the co-evolution between university, government and industry, to assess how these populations interact throughout the phases of an institutional entrepreneurship process. The results shows that the field state; emerging and with low institutionalization, with the presence of stimulus in the field, the market opening and, the positions of the actors, who through boundary bridging accessed new institutional logics, consisted of enabling conditions for the institutional entrepreneurship process. Although previous studies point to fad and isomorphic diffusion as the factors that promoted the institutionalization of total quality in the country, this study reveals the importance of the mechanisms people exchange, lobbying and rules of the game and how they fed the co-evolutionary dynamics between university, government and industry in this context. The research proves to be important for the Brazilian scenario, since it was possible to deepen the understanding of how a certain management practice, total quality, arrived and was legitimized in the country. The findings of this research are relevant so that other important movements for the country can be leveraged through the same mechanisms and interactions, as well as learn from their mistakes and successes. Finally, through this study, it is suggested that the combination of the co-evolutionary theoretical lens with institutional entrepreneurship, and the use of the proposed framework, bring a great contribution to the study of institutional changes in a multilevel aspect and with multiple actors.