In the last years the number of publications in organizational studies which adopt rather qualitative than quantitative methodologies has increased. This can be explained by the fact that researchers have been taking in account the multidisciplinary characteristics of business administration as an applied social science that makes use of several epistemological sources. However, scholars always relegated or never considered the potential of history studies for the analysis of organizations. The proposal of this work is not only to catch the researchers' eyes to the potentiality of the dialogue between history and administration as a tool to analyze the organizational reality, but emphasize the importance of the development of local and regional studies taking in account the voices from the "past" and of "forgotten people". Starting from the point of view that the organizations will only be understood satisfactorily when they know their own history, this article will present in brief the experience of the Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia.
Management; organizational analysis; History; Oral History; quality Research