Diversity, singularity, sustainability, and decolonization: advances in Brazilian scientific research

We begin our first issue of 2022 by renewing our wishes for good health, peace, and happiness to all our readers, authors, reviewers, and assistants, without whom Cadernos EBAPE.BR would not exist.

We reiterate that our journal is open to empirical research, theoretical essays, case studies, and bibliographic reviews. We do not discriminate against any ontological gaze or epistemological choice; however, our research and reflections must contribute to a more diverse, sustainable, and democratic society and organizations. Our research has to reveal, for example, nuances of orthodox organizations built on - and strongly dependent on - hierarchy. It has to reveal this hierarchy that “reduces free and intelligent people to cognitive and emotional toddlers” (Diefenbach, 2020, p. 12).

Strictly speaking, companies are “[...] the armed wing of dominant economic thinking” (Aktouf, 2004, p. 124, our translation), and the reification of a contemporary playground for “anti-social perpetrators” (Diefenbach, 2015, p. 223), owners of authoritarian personalities (Adorno, 2002; Fromm, 2013), who produce and are produced by the requirement to worship obedience. Therefore, we cannot evade our responsibility as academics because, even among us, there are inept managers and cognitive, emotional, social, and especially morally limited and distorted leaders (Parker, 2021).

Thus, in the last two years, we have observed a line of convergence between the studies and published scientific advances, which dialogue and present, under different perspectives and ontological and epistemological approaches, advances regarding research produced in Brazil on diversity, singularity, sustainability, and decolonization, emerging and necessary themes in our evolution as academia and society.

We seek to instigate these discussions in several areas. Therefore, Cadernos EBAPE.BR is open to thematic issues, and we take the opportunity to invite everyone to submit proposals. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us directly. We are happy to help you.

In 2021, professors Russel Belk, Luís Pessôa, and Vitor Lima organized a call for papers entitled Uncertain consumption practices in an uncertain future, which received nine submissions, of which five were accepted.

As for the issue Infrastructure delivery and project management in developing and emerging economies, conducted by guest editors Lavagnon Ika, Marcos Lopez Rego, Vered Holzman, and Nuno Gil, we received 17 submissions, still in the reviewing process.

For 2022, we have four more calls for papers. Debating black slavery in Management and Organizational studies from decolonial and Afro-Diasporic perspectives, organized by professors Cintia Araújo, Alex Faria, Jair Santos, and Nidhi Srinivas (submission deadline: February 28, 2022); Labor, migration, and mobility: a Lusophone dialogue, with guest editors Andrea Oltramari, Carlos Lopes, Duval Fernandes, Inês Raimundo, João Peixoto, and Maria José Tonelli (deadline to submit expanded abstracts: April 30, 2022); Leadership: revisiting and reframing the big questions on theory and practice, organized by Juliana Mansur, Gustavo Tavares, Urszula Lagowska, and Liliane Furtado (articles must be submitted before August 1, 2022); and finally Critical thinking vs. organizational thinking, organized by professors Fernando G. Tenório, Ana Paula Paes de Paula, Andres Abad, and Ariston Azevedo (submission deadline: December 02, 2022).

In this first editorial, we would like to share with you all the good news from 2021. With great satisfaction, we were approved in the 2021 editorial call of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), which aims to support the editing and publication of highly specialized Brazilian scientific journals in their various areas of knowledge. This is a result that reinforces Cadernos EBAPE.BR’s commitment to editorial policy and seriousness in its scientific publication processes.

At the end of 2021, the SPELL Impact Factor (IF) of national journals - Scientific Periodicals Electronic Library (SPELL), which is the indexer and repository of scientific articles managed by ANPAD - was disclosed. The IF measures how many times the articles published in a journal registered in the repository were cited in research published in other journals of the same repository. Cadernos EBAPE.BR reached an IF of 0.675 and is among the top five journals in the field of administration when excluding self-citation of articles published in the past five years. When excluding self-citation of articles published in the past two years, the impact factor drops to 0.469, but the journal remains among the top ten in the country.

In 2021, we were honored to welcome new members to our editorial board: Professors Russell Belk (York University/Schulich School of Business, Toronto, Canada), Lavagnon Ika (University of Ottawa/Telfer School of Management, Canada), Vered Holzman (The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Israel), and Gazi Islam (Grenoble École de Management, France).

Last year we created the Case Studies & Teaching Cases section, publishing empirical examples to contribute to our classes and bring the corporate world closer to academia. These resources offer cases accompanied by teaching or research notes.

In addition, as of 2022, Cadernos EBAPE.BR will be published bimonthly. We plan to speed up the editorial process and the publication of scientific articles in their final versions, in addition to the early-view publication already adopted. Currently, the average time between submission and a final editorial decision is four months, while the average time between submission and publication is nine months.

Graph 1
Average editorial process time (2017-2021)

Regarding the statistics for 2021, we received a total of 253 submissions: 237 from Brazilian authors and 16 from foreign authors - Portugal (4), Mexico (3), United States (3), Chile (1), Belgium (1), Colombia (3), Peru (2), and Canada (1). This total includes five submissions received in the fast track modality by the GPR/EnANPAD 2021 division. In terms of gender, 43% of the authors declared male and 57% female. Of these submissions, 59 were written in English and one in Spanish.

We have published 76 articles in five issues in the last twelve months written by 197 authors representing 67 Brazilian and seven international institutions.

Regarding the rejection rates in the desk review stage, we had an average of 49% (higher than 2020, with 36%). The ad hoc post-review rejection rate reached 39% (down from 47% in 2020). Thus, our acceptance rate for publication is around 35%.

Graph 2
Submission and rejection (2017-2021)

We begin this first edition of 2022 with the article “The diversities within diversity: a systematic review of Brazilian scientific production on diversity in Administration (2001-2019).” Aline Mendonça Fraga, Renato Koch Colomby, Catia Eli Gemelli, and Vanessa Amaral Prestes analyzed the multiplicity of ‘diversity’ revealed by theoretical and empirical plurality. Their results show elements such as the concept’s (in)definition and scope; incipience of authorship and reference institution; and (in)visibility of certain social markers given the breadth of the concept and theme.

Eduardo Vivian da Cunha and Washington Jose de Sousa present the article “Administration and indigenous people in Brazil: knowledge and interest in master and Ph.D. research,” which aimed to delimit analytical categories of research on indigenous themes. The authors present four classes of research: “university and minority access to higher education,” “land and conflicts,” “organizations, management, and sustainability,” and “indigenous sociopolitical organization, state, and public policies,” which reveal the diversity in epistemological choices of research on indigenous themes in the area of administration, with hermeneutic, empirical-analytical, and critical biases.

In “Managing cultural organizations: perspectives, singularities, and paradox as a theoretical horizon,” Fabiana Pimentel Santos and Eduardo Davel describe the academic production on the management of these organizations and present a fertile conceptual-theoretical horizon to stimulate future research. The authors offer three categories that integrate academic production: perspectives on central issues in research on cultural organizations (technical-operational and political), singularities of these organizations (hypersensitivity, hypertension, and hyper uncertainty), and the paradox as a crucial theoretical-conceptual axis to improve knowledge about cultural organizations.

Mariana Mayumi Pereira de Souza and Ana Paula Paes de Paula present the theoretical essay entitled “Toward a critical theory of management technologies: the ambivalence of technology, the Feenbergian framework, and the possibility of subversive rationalization,” in which they discuss the possibility of management technologies by another ideological basis, bringing the position of classic and contemporary authors. They argue that Andrew Feenberg’s theory can contribute to advancing thinking about the critical praxis of management as technology and point to the need for connecting technologies in the field of management with other liberating technological systems, integrating a broader political project.

In “Sustainable fashion: an analysis from the perspective of teaching good sustainability practices and circular economy,” written by Leonice Troiani, Simone Sehnem, and Luciano Carvalho, the authors analyze the insertion of sustainability and circular economy premises in the training of higher education students. The study offers educational coordinators and managers subsidies to restructure undergraduate programs’ educational plans and include specific subjects that emphasize contemporary and emerging sustainability practices and circular economy.

Laira Gonçalves Adversi and Rene Eugenio Seifert, in the article “Limits to economic growth and technical efficiency in alternative organizations: sufficiency and conviviality,” investigate a community association whose way of organizing showed a misalignment with the dominant organizational model. The authors discuss the need for more precise definitions regarding the differentiation between conventional and alternative organizations since the dominant model appropriated some characteristics that the literature attributes to alternative organizations.

In the article “The construction of interventions based on experiential learning to promote education for sustainability in management teaching,” Nathália Rigui Trindade, Marcelo Trevisan, Lisiane Célia Palma, and Maíra Nunes Piveta apply the experiential learning theory through the construction of interventions to promote education for sustainability. The research advances in understanding how constructivist approaches to learning can lead to a new proposal for management teaching, fostering sustainable development.

In the theoretical essay “From the spirit of capitalism to the entrepreneurial spirit: the consolidation of ideas about entrepreneurial practice in a historical-materialist approach,” Janaynna de Moura Ferraz and Deise Luiza da Silva Ferraz discuss the “critical approaches in entrepreneurship,” contributing to the criticism toward the entrepreneurial practice, situating it before the stage of development of the productive forces in its historical path, and not just limited to capitalist realism that delimits human action by individualist, competitive, or liberal acting.

In “Decolonizing business history: the case of Unilever historiography,” by Alexandre Faria and Jaeder F. Cunha, the authors investigate the absence of Latin America when observing the historiography of Unilever, one of the most important co-produced in the field of business history. The authors argue that inter-imperial dynamics and radicalization inform the institutionalization of the business history by the Anglo-American world as a post-imperial turn of North-South binarism championed by the field of imperial history.

Carlos César de Oliveira Lacerda presents his bibliographic review of the book “Diferenças e Territorialidades na Cidade” [Differences and territorialities in the city] in “Dissolving silences and stereotypes about differences in organization studies of the city.”

This issue publishes two teaching cases. First, Mel Girão presents the case “Qualicorp: the naked truth and the need to rethink corporate governance.” The author describes the story of a benefits administration company involved in a corruption scandal unraveled by a plea bargain. The case seeks to create strategies to regain reputation with clients, partners, and public opinion in general and motivate and mobilize employees, ensuring its ability to retain and attract talents.

In the second case “Ethos of work at the clothing production region of Agreste,” by Elisabeth Cavalcante dos Santos, Ana Márcia Batista Almeida Pereira, and Diogo Henrique Helal, the authors reflect on the repercussions of the absence of the government and the fragmentation of narratives about work to workers in the region. This teaching case is adapted from the documentary “I’m saving myself for when carnival arrives,” directed by Marcelo Gomes and released in 2019.

We wish you a pleasant read!

Ph.D. Hélio Arthur Reis Irigaray

Editor-in-chief

Ph.D. Fabricio Stoker

Associate Editor

REFERÊNCIAS

• Adorno, T. (2002). Aesthetic theory London, UK: Continuum.
• Aktouf, O. (2004). Pós-globalização, administração e racionalidade econômica: a síndrome do avestruz São Paulo, SP: Ed. Atlas.
• Diefenbach, T. (2015). Hierarchy and organisation: toward a general theory of hierarchical social systems New York, NY: Routledge.
• Diefenbach, T. (2020). The democratic organisation: democracy and the future of work Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
• Fromm, E. (2013). Escape from freedom New York, NY: Open Road/Integrated Media.
• Parker, M. (2021, Fevereiro). Democracy to come, in the seminar room. OrganizationRecuperado de https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508421995757

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  11 Mar 2022
• Date of issue
  Jan-Feb 2022