In the last couple of years, there has been a growing concern of researchers from the field of Organization Studies with regard to the importance of History and the development of historical researches aiming to understand the study object of this discipline. However, any research trying to recover evidence from past situations, events, and happenings will necessarily be restricted to the reminiscences of that time. Thus, any clamor for discovering the past needs to be followed by another one, also demanding the preservation and availability of traces and sources which give it some point of entry. One may claim as the main argument of this paper the need for discussing and evaluating the current status of the Brazilian business archives, in order to promote the development of actions and projects to improve the preservation and availability of business archives to researches in the field of Organization Studies. Therefore, the interest in strengthening preservation programs and initiatives dedicated to the Brazilian business archives requires determining the possibilities of contribution from public and private agents. They might join their efforts to develop projects and programs dedicated to recover documents and records about the Brazilian organizations, properly gather and organize these records into well-structured collections and files, as well as provide researchers with access to the collections of the many institutions dedicated to keep business archives. This is a necessary and crucial step to guarantee the availability of raw material for researches aiming to unveil the history of companies and the development of Management in Brazil.
Business archives; Historical research; Organization studies; Management; Historical sources; Historiography