University innovation and management in the decolonial field: study of the normative support of an international integration university

Abstract

This paper analyzes university management models to characterize the University of International Integration of Lusophone-Afro-Brazilian (Unilab) as an innovative project of higher education and to understand the “novelty” linked to normative discourse within the scope of its institutional mission. In addition, it suggests insights for the construction of a university management model that includes the contradictions between market logic and social relevance. For such, our documentary research included normative discourse based on lexical and content analysis using Iramuteq and Atlas Ti. Based on the analysis of conceptual clusterings, institutional mission and institutional organization, we derived that the “novelty” associated with the normative discourse of the project was caused by its epistemological perspective that considers epistemic “decoloniality” in the constitution of academic-formative possibilities integrating cultural diversity with respect to the plurality of knowledge. This brings insights towards a conception of university management from an alternative epistemological interpretation that encompasses the multidimensionality of human beings and social systems (as a critique of economic instrumentality) as well as the multidimensionality of the educational phenomenon.

Keywords:
Epistemologies of the South; Decoloniality; Cultural Diversity; Multidimensionality of Education