LATIN AMERICA

In this blog I’m going to analyze the document EMANCIPATORY MANAGEMENT: THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN PRACTICE AND DISCOURSE by MARCOS BARROS proposed by the teacher in the Latin America Module.
After more than ten years of critical management study, there is not a clear organization theory, therefore, the author is trying to strive through the combination of theory and practice the notion of Emancipator Management by conducting an study of communitarian organizations in Bahia (Brazil) and Quebec (Canada). These organizations were chosen especially because they defended a clear emancipatory discourse of participation, solidarity and collective well-being. For that reason, the research was focus on the congruence between these expressed values and their organizational practices in the light of their specific contextual constraints.
The research was conducted through an observation of 400 hours in each group. During this time, they looked the organizations’ members for significant events that should be characterized as an obstacle (limiting-situations) to the emancipation in their work environment. This stage was complemented by a document review and five different two-hour semi-structured interviews in each organization with members of different levels of hierarchy and organizational functions. The last stage was the codification and decodification of emancipation themes three-hour meeting in each organization. The selected situations were presented in a pictorial form that symbolized concrete and recognizable events of the organizational life that limited or defied emancipation. These meetings showed the limitations of the methodology. This method, does not take into account the bias forced by power inequality. Therefore, in both organizations, though in different manners, political aspects forced us to change the format of the discussion.

EMANCIPATORY CONTRADICTIONS AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

Quebecker Organization: The Individual and the Communitarian