Rural heritage of early Brazilian industrialists: its impact on managerial orientation.
| Autor | Vizeu, Fabio |
| Cargo | Report |
Introduction
Modern management has been seen as an institution that is the fruit of the process of modernization in the world, where capitalism, industrialization and rationalization are the fundamental pillars (Bendix, 1974; Braverman, 1998; Pollard, 1965). Thus, the modern idea of management is consolidated as one of the institutions that are most representative of this period of history, centered on the instrumental rationality that emerged particularly with the development of industrial capitalism.
In this sense, England, since the eighteenth century, and the United States, since the nineteenth, have been the central world leaders in this process (Hobsbawm, 1988, 1999). For this reason, they should be considered as the main arena of management gestation (Bendix, 1974; Jacques, 1996; Pollard, 1965). On the other hand, there are countries that took on a marginal role during the spread of industrial capitalism. These were more dedicated to the production of primary goods and were unable to keep up with the industrial powers (Hobsbawm, 1999). Consequently, they were forced to become dependent on an industrial path paved by foreign countries. Certainly, one way to express this dependence is that of the management maxims of the English-speaking countries, especially those built in the United States, where management has been seen as one of the most important cultural exports (Jacques, 1996). Although this importing of managerial techniques is recognized as a positive process for improving management in undeveloped countries, we point out its ideological sense by appealing to a historical dependence view. For example, despite its already significant industrial and technological development, Brazil is still conditioned to importing management models and theories that originated in the North Atlantic and which are not always suitable for the Brazilian business reality (Caldas & Wood, 1997).
For this reason, the understanding of modern management in historically dependent countries must take into account the literature concerning their historical background which, based on different factors from those that sustain modern institutions, has come a different route from the Anglo-Saxons. Therefore, in this study we shall be analyzing the case of Brazil, where the modernization process has been marked by a unique colonial heritage. The aim of this analysis is to point out that the roots of certain specifics of Brazilian management lie in the socio-political background of the country.
The main contribution we have sought in this study is to reveal the decisive role of Brazilian agricultural institutions in the shaping of management in Brazil, considering their influence on the establishment of Brazilian industrial society. During the nineteenth century when Brazil constituted its national identity, the strengthening of the farming system was a decisive for the country to fall behind the social, political and economic modernization processes. On the other hand, in comparison with other countries involved in modernization processes, Brazil's path seems to be anachronistic. While the United States was undergoing the second industrial revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century as the result of the consolidation of republican federalism (Jacques, 1996), Brazil was having difficulties in abandoning the slave economy; furthermore, a hundred years after the French revolution, Brazil was taking the first tentative steps in the republican regime, but still holding on to patrimonialist relations (Faoro, 2001).
We believe that Brazil's institutional anachronism is the basis of its managerial pattern. In fact, one of the main consequences of the introduction of modern management in Brazil was its hybridization with traditional mentality. The persistence of rural logic in social and political spheres in republican Brazil was a determining factor for the configuration of industrial management with traits that were characteristic of patrimonialist societies, bearing in mind that such cultural conditions were relevant in the unfolding of the industrialization process (Leff, 1972, 1982; Prado, 1971; Stein, 1957). This assimilation is most evident in the patriarchal configuration of the management model adopted by the first big Brazilian industrial groups a pattern that continues until the present day. Furthermore, we see a hangover from colonial rural society in the protectionist relationship between the first industrialists and the State, characterized by clientelism (Castor, 2002).
In order to understand the formation of Brazilian industrial management, it is not enough to look up the birth of the first factories in the country and see this as the event that supposedly led to industry in Brazil. It is necessary to observe certain nuances of the general elements that shaped the identity and imaginary of Brazilian society.
Considering that of the five centuries since the discovery of Brazil, three were a colonial period, this surely must have been an important historical time in the shaping of the institutions that founded Brazilian society (Holanda, 1995; Prado, 1971). From an institutional viewpoint, the main inheritance from the long colonial period may be referred to as a rural model, a socio-economic system for organizing Brazilian colonial life.
There now follows a brief reflection on the Brazilian colonial institutional model. Following that, we will deal with the implications of this model in the historical trajectory of Brazil in the nineteenth century. We will then discuss how this rural institutional pattern conditioned the pace of Brazilian modernization, as well as how it determined the Brazilian managerial path. Finally, we discuss some implications for Brazilian management research and further studies.
The Rural Model of Colonial Brazil
The imaginary of nineteenth-century Brazilian society is mostly based on the cultural traits that were consolidated during the three centuries of colonization. During this time, the ethnic mixture of the three races that made up Brazil was remarkable: These races were the Portuguese, the Blacks and the native Indians. Holanda (1995) points out that the Portuguese model determined the mind-set of the elite and, therefore, the political and economic configuration of Brazil. The author emphasizes that the Portuguese had no racial pride and this led them to accept partially Indian and Black culture. As a result, the elite adopted habits, techniques and behavior patterns that were characteristic of the dominated races.
Even so, the plasticity of the Portuguese and their descendants was conditioned to the distancing of the elite from the inferior castes of society, which had begun with the formation of their patrimonialist society. In this sense, patrimonialism is the dominant group's ability to impose their will and whims on the rest of the population, a situation which was made possible by the relative docility of the lower-ranking social groups (Holanda, 1995).
This trait is linked to mandonismo (1) or 'commandism', an important element for ordering social relations in Brazil and seen throughout the country's history and in the simplest aspects of the daily lives of ordinary people even today (DaMatta, 1992). It derives from the personal power of a local leader, based on well defined oligarchic structures. According to Carvalho (1998, p. 133), those who have power in this system are
those who are in control of some strategic resource, generally land ownership, and who use this power over the rest of the population, a personalistic and arbitrary form of domination that blocks free access to the market and political society. In this sense, Brazilian commandism stems from the patriarchal logic of the main socioeconomic organization of the colonial period: the big agricultural enterprise.
The fact that the economy of the colonial period was centered on the model of big agricultural enterprise was a decisive factor in the formation of the Brazilian elite. Owing to the need to guarantee the settlements, the Portuguese government opted for an agriculture-based colonization model, centered on the large scale production of articles with a high commercial value on the European market. In this context, this monoculture economy for exports was broadened significantly, starting with sugar cane in the Brazilian north-eastern region (Baer, 2007; Canabrava, 1985; Furtado, 1999). This is why the sugar mill was the most representative economic model of that period, due to its huge impact on the economic, social and political structure of Brazilian colonial life (Canabrava, 1985).
One of the factors that led to sugar production becoming the most significant economic model was the fact that the operationalization of the mill required simple technology, with the only really necessary resources being land and labor (Canabrava, 1985). Considering that Portuguese settlement policy made land a resource of easy access, the only factor of production that really mattered was labor (Canabrava, 1985). The problem was that it was difficult for the indigenous people to acquire the minimum conditions of discipline required in the systematic and methodical work that farming involved on a large scale. Thus, the option that remained was to resort to black labor, captured from the Portuguese colonies in Africa and enslaved (Holanda, 1995). As a consequence, mercantilism was intensified through the slave traffic, stimulating the domestic economy (Baer, 2007; Skidmore, 1999) and emphasizing slave ownership as a foundation of the nineteenth-century economic system (Graham, 1981; Holanda, 1995).
According to Freyre (2003), the social and political dimension of a semi-feudal nature for farming was personified in the personalistic relations within the community that sprang up around the company. In this sense, the author refers to the sugar mill as a patriarchal economy, i.e., a productive model with traits...
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