The administrator’s education in the undergraduate teaching: a reflection

Abstract

This article aims at contributing for the critical reflection process on the professional education of administrators in undergraduate courses, based on one of its main empirically observable weaknesses: the teaching fragmentation, with emphasis on the transmission of technical-conceptual knowledge, and the consequent absence of appropriate general and systemic view of an organization/enterprise. In order to better understand the problem, four fundamental questions were posed: the origin of the Administration courses in Brazil, which explains the emphasis on the technique; the organizational complexity as the object of Administration, which raises polemical views on what administration is and what an administrator does; the dominant paradigm in the production of knowledge and how it impacts, until now, on the reproduction of knowledge in higher education; and the pedagogical projects of the Administration courses, approaching the problems related with their premises and practices, as well as the institutional structures for their operationalization. The discussions and analyses performed suggest, as a conclusion, the clear need for new conceptions concerning the education process of the professional administrator.