Concentration Area: Management and Sustainability

 Research Lines

1) Management and Strategy

Initially, it is postulated that research in the field has as its fundamental object the organization and its relations in internal and external environments. It also points to the social and economic dimensions inherent to the participation of organizations in society at different levels of scope, from the local community to complex international relations.

As economic agents, organizations seek to add value to their activities and meet the different expectations of the groups related to them (stakeholders). In this way, understanding the respective operating environments requires specific knowledge and skills.

Strategically, organizations must project future scenarios considering certain assumptions, identifying the relevant factors to guide their decisions. Thus, the need to look at strategy that considers corporate management integrated to contextual elements is reinforced.

Thus, the research line studies the strategic options of the organization, going through its determinants (based on diagnostics and problem identification), stages of formulation and implementation, and reaches the sphere of the evaluation of results and impacts—always keeping in mind the diversity of stakeholders in the processes of decision-making in the organizational sphere.

Along the same lines, one seeks to understand the formation of strategy. Studies that aim to advance the area under interdisciplinary aspects that promote the "return” of strategic management to its original character of Business Policy, translating into the clear challenge of developing new research methods and techniques that go beyond the economic aspects of the company and consider the positive externalities generated for society.

Another layer of discussion in this line is related to management, guided both by the side of Administration theories and by the discussion of the elements that support planning and strategic choice.

Still in this line of research, the elements that serve as a basis for the implementation of the defined strategies are investigated, with emphasis on aspects of organizational culture, marketing, control and evaluation of business performance, human resource management, overcoming barriers to competitiveness and the establishment of inter-organizational networks. Here one observes intellectual capital, tacit knowledge, human relations, power relations, and the potential for collaboration between the different actors involved in the strategy.

The relevance of the methodological aspect related to planning and strategic management is evident, with emphasis on the tools and their combinations for identifying trends, opportunities and problems, leading to the prioritization and selection of alternatives to seek convergence between different actors. This promotes the monitoring of strategic actions and the evaluation of results and impacts generated in a targeted manner in decision making in complex and uncertain scenarios.

2) Entrepreneurship and Sustainability

In the context of a globalized and constantly changing environment, different business opportunities can be identified, requiring appropriate action from those who propose to explore and develop solutions to meet specific demands. Entrepreneurship, in this way, presents itself as a relevant initiative in favor of the market dynamics with reflexes not only economic, but that can extend to different sectors of society.

Acting as a relevant tool of entrepreneurship, innovation has been placed as one of the important pillars of success of current businesses, contributing to the diversification of risks and definition of new profit margins. However, the generation of new services, products and processes, as well as organizational and marketing innovations, increasingly important for the success of organizations, are not trivial tasks, precisely because they involve the management of knowledge creation and diffusion processes and multiple interactions between different actors and institutions, amidst environments of uncertainty.

Entrepreneurship, relying on innovation, favors the analysis of the conditions and factors related to the creation of new micro and small enterprises and their operation in complex environments facing the capabilities of generating new products, processes, marketing practices and organization. The integration of small and medium-sized enterprises into global value chains is a challenge that involves the need for gains in competitiveness as a whole, at micro- and macroeconomic levels.

In a broader approach, we also find the issue of social entrepreneurship, which incorporates new forms of value creation such as social justice, environmental protection, economic prosperity and equity, imposing on this trajectory the understanding of its conditioning factors, dependencies and complexity in the face of global challenges, leading to the development of effective solutions. The training of human resources is of particular importance to entrepreneurship, enabling the development of products that are linked to sustainability and have greater market potential. This trend in entrepreneurship complements that directed towards business arrangements in traditional sectors, although their capacity to generate employment is still relatively limited.

In this context, the centrality of entrepreneurial activities is also placed, aiming to create new spaces for capital appreciation, as well as the liberation of creative potential related to "human capital" and the recreation of "civic capital", from its relations with public policies.

Finally, it is highlighted that the intensification of globalization has caused the business environment to undergo major transformations in the markets, engaging the interdependence of different levels of trade in goods and services, direct investment, technology transfer and capital movements. Thus, we highlight the issue of competitiveness seen from the perspective of integration into global value chains and broader processes of internationalization and business strategies, and this theme is of growing interest to researchers in the field.

One of the fundamental axes of the debate on development, competitiveness is based on the evidence generated by the academic community, as well as by civil society, policy makers and administrators regarding the implications of the use of natural resources. These aspects lead us to search for adequate answers to equate the efficient and effective allocation of resources allied to obtaining competitive advantages.

Thus, it becomes necessary to understand the complexity of sustainability issues that are addressed by the area, notably in relations with the private and public sectors, forms of governance, regulatory developments, production and the efficient use of scarce resources.