Neither ‘bureaucrat’ nor ‘new manager’: the ‘caboclo’ and the challenges of the State Reform Plan in the Brazil of the Real

• Autor(a) principal: Junquilho, Gelson Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2004
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Administração Pública
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/rap/article/view/6531
• topic: public management; subjectivity; culture; managerial practices.; gestão pública; subjetividade; cultura; práticas gerenciais.

More and more present in the contemporary world, the restructuring of state agencies has been adopted in Brazil since 1995 as a part of a set of actions summarized in the so-called Plano Diretor de Reforma do Estado (State Reform Plan). An important challenge for reaching the goals of such a plan was the proposal to replace the prototype of the ‘bureaucratic administrator’ — inefficient, uncompromised and unconsiderate of the user — for that of the ‘new manager’ — enterprising, creative and mindful of the client. This article problemizes such a proposal and, secondarily, shows how complex any change can be in the way the so-called ‘bureaucratic administrators’ act, sincetheir actions reflect everyday practices which were developed within a socialhistorical process, comprising, among others, the cultural dimension — the inherent Brazilian culture features that influence the actions of those same actors inside public organizations. Such problemizing is illustrated with a research carried out in a set of state government organizations, the results of which reveal inappropriate managerial conduct profiles both for the socalled ‘bureaucratic administrator’ and for the ‘new manager’.