Models of man and administrative theory

• Autor(a) principal: Ramos, Alberto Guerreiro
• Data de Publicação: 1984
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Administração Pública
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/rap/article/view/10559

Administrative theory can no longer legitimize the functional rationality of the organization as it largely has done. The basic problem of an earlier time was to overcome the scarcity of material goods and elementary services. In that period a great amount of toil in work settings was technically and socially necessary and even inevitable, which is not true at present. What brings about the crises in today's organizations is the fact that by design and operation they still assume that old scarcities continue to be basic, while in fact contemporary man is aware of critical scarcities belonging to another order, i.e., related to needs beyond the level of simple survival. Thus, the Social Darwinism that has traditionally validated management theory and practice has become outdated by the force of circumstances. This article is an attempt to reassess the evolution of administrative theory. It takes models of man as its point of reference (namely, the operational man, the reactive man, and the parenthetical man).