The country of the so-called lazy people

• Autor(a) principal: Castor, Belmiro Valverde Jobim
• Data de Publicação: 2001
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Administração Pública
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/rap/article/view/6388
• topic: trabalho; produtividade; indolência; novos espaços organizacionais; paradigma paraeconômico; isonomias; fenonomias.

An unfortunate combination of poor information and stereotyped prejudice has disseminated the idea that the Brazilian work force is indolent and not capable of hard work. Statistics do not support this negative assessment. By the same token, the relative lack of qualification of Brazilian workers is considered to be a central reason for the low levels of productivity of the Brazilian economy. This opinion is loaded with bias too, insofar as the relative rudimentariness of the methodologies employed to compare productivity levels do not afford to establish (with minimum accuracy) in what proportions labor and capital really contribute to the final output of the economy of a country, which makes comparisons impossible. A third source of misunderstandings on the quality and dedication of Brazilian laborers derives from a too narrow definition of what is work in market economies and modern industrial societies. A new definition, which takes into account a broader perspective of what really is socially useful work and of the "organizational spaces" where this work takes place, is in order. The categories of isonomies and phenonomies described by Guerreiro Ramos in his paraeconomic paradigm are valuable theoretical contributions in this direction.