Muito mais que uma política: ações empreendedoras no esporte de Lavras/MG

Abstract

The term "entrepreneurship" is widely known in the field of private organizations. Its essence ruled as a practice resulting from the initiative of an entrepreneur who recognizes opportunities and innovates thus boosting the economy and the development of a country. With the emergence of New Public Management, known in Brazil as the Public Administration, this phenomenon was introduced in public management with the objective of improving the performance of governments and result in improvements in services rendered to society, being linked to the so-called public entrepreneurs. However, some authors have drawn attention to another way of interpreting entrepreneurship by diverting the focus from the entrepreneur to the actual entrepreneurial action. In this case the result of the action due to the changes it causes in the organizational environment is important. This perspective, however, has been little discussed in the public sector, but it is of great relevance for this sphere since it turns to actions provoked by the collective effort of individuals or organizations in the search for better social results. In this sense, the present dissertation established as general objective to verify if there are entrepreneurial actions in the sport at Lavras, Minas Gerais. The objective is trying to understand how public policies and entrepreneurial actions can be articulated to promote the sport in this city. For this, we adopted an interpretive epistemic orientation based on the methodology of action research and, due to the qualitative aspect of the research, we opted for content analysis. In order to evaluate the policies, projects and actions developed in the city, an interview was conducted with the Secretary of Sports, besides of a research in official documents of the City Hall and visits in various sectors of this public organization. After this, we define investigate an specific action. The researcher participated actively of the social project and conducted interviews with the main actors involved in this action: the idealizer, the sponsor and a social worker. To understand the sports scene of Lavras was interviewed a local sports journalist. Specifically, participant observation, documentary research, interviews with open recorded script and field diary were used as this research. The results indicate that the studied action can be considered an entrepreneurial action. However, it is not the public sector that promotes it. This action is beyond politics, but it include other sectors (Civil Society, Private Sector and Public Sector). As a result, it could be considered entrepreneurial action in the sport at Lavras.