As lógicas institucionais de experiências empíricas de gestão social no Brasil

Abstract

Social Management has been widely studied in Brazil over the last three decades from different perspectives that generally denote how social management practices are carried out. Consequently, given the complexity of Brazilian society, many interpretations are attributed to social management. Thus, on the one hand, the Brazilian scientific literature shows that social management aligns with notions of management oriented toward local development through relationships between civil society organizations and their agents, applicable to any manageable environment (public, corporate, or the third sector). On the other hand, it aligns with a societal public administration model that adheres to macrosocial activities. In this study, these different perspectives are understood as aligned with distinct epistemological positions that ultimately reflect normative, structural, and symbolic components guiding how researchers interpret Social Management experiences during fieldwork. Therefore, considering the institutionalization of the Social Management field (reflected in professional training initiatives and scientific dissemination systems), the field is understood to structure and expand itself by exposing different views while concurrently contributing to a praxiological convergence. Institutional theory describes this convergence as a process of procedural homogenization known as institutional isomorphism. However, the theory fails to explain why some practices, even when similar, still differ in certain aspects, such as the use of shared financial resources, solidarity practices in economic contexts, and environmental maintenance, among others. To examine this assumption based on a neo-institutional framework—specifically the Institutional Logics Perspective (ILP)—this paper seeks to understand the constitutive elements of the institutional logics that influence empirical experiences of Social Management in Brazil as portrayed by recent scientific literature. To this end, methodological procedures were adopted to map the relevant literature through bibliometric analysis. Furthermore, new knowledge was constructed in an integrative, critical, and synthetic manner through an integrative literature review of scientific documents published in outlets indexed in the Google Scholar database between 2014 and 2023. The study revealed an expansion of knowledge built within the field, which increasingly demands the entry of new researchers who, in many cases, choose not to continue a long-standing line of research. The results also highlighted new research interests in the field, albeit accompanied by the perpetuation of certain epistemological limitations already extensively addressed in the relevant literature. In an attempt to circumvent these limitations, the findings suggest understanding Social Management as a school of thought that matures as it reflects on the cognitive and institutional constraints hindering its development. Finally, by analyzing empirical experiences of Social Management reported in the national scientific literature, the results enabled the identification of five institutional logics (along with some respective sub-logics). Keywords: Social Management; Institutional Logics Perspective; literature review; school of thou