UNPREDICTABILITY, BUREAUCRACY AND
IMPROVISATION: A CASE STUDY IN A FEDERAL PUBLIC UNIVERSITY
Name: ANTÔNIO AUGUSTO BRION CARDOSO
Publication date: 06/12/2022
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| LUCILAINE MARIA PASCUCI | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| LUCILAINE MARIA PASCUCI | Advisor * |
| RUBENS DE ARAÚJO AMARO | Internal Examiner * |
| TERESA CRISTINA JANES CARNEIRO | External Examiner * |
Summary: Public universities have characteristics that make their management a challenge. The
structural complexity, allied to the rigidity of norms and rules that govern the use of
public resources, contribute to these institutions being slow in responding to the
demands of the environment. In crisis situations, this feature becomes even more
challenging as it requires quick decisions and actions. In this context, plans, routines
and standard procedures prove to be inefficient to meet urgent and unexpected
demands, demanding alternative solutions from public managers that are, at the same
time, in line with rigid institutional precepts on the use of resources. Thus, given the
need for agility and some inefficiency - arising from the excessive rationality of preestablished decision-making processes in public management - it is common for
improvisations to manifest, whether of an extraordinary or infraordinary nature. This
study examined how improvisation manifests itself in the performance of the university
manager when reconciling rigid legal formalities and the use of financial, human and
structural resources in urgent and unexpected demands. To this end, concepts of
public management, improvisation and organizational complexity applied to a federal
public university in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic were used. This is a
qualitative research, whose data were collected through interviews and documents and
were analyzed using the technique of narrative analysis and document analysis.
Results pointed out that the crisis situation potentiated an additional challenge related
to the use of resources, having as antecedent factors directly and indirectly related to
the complex and bureaucratic structure of the university, such as the limitation imposed
by the legislation for the use of resources, budget restriction, diversity of interests and
the slowness caused by pre-established routines and procedures. On the other hand,
other characteristics typical of the complexity of the analyzed context such as the
dynamicity of interactions, the agents´ ability to adapt and learn allowed quick and
viable responses to the demands presented through the manifestation of
improvisations. Improvisations - both of an extraordinary and infra-ordinary nature -
proved to be essential to enable the use of resources, helping managers to deal with
surprise, urgency and the exceptional. It was verified that the extraordinary and
infraordinary improvisations generated learning, although the last of them only
contributed to individual learning, which, given the rigidity of the rules and legislation
for the use of resources, brings fear on the part of the agents, to act in a detached way.
of the default. However, it was found that extraordinary improvisation promoted
organizational learning, even contributing to changes in existing procedures and
routines, in order to represent a virtuous circle resulting from the antecedent and
consequent factors identified. Results allowed advancing in the representation of a
possible behavior of improvisation in relation to learning and unlearning in the
context of public universities, in particular, in a crisis situation.
