During the second half of the 20th century there has been both a burgeoning intellectual interest in business and management as a topic and an exponential growth in the formal study of business and management as an academic subject. Indeed by the end of the century it was estimated that worldwide there were 8,000 business schools and more than 13 million students of business and management. In addition, it was estimated that worldwide annual expenditure on university level business and management education had reached US $15 billion (The Global Foundation for Management Education, 2008). However, despite this there is a lack of clarity regarding both the scale and the nature of the influence that academic scholarship exerts over managers. Accordingly this research study has sought to investigate the appropriation of ideas, theories, concepts and models by management practitioners. The thesis has reviewed and evaluated the two most obvious, most established and most influential potential explanations. These were diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1962) and fashion theory (Abrahamson, 1991 & 1996; Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). It has been concluded that whilst both these potential explanations provided important insights, neither was able to provide a comprehensive theoretical foundation for this research study. Accordingly, a much broader range of pertinent scholarship was reviewed and evaluated. This included, but is not limited to, the scholarship that is associated with learning by adults (Dewey, 1933; Bartlett, 1967; Schank & Abelson, 1976; Mezirow, 1977). Although this additional scholarship provided a further range of potential explanations, the extent to which any of these would be found within the particular setting of management practitioners remained unclear. In addition, the literature review highlighted a number of unresolved debates regarding issues such as (i) whether management was a science or an applied science; (ii) whether it was a craft or a profession; (iii) whether in reality there were fashionable trends in management practice or whether in fact such practices were remarkably stable; and (iv) whether management theoreticians, gurus and consultants actually exerted significant influence over management practitioners. The literature review also highlighted methodological concerns relating to the use of citation analysis as a proxy for primary information regarding managerial practice. Hence, this research is situated in a gap which is delineated by the unresolved issues that are associated with both diffusion theory and fashion theory; the applicability of the broader range of scholarship to a management setting; the unresolved debates within this field of interest and the need to obtain primary information relating to management practice, rather than being dependant upon citation analysis. The research study has utilised qualitative data and inductive reasoning to examine these matters and the overarching research philosophy has been that of realism (Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). Ultimately, 39 semi-structured, recorded interviews were undertaken using the critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1954). Collectively these interviews lasted for 35 hours and obtained information relating to 160 critical incidents. The verbatim transcripts of the interviews totalled 350,000 words. A case study analysis of this data was undertaken to examine the decision making of the interviewees in relation to some of their most challenging managerial situations. This analysis concluded that for the ‘generality’ of these interviewees; theory played little, or no, overt part in their decision making. The data was also subjected to a content analysis using a bespoke compendium of 450 ‘terms’ that represented the development of theorising about management over the whole of the 20th century. This analysis concluded that the influence of the 20th century’s management theoreticians over these interviewees was weak. Finally, the possibility that any such influence might be a covert, rather than an overt; phenomenon was examined using both the insights of intertextuality (Allen, 2000; Bazerman, 2004) and the framework analysis technique (Ritchie, Spencer & O’Connor, 2003). This analysis demonstrated that the discourse, dialogue and language of these interviewees could be indexed to four domains; (i) the theoretical; (ii) the conceptual; (iii) the tactical; and (iv) the practical. The intertextual indexing outcomes were corroborated both by substantial extracts from the verbatim interview transcripts and by three unrelated strands of scholarship. These were (i) adaptive memory systems (Schacter, 2001); (ii) the realities of management (Carlson, 1954; Stewart, 1983; Mintzberg, 1989) and (iii) the role of concepts and conceptual thinking in nursing (McFarlane, 1977; Gordon, 1998; Orem, 2001). On this basis it has been concluded that management can be characterised as a conceptual discipline; that in its essential nature management is at least as conceptual as it is either theoretical or practical; and that managers appropriate concepts and ideas, rather than theories and models per se.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In this study, we approach the Political Pedagogical Project (PPP) centrality as scholar everydayness important articulator, as innovation instrument at school and potential articulator of teachers permanent formation, through processes auto(trans)formatives, with the development of educational institution. We reference Paulo Freire, Francisco Imbernón, Isabel Alarcão, Antônio Nóvoa, Vitor Paro e Heloisa Luck, among others, in order to think the PPP as an important participation and decision sharing mechanism, in a way that its shared construction by scholar community is a dialogical and humanizer movement of educative institution. So, this text is a theoretical-practical research report, of the qualitative approach, of case-study method, which comprises its arising reflections. Locus was an cluster of three urban school of an Municipal Teaching Network. Eight teachers, scholar council members of their respective schools, served as subjects. This research aims to verify how the school PPP articulates its everydayness and permanent teachers formation, seen that this articulation makes viable the docent professionality development, through direct teachers participation in argument about schools problematics and, by consequence, promote the educative institution development. With the research we noticed that PPP is not the docent auto(trans)formatives processes articulator with the school everydayness, and that the public politics to permanent teachers formation at Municipal Teaching Network have been implemented in a view that sees the teacher as an executor of such politics and not an author, losing a privileged space of docent professional development linked to educative institution development. / Neste texto, abordo a centralidade do Projeto Político-Pedagógico (PPP) como grande articulador da cotidianidade escolar, como instrumento da inovação na escola e como um potencial articulador da formação permanente dos professores, através de processos auto(trans)formativos, com o desenvolvimento da instituição educativa. Referencio-me em Paulo Freire, Francisco Imbernón, Isabel Alarcão, Antônio Nóvoa, Vitor Paro e Heloisa Luck, dentre outros; para pensar o PPP como um importante mecanismo de participação e compartilhamento de decisões, de forma que a sua construção, compartilhada pela comunidade escolar, constitua-se em um movimento dialógico e humanizador da instituição educativa. Assim, este texto constitui-se em um relato de uma pesquisa de cunho teórico-prático, de abordagem qualitativa, do tipo estudo de casos (múltiplos casos), que vem acompanhada das reflexões dela advindas. O lócus foi um grupo de três escolas urbanas de uma Rede Municipal de Ensino, sendo sujeitos um total de oito professores, membros dos Conselhos Escolares de suas respectivas escolas. Com esta pesquisa, buscou-se verificar como o PPP das escolas articula a sua cotidianidade e a formação permanente dos professores, tendo por base que essa articulação torna possível o desenvolvimento da profissionalidade docente, através da participação direta dos professores nas discussões acerca das problemáticas da escola e, por consequência, promove o desenvolvimento da instituição educativa. Constatou-se, com a pesquisa, que o PPP não é o articulador dos processos auto(trans)formativos docentes com a cotidianidade da escola e que as políticas públicas para a formação permanente de professores na Rede Municipal de Educação pesquisada têm sido implementadas dentro de uma perspectiva que vê o professor como um executor dessas políticas e não como um autor, perdendo-se um espaço privilegiado de desenvolvimento profissional docente ligado ao desenvolvimento da instituição educativa.