Exploring Indigenous Management Aspects in a Financial Organization: Jeitinho and Relational Society

Abstract

There is an increasing interest from researchers to understand concepts which are meaningful for our own society, and not imported from other cultures, called indigenous management approaches. Following this line of research, this article carried out a socio-anthropological literature analysis in the field of organizational studies on Brazilian culture which resulted in a synthesis of five distinctive traits of our society: Hierarchy, Ambiguity, Trickery (Malandragem), Jeitinho and Relational Society. The article focused on Jeitinho and Relational Society and aimed to identify and analyze the incidence of both traits, in the management of a financial organization. A questionnaire, using a Likert scale, was developed and applied to a sample of 303 employees from such an organization. Jeitinho can be described through a three-dimensional structure: circumvent rules, flexibility and an informal problem-solving strategy. The Relational Society, also a multidimensional construct, was composed of personal relationships, familiar-affective relations, trust-dominance over impersonal relations and personal relationship dominance over professional ones. Regardless of the socio-demographic variables,Jeitinho was identified as a common social practice and Relational Society was seen as an environment that favors the use ofJeitinho.

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