ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AND MANAGERS’ EDUCATION: HOW MANAGERS LEARN IN A PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY SECTOR

Abstract

The business environment is marked by increasing instability and complexity. In this sense, organizational learning becomes strategic for organizations that aim to gain competitive advantage over its competitors. Another equally important issue concerns the process of management training and education, given that managers are key elements in managing the production process. Under this perspective, this article aims to analyze how and where is the managers’ education process in a petrochemical sector industry named fictitiously as Sigma S.A. The empirical approach was essentially qualitative; the simple case study and the analysis of the Discourse of the Collective Subject (DCS) were adopted, for interpretation of the empirical findings. As a result, it was found that, at Sigma S.A., the process of management training occurs predominantly from the informal perspective of learning, that is, from the social and relational interactions and from sharing of knowledge and experience in their own work context. It was also observed that mentoring is widely adopted in the organization as a way to create and disseminate knowledge, thus contributing to the development of new management skills. Another important aspect refers to noncompliance with practice communities in the company, although the organizational culture promotes the emergence of these social structures.