Corporate education and professional development in social cultural dynamic of business organization

Abstract

This essay deals with certain dimensions of corporate education, mainly its insertion in a net of meanings, values, and representations reconciling some different and ambiguous, but complementary, forms of solidarity. Research carried out in three great companies located in Espírito Santo reveals some strategies for qualification and training based on a duality of integrative and rationalizing patterns. On one hand, the communitarian sources reinforce identification and involvement with the company’s values and goals and stimulate cooperation among team members as well as legitimacy of leadership emerging from the group itself, while never overlooking market imperatives. On the other, the contractual sources enhance technical knowledge, self-development, organizational competence, and the business strategic plan and start differentiation and individualism, without dissociating them from a basis of cultural values and symbols which stands for the company’s own identity.