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This paper presents a formative academic experience where undergraduate students of organizational psychology from a Peruvian university do their internship in local microenterprises. They conducted participant observation in order to analyze microenterprises' organizational behavior. By using a university social responsibility approach, the project recognizes microenterprises as the prevailing type of organization in the national economy. Through the linkage of students to the microenterprises, this project deconstructs and decolonizes the hegemonic knowledge traditionally taught in business schools, demonstrating the need to think about organizational knowledge and practices in a way that is situated, critical and shared by all participants. Methodological details and general operative results of this experience are outlined, as a useful pedagogical input in training contexts of the complex and inequitable labor and organizational Latin American framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the language employed by disciplines that study organizations (business administration, organizational theory, organizational studies, etc.) must be carefully cultivated for strictly methodological reasons, given that the language in which theory is expressed affects the theory positively or negatively. Therefore, as an example, the paper shows that the expression administrative process is erroneous and even harmful. The paper discusses the efforts of philosophers and social scientists who have studied the aspects of scientific language in general as well as the language of their respective fields and it critically analyzes proposals by important thinkers who have broached the topic of problems with the theoretical language for organizations. Such analysis includes efforts seeking to standardize administration terminology made by authors such as Urwick and Koontz; propositions by Astley, Daft, and Wiginton who argue that studying organizations requires an ambiguous language, given its complexity (within the "linguistic slant" that has permeated organizational research, in which Alvesson, Cooper, Gergen, and Thatchenkery have also participated); and Simon's thoughts, who set out to build a vocabulary that would enable describing organizations for scientific purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon research indings of some authors, this paper is putting forwards a novel deinition of organizational capabilities pinpointing the nature, features and potential of this notion. This deinition suggests an alternative solution to the dificulty to establish a typology of organizational capabilities. The two components making up such a deinition are exempliied on the basis of a case analysis, i.e., the dialogic nature engrained in the governance capacity, and the dual dimension characterizing the way how such organization capabilities are being put into practice. Thus, such a deinition provides for an explicit and coherent conceptual basis for further research endeavours to be undertaken vis-à-vis organizational capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greatly changing scenarios are affecting how organizations must be managed, leading to the need for very efficacious, efficient governance and management systems. Nowadays, it is essential to examine the elements that organizational governance implies and to pay special attention to the relation between governance and the agency theory that is be- coming vital in the seductive, complex topic of contemporaneous companies. This article broaches the theoretical bases of this issue, for the purpose of structuring a conceptual framework to organize the knowledge and scope of corporate governance and its alignment mechanisms, especially those related to the role of administration councils. The article ends by mentioning some papers on this matter, to give it a pragmatic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction to Administration textbooks usually give simplistic definitions of administration, which do not correspond to the activities and duties that persons who perform management or administrative labors have. In addition, the concept of administration is made up of a series of unrelated loose ideas; for example, the role of managers, hierarchies in organizations or organizational culture. This paper reviews the definitions found in several such textbooks, from different theoretical perspectives and proposes a definition that relates to the various elements that comprise administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]