O trabalho do dirigente da pequena empresa: uma investigação pela etnometodologia

The importance of small enterprises as central actors in the economic and sustainable development of nations is now recognized, and because this the focuses on studies to improve their performance capacity is very important for both developed and developing countries. It is now well known that most organizational studies are concentrated on the positivistic research paradigm. Thus, in order to understand the objects of study in their social reality and through interpretativism, the present article set out to answer the following research question: how does the small business managers describe his own work? In order to answer this question, the study aims to identify, through an ethnomethodological analysis, how the small business manager defines and describes his work from the context in which he is inserted. To perform the ethnomethodological analysis, two direct observations were carried out, with a duration of one month each, with two owners of small companies in the interior of São Paulo. At the end, an unstructured interview and content analysis were performed. As a result it has been found that the work of small business manager defines their job as being to learn and teach (guide) others, solve problems and make decisions based on their own life experience and intuitively. It still performs many activities and interleaves at all times between managerial and operational activities. The manager also defines himself as one does everything in the company.