Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar a Teoria AtorRede como uma alternativa epistemológica para a condução de pesquisa organizacional no Brasil. Enquanto uma perspectiva pósestruturalista, essa abordagem teoriza as organizações como o resultado momentâneo de processos e eventos que não obedecem a uma lógica semelhante. O foco está direcionado ao processo organizar ao invés de assumir organizações como entidades portadoras de diferentes subpartes que trabalham para um objetivo comum ou como algo dotado de fronteiras claras e que possuem significativa estabilidade. O artigo apresenta os principais elementos dessa abordagem e destaca suas possibilidades para a compreensão de organizações em nosso país.

Introduction Workers often find it difficult to achieve work-home balance (Kreiner et al., 2009; Mayo et al., 2011) and work-home conflicts can generate undesirable consequences for both individuals and organizations. For professionals, these consequences are manifest in the form of family problems, stress, burnout, and other health problems (Grant-Vallone and Ensher, 2011; Boyar et al., 2003; Kreiner, 2006). Companies, in turn, may face high rates of turnover, absenteeism, and reduced productivity and reduced employee commitment (Allard et al., 2011; Beechler and Woodward, 2009; Ford et al., 2007). Combined, these results have fostered a growing interest in understanding the conflict and balance between work and home demands. Recent literature reviews on work-home conflict and work-home balance (e.g., (MacDermid, 2005; Chang et al., 2010) demonstrate that the topic is studied mainly from the perspective of the conflict and that many of these studies adopt a quantitative design. Although the contribution of this dominant perspective is undeniable, it is also necessary to understand how people solve the problem of work-home conflict (Kreiner el al., 2009; Stroh, 2005). There is a lack of qualitative studies that focus on the solution (balance) rather than on the problem (conflict) (Caspet et al., 2007; Chang et al., 2010). As emphasized by Kreiner et al. (2009), in the rare cases in which the process of achieving balance between these domains is studied, such studies are typically conducted from an organizational perspective. Thus, because individuals are actively subject to (rather than mere spectators of) external pressures and because they play the key role in the process of balancing work and home demands (Kreiner et al., 2009), we believe that qualitative studies that are dedicated to discovering actionable knowledge for individuals to balance work and home demands represent an important advance for this field of study, Among the few studies that fit this perspective are the pioneering study of Nippert-Eng (1996) that examines scientists and that of Kreiner et al. (2009) that focused on Episcopal priests. In this study, we chose to study the work-home interface of midcareer professional working mothers. We chose this profile for the following reasons. First, women face serious challenges during midlife in balancing the potentially conflicting demands of their work, career, children, and elder care (Marcinkus et al. 2007; Auster, 2001). Second, there is evidence that employees make little use of flexible working option (also known as "flexi-option") policies offered by organizations (den Dulk and de Ruijter, 2008; Heywood et al., 2010) and rely more on individual tactics (Budd and Mumford, 2005), which appears to be particularly true of mid-career working mothers because previous studies have shown that stigma is attached to women who use such arrangements (e.g., O'Connell and Russell, 2005; Drew and Murtagh, 2005; Hochschild, 1997). Finally, although previous qualitative studies have explored how mid-career w...

Drawing on Actor-Network Theory and the cartography of controversies, we present a method for ANTi-History research to investigate the implementation of a contract between a labour services company and a public university hospital in Brazil. The research question focuses on how the past is enacted in the present. The method is a general guideline based on five focal points used to organize the fieldwork: identifying controversies; mapping the actor-network; drawing out the translation process; politics of actor-networks and multiple reality/power relations. The proposed method makes two contributions to ANTi-History literature. First, although these focal points have been discussed by ANTi-History scholars, they are scattered throughout the literature. We unite them to offer a guide to doing historically embedded research. Second, we show how controversy analysis can be helpful for mapping the politics of actor-networks and describing multiple realities in the construction of history.

ResumoO objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma discussão a respeito da suposta perda de autenticidade e tradição das escolas de samba e fornecer uma contribuição para a análise organizacional, tendo em vista as características peculiares desse tipo de organização, o que nos permitiu destacar a ideia de organizações sem fronteiras. Apesar de serem significativamente pesquisadas na antropologia e na sociologia, tais organizações não ganharam ainda a devida atenção da administração. Essas agremiações são tratadas por alguns autores como entidades que sofreram grandes transformações e, por isso, teriam perdido sua autenticidade e tradição, a partir daquilo que fi cou conhecido como mercantilização/modernização do carnaval, além da chamada invasão da classe média. Argumentamos que a "mercantilzação/modernização" do carnaval e "invasão" da classe média não produziram a suposta perda de autenticidade e tradição, uma vez que a comercialização do carnaval já se fazia presente no cenário brasileiro desde o início do século XX e a relação entre cultura popular e elite não é algo novo. Assumimos a posição de que "tradição" e "modernidade" não são dicotômicas e excludentes. Como desdobramento da discussão proposta, procuramos apontar que os estudos das práticas organizativas seriam um caminho interessante para superar as dicotomias comumente empregadas nos estudos de escolas de samba, as quais, na verdade, se confi guram como organizações sem fronteiras.Palavaras-chave: Escolas de samba. Carnaval. Cultura popular. Práticas organizativas. Desfi les carnavalescos.Samba Schools: history, contradictions and contributions to organizational studies Abstract T he aim of this paper is to present a discussion about the supposed loss of authenticity and tradition in samba schools and provide a contribution to organizational analysis considering the peculiar characteristics of this type of organization which highlights the idea of borderless organizations. Despite being widely studied in anthropology and sociology, these organizations have failed to gain the attention of the fi eld of business administration. These organizations are treated by some authors as entities that have undergone major changes, and therefore have lost their authenticity and tradition as a result of what has became known as commodifi cation / modernization of carnival, invasion beyond the call of the middle class. We argue that the "mercantilization / modernization" of Carnival and the "invasion" of the middle class has not led to the alleged loss of authenticity and tradition because the marketing of carnival has been present in Brazil since the early twentieth century and the relationship between elite and popular culture is not something new. We take the position that "tradition" and "modernity" are neither dichotomous nor exclusionary. We point out that a study of organizational practices would be an interesting way to overcome the dichotomies commonly used in studies of samba schools, which actually take shape as organizations without borders.

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