Research analyzes use of TRS in organizational studies

Priscilla de Oliveira Martins-Silva, Associate Professor at Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (UFES), Vitória, ES, Brazil

A group of researchers from UFES, under the coordination of Professors PhD. Priscilla de Oliveira Martins-Silva and PhD. Annor da Silva Junior carried out a bibliometric research of all the scientific production that involved the use of Social Representation Theory (SRT) in Organizational Studies (OS) in the last 14 years. The results of the research were published in Journal Cadernos EBAPE.BR in Volume 14, Number 4 of October to December of 2016, whose title is “The social representation theory in Brazilian organizational studies: a bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2014”.

The authors analyzed 90 scientific paper published within the period from 2001 to 2014 in journals and scientific events in the area of the OS, having as scope 7 categories of analyzes, which are: (1) the number of articles per year and the nature of the scientific article (theoretical essay, theoretical-empirical, etc.); (2) type of SRT approach utilized; (3) type of representational object investigated; (4) methodological procedures adopted (research approach and data collection and analytical procedures); (5) justification for the use of SRT; (6) SRT references which these articles are most often based on; and (7) most cited authors associated with SRT in these articles. The data analysis consists of the articulation of two procedures: (1) a descriptive statistical analysis of the absolute and percentage frequencies of the publications; and (2) an analysis of the content, as a way of enriching the critical analysis of the selected texts.

As the synthesis of the results, among the 90 articles investigated, 67 were published in 7 scientific events and 23 were published in 6 journals. Out of this total, 83 have a theoretical and empirical nature and only 7 are theoretical. The bibliometric survey allowed to identify that using the SRT in the OS is still incipient and that, in the articles addressed, the SRT is used in a superficial manner, without exploring the potential that this theory provides for understanding social phenomena. In addition, the results indicated that in the texts under analysis some theoretical and methodological inconsistencies in using the SRT, where it is worth highlighting a mistaken approach to representational objects, a reductionist adaptation of the concept of social representation (SR), and use of the SRT as a research method. As a contribution, the paper points out the need for evolution and maturation of the SRT in the OS, both in quantitative and qualitative terms.

References

MARTINS-SILVA, P. O. et al. Teoria das representações sociais nos estudos organizacionais no Brasil: análise bibliométrica de 2001 a 2014. Cad. EBAPE.BR [online]. 2016, vol.14, n.4, pp.891-919. [viewed 9 March 2017]. ISSN 1679-3951. DOI: 10.1590/1679-395155900. Available from: http://ref.scielo.org/4wjnjf

External Link

Cadernos EBAPE – CEBAPE – www.scielo.br/cebape