Empreendedorismo como prática: um estudo em organizações produtoras de cachaça artesanal

Abstract

In this thesis, we address the theme of entrepreneurship. This phenomenon, characterized by various economic and social repercussions, presents important particularities and different theoretical perspectives. Through a synthesis between processual and organizational approaches, with a focus on elements such as the entrepreneurial process and the process of organization-creation, it is possible to generate further studies on entrepreneurship that adopts a practice-based approach. Consistently with conceptual elements from practice theory, this approach advocates the apprehension of entrepreneurship as a situated practice. Therefore, this thesis seeks to answer the following research question: How does the construction of entrepreneurial practices occur in processes of organization-creation and in the dynamics of organizational evolution over time? In order to do so, this research aims to comprehend the construction of entrepreneurial practices in organizations from the cachaça industry. Specifically, the aim was to identify entrepreneurial practices related to the creation processes of these organizations, to verify the entrepreneurial practices directed to their renewal, including its production and commercialization processes, and to demonstrate similarities and differences comparatively in terms of entrepreneurial practices within the studied cases, highlighting how these practices contribute to the configuration of entrepreneurship as a practice. We studied four organizations from the cachaça industry from a qualitative multicase perspective dully informed by a social constructionism foundation. The discussion of the results allowed the analysis of categories such as organization-creation processes, entrepreneurial processes, opportunities identification and exploration/exploitation processes, production, commercialization, and innovative processes. Therefore, entrepreneurship as practice, or entrepreneuring, is as a socially creative and organizationally situated process, which materialize a new organization or new organizational practices through decisions and actions made by entrepreneurial practitioners who organize people and resources. In doing so, these practitioners create, discover, identify, exploit, and explore business opportunities, thus creating and renewing organizations. The entrepreneurial practices emerge, in this context, as practices socially and contextually circumscribed to the domain of entrepreneurial practitioners and their organization, resulting in everyday and routine activities cumulatively and contextually constructed, translating themselves in an unveiling of several innovative practices of organization creation and renewal. The role of the practitioner, in this scenario, emerges with the entrepreneurial action and with the act of entrepreneuring in practice, involving routines of comprehending, knowing, acting, doing, and entrepreneuring entrepreneurship. Therefore, we conclude that practice theory, in its various perspectives, can contribute to entrepreneurship studies and for entrepreneuring in organizations, thus forming an interesting alternative for the development of the field.