Entrepreneurial Action in Public School Managemen

Abstract

Research objective: Besides identifying actions developed by municipal public actors in the education department of a municipalitylocated in the south of Minas Gerais to fulfill the National Education Plan, this article seeks to explain and analyze them fromthe theory of entrepreneurial action.?eoretical framework: ?e study of entrepreneurial action seeks to fully understand an enterprise, its driving motives,development, and actors involved. ?e entrepreneurial action can occur in different environments, being inherent to any processmodified by creativity despite not being an innovative concept and being present in school management in Brazil, its effectivenessposes a challenge for the public managers. In the public sector, entrepreneurial action can be defined as a successful result of theintertwining between public agents, organization, and society, resulting in new goods and services, or restructuring processes thatmeet public demands. Methodology: ?e research has a qualitative approach, with explanatory objectives, becoming a case study. ?e goal of thisstudy is the education department of a municipality in the south of Minas Gerais, which stands out for the creative way inwhich it manages its demands. ?e research actors are public workers assigned to the municipal education department. Datacollection took place through in-depth interviews and focus groups. Initially, a focus group carried out with four actors from themunicipal education department enabled to map out the potential entrepreneurial actions. A?erward, six in-depth interviewscollect thorough information about them. ?e data collected were analyzed by the methodological procedure of content analysis.Results: Data analysis allowed us to identify four entrepreneurial actions linked to the service of students, parents/society, teachers,management, also goals 4, 18, 19 of the PNE-2014/2024; being the creation of the service of attendance and support to theinclusion, the young permaculturist fair, the time-activity regulation, and the outsourcing of school meals the ones identified.?e actions emerged from tensions in the institutional logic, being carried out by research actors mobilized in creating innovativeexchanges that led to improved management.Originality: ?e entrepreneurial action investigation is a new topic with few studies developed in Brazil. Studying schoolmanagement from the entrepreneurial action perspective with all action steps detailed to understand how public managerscreatively and innovatively articulate to solve existing demands can help promote the already shaken public policy managementstigmatized by its inefficiency and improve the theoretical development of entrepreneurial action. ?erefore, this article providesa new way of understanding public entrepreneurship through the study of entrepreneurial action, investigating the intertwiningof various actors and how it allows the creation and use of opportunities.?eoretical and practical contributions: ?is study contributes to the field of social sciences, notably, to the study of publicadministration, by highlighting the assumption of entrepreneurial action as an identifiable phenomenon in public institutionsthat makes it possible to improve management. It also contributes by discussing the phenomenon of entrepreneurial actionand providing a theoretical framework for application in other studies. In terms of practical contributions, the identifiedentrepreneurial actions demonstrate the public managers' search for effective, competent, innovative school managementcommitted to social results, being a phenomenon of extreme value for the Brazilian public administration. Besides, the use ofcreativity, dialogue and innovation allows the public managers to bring about changes and improvements in facing the existingtensions.