Contando histórias, concebendo empresas: o papel das apresentações de negócios enquanto práticas estratégicas na criação de organizações

Abstract

In this research, the organization is understood as a happening of a set of practices and material arrangements; it ceases to be considered an entity and is then considered a socially situated event. In light of studies of the field of strategy as practice and entrepreneurship, which research how organizations are created, we investigate: how formal presentations of Internet companies, which are still a fiction, contribute to organizational emergency? We considered that the formal business presentations that entrepreneurs realize of their companies are strategic episodes for the (re)construction of these companies. The objective of the research was to analyze the role of formal business presentations for organizational emergence of Internet companies that are seen as fictions, which implies that they could not be more than a storytelling - a story told by the entrepreneur(s) who, at this stage, are, in many aspects, the organization itself. The research was guided by interpretive assumptions and was conducted in three stages: participant observation with field book records and analysis of videos and photos available online; semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs; and another participant observation with records in field book, videos and photos. The results show that business presentations are part of a network of practices - pre-presentation, presentation and post-presentation practices - that can lead (or not) to the emergence of Internet companies. In this study, we show that this network has the practice of presentation as a central episode, not because during its realization occurs strategic thinking, since this is a moment for rehearsed and learned practices, but because the moment of their preparation (pre-presentation) and after its completion (post-presentation) generate and require strategic reflection on the organization that is ceasing to be fiction and becoming something concrete. This result moves the strategic episode status from the presentations to the post- and prepresentation moments, when there are performances of activities related to the direction and survival of the organization or even the "no establishment" of organizations.