An essay on archaic postmodernity: The case of Portugal

In this paper, some peculiarities of a Southern European country are made explicit, namely, how the attraction of new, “global," management practices combines with deeply persistent, thus traditional, ways of imagining organization. The dominant Anglo-Saxon and Protestant models of management may not be fully adequate to characterize management and organization in the Latin Catholic countries of the south, or those postcolonial societies that they inscribed in Latin America. We present an interpretation of why what are glossed by moderns as dysfunctional management practices persist, sometimes despite their recognized inadequacy. The contributions advanced here may thus be relevant to researchers interested in the route of transition from closed to open societies and who are concerned that all models need to be appreciated in context.