The historic path of affirmative actions in a Brazilian public university

Abstract

An organization’s trajectory interferes with how it organizes its resources and responds to the needs imposed by internal and external agents. This paper presents a discussion about the trajectory of a Brazilian Higher Education Institution (HEI) in relation to affirmative action policies. Affirmative action can be understood as a set of public policies that aim, in the medium or long term, to give equal access to employment opportunities and education to a historically disadvantaged group of people. Since 2012, public HEIs have been responding to a federal law that requires that 50% of all places be reserved for students coming from public schools, with a per capita income lower than a minimum and a half wage and for self-reported black, brown or indigenous students (BRAZIL, 2012). Thus, this paper aims to analyze the Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso path related to affirmative action’s adoption. For this, we used the theoretical lens of the trajectory dependence, proposed by Teece et al. (1997). As contributions, we highlight the importance of the HEI in recognizing its trajectory in relation to affirmative actions, all the initiatives that have brought favorable results, as well as the impediments and obstacles. The trajectory dependency approach emphasizes the importance of learning from mistakes, and stresses that organizations can alter unsuccessful trajectories by not becoming hostage to them.