HPTD-M for Public Management Sustainability: A Proposal for Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to study Brazilian public management through the HPTD-M theory (Holopraxis Transdisciplinary Management). The excess of analysis, bureaucracy, and rationality is a Brazilian bottleneck. The concept of transdisciplinarity is abbreviated in this article as TD. The HPTD-M approach is based on the principles of duality, i.e., interaction and integration of opposites, especially the analytical and synthetic methods, and four requirements, namely rationality, feasibility, reasonableness, and meaning. Complexity can be transformed into simplicity through deep studies and discussions with all actors involved. The methodology to achieve the four requirements comes from Jungian psychological functions: sensation, feeling, thinking, and intuition, respectively, which are translated into four skills or types of intelligence, namely empirical, emotional, rational, and intuitive. Our Findings involve dialectics as a sustainable duality required to improve the managerial aspects of the public organizations in Brazil: The dialogue between specialists and generalists, analytical and synthetic methods, academics and executives, technicians and managers, and techno-bureaucrats and politicians, through education and change in legislation. In this context, four major groups of disciplines: technoscience = technology + science; bureaucracy, which covers law and legislation; psychology, which includes the behavior of all actors in public administration and their relationship; and politics, which involves dialogue and complete information to subsidize higher instances decision, as opposed to political ideology or dogmatism. The HPTD-M applied to sustainable public management is simple, as a result of the sophistication of complexity through studies and discussions. In that sense, simplicity can be considered a requirement in public administration, owing to dialectic models for solving the complexity of human phenomena. These HPTD-M concepts can hopefully help other open systems of knowledge as well, such as in sciences, economics, law, psychology, and politics. New approaches for governance and internal sustainability could emerge in other countries with similar problems of bureaucracy, with direct implications for the quality of public expenditure.