JUNIOR COMPANY: CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE TRAINING OF THE ADMINISTRATOR-ENTREPRENEUR

Abstract

The Junior Company called Integração Júnior (IJ) is located at the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul (UFFS), Cerro Largo-RS campus. This enterprise proposes to contribute to the training of administrators-entrepreneurs and is supported by the Extension Program “Training and Support to the Management of the Junior Company”. In this context, this study seeks to know how the practices developed in the Integração Júnior contribute to the learning and the development of the administrators-entrepreneurs’ abilities. Aiming to elucidate this questioning, the objective defined for this study was to analyze the practices developed in the Junior Company, considering the possible contributions to the learning and the development of the administrators-entrepreneurs’ skills. In order to answer, satisfactorily, the research problem and to achieve the objective proposed in this research, a qualitative approach was chosen to develop a case study, whose focus is the Junior Integration and its current and former directors, students of the Administration course at UFFS. The results show that the activities developed by IJ contribute to the attainment and/or consolidation of technical and managerial skills, as well as the students’ – future administrators – personal abilities and motivate students to follow the path of entrepreneurship. Through the Junior Company, these activities are transformed into fundamental pedagogical practices for the training of students in the Administration course, because by providing opportunities to apply the theoretical knowledge obtained in the classroom, the practical education of managers-entrepreneurs is made possible at UFFS.