Evidence on the professional management of a familiar-base business: Klabin S/A

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to present evidence on how the Klabin S/A group, now with more than 130 years of history, managed to develop its professional management. The use of primary sources, acquired from the Klabin Documentation and Memory Collection, Jundiaí-SP/Brazil, in addition to complementary data and information extracted from other important sources, allowed us to understand that Klabin’s intentions when seeking to develop professionalized management were: growing, diversifying products and processes, attracting more and more investors and promoting its insertion in the international market. In this context, it was concluded that in order to achieve these goals, Klabin developed its professionalization process, establishing an organizational change that, among other aspects, proved to be intentional, consciously originated by decision of its own management. The development of this process also relied on human resources management organized by strategies aimed at training, anticipating and retaining a trained and qualified workforce to be used at specific times, in addition to the implementation of a financial control that allowed the monitoring of performance business and a more structured governance system. A set of strategies that allowed the Klabin group to consolidate itself among the most important in the Brazilian economy.