Authoritarianism in cooperatives and in private-sector enterprises: an investigation with directors and managers, using a scale based on the F Scale of Adorno

Abstract

This paper compares authoritarian personality traits between two groups, high-level managers of private companies and of cooperatives. The analysis was based on Adorno's F scale, which represents an original contribution to the studies about organizational power in Brazil. In theoretical terms, the focus is on the links between the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and Freudian psychology. Those links are expressed by the F scale, developed in 1950 by the German philosopher Theodor Adorno and his associate researchers in California, USA. The methodology of this paper is based on a quantitative perspective and the data were analyzed using a graphic comparison and the t test of equality of means of two independent samples: one group formed by directors (75 from cooperatives and 140 from private companies), and the other by high-level managers (158 from cooperatives and 650 from private companies). The results show that the cooperatives' directors tend to be more authoritarian than their private sector colleagues, who, however, are less authoritarian than both groups of managers.