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I. INTRODUCTION
In a time when History is much neglected, when people
prefer quick communication received through WhatsApp ,
when we are invaded by fake news , we want to argue that
studying history, investigating the past is really necessary.
History can teach us the best way to look at events and facts
either good or bad ones. Besides it can help us avoid falling
into the same traps that people or corporations did.
Therefore, History is not only about the past, but about the
present and the future. In this work we claim that studying
the history of a successful company may be a way of helping
people and entrepreneurial in general who are when starting
their own business. We propose to explore the history of a
successful company. We believe that , often, just by having
studied the histories of companies and the way they have
faced work and commitment one can access the strategies
and principles that made them successful. History in this
sense may help encourage people in their new business. In
this sense, we argue that by studying individuals and
companies that are in a position you or your corporation
want to be in in the future, can be a great motivation. By
identifying a successful company in a country, province or
city and studying it may help people not only from business
but from other areas to learn about administration, leadership, commitment and other factors. In addition to
this, the process of researching how a company has
unfolded and grown in a community may help us to
understand the community we live in, the people who live
in, and give us more knowledge on the whole context of
administration, as well as authentic leadership ,
commitment and awareness of the need to adaptation. In
this work, we are going to focus on a company located in
Southern Brazil, in the city of Sao Bento do Sul.
II. MOVEIS RUDNICK – THE START
MÓVEIS RUDNICK S/A. is a nationally recognized
industrial company in the furniture sector in São Bento do
Sul – Santa Catarina, Southern Brazil. where descendants of
German immigrants settled in 1873. In 1938 Mr. Leopoldo
Edmundo Rudnick, started a woodwork factory, or rather, a
small joinery which later became a factory. in a small shed
located on Estrada Dona Francisca, in the interior of the
municipality. The groups of immigrants who arrived in the
city of São Bento do Sul worked with wood in their original
land and this was an important motivation to continue their
activities in Santa Catarina. In 1946 the small joinery
(woodwork) moved to the Oxford district, where one of the
company's production units is now located. Thus, in 1959
the “Industria de Móveis Rudnick was founded having Mr.
Leopoldo Rudnick as the patriarch of the organization. The
patriarch Mr. Rudnick cultivated values, strongly linked to
his family, to the Lutheran Church and appreciated
discipline and commitment. There was a “Rudnick bulletin
which contextualized itself within the modus
operandi of other furniture factories. It should be noted that,
at the time, the reference in furniture production in the
region was Móveis Cimo, whose headquarters were in Rio
Negrinho ,15 miles from São Bento do Sul.
The micro-region of São Bento do Sul, located in the
northern plateau of Santa Catarina (near Paraná)
encompasses the municipalities of São Bento do Sul, Rio
Negrinho and Campo Alegre. The forest in the region, in the
period of the first German immigrants, had a great
biodiversity, and the most common species found were
’araucaria pine”, mate, imbuia, cinnamon tree, among other
species of timber wood.
The combination of the existence of abundant raw material
and artisans with the trade in wood and mate, responsible
for generating income and accumulating regional capital,
enabled the development of furniture production. The
carpentry production system at the beginning of the 20th
century was artisanal, little industrialized, and the product
met the demands of the buyers, whose market was regional.
With the increase in the flow of immigrants, the sale of
products grew, with a corresponding improvement in the
quality of the products.
In the late 1950s, producers began to offer furniture made
by the factories. In the 1960s, the furniture industry was
consolidated in the municipalities of São Bento do Sul, Rio
Negrinho and Campo Alegre, giving rise to the furniture
pole, structured by the large availability of raw material
(especially imbuia), by the supply of qualified labor and by
its own financial resources, when the company started to
sell its products in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo
and Curitiba.
It is important to emphasize, for the context of our work,
that in the 1960s the Brazilian government encouraged
reforestation of imported trees, which caused a strong
impact on the region, as companies cleaned areas of natural
wood to introduce the planting of imported pine. The first
large company to settle in the city was Battistella which
used to work with pine wood. The industries that were here
previously, such as the extinct Móveis Cimo worked with
native wood. (TERNES,
In the 60s, Rudnick company received subsidized financing
and started implementation of actions to expand its
industrial park. At that time, the motivation to produce
furniture was the market which demanded it. Thus, most of
the industries in São Bento do Sul focused on the
organization and commitment of the companies, and
applied all the forces in a production, with a qualified
workforce that differentiated it from other regions of the
country.
During the 1970s, taking advantage of the high growth of
the Brazilian economy, the furniture sector experienced a
strong expansion of demand in the domestic market, with
the incorporation of the North and Northeast regions of
Brazil as consumers of products from the São Bento do Sul
hub.
III. FURNITURE INDUSTRY IN THE STATE OF
SANTA CATARINA
From 1970 onwards, the organization started to import
machines, thus beginning a new period, with more
technology, better quality standards and an advanced
commercial policy. For example, modern machines were
imported from Germany in 1974, which brough the
advantage of producing on a larger scale and with a
laminated finish, with high gloss, differentiated from other
industries in the region. It should be noted that Rudnick was
the first buyer of the Agglomerate, whose industry at the
time Placas do Paraná was pioneered in Curitiba.
Thus, in the 1970s, when the expansion of demand was
notable, Rudnick stood out for its innovation in the production of straight-line (modern) furniture. Contrary to
the companies in the region, which, given the specialized
workforce, operated with colonial furniture.
Rudnick in the face of the favorable market had an upward
growth in the 1970s, becoming known in the market. Its
customers were retail stores, and it operated through its own
sellers and representatives throughout Brazil. It basically
operated with bedroom furniture.
Another strategy, in the company's innovative era, was the
acquisition of companies. When its industrial park was fully
consolidated, in 1977, it bought another company in the
same sector that operated with shelves from Móveis Alpes,
but its production line remained with the same products, but
with central administration by Móveis Rudnick.
As Rudnick had a high cash flow, its investments became
operating companies with an already cooled market. At the
end of the 1970's, with the abrupt reduction of the imbuia
wood and with the entry of new production technologies,
most furniture producing companies started to use
reforested (imported) Pinus, destined for the domestic
market. This phase changed the production process, which
used to be more artisanal, to a straighter line, using more
modern equipment, influenced by Government incentives
for the acquisition of equipment. A striking fact was that,
without the appropriate technology, companies started to
produce furniture in Pinus for the national market, which
distorted the concept of furniture made from this plant
species. The quality of the furniture was a factor that, until
today, a great part of the consumers of previous generations,
abhor Pinus furniture.
In the 1980s, the Brazilian economy went through a period
of uncertainty, with the financing crisis with a strong
reduction in purchasing power in general. According to
ABIMÓVEL (2003), in the case of the furniture center of
São Bento do Sul, the 1980s marked a new and decisive
phase in the development of the furniture industry in the
region, characterized by the retraction of the domestic
market, by the change in raw material (consolidation pine)
and by the search for the international market.
Rudnick, in a matrix model, centralized the media activities
and started to produce in decentralized way, acting in each
manufacturing unit with a focus on a particular product, at
the time a competitive advantage, which later on, harmed it,
due to isolated activities, sometimes, with the same type of
machinery.
With operations throughout the Brazilian market, as well as
in the export sector, with pool tables and a very positive
cash flow, the company started a phase of prominence in the
Brazilian furniture market. And under the influence of
inflation, it was able to evolve, taking advantage of it by
having a positive cash flow and taking advantage of
suppliers.
In 1994, during the government of Itamar Franco, Brazilian
currency was changed with the “Plano Real” in order to
stop the inflation which was very high. This fact required
new modes of operating which was successfully done by the
leaders of the company.
In 2001, the company constituted the Board of Directors in
which family members were transferred to it. Currently, the
Rudnick Group is managed exclusively by an executive
board and family members make up the organization's
Board of Directors. In addition, the company has around
600 employees, an administrative headquarters, two
manufacturing units and a distribution center that, together,
add up to approximately 50 thousand square meters of builtup area.
Today the company has a segmented focus and manages to
print more strategic actions. And it survived in the face of
adversity because it had reserves built up at the time of its
growth, without which, to straighten up again, it would
certainly suffer setbacks.
The permanence and sustainability of the Rudnick company
is based on values, as mentioned above, which it values to
conserve over time. The company is integrated into the
community and has always collaborated to the society, e.g.,
by giving land to Univille - University in São Bento do Sul
and other social institutions. During its trajectory, countless
professionals have passed by, important leaders who helped
the company to take important steps towards their
professional advancement. Important here is to have a brief
discussion on the issue of leadership.
IV. MOVEIS AND THE ISSUE OF LEADERSHIP
Leadership has been studied for a long time, which is proven
by the varied interpretations of this concept. While some
theorists were concerned with studying what a leader is,
others chose to dedicate themselves to understanding what
they do, and how their work interferes with other functions
around them, outlining the different styles and forms of
leadership. When it comes to organizational leadership, the
importance and attention must be understood, as this is a
fundamental link for the success of associations, since it has
its own goals and objectives, hence the dependence of
companies on their leadership to achieve the success and,
where a healthy climate prevails, in which the team
members feel committed and integrate happily into the work
environment, there are authentic leaders in “Authentizotic
Organizations” (Kets de Vries, 2001). .The theory of
authentic leadership is a recent approach, and crosses an
abundant range of studies and approaches, but in general all of them improved that authenticity takes as a starting point
that leaders, through their self-awareness, self-acceptance,
self-knowledge , faith, actions and services, have authentic
relationships with their followers and associates, supported
by transparency, trust, integrity and high moral standards
(Avolio & Gardner, 2005). Thus, in this investigation, the
objective is to understand if Móveis Rudnick S.A.'s
leadership is authentic, and promoter of an authentic
organization.
Every company seeks good results and qualified people in
their management and leadership. A leader is someone
capable of leading a team to any challenge and result, for
that it is necessary to know how to live with people, have
self-confidence and believe in the company itself. A good
leadership is able to obtain results through the interaction
between the leader and his followers, as an environment
with a sense of belonging and personal importance must be
created. A leader must, mainly, understand the needs of his
team, having the ability to visualize how personal events
can interfere in the organizational day-to-day. Authentic
leadership comes to transform a group of people into a team.
This vision of leadership comes from the various business
and world crises, more specifically from business scandals
in the world, where business leaders were in disrepute with
the world market and with the population. Authentic
leadership gained a definition by Walumbwa et al (2008, p.
84) recently: A leader behavior pattern that builds on and
promotes psychological capabilities and a positive ethical
climate to foster greater self-awareness, an internalized
moral perspective, processing of balanced information and
relational transparency by leaders who work with followers,
promoting positive self-development.
A leader must be authentic in order to be able to develop
himself, the company in which he works together with his
subordinates. Sparrowe (2005, p. 420) quotes Shakespeare
in his famous book Hamlet, where a character Polonius talks
about being who you really are. Avolio et al. (2004, p. 802)
define authentic leaders as “[…] people who have achieved
high levels of authenticity, who know who they are, what
they believe in and value, and who act based on these values
and beliefs while interacting transparently with others
”.Esper (2015, p. 5-6) brings that authentic leadership is a
normative theory, which proposes how the leader should be
and act, based on the principles of positive psychology and
positive organizational behavior. Thus, it is understood that
authentic leadership is nothing more than a leader's
behavior. A positive behavior, based on ethics and morals.
1. INTERNAL ATMOSPHERE FOR AN
AUTHENTIC COMPANY
All organizations have an internal atmosphere which favors
the health of employees and the development of the
company. Currently, because or many reasons, we live in a
world of stress, and this occurs within companies, creating
a psychologically unstable environment. Souto and Rego
(2003) point out that the stress that predominates in most
organizations has devastating effects for both companies
and individuals. Thus, authentic organizations arise, as a
way to help workers, allowing them to maintain a balance
between professional, personal and family life. Rego (2004,
p. 2) brings the meaning of authenticity. “Authentizotic” is
a neologism derived from the conjugation of the Greek
terms authenteekos and zoteekos. The first means that the
organization is authentic, trustworthy and the second means
that it is vital to people's lives, giving them meaning to life.
Authentizotic organizations are known, according to Rego
(2004, p.3) as "a good workplace", a place where employees
trust the people they work for and feel proud of what they
do and enjoy working with others. An authentic
organization is a place that helps its employees to have a
balance between personal, family and work life. Thus, for
Souto and Rego (2004, p. 5) the concept of authentizotic
organization is inspired by this model, intending to highlight
the relevance of the psychological well-being of individuals
for the functioning of organizations.
2. OUR RESEARCH ON MÓVEIS RUDNICK, AN
AUTHENTIC ORGANIZATION
In order to develop our research on the company we used
quantitative research, with questionnaires that had already
been theoretically validated, covering leaders and followers
of Móveis Rudnick . The data collected from the company
sought to ascertain through statistical methods the profile of
the existing leadership in the organization and, if confirmed
as authentic, what its influence on the organizational climate
is, to confirm whether it is an organization theoretically
called "organizational authentication". It is noteworthy that
before applying the questionnaires, it is expected to know
the researched company, organizational aspects,
departments, sectors and command fluency were identified,
in addition, the scientific questionnaires exclusively
addressed Authentic Leadership (WALUMBWA, 2008)
and Authentic Organizations ( REGO and SOUTO. 2004).
The collection sought to include all intermediate leaders,
below the leader who runs the company, also contemplating
those led, at random in a number that statistically
represented a sample considered valid, by measuring the
total number of workers.
The criteria for the inclusion of participants with regard to
outlook, obeyed that he has a designation of manager, unit,
department or sector; in relation to intermediate leaders, it
followed the profile that the respondent is an intermediate
leader, with a hierarchy below managers, supervisors in a
department or unit of the company, regardless of any other qualification. The others led were chosen from among
Móveis Rudnick's employees, who carry out work
activities, without command, in the manufacturing or
administrative sectors; they were chosen through the easy
access to the sectors, negotiated with the company's
directors, during the day shift, without observing any other
requirement, that is, at random. The first questionnaire
applied deals with authentic leadership and includes 16
questions, sixteen factors that seek to assess the main
characteristics attributed to authentic leadership (selfawareness, relational transparency, internalized moral
perspective and balanced processing), while the second
questionnaire has 21 questions. relating to Authentizotic
associations, through measurement according to a structure
proposed by Rego and Souto (2004), focused on the cultural
perception of the organization. The questionnaires were
answered with marking, using the Likert scale (RENSIS
LIKERT, 1932) with five positions in the range between 1
and 5, with affirmations, where: 5 - always; 4 - almost
always; 3 - from time to time; 2 - rarely; and 1 - never. In
possession of the collected data, through the Likert scale of
the applied statements, it was possible to analyze the
existence of an authentic leadership in the organization and
how the organizational climate is perceived by the
approached collaborators. The results obtained with the help
of 58 employees (various levels of leadership) are presented
below. For better exposure of readers, the graphs will bring
all the calculated percentages, to gauge the existence or not
of Authentic Leadership, as well as, in terms of authentic
organizational climate.
V. SOME RESULTS
Among the responses to our questionary, the vast majority
marked the maximum score 5 representing the statement
"always" and score 4 representing the statement "almost
always", see: According to the averages in the table above,
the minimum average reached was is 3.29, a sufficient
number to confirm that the researched organization has
attitudes based on factors such as self-awareness and ethics,
in addition to having transparent relationships that generate
motivation and commitment from the organization's
components (GARDNER et al, 2011). True leadership has
ideas with a strong sense of value, has ethical positions and
its performance goes beyond expectations, as a result the
organization becomes healthier, the environment becomes
beneficial to employees who in turn wear the organization's
shirt with much more determination. This judgment had
already been declared by Bass in 1985 in his work
"Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations", in
which the author states that the ethical vision of the
organization is a preconceived vision of true leadership.
Authentic leadership emphasizes the establishment of an
honest relationship of the leader with the follower, guided
by transparency in labor relations, in order to cultivate a
relationship of mutual trust; this means that the hierarchy
cannot be the cause of problems in organizations, after all,
in the production chain, everyone has great value, besides
the final objective does not materialize if each one does not
comply with what they are willing to do. Engagement is
based on a relationship of trust that presupposes access to
the information you need and decent and rewarding working
conditions (ESPER & CUNHA, 2015).
Other answers to our questionnaires indicate that Móveis
Rudnick is an authentic, that is, a company where its
employees feel integrated, are part of a general purpose and,
therefore, committed to it, making the company part of their
individual purpose. The confirmation of this assumption
about authentic organizations at Móveis Rudnick is clear,
since the numbers indicated in the table above mean that the
organization offers a good organizational climate. Healthy
practices in an organizational environment are bricks for a
more positive performance in it, after all organizations that
do not put healthy actions into practice and that treat
employees only as numbers, become disreputable
companies and may face problems including filling out its
staff. It was noticed through the data obtained and the
graphs above, that both converge to confirm authentic
leaders and an authentic organization. Both tables present
significant averages in the researched statements, amply
evidencing the authentic leadership and the authentic
environment found in the analyzed company.
VI. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
This work is not completed. Further investigations on the
history of the company will be developed. However we
would like to emphasize that a study on company and
leadership cannot neglect the history of the company. An
Authentizotic company as Móveis Rudnick S/A could not
be complete without a brief history of its foundation, and of
its founder, Mr. Leopoldo Rudnick. How the company
developed itself, facing several challenges it is also
important to be investigated. History does matter when we
study a company. We live in an important moment when
some fake news seem to be stronger than the study of history
and we, as students and scholars must start to show
resistance towards this situation.
Moreover, trough the results obtained from our study it was
possible to perceiver that the history of Móveis Rudnick
corporation revealed important moments when a true
leadership was necessary. The company nowadays,
following the steps of the founder reveals to be an
organization in which authentic leaders are present, leaders who value interaction and transparency. In this way, the
company promotes positive characteristics to their
followers and provide feedback that fuels composition of a
healthy and functional organizational environment. In
further work, we will proceed our study aiming at a deeper
knowledge of the company, by listening to more people
involved in the company since its beginning.
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