The organizing process in travel agencies: aesthetic, ethnomethodological and practices influences

Abstract

In the context of tourism organizations, the relationship between the process of organizing and learning and generating knowledge is something latent, in particular those of small and medium size as are the vast majority of travel agencies in Brazil. However, according to Valtonen (2009) this issue has received little attention from the academy field in the areas of business administration and tourism. This article has adopted the following guiding question: How does occur the process of organizing of a group of shops of a travel agency, analyzed through the lens of aesthetics, ethnomethodology and the concept of practice? The main objective was to understand how a small tour company, travel agency, established its organizing process from their everyday practices in a naturalistic and situated way influenced by the use of technology. The research adopted as theoretical references organizational aesthetics, ethnomethodology and the concept of practice. The empirical research strategy adopted was the ethnomethodology in a travel agency with three stores in the wide São Paulo. The main research results indicates that the use of technology as a practice in the organization studied is a major influence on their modus operandi and in the process of organizing.