An Analysis of Secretarial Consultancy as a New Market Niche and as a Subject in Executive Secretariat Courses

Abstract

This study aims at promoting a reflection about secretarial consultancy, showing the transformation of the secretariat's profession throughout the years, as well as the new competencies of this professional, who rises in the consultancy sector. The hypothesis for the study is that, although the curricular guidelines anticipate a consultant executive secretary professional, this profile is little explored by companies and high educational institutions. In this sense, with the purpose of learning about the changes in the executive secretary's profile and establishing a relation with the profile required from the business in consultancy, documentary research on the National Curricular Guidelines of the Executive Secretary course was performed, as well as a bibliographical research, both considering authors who trace the executive secretary's profile and who show the profile of consultants in general. Subsequently, after identifying the high educational institutions in Brazil which offer the Executive Secretary course, through documentary research on Inep website, their curriculum concerning the importance given to consultancy in each course was also investigated. The research is descriptive-exploratory, with qualitative approach, using concomitantly quantitative data collection to map institutions, and qualitative approach to analyze the treatment given to the Consultancy subject in the courses. It can be concluded that, despite the fact that consultancy is a promising branch of activity and the Curricular Guidelines direct to such content, there are few high educational institutions that have the subject in their curriculum, which demands a reflection about the professional intended to be shaped for the current market.