The article deals with the problem of importation of administrative technologies to Brazil, the issue being approached as a social phenomenon of the nature of a myth, as said methodologies have been considered in the Brazilian organizational environment. So, the study endeavours to demythicizing such methodologies, founded on the semiologic method of Roland Barthes, thus redeeming the phenomenon's historic context and demythicizing its concepts of universality, scientific nature, rationality, neutrality and modernity and revealing the elements of its sense - those of its essential meaning - or, namely, the instrumental rationality, the managerial ideology and the functionalist paradigm.Importação de metodologias administrativas no Brasil como fenômeno social composto do mito. Desmitificação dessas metodologias com base no método semiológico de Roland Barthes. Resgate do histórico do fenômeno e desmitificação dos conceitos de universalidade, cientificidade, racionalidade, neutralidade e modernidade, revelando os elementos do sentido: a racionalidade instrumental, a ideologia gerencial e o paradigma funcionalista.