The article aims to reflect on other epistemic horizons of understanding academic-administrative management in university institutions as an alternative to the adoption of the principles of the predominant management paradigm (management). Its originality is based on a theoretical-categorical framework of key concepts from the fields of political politics, critical theory and psychoanalysis. As an approximation, the sociology of absences is proposed. The results allow us to contribute to the debate a concept of academic-administrative management based on an ethical criticism from the externality and the suffering of the excluded subjects by the systems of domination of the formal and practical knowledge. The implications of the work show the potential of using interdisciplinary views of theory and the need to adopt complex holistic approaches in the design of research on the subject. The conclusions refer to the design of training profiles based on the concept proposed in this paper.