When the humanization of work makes workers sick

Abstract

This article seeks to show that modern management has retained one of the essential dimensions of Taylorism: the disqualification of the professionalism of employees in order to remove any legitimacy on their part in wanting to leave their imprint on the organization of their work. This continuity is hidden by the fact that modern management calls for a humanization of work, depicts men and women with their affects, their emotions, and their desires, and claims to manage, on a strictly individualistic basis, both their strengths and their weaknesses. This subjective destabilization launches the employees into an exacerbated quest for self-realization according to a logic that requires them to conduct themselves in strict conformity with the methods and objectives that dominate them.