Reflection - 2025: Psychosocial risks, rhizomatic controls, and multiple intersections related to work and subjectivityAbstract
This article offers a theoretical and analytical reflection on the connections between work, subjectivity, and health, examining how different forms of management can function as both mechanisms of care and control. It builds on the assumption that work is not merely a technical activity but a social, symbolic, and political process that shapes identities and meanings, capable of generating both fulfillment and suffering. Drawing on authors such as Dejours, Antunes, Codo, and Seligmann-Silva, the text posits that mental illness is not a matter of individual failure but emerges from organizational conditions, control mechanisms, and the meritocratic logic that permeates the world of work. The article discusses psychosocial risks and protective factors, highlighting recognition, cooperation, and participation as essential elements for occupational health. It analyzes the concept of a control society, focusing on rhizomatic control, which is amplified by technology and mobilizes subjectivity through subtle mechanisms of compliance and self-control. The criticism of the logic of performance and merit highlights their harmful effects on cooperation, solidarity, and the meaning of work, as well as the role of organizational culture as an instrument of symbolic power. Finally, a critical agenda is proposed, centered on recognition, care, and institutional transformation. This agenda advocates for management practices that are more ethical, dialogical, and sensitive to individual experiences. In this context, health is conceived as a collective construction and a struggle for dignity, participation, and justice in the worlds of work, acknowledging the central role of ethical, affective, and symbolic dimensions in the work experience.
Keywords:
Work; Subjectivity; Worker’s health; Psychosocial factors; Organizational control
Resumo
Este artigo propõe uma reflexão teórico-analítica sobre as articulações entre trabalho, subjetividade e saúde, examinando como diferentes formas de gestão podem operar tanto como dispositivos de cuidado quanto de controle. Parte-se do pressuposto de que o trabalho, além de atividade técnica, é um processo social, simbólico e político que molda identidades e sentidos, podendo gerar tanto realização quanto sofrimento. Fundamentado em autores como Dejours, Antunes, Codo e Seligmann-Silva, o texto destaca que o adoecimento psíquico não se reduz a falhas individuais, mas emerge das condições organizacionais, dos dispositivos de controle e das lógicas meritocráticas que permeiam o mundo do trabalho. Discutem-se os fatores psicossociais de risco e proteção, enfatizando que reconhecimento, cooperação e participação constituem elementos essenciais para a saúde ocupacional. Analisa-se o conceito de sociedade de controle, com ênfase no controle rizomático, que, potencializado pelas tecnologias, mobiliza a subjetividade por meio de mecanismos sutis de adesão e autocontrole. A crítica à lógica do desempenho e do mérito evidencia seus efeitos sobre a cooperação, a solidariedade e o sentido do trabalho, assim como a função da cultura organizacional como instrumento de poder simbólico. Por fim, propõe-se uma agenda crítica voltada ao reconhecimento, ao cuidado e à transformação institucional, defendendo práticas de gestão mais éticas, dialógicas e sensíveis às singularidades. A saúde, nesse contexto, é concebida como construção coletiva e luta por dignidade, participação e justiça nos mundos do trabalho, reconhecendo o papel central das dimensões éticas, afetivas e simbólicas na experiência laboral.
Palavras-chave:
Trabalho; Subjetividade; Saúde do trabalhador; Fatores psicossociais; Controle organizacional
Resumen
Este artículo propone una reflexión teórico-analítica sobre las articulaciones entre trabajo, subjetividad y salud, examinando cómo las diferentes formas de gestión pueden operar tanto como mecanismos de cuidado como de control. Se parte de la premisa de que el trabajo, además de ser una actividad técnica, es un proceso social, simbólico y político, que moldea identidades y significados, y que puede generar tanto realización como sufrimiento. Basándose en autores como Dejours, Antunes, Codo y Seligmann-Silva, el texto destaca que el padecimiento psíquico no se reduce a fallas individuales, sino que surge de las condiciones organizacionales, los mecanismos de control y las lógicas meritocráticas que impregnan el mundo laboral. Se discuten los factores psicosociales de riesgo y protección, enfatizando que el reconocimiento, la cooperación y la participación constituyen elementos esenciales para la salud ocupacional. Se analiza el concepto de sociedad de control, con énfasis en el control rizomático que, potenciado por las tecnologías, moviliza la subjetividad mediante sutiles mecanismos de adhesión y autocontrol. La crítica a la lógica del desempeño y del mérito pone de manifiesto sus efectos sobre la cooperación, la solidaridad y el sentido del trabajo, así como la función de la cultura organizacional como instrumento de poder simbólico. Finalmente, se propone una agenda crítica centrada en el reconocimiento, el cuidado y la transformación institucional, abogando por prácticas de gestión más éticas, dialógicas y sensibles a las singularidades. En este contexto, la salud se concibe como una construcción colectiva y una lucha por la dignidad, la participación y la justicia en el mundo laboral, reconociendo el papel central de las dimensiones éticas, afectivas y simbólicas en la experiencia laboral.
Palabras clave:
Trabajo; Subjetividad; Salud del trabajador; Factores psicosociales; Control organizacional
“Travailler, ce n’est pas seulement produire ; c’est aussi se transformer soi-même” (Christophe Dejours, 2009 , p. 30).
“L'essentiel du travail est fondamentalement invisible” (Christophe Dejours, 1992 , p. 5).
Introduction
The centrality of work in contemporary social life is indisputable. It structures identities, sustains ways of life, and mobilizes affect. Yet it has increasingly become a source of suffering, illness, and subjective destabilization. As Antunes (2018) argues, we live in an era in which work has, in many cases, lost its vital and transformative meaning, becoming a site of human degradation, intensified control, and exploitation.
The claims advanced by Dejours (1992, 2007, 2009), which open this invited article, challenge traditional management practices by showing that fundamental aspects of work experience—such as cooperation, silent effort, and space for creativity—are frequently overlooked in the measurement and administration of everyday labor. Contemporary management, often guided by performative and meritocratic models and by the logic of self-management, tends to neglect the ethical, affective, and symbolic dimensions of life at work. Psychic suffering, often medicalized or interpreted as an individual failing, is in fact an expression of structural conflicts embedded in prevailing forms of work organization. As Dejours (2007) contends, to work is always a subjective risk—of creation or of destruction—because it entails engagement with the world, with others, and with oneself.
In a period marked by productive intensification, the casualization of employment ties, the platformization of labor relations, and the weakening of social protection networks, the number of people who—despite being inserted in the (in)formal labor market—experience burnout, anguish, and a loss of meaning in relation to their work has grown. For many, work has ceased to be a space of expression and recognition, becoming instead a site of abandonment. This disconnection between doing and meaning reveals a model of work organization that severs bonds, demobilizes affect, and undermines the possibility that the subject can recognize themself in what they do.
This analysis proceeds from the assumption that workers’ health cannot be understood apart from the organizational dynamics, management strategies, and subjective mediations that configure living-working. More than the mere absence of disease, health should be conceived as a quotidian construction, traversed by struggles over meaning, recognition, belonging, and dignity at work. This perspective finds support in the recent revision of NR-01—Regulatory Standard No. 01 (Norma regulamentadora n. 1, 2025), which more explicitly incorporates psychosocial factors as central elements in occupational risk management.
Such regulatory change, if effectively implemented, represents a significant advance insofar as it recognizes that workers’ health depends not only on physical or technical variables but also on organizational conditions, interpersonal relations, and the ethical climate of the workplace. In this context, it is crucial to analyze the relationship between work and subjectivity—understood as the ways in which individuals experience, feel, and attribute meaning to their experiences, including those in labor settings. An inquiry into subjectivity makes it possible to grasp what is at stake at the core of labor relations and to apprehend the transformations that traverse people’s lives beyond the productive sphere (Tittoni & Nardi, 2011).
Accordingly, the purpose of this reflection is to offer a theoretical and analytical overview of the articulations among work, subjectivity, and health, demonstrating how different management forms can operate as devices of both care and control. To this end, the text is organized into five movements: first, it revisits the principal conceptual approaches to work, the production of subjectivities, and health; second, it examines psychosocial risk and protective factors in organizational settings; third, it mobilizes the concept of the society of control, with emphasis on rhizomatic control; fourth, it discusses the entanglements produced by the logics of performance and merit within organizational culture; and finally, the fifth movement proposes a critical agenda for action aimed at promoting health at work, with an emphasis on institutional practices committed to recognition, care, and human dignity.
Work, Subjectivity, and Health: Conceptual Foundations
The polysemy of work—conceived at times as a source of income and identity, at others as a site of oppression and suffering—expresses its contradictory, relational, and historically situated nature (Antunes, 2018; Linhart, 2021). Understood here as a socially organized activity that engages the subject in physical, affective, and symbolic dimensions (Dejours, 1992), work also constitutes a field of dispute, risk, and creation. Grasping the articulations among work, subjectivity, and health therefore requires a critical, interdisciplinary approach that recognizes work not merely as a technical activity, but as a social, symbolic, and political process that shapes the subject themself.
In this context, subjectivity is not conceived as a fixed essence or an exclusively individual attribute. As Guattari and Rolnik (1986) argue, it is a historical and relational production, continuously shaped by social norms, institutional discourses, and organizational practices. In the workplace, this production of subjectivity is intensified, since work not only imposes tasks but also conveys values, defines expected conduct, and establishes specific forms of recognition and belonging.
As Dejours (1992) observes, it is in confronting the concrete reality of work—its demands, limits, and interactions—that the subject can both construct meaning and experience suffering. The psychodynamics of work offers a robust theoretical framework by distinguishing between pathogenic suffering and suffering that may be transformative, underscoring the fundamental role of recognition, cooperation, and symbolic elaboration. Complementarily, Codo (2004) and Seligmann-Silva (2011) reinforce this conception by defining subjectivity as the singular way in which the subject interprets, feels, and assigns meaning to lived experience, traversed by affects, conflicts, and symbolic disputes. The organizational environment thus becomes a privileged—albeit tension-ridden—space for the constitution of psychic health or illness.
In the field of collective health, the broadened concept of health, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2014) as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being—and not merely the absence of disease—helps to displace restrictive biomedical views centered on the individual. From this perspective, health is understood as the outcome of living conditions, social relations, organizational structures, and the degree of autonomy and recognition experienced by subjects. This understanding is particularly salient given the growth of so-called “invisible” health harms, such as chronic stress, depression, anxiety, burnout, burn-on, and other psychosocial conditions associated with work. These phenomena have been recognized as expressions of contemporary forms of precaritization and of the increasingly intense subjective demands within organizational settings.
Authors such as Codo (2004) and Seligmann-Silva (2011) reiterate that workers’ mental suffering is neither exceptional nor accidental; rather, it signals the symptoms of an organizational logic that fragments bonds, precarizes relationships, and imposes upon the subject a constant mandate of adaptation and self-optimization. In the same vein, Castel (2005) problematizes the effects of neoliberalism on the social bond, evidencing the corrosion of belonging networks and the weakening of collective forms of protection.
Against this backdrop, work is configured simultaneously as promise and threat. It may be a site of fulfillment, recognition, and meaning-making; but also of exhaustion, alienation, and loss of identity. Thinking about workers’ health therefore demands attention to the multiple layers mediating the relation between subject and workplace. These layers—also addressed through the lens of psychosocial factors—include modes of management, mechanisms of symbolic control, regimes of recognition, and the meanings produced (or denied) in the everyday conduct of work.
Psychosocial Risk and Protective Factors in Organizational Settings
In the field of occupational health, psychosocial factors are central to understanding how work affects workers’ physical, mental, and social well-being. These factors refer to the complex interactions among the work environment, task organization, instituted cultural values, and the subjective conditions of those who work. When such interactions are marked by excessive demands, lack of recognition, relational isolation, role ambiguity, or organizational injustices, they constitute psychosocial risks. Conversely, work contexts that foster participation, belonging, cooperation, and meaning can function as significant protective factors for health.
The demand-control model proposed by Karasek and Theorell (1990) was pioneering in demonstrating that illness is not produced solely by the intensity of workload but by the combination of high demands with low decision latitude. Environments affording greater autonomy and social support, even under pressure, tend to generate less psychological distress. Complementarily, the effort-reward imbalance model developed by Siegrist (1996) shows that a persistent mismatch between what is given and what is received—in terms of recognition, security, and esteem—can lead to chronic strain, emotional depletion, and burnout.
In Brazil, the fields of the psychodynamics of work, collective health, and health-surveillance practices have substantially expanded understanding of these risks. It is now well established that psychosocial conditions directly influence the incidence of depression, anxiety, burnout, and ethical-political suffering. The absence of legitimate channels for voice and listening, dehumanized hierarchical relations, and exacerbated competitiveness are examples of settings that favor the emergence of pathogenic suffering.
On the other hand, several organizational elements operate as powerful protective factors: symbolic and material recognition of work performed; leadership committed to care; the promotion of horizontal ties and inclusive practices; the institutionalization of active listening; and the effective participation of workers in decision-making processes. Environments that permit the symbolic elaboration of conflict, the expression of singularities, and the construction of meaning in everyday action tend to strengthen mental health and expand individuals’ subjective resilience in the face of adversity.
Recognizing psychosocial risk and protective factors is indispensable for developing institutional strategies genuinely committed to care. Beyond one-off initiatives or behavioral trainings, the task is to promote structural transformations in organizational practices, management models, and institutional cultures that often operate silently as producers of suffering and illness. This entails a critical interrogation of the organization of work—not only as it is, but, above all, as it can and should be transformed.
Such recognition already finds support in Brazilian regulation. The recent update to NR-01 explicitly includes psychosocial factors among occupational risks, requiring organizations to adopt an integrated preventive approach that encompasses the subjective and relational dimensions of the work environment. This represents a significant normative advance: it shifts the focus from individual responsibility to the concrete conditions under which work is carried out and affirms, unequivocally, that care for mental health cannot be dissociated from the organizational structure and the modes of management—and control—that sustain it.
The Society of Control, Normativity, and Rhizomatic Control
Organizational control has progressively shifted onto the plane of subjectivity, investing in the mobilization of workers’ psyches in favor of institutional objectives. These are subtle forms of regulation that—through the indoctrination of values and the internalization of organizational culture—foster spontaneous adherence and voluntary submission. In this context, increasingly sophisticated communicative strategies arise that, far from promoting dialogue, operate as dispositifs of symbolic violence, amplifying practices of self-violence and voluntary servitude (Mendes & Siqueira, 2014).
The configurations that control assumes within organizations foreground the double face of subjective engagement characteristic of the society of control (Deleuze, 2008). They differentiate modalities and relations of work in the modern firm, constituting at once a form of control and domination over wage labor and a source of possibilities for emancipation, as noted by Zarifian (2010). For example, the conveniences introduced by new technologies harbor novel strategies of domination—including individuals’ own efforts to remain in particular segments—amounting to a kind of voluntary servitude.
This is enabled by what Gaulejac (2002) calls non-prescriptive normalization (não prescrição normalizadora): a mode that eschews any appearance of control or manipulation and thereby intensifies self-control. It marks the shift from disciplinary power to management power, which, according to Gaulejac (2002, p. 83), presents itself as “a remarkable advance over the oppressive and static character of the disciplinary system.” In this light, rhizomatic control becomes a key concept for understanding how self-fashioning comes to involve both body and mind (Grisci, 2011). Recalling the characteristic features of the rhizome, what we observe is control installing itself in multiple, permanently mobile centers that, taken together, compose the whole.
By rhizomatic control we mean a form of control that—potentiated by new technologies and operating non-confrontationally—expands and becomes invisible through permanently mobile centers that configure modes of working and living, molding individuals and collectivities into forms of self-control. The rhizomatic perspective, within Deleuze and Guattari (2000) theory of multiplicity, has been used to make sense of organizational phenomena. Through this lens, the organization is understood as thought and the construction of subjectivity, subject to an intricate dynamics of affects that can either liberate—creating new worlds—or imprison subjectivity within productions driven by a colonial-capitalist unconscious (Zioli et al., 2021).
In the Fordist model of production and work, preventing autonomous movements, imposing discipline, and homogenizing behavior required keeping individuals fixed under the gaze of surveillance. In the post-Fordist model, the worker is summoned to be the subject of work. Whereas the panopticon’s principal function was to ensure that no one escaped the surveilled space, contemporary categories such as distributed surveillance, control-as-stimulation, and risk control emerge to elucidate how individuals actively participate in a broad and complex network of control (Grisci, 2011).
The society of control thus enhances the invisibility of power, which diffuses across porous boundaries and flexible networks, eliciting a sensation of apparent freedom. In this sense, the concept of the rhizome, borrowed from botany, helps to explain how the new technological paradigm amplifies control from a synoptic* perspective. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari (2000), Grisci (2011) argues that control installs itself between these (non)places.
Within this perspective, power-control manifests via technology—rendering it subtle and impersonal—and via seemingly incontestable statistics that report both collective and individual results through tools fed by workers themselves. As Grisci (2011) notes, it operates from hierarchical structures that no longer primarily repress, punish, or impose, but instead seek voluntary adhesion through seduction, gratification, or the stimulation of individual commitment; and through computerized performance-evaluation protocols that are seldom contested, given the belief that their transparency and objectivity guarantee reliability and safety.
Control also appears in management projects that extend organizational boundaries into workers’ homes, driven by the imperative of customer satisfaction; in training and formation that standardize profiles even prior to hiring; and in prescriptive or non-prescriptive norms concerning elegance in bodily presentation and conduct, via image management—among other mechanisms.
In this way, control takes on new forms and gives rise to new discourses that permeate power relations in and of work. Colleagues come to police everything in anticipation of professional and financial gains; the subject, hesitant yet compliant, gradually sets aside personal life—regardless of the harm it may entail—deeming it necessary to make certain concessions at particular moments and defining total availability for work as self-discipline, tied to the need to appear always engaged so as to merit favorable evaluations.
Accordingly, rhizomatic control is not confined to modes of working; it equally reaches modes of living for individuals and collectivities. The result is a standardized subjectivity, continually updated through submission to prevailing conditions of production, consumption, and circulation—conditions that shape not only the expressions of affect but also its exploitation. These dynamics are traversed by a logic of performance and merit that pervades organizations, products, and cultural productions, functioning as a symbolic apparatus (dispositif) of managerialist ideology.
Cross-Currents of Control: Performance and Merit as an Organizational Logic
The logic of performance, having become one of the pillars of contemporary organizational rationality, operates not only as a technical instrument but as a power apparatus. In the name of efficiency, productivity, and strategic alignment, diverse methods of measuring results have been adopted by management, often tied to variable pay, bonuses, and promotions. Yet this model bears profound ethical implications, especially when it disregards structural asymmetries, work contexts, and the modes of subjectivation implicated in labor practice.
Reward policies, frequently legitimated by the discourse of meritocracy, presume that all individuals compete under equivalent conditions and that individual effort is the principal determinant of performance. By failing to account for the heterogeneity present within organizations, this conception ignores the social, economic, and cultural inequalities that shape career trajectories, shifting responsibility for advancement or failure to the individual (Souza & Vasconcelos, 2021). Mascarenhas (2020) adds that, in the Brazilian context, meritocracy functions more as an ideology than as a genuinely operative criterion, insofar as society tends to value networks of influence, social origin, and historical privilege more than individual trajectories.
Moreover, the capture of performance by quantitative metrics tends to produce perverse effects on workers’ subjectivity. By prioritizing the measurement of outputs and results, relational knowledge, creativity, care for others, and the meanings attached to work are eclipsed. This process of quantifying the worker’s value feeds a diffuse logic of control, in which evaluation is not only external but also internalized as permanent self-assessment—and thus a source of anxiety, comparison, and insecurity.
As Béhar (2019) observes, merit has become a symbolic apparatus of managerialist ideology, responsible for individualizing success and relocating critique from structures to subjects. In this scenario, rewards and sanctions cease to be instruments of development and become mechanisms of surveillance and disciplining. When tethered to competitive models, rewards can rupture bonds of solidarity and cooperation among workers, reinforcing isolation and subjective precaritization.
In contemporary management practice, organizational culture is frequently mobilized as a strategic resource to align behavior, generate engagement, and sustain institutional identity. Terms such as “organizational values,” “results-oriented culture,” or “cultural fit” have entered the managerial lexicon, often treated as neutral desiderata that can be administered technically. Viewed from a critical perspective, however, these practices reveal themselves as mechanisms of symbolic control that act upon modes of being, feeling, and acting at work.
Culture, in this context, operates as an instrument of power that traverses not only explicit norms but also everyday rituals, institutional discourses, evaluative dynamics, and modes of recognition. The incorporation of a “desired behavioral profile” into selection processes, the valorization of a “positive attitude” in performance reviews, and the induction of self-responsibilization in the name of a “high-performance culture” exemplify how power infiltrates the meanings produced by management. As Freitas (1991) reminds us, culture is an instrument of control par excellence, for it symbolically organizes power relations and legitimates hegemonic models of organizational conduct.
These mechanisms of subjectivation operate through the symbolic capture of subjects, calling them to a performative adherence to instituted values. This is a form of power that is not imposed solely by external coercion; it acts from within, shaping desires, affects, and identities. The construction of “strong” cultures may result in the homogenization of differences, the suppression of conflict, and the depoliticization of organizational relations. As Alvesson (2012) and Legge (2005) caution, when culture is instrumentalized by management it tends to become a disciplining artifact, capable of masking structural inequalities and silencing resistance.
Power, however, is never absolute. As Foucault (1988) proposes, every power relation entails possibilities for resistance. In organizational life, such resistances often manifest subtly and almost imperceptibly: through irony toward institutional discourse, strategic silence, refusal of certain norms, and the creation of alternative spaces of belonging. Organizational culture, while structuring conduct, can also be a site of invention, ambivalence, and symbolic reinterpretation.
These everyday practices of resistance reveal that culture is not a monolithic set of meanings, but rather a contested field where multiple voices intersect, clash, and reconfigure themselves. Fischer (1989) draws attention to the “unspoken” of organizational culture—those zones of silence where dissent, pain, and the desire for transformation reside. It is within this ambiguous and contradictory space that openings are produced for alternative ways of living and imbuing work with meaning.
Recognizing culture as a field of symbolic struggle and power as immanent to organizational practices is essential for understanding the processes of subjectivation at work. Rather than reinforcing discourses of alignment and cohesion, it becomes necessary to listen to the noise—the dissonances and deviant gestures that inhabit organizational spaces and point toward other possibilities.
Final Remarks
This article offered a theoretical and analytical overview of the articulations among work, subjectivity, and health, showing how different forms of management can operate both as dispositifs of care and of control. It proceeded from the premise that work is a privileged space for the constitution of subjectivity, where struggles over meaning, desire, and existence unfold. From this perspective, psychic illness cannot be reduced to individual failings or to exclusively neurochemical imbalances; it emerges, to a significant degree, from organizational conditions that mute, accelerate, and precarize lived experience at work. Accordingly, workers’ health should be understood as a collective, political, and relational construction, anchored in institutional practices of listening, recognition, and dignity.
Parallel to the expanding body of research on health and illness at work, there has been a rise in studies focused on happiness in the workplace. Noting this trend is relevant not only because it contrasts with suffering, but also because it (re)affirms the need to transcend an instrumentalized conception of the subject and of work—still promoted by the mainstream of Management (Mozzato & Grzybovski, 2023). Although the theme of happiness dates back to classical philosophy—Socrates, for whom it was a path of self-knowledge, and Aristotle, who conceived it as a state of flourishing—its contemporary appropriation by positive psychology has, at times, lacked a critical approach, tending to depoliticize work experience and individualize responsibility.
Guided by the critical tradition that characterizes the editorial project of Cadernos EBAPE.BR, this reflection sought to broaden the debate on the organization of work and on the management of labor within the context of the current capitalist rationality of production. The debate is increasingly urgent given that instruments native to epidemiology have been incorporated by Management as tools aimed at improving productive processes and corporate efficiency. With a strongly functionalist bent, these studies employ statistical methods from the biological and social sciences to identify so-called work-related risk factors, with particular emphasis on absenteeism and its correlations with accidents, illness, and deaths in the workplace (Maxta & Ferraz, 2023).
In general terms, current applications of these bodies of knowledge can be understood as updates of the old “industrial occupational hygiene,” led by Occupational Medicine in late nineteenth-century production plants. Throughout the twentieth century, such practices were reformulated by the scientific rationality of health applied to organizational environments, giving rise to what is now called occupational health. In this scenario, the psychodynamics of work—above all in Dejours—emerges as a crucial epistemic touchstone, enabling analysis of how the working class perceives its context of action through the forms of subjectivation and defensive strategies mobilized to confront the contradictions experienced between pleasure and suffering at work.
Against this backdrop, organizational practices must be continually interrogated in light of their subjective effects. Management models oriented exclusively by targets, efficiency, and performativity tend to produce not only results but also moral distress, anxiety, and disconnection. By contrast, forms of management grounded in active listening, symbolic recognition, and ethical care have the potential to configure spaces of resistance, attachment, and meaning-making. To think critically about performance management, in this context, is to face the persistent tension between control and recognition. It implies developing evaluative models that are more dialogical, ethical, and sensitive to the singularities of organizational contexts and professional trajectories. This effort further demands revisiting prevailing meritocratic practices, confronting systemic biases that traverse evaluative processes, and incorporating qualitative dimensions into the analysis of work.
As a critical agenda oriented toward care, recognition, and institutional transformation, we propose: (i) deepening studies that articulate health, work, and subjectivity from critical and intersectional perspectives; (ii) investigating the effects of technological transformations, managerial models, and platformization on psychic suffering and on modes of subjective resistance; and (iii) expanding empirical production on psychosocial factors and on institutional experiences oriented toward care and the prevention of illness. In the realm of professional formation, it is essential to train practitioners to recognize suffering at work as a collective, socially situated phenomenon rather than an individual deviation. This requires pedagogical practices committed to ethics, listening, and critique of performance logics. With respect to university outreach, it entails a commitment to actions that strengthen ties among training institutions, territories, and workers, valuing initiatives that promote health, participation, and justice in the worlds of work.
Under this theorization, health is struggle: a struggle for the recognition of human and environmental life in the face of the capitalist exploitation of labor power—an exploitation also renewed through the scientific and organizational dispositifs of Management and its cognate fields. Promoting health at work, therefore, is not only preventing illness but creating the conditions for work to be lived as expression, attachment, and fulfillment. If, as Dejours (1992) proposes, the essential dimension of work is invisible, then it is urgent to relearn how to see. And let it be recognized, as he also insists (Dejours, 2009), that to work is also to transform oneself. May such transformation be oriented toward dignity, plurality, and the care of self and others.
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Edited by
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Hélio Arthur Reis Irigaray (Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro / RJ - Brazil). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9580-7859
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ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Fabricio Stocker (Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro / RJ - Brazil). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6340-9127
Data available upon request.
