The lifestyles of the liquid-modern society (Bauman, 2001Bauman, Z. (2001). Modernidade líquida. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar., 2007Bauman, Z. (2007). Vida líquida. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.) are associated with performance indicators linked to short-term and obsolescence, which are aligned with managerialism (Gaulejac, 2007Gaulejac, V. de. (2007). Gestão como doença social. São Paulo: Idéias e Letras.). Such kind of management, composed essentially by ideological characteristics, takes advantage of the discourses linked to efficiency and effectiveness to create a false neutrality of management in the workplace. The managerialism also becomes important to expand the several different precepts that go beyond companies, contributing to make other ambits of life be produced in the patterns defined by management. In this context, it is important to devote attention to the executives, since they are characterized as icons of the (re)production of lifestyles (Tanure et al., 2007Tanure, B., Carvalho, A., Neto, & Andrade, J. (2007). Executivos: sucesso e (in)felicidade. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier.; Gaulejac, 2007Gaulejac, V. de. (2007). Gestão como doença social. São Paulo: Idéias e Letras.; Boltanski & Chiapelo, 2009Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, È. (2009). O novo espírito do capitalismo. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes.). Considering that, the following question emerged: what are the possible influences of the managerialism present in the production of executives’ lifestyles? Hence, the objective to understand which elements of the managerialism promote the (re)production of executives’ lifestyles was brought up. In order to do so, the life story approach was adopted. The life stories of two executives – whose elaboration was based on the conduct of in-depth interviews and whose analyses were done in the light of relevant literature – allow the observation of a set of elements that foster the (re)production of the executives’ lifestyles. These elements are the glamorization of the executive world; the constant pressure experienced at work daily; the depersonalization of the worker, who is evaluated based on indexes and results; and the relationship with the family, closely achieved by the logic of management. By producing an individual who finds him/herself seduced by the glamour, managerialism presents its facet of production machine and social control, since its resulting styles are lifestyles and not only a portion of life. This feature, to a certain extent, instills characteristics and compensatory feelings that mask the suffering or even the power and domination mechanisms that exist in such managerial stream.
Managerialism; Subjectivity; Lifestyles; Executives; Contemporaneity