Keywords

The theme of organizational culture is fascinating. The longer one dwells on it, with the necessary attention and depth, something immediately stands out: its complexity . To truly immerse into this vastness, a series of other subjects must be taken into account. At first, maybe four of them. First, anthropology—mother to the concept of culture . Then, psychoanalysis, essential to understanding the Subject-employee . Not to forget management , both of people as of business . And, last but not least, employee communication itself. The remaining question is: This interdisciplinarity should not be restricted to the theoretical field or the academic thinking. Doing so would impoverish practice and, even worse, limit it to the corporative practicality: processes, goals, and results . Acting like this, confronting all the complexity imposed by the contemporary (to society and, therefore, to organizations and employees), is a mistake. At best, it’s working on organizational culture in a meaningless way. When treating it as a simple management component, it—unfortunately!—impoverishes.

This text, therefore, primarily focuses on a small part of this possible interdisciplinarity and, as a consequence, proposes a reflection: Does organizational culture experienced within the institutions correspond to the wishes of the contemporary employee ? This provocation arises from the empirical observation that there is a dissonance between the expectations of the employer and the employee , and tries to seek understandings. There is no pretension at all to conclude the reflection. On the contrary, the objective is to raise the question for an ample debate. After all, it is quite common to verify complaints and criticisms on the part of the individuals who make up the economically active population. There is a clear and audible dissatisfaction when it comes to the labor market, the relations established within it, people management policies, business plans, productive processes, archaic leaderships, targeted promotion, insufficient benefits, unsatisfactory pay, and many others. Complaints go as far as the last stage of this story: resignation. Apparently, there is not a single individual completely satisfied with their job.

What is the possible cause for that?

The Role of Work to the Subject

Work occupies a large part of people’s time (or would it be correct to say: of their life?). In a society in which leisure is taken as a negative social trait, productive activity (of any kind) becomes the antithesis of the Capital Sin of sloth. And why is it not possible to stand outside of this productive logic, not even for a moment? Well, because modernity has been tainted by the fallacy of sovereign equality and the innate right to success and, consequently, to happiness. It signals that wanting is all it takes to conquer a place in the sun. Therefore, there are no time or space left for unhappiness, suffering, and lacking: Our culture screams “Get up, move yourself an be happy!” “And, if possible, without being a burden to anyone else, be independent and standing on your own two feet. And don’t complain, where there’s a will, there’s a way!”

By stating that “labor ennobles man”, Max Weber (considered one of the founders of sociology, whose intellectual production took place between 1890 and 1920) extrapolated the thought according to which working magnifies man by removing him from idleness and, thus, paved the way for a vast mass of people to abandon traditional forms of life and work (in which accumulation, profit, and economic growth were not essential) and to undergo a discipline of schedules and activities imposed by industries, which at the time had just started to settle in big cities. Over time, this doctrine, initially of a pure Protestant nature, began to be part of the lives of people from different cultures and religions.

Thus, work has become such an essential part of the existence of the individual that it is impossible to remove it. Nevertheless, it is also the cause of great suffering. However, we are not talking about the sorrow of those left out of the labor market. No. Those outside suffer, but those inside bleed. Because those who work live under the eternal ghost of being thrown out and thus become socially excluded (well, but those who do not work are like zombies to the “fortunate” ones who are active).

Individual suffering is nothing more than the effect of an exclusion commanded by a discourse that (…) imposes itself as a norm, be it religious, political or economic, disciplining and adjusting the body , making up a true state of exception. (Dias 2009, p. 10)

The West has become The Burnout Society (Han 2015). Tiredness that originates on excess is derived from the categorical imperative of “nothing is impossible”. Thus, a new logic is emerging: humanity no longer needs to be centered on discipline and control. These previously extracorporeal moorings presupposed obedience. Now, they are internalized. It happens because those who live in the Burnout Society are guided by the pressure of performance. It means that everything has to be possible and always be more than before. So, we could say that excess, the maximum limit, that shapes everybody (from a young teenager at high school to the top CEO in the largest worldwide company). It is no longer necessary that there are other people dictating rules: They are imposing that to themselves. The Performance-Subject no longer fights with anything that is external to him/her: His/her battle is against himself/herself. Such fatigue leads to burnout , and then to the consumption of oneself, which leads to depression.

The depressive human being is an animal laborans that exploits itself - and it does so voluntarily, without external constraints. It is predator and prey at once. (…) It erupts at the moment when the achievement-subject is no longer able to be able. (Han 2015, p. 10)

Now, if the author refers to the animal laborans, he is putting in perspective the one who works. The Subject who works bleeds, but remains there—in the place of the one who is the instrument of the discourse of the Other,Footnote 1 which is the market. After all, how do you explain that a worker works several hours a day, sometimes in an unhealthy activity, with no prospect of professional advancement and for a salary considered by himself to be unsatisfactory? Thinking shallowly about this issue can lead to a simplistic and hasty conclusion, which points only to financial need or desire for consumption. Of course, these factors cannot be entirely removed from the equation. The economic question can be substantial, since having a salary is imperative. This answer covers part of the truth—but not all of it.

And why?

Let’s consider two pieces of research,Footnote 2 both on the same theme, happiness. Based on the premise that human welfare has two aspects, being the first objective (which can be verified and, therefore, measured by rates related to per capita income, education, safety, nutrition, etc.) and the second, subjective (associated with the particular experience of each Subject and their own notion of what it means to be happy), these studies sought to identify if there is a direct and proportional relationship between both. Results indicate that “(economic) growth buys happiness in impoverished countries, but as soon as a nation reaches a certain income level (about $ 10,000 per capita a year), other additions of income no longer translate into gains in subjective well-being ” (Fonseca 2010). Thus, objective happiness and subjective happiness are not directly linked when average income lies above BRL 2600.00Footnote 3 a month. Proportionality between the two parameters only gains direct contours when the annual value reaches levels above $80,000 per capita (something equivalent to BRL 20,800.00 per month).

Well, the remaining question is: If the financial factor does not interfere with the sense of subjective happiness (at least for the vast majority of workers , whose wages are among the values mentioned above), why should they give themselves so hard to work ? Maybe the famous essay by Etienne de la Botie (sixteenth-century French humanist and philosopher), called The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, written after the defeat of the French people against the king’s army and inspectors who had established a new salt tax, can shed light on this issue. Here, the author reflects on how “many” let themselves be dominated by “few”. Considered an essential reference to libertarian thinking, the essay already draws the reader’s attention with its title, pointing to the contradiction of the terms voluntary and servitude. This leads us to think how it is possible to serve in a way that is voluntary, i.e., sacrificing one’s freedom of spontaneous will? He will state, after ample reflection, that men themselves are made to dominate, because, if they wanted their freedom back, they would only need to rebel to get it. Another viable answer is more focused on the relationship of the Subject with their work and concerns the encounter between the body and the real world. This moment of union between what one is (the body in its role of a vehicle of the completeness of being) and the place where one lives (as a social occupation) only materializes in the experience of work—since this is where subjectivity itself is put to the test. Thus, work is not an activity that should be merely reduced to the objective concept of production.

(…) Work is not just an activity but a social relationship ; in other words, it takes place in a human world characterized by relationships of inequality, power, and domination. Working means involving one’s subjectivity in a world that is hierarchical, ordered, constrained, and rife with struggles for domination. Thus, the reality of work is not simply that of the task, which is to say, what makes itself known to the subject through its resistance to control in the course of the hands-on struggle with the materials and technical objects. Working is also experiencing the resistance of the social world, and more precisely that of social relations, to the deployment of intelligence and subjectivity. The reality of work is not only the reality of the objective world but also that of the social world. (Dejours 2006, p. 60)

Hannah Arendt (1987) also discusses how we can understand this representation of work for the Subject. In her article called Labor, work, and action, the author indicates that labor is related to life’s natural order and, therefore, related to the experience of the body. That is why labor will last as long as the body does, despite its toil and trouble.

Since labor corresponds to the condition of life itself, it partakes not only in life’s toil and trouble but also in the sheer bliss with which we can experience our being alive. The “blessing or the joy of labor” (…) is no empty notion (…) laboring is the only way we can also remain and swing contentedly in nature’s prescribed cycle (…) The reward of toil and trouble, though it does not leave anything behind itself, is even more real, less futile than any other form of happiness. It lies in nature’s fertility, in the quiet confidence that he who in “toil and trouble” has done his part, remains a part of nature in the future of his children and his children’s children. (Arendt 1987, p. 6)

In other words, work implies a human notion: the act of work, which, in a certain way, corresponds to a particular bond of the personality, so that it accomplishes a given task that is permeated by social and economic pressures. Thus, it must be known that there is something of itself in dedicated work . It is this something that disposes (of the one who works) the human factor that fills the gap between what is expected of an activity or function (what is prescribed) and its concrete reality (the act of working), which is permeated by unforeseen events.

(…) the path to be navigated between the prescriptive and the real must constantly be invented or rediscovered by the subject who is working. Thus, for the clinician, work is defined as what the subjects must add to the orders so as to reach the objectives assigned to them, or alternately, what they must add of themselves in order to deal with what does not function when they limit themselves to a scrupulous execution of orders. (Dejours 2006, p. 48)

If work constitutes a space where the Subject can express their subjectivity and thus find meaning for the life cycle itself, efforts must be made to understand who the subject who works in the contemporary is—the one who seeks this gap of expression. However, before that, it is necessary to reflect on organizational culture , since this is where they will (or not) find the space for that.

The Solid Modernity of Organizational Culture

Understanding the phenomenon of organizational culture calls for a look at modernity, a period in which large corporations are formed and solidified, as well as the characteristics that permeated (or still permeate?) the notion of work .

Roughly, it can be said that the modern era had its maturity established between the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. It is the period enclosing the prosperous rise of the capitalist economic model, added to all the intellectual and philosophical inheritance derived from the Illuminist thinking—where the central point was the imperative of reason as the basis for a reformulation of society and knowledge from medieval times. There was a structural rigidity reflected in the same social and behavioral solidity, which thus exalted the triumph of rationality over human life. There was a firm belief in the transformation of the world by science and rationality as if the very destiny of society—and the people who composed it—could be controlled. In this context, the state was seen as the leading social agent on which security and the maintenance of welfare of each person depended. All social regulation depended on the solid modern state: the systematic organization of the growing urban population (resulting from the sum of rural migratory movements to the postwar demographic boom) and the regulation of the distribution of land, wealth, health, and education. The State was not only solid, organized, and controlling, thus playing a fundamental role in the constitution of the understanding of the self in the world. There were other members reaching their normative arms over people. One of them was the bourgeois family model, whose relationships were based on the economic needs and the particular interests of perpetuating traditions, wealth, and land. The other was the Church,Footnote 4 which, even with the harbinger of crises since the previous century, still ruled (and often still rules) much of the social imaginary, limiting humanity’s behavior in its attitudes and thoughts.

But it all made sense to the modern man. The conception of liberty at this time was intimately related to aristocratic ideals, inherited by the European bourgeoisie, which accepted the idea that the man in loose condition is but a beast—often indulged in the most savage and primitive instincts. Thus, it was necessary to impose regulatory social limitations, external to life in society, because—on the contrary—individuals were incapable of an existence that was not brutal. To modern man, therefore, a life ruled by momentary impulses and short-term actions—devoid of routine, habits, and control—was deemed as a meaningless existence. Being free is less critical than being socially worthy.

To the individual, this scenario called for stability regarding their existence (or a sharper perception of it). Their place in “the world” was secured: if not by actual inheritance, by order of fate. And there was no room for objections. This stability also had a direct impact on employment relations. In this context, the productive symbol of the “solid modern” capitalist society was the Fordist factory. Idealized by Henry Ford, its ultimate goal was to take productivity to the limit. Its logic of production was based on the Notions of the Scientific Administration, postulated by Frederick Taylor and commonly embraced under the term Taylorism.Footnote 5 A logic that praised processes, organization, quantities, systematics, and control. Such a productive increase became possible as human activities were reduced to a simple, routine, and quick movement, fragmented into small series. Thus, work and time needed for production became easier to control, which, apparently, represented greater control over the employee , his body , and his mind.

It was a time of frantic industrial production, seen as the salvation for the global economic crisis in which Europe, the Americas, and part of Asia were immersed as a result of the Great Wars. Since the demand was for something entirely new, in the sense of mechanization of the activities, the following fact was natural: “(…) the body appears as the main source of the impact of all work losses. Physical exhaustion concerns not only the manual workers but the mass production workers as a whole” (Dejours 1992). Not least, concern about the physical health of employees on the production lines starts being discussed—firstly, because of the high number of deaths, and secondly because sick or invalid workers were a considerable loss in the small towns (where the number of laborers was already scarce).

Capitalism solidifies, and with it, a new social class starts to grow: the proletariat. Low living standards, factory promiscuity, the risk of severe accidents and long periods of working combined have provided close interaction between workers and a growing awareness of the precarious living and working conditions and exploitation by an economically favored social class. It didn’t take long for the first conflicts between the working class and industry owners to arise. Some countries started to intervene in some aspects of the relations between workers and factories, creating labor laws. In 1802, the British government sanctioned a bill of law which protected the health of workers in the textile industry and inspections were done voluntarily by Protestant pastors and local judges. Other sparse laws were gradually imposed, as problems grew worse. (Chiavenato 2003, p. 50)

Limited to activities of little or no intellectual and creative need, workers found themselves reduced to an extension of the machine and the employer needed an operational surplus to accomplish so many small tasks. There was, therefore, a mutual need of a relationship —with the previously defined place and time.

Solid modernity was, indeed, also the time of heavy capitalism of the engagement between capital and labour fortified by the mutuality of their dependency. Workers depended on being hired for their livelihood; capital depended on hiring them for its reproduction and growth. Their meeting-place had a fixed address; neither of the two could easily move elsewhere - the massive factory walls enclosed and kept both partners in a shared prison. Capital and workers were united, one may say, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, and until death them did part. (Bauman 2000, p. 145)

Atomized into small productive cells and involved in repetitive tasks, the modern society led the human being to an incessant individualization—not only in functions related to production environments but also in his social life. The time of certainty and security was fading, and therefore, the model of ideal identifications that organized individuals and groups was changing. Nation-state found itself weak and undermined by the economic and social relevance that large corporations and capitalist thinking began to play in society and people’s lives. It found itself inefficient, morose, and obsolete—at the extreme opposite of what the logic of frenetic production displayed in the economic-industrial sphere. If it wanted to keep working, it had to shrink. Bankrupt and discredited, the State became unable to establish policies that would guarantee employment and social security. This is where the modern enterprise emerges, challenging the State in its role as a citizen protection entity. It offers jobs, wealth, collects taxes, and gives benefits that ensure primary social needs (health, education, food, etc.), gaining representativeness in the economic, social, and political scenario of the nations. At the same time, the Church could no longer co-opt the notion of the sacred—i.e., of what people would be able to sacrifice their own lives for. Modern practicality rejects the religious conception of a quest for transcendence, and thus, the relationship between men and religiousness became pragmatism: simple solutions, packaged for quick consumption and preferably listed as “10 simple steps” to overcome the ills of life—the fear of unemployment being one of the greatest afflictions. Finally, the idea of a family nucleus providing the Subject’s first level of identityFootnote 6 no longer represented an essential structure. The ideal of the bourgeois model family proved to be bankrupt, and thus the increasing decline in the number of marriages, as well as the increase in divorce cases and the emergence of a multiplicity of possible family models have given new meaning to family in the social imaginary, as something not very necessary, secure, or trustworthy. The collapse of these institutions causes an inflection of all aspects of life at one single point: organizations . Well, this is the context in which organizations are born. And it seems obvious to consider that it is also the ground on which the first roots of what we now name by organizational culture are sown.

Culture , overall, is constituted over time, and therefore, one can not lose sight of the fact that it embraces today the traces of what it once was. Culture is formed and maintained based on a set of values, rules, and symbols, as well as rituals and myths that give meaning to the relationships of that particular group. Considering this, it is possible to affirm that culture takes place “within time” (in the sense of time spent) and “in time” (i.e., in the exact moment in which it is lived, shapes, and is shaped by the members of the group). It is similar to what happens to the human being himself. Each one is the same person from the time they are born, but shape themselves throughout their trajectory. That is to say, today’s individual is the same as the one who was born with a given name and descent, but it is also different since it is a result of the actions that have taken place over time and even those that are happening in the present time in which one lives. Therefore, the need to understand how a given culture propagates and perpetuates itself becomes evident, since there is no way to isolate the individual from the environment of which he is a part. Paralleling this understanding with the corporate environment, one understands that who is inserted in a given cultural fabric unique to an organization ends up suffering the impacts of this history (of yesterday and today) on their subjectivity.

Considering all the above mentioned, it is possible to position the birth of corporate cultural logic in line with the ideals of modern solid thinking. Therefore, the central premise that gives rise to organizational culture is effectiveness. This was the great pursuit of Taylorism: increasing productivity based on control and vigilance, rationalization, hierarchy, fragmentation, order, individual capacity, and everything else that human capital theory advocates for. These are possibly the foundations on which the backbone of any organizational culture is structured. And this is the framework of behaviors (or values) with which the Subject-employees should identify.

The analysis of this context clearly indicates that the internal environment of organizations is strongly dictated, as taught by Christophe Dejours (and already described in the initial part of this essay). Control, norms, rules, policies, and processes govern the experience of the body and the subjectivity of the one who works. Thus, the Subject-employee has to shape himself to the organizational culture where he is inserted. However, considering the bases proposed here as founders of the internal cultural environment and also its potential for identity, the question that arises is: Given the characteristics of the postmodern employee , is it possible to consider that there is room for identification and expression of their subjectivity, even with all the prescription of solid organizational culture ?

The Liquid Employee

To understand today’s employee , one must think, even if in a broader sense, about contemporaneity, once this is the place where he is shaped and constituted. This implies speaking, a priori, of a referential crisis, in which society is no longer governed by the modern rational ideals already described. From the idea that saw in reason the most solid structure for its development (aimed at as continuous, perennial and controlled, and, therefore, safe) one migrates to a society in which “We can no longer bear anything that lasts” (Bauman 2000, p. 5). In other words, the postmodern is the celebration of a now, which becomes yesterday at the very moment of its existence.

This evolution (that should not necessarily be understood as an improvement between the past moment and the other one following) is the structuring foundation of a part of Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s work when he elaborates his theory on liquid modernity . His thinking advocates that there is proximity between what is bounded by modernity and by the so-called postmodernity. Thus, the author defines as solid modernity everything that has the characteristic of being stable and having a structure—which is, chronologically, related to the time of industrial production society, described in the previous item. Liquid modernity , on the other hand, must be thought of as something that quickly molds itself under the effect of some tension, of any minimal pressure. Liquids are fragile and do not perpetuate their form and feature over a long time—a striking feature of today’s society, where mobility and change are part of everyday life.

Fluids travel easily. They ‘flow’, ‘spill’, ‘run out’, ‘splash’, ‘pour over’, ‘leak’, ‘flood’, ‘spray’, ‘drip’, ‘seep’, ‘ooze’; unlike solids, they are not easily stopped - they pass around some obstacles, dissolve some others and bore or soak their way through others still (…) The extraordinary mobility of fluids is what associates them with the idea of ‘lightness’. (…) We associate ‘lightness’ or ‘weightlessness’ with mobility and inconstancy: we know from practice that the lighter we travel the easier and faster we move. (Bauman 2000, p. 2)

Despite this complicated scenario that imposes itself on the Subject of the contemporary, one usually defines, erroneously, today’s employee only through the classificatory gaze of the generations, eliminating from this reflection so many other paradigms in which they are immersed, merely because they are subjects of this past social culture . Of course, the reflection on generational profiles matters, since society has evaluated and studied human behavior for decades based on the chronological age of the individual. Therefore, a specific behavioral pattern is expected from a teenager—regardless of the historical moment he has lived through. However, if one considers the social reality lived in the face of the specific themes of each age, it is clear that such a chronological view is limiting, as it generalizes and also excludes relevant characteristics of a particular group. What has emerged from this understanding is that part of this “social behavior” is related to the socioeconomic and historical moment lived by that individual. It was in 1950 that the term Baby Boomer Generation was coined, which began to identify the behavioral profile of the generation born soon after the population increase that took place after the end of World War II (1939–1945). After that, even without a consensus as to the year of beginning and end of each, other generations have been classified, and today roughly three of them constitute the labor force of the market: Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y.Footnote 7 But it is not just these possible behavioral differences between generations that distinguish the complex universe of employees nowadays.

One has to consider that the contemporary brings in itself indeterminacy, discontinuity, pluralism, and the ephemeral. Thus, complexity and multiplicity begin to define this epoch and therefore the Subject who is also an employee . Consequently, it is imperative that one looks beyond the walls and physical limits of organizations to truly understand and consider many other issues that impact the Subject-employee .

For example, gender issues, something latent in the social and little discussed within organizations . There is a lot of talk about diversity , from the perspective of race and religion, even from the inclusion of women in high management positions. But it is also observed that there are great taboos about this specific topic, and the debate around this issue is something widely present in the contemporary social context—this is a delicate topic since it impacts the matter of identity.

Another extremely relevant subject is the relationship of the contemporary subject with time. The now has swallowed the notion of space and time. The acceleration of life to the level of the present moment is strongly related to every technological increase that has already occurred. But here, one should not address technology only from the perspective of data and networks. No. The referred development comes together with the creation of the first machines. Since the steam engine, the transportation, and the industrial automation until—yes—the Internet, mobile phones, and the vast digital apparatus, everything makes the subject’s life rhythm increasingly summarized in an immediate present. The practicality and instantaneousness provided by this technological complex reduce the time of experience, while increasing the succession of empty moments, without purpose , since one doesn’t give “time” (or “space”) to the psychic apparatus for the creation of value representations. The result is only one: Any experience is devoid of sense. Let’s then take the concept of liquid modernity described by Bauman (2000) as our basis. The idea that the absence of rigid contours is another interesting point for the analysis of this question of time and space becomes latent. This is because the inexistence of boundaries and physical delimiters, in a liquid society, gives more mobility to things and allows flexibility in choices . Thus, the individual rushes from one experience to another almost instantaneously, in search of efficient and fast satisfaction for their desires (preferably, which can be easily administered and produce results with a single dose).

The accelerated time of liquid modernity is, first and foremost, the essential factor for the occupation of space. If technology exists and there are no boundaries, the Subject is allowed to be in many places simultaneously, and if they can, they want to. Nevertheless, there is the understanding that liquid modernity is a succession of ruptures and fragments. With an identity disjointed from time and past events, and also with the possibility of our articulations of significant value in the future, the postmodern Subject locks themselves in an empty today. This “empty today” can be understood as the metaphor for the supremacy of inner experience over empirical experience, a subject of analysis by Walter Benjamin (in Experience and Poverty, 1933), articulated by Claudio Cesar Montoto (2013) in “How we kill experience”, text inserted in the book Semiótica Psicanalítica: Clínica da Cultura (translated freely into English as Psychoanalytic Semiotics: Culture Clinic). The author explains that inner experience is an empty act and devoid of meaning since it is not contextualized with the past or linked to the future—something that is related more to the quantity and not to the quality of what is lived. Thus, the qualitas of the inner experience would be the elaboration of it in the course of a period that allows him, the Subject, to understand what he has lived. Therefore, the author concludes, inner experience stands for information as well as empirical experience stands for knowledge. Now, if there is no time in contemporary society (not because it is valued but rather because of the total lack of value related to it), quantitative inner experiences do not represent qualitative empirical experience itself to the Subject. This theme is also profoundly explored by Maria Rita Kehl (2009) in her book O tempo e o cão: A atualidade das depressões (freely translated into English as Time and the dog: the actuality of depression), in which she analyses how temporality is lived by people suffering from depression and brings back the notion of Freudian melancholy. When it comes to empirical experience, the author says:

(…) has the meaning of what, when lived, produces knowledge prone to transmittance. A piece of knowledge that can be passed on and that enriches what was lived not only to the one to whom the empirical experience is transmitted but also to the one who transmits it. It is in the act of transmission that inner experience gains status of empirical experience so that the idea of individual empirical experience does not make sense in Benjamin. (Kehl 2009, p. 161)

And this is how—enclosed in an empty today, which is full of fragmented and meaningless experiences—that the postmodern Subject occupies the labor market. The most direct consequence is the reduction in employees’ job retention.Footnote 8 If in the past it was relatively easy to find employees with 20, 30, or 40 years servicing the same company, today the average in Brazil is a little over three yearsFootnote 9—this number is a historical record since 2002. Among 22 countries surveyed, Brazil has the second-worst job retention average (behind only of the US workforce).Footnote 10 These are complex data to be evaluated, since they consider the general average turnover of the labor force, not explaining whether this was done by the will of the company or the employee —something that changes the angle of analysis of the question (besides, of course, being a factor that is strongly impacted by economic and social momentum). Therefore, it is worth adding another figure to this context (of the year 2012): The number of employees, up to 30 years old, who think of leaving the job if they are not promoted within two years, is about 80% of the respondents.Footnote 11 In other words, the classic tale of employees who start of as an office-boy and retires along with the first man from the same company is becoming a myth. There does not seem to be enough time to build a relationship between these parties.

The perception that there is a compression of space-time is closely related, too, to the advent of technology . First, one must reflect on digital technology as a whole. When one thinks of the subject of liquid modernity within organizations , it is latent to look at the end of the era of control and regulatory systems that prevails in the social world out there. If in the past, it was necessary to be present physically, close to control, because the processes were rigid and work was rooted in a single physical place, there now seems to be no more sense in this. Not only because of social instability itself but mainly because digital technology has given wings to mobility . Meaning it is the end of the strong tie between employee and employer, confined in the same space-time. This is reflected in the emergence of new forms of work and organization, such as the possibility of Home Office,Footnote 12 flexible working hours,Footnote 13 and the use of cloud technology .Footnote 14 These factors, however, compromise an essential point of the employee –employer relationship : building trust . If there is no physical presence of one in the work routine of the other, the practice of face-to-face dialogue , an essential element for this construction, ceases to exist, since it is through the eyes of the other that the Self, in the imaginary, establishes itself. If there is no such identification, given the absence of one’s gaze on one another, then one has to think about who the individuals who are acting in this scenario are and how a relationship between them will be formed.

An encounter with a live person calls for the kinds of social skills which may be missing or prove inadequate, and a dialogue always means exposing oneself to the unknown: as if giving a hostage to fate. (Bauman 2007, p. 17)

With this overview of digital, it is now possible to narrow the perspective of analysis and look exclusively at the advent of social media . What are they and what do they represent?

The first fact is: They may even be new, but the concept of a network that people create to talk to one another is not. The difference lies in the amplitude of such connections, which is far from signifying an increase in the quality of the relations and their depth. Social media channels have gained such importance, for Brazilians, getting updates from their Facebook feed is more important than spending time with friends or going on a date.Footnote 15 That is, a life mediated by a screen, the possibility of being someone else, besides reinforcement to the present moment. Blogs, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ (and by the end of the writing of this article, of course, others will emerge) are responsible not only for a new form of relationship but also for a faster, more networked, comprehensive, and collaborative way of thinking. Such places of virtual interaction are fertile ground for transparency , for better and for worse. In their worst form, they translate into the excessive exposure of private life—of the body , thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. On the other hand, they allow greater democratization of the power of information . These characteristics of digital logic reflect, in many ways, on the employee–employer relationship , the main one being the lack of distinction between what is internal and what is external to the organization, i.e., the personal and professional lives of employees within the network.

In this context, an overflow of business information is generated daily on the web, by all those who interact with a brand or product - and also by its employees. This content is accessible to all people who are willing to look for them. The employee speaks, and all other publics listen. There is initially no room for discussion about the credibility of this content. The information is there, true or not, and control is not in the hands of companies. Meaning that an unsatisfied employee - or even just misguided in their perception of the company in which they work - can influence how other audiences perceive the company, its brand and also its products. (Carramenha et al. 2013, p. 24)

The way out of this dilemma is not as simple as blocking access to social networks within companies. This is illusory since any regular employee owning a smartphone can access them anytime, anywhere. Moreover, research indicates that to young employees the fact that a company gives them access to digital networks matters more than wage and benefits package, at a rate of 74%.Footnote 16 At the same time, other data indicate that the constant use of networks in the workplace is detrimental to business performance: 60% of work interruptions involve the use of so-called social tools . Because of this, 45% of employees are unable to work even for 15 minutes without being interrupted, and 53% lose at least one hour a day with this type of distraction. According to the research, this loss of productivity translates into roughly $10,000 per worker per year.Footnote 17 Well, this picture of the loss of productivity seems disconnected from the fact that people spend more and more time working (much due to mobile technology itself, which allows the employee to be connected to the company at any time and in any place). At least this is what the 2011 study From dedication to medication?Footnote 18 notes that nearly half of the world’s employees (48%) work more than nine hours a day, and in Brazil, approximately one-fifth of the workers spend 11 hours a day or more at work . Moreover, 43% of respondents claim to take work home more than three times a week.

Final Considerations

Diversity , generations, space-time, and technology are only a few of the contemporary themes impacting the liquid subject and, therefore, their experience as an employee . One could extend these correlations to many other topics, exemplifying how various social characteristics directly affect the company–employee relationship . But this is not in the context of this essay.

What is essential, however, to close this reflection is to return to the title and the proposed analysis of this text, namely: Does the organizational culture that is experienced internally in companies correspond to the wishes of the employees of the contemporary? Universal conclusions have no value. Each company is unique and has a more- or less-developed organizational culture , and it is evident that corporations—as part of this same social context in which Subject-employees are embedded—are also not the same as in the modern era. The practical exercise of projects related to organizational culture indicates that institutions, somewhere, have evolved in consonance with society—after all, they are a part of the latter. However, the adaptations seem to be aimed much more to those outside.

Modern organizations are a product of history and time of the societies in which they operate, as well as of the evolution of these societies. If today it has an increasingly important role in the social scene, it is because the social itself gives them space. And when organizations try to create their imagery, it is still in the social that they will find messages that have meanings for their specific audiences. But there is no neutral imagery, no neutral signs, no neutral meanings. (Freitas 2006, p. 55)

It is clear that corporations seek to be in line with the demands and wishes of their consumers, clients, and potential clients. But, internally, there seems to still be a significant gap to be filled. Much is said about all these themes; the discourse is noble and dignified. But the inner experience still suffers from many of the modern ills: the exercise of power, lack of transparency , and bureaucratic rigidity and systemic fragmentation. The prescribed is made present in practice, despite the good intention of the corporate discourse that is propagated. The central point seems to be this: the existence (or not) of coherence between what the company does and what it says. It, the organization, presents a discourse in line with contemporary yearnings. This seduces and identifies the Subject as a potential employee (the name used by organizations for this process is very illustrative: attraction). But for a short time: The practical experience in everyday life—now as an effective employee —inserted in the organizational culture is guided by a heavily prescribed experience. Thus arises a conflict which comes from this incoherence of the act of working that arises between the worker’s desire and the employer’s injunction.

With the rationalization of work , originating from Scientific Administration, the Subject-employee was no longer called to accomplish something and much of the sublimatory potential of work was extinguished. In this way, the “fatigues and sorrow” that came out of this emptied itself of meaning and became a mere task. Here is what can be said that was “Taylor’s mistake”: once the act of working (or the production capacity of a body , in what proves it) was questioned by the modern scientific rationalization and divided into small tasks (routine, repetitive, and fragmented), becoming a mere prescription (with no creation), the Subject is no longer summoned—body and subjectivity. The Subject-employee has become a robot-employee .Footnote 19

It shines a light on a problem that calls for careful future analysis: What society names as work in the contemporary may be just a mere use—use of the body or mind and not something that occurs in the sense of the Subject’s fullness. It is necessary to reflect on this and to correctly name what is being done today (if work or use) so that this issue can be better understood and solved.