Abstract

ROJAS-ROJAS, William  and  STOMBOLI, Laurent. The Conflict of the Working Relationship in the Knowledge Economy: An Identity Perspective. cuad.adm. [online]. 2009, n.41, pp.71-80. ISSN 0120-4645.

This article aims at showing the permanence of conflictual labour relations between leaders and subordinates within the most advanced firms of the developped economies. The conflictual character of labour relations is described from an identity perspective founded on the psychoanalytic concept of inhumanity. The inhumanity is defined as the dimension of the human condition that drives individuals to affirm their identities by partially denying the human conditions of the other individuals in labour relations. The authors are willing to show the managerial illusion that command to put in place programmes aiming at preventing conflicts in labour relations. For the authors, such programmes will not eliminate an inhumanity engraved in the formal structures as well as in the cultural, symbolic and imaginary system of organisations. The permanence of inhumanity in labour relations reflects the existence of powerfull psychological and cultural barriers to fully recognising the human condition in organisations. The impossibility to express alterity of one’s identity in the organisational field surely conducts to move the aggressive drive towards forms of violence that are no longer symbolic but concrete. Against violence, management has no grip and no tools. As shows the history of humanity, only civilisation and culture can lead to better recognition and recognise oneself in alterity.

Keywords : labour relations; identity processes; psychoanalysis; inhumanity.

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