Towards a critical psychology of workplace digitalization

Simon Schaupp

Chapter 18 in Handbook of Critical Work and Organizational Psychology, 2026, pp 310-324 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter develops a critical psychological framework for analyzing workplace digitalization, drawing on psychoanalytic theory and Frankfurt School critical theory. Against approaches that locate workplace suffering in individual pathology or organizational dysfunction, the chapter argues that key forms of distress arise from digitalized workplaces functioning precisely as designed. Three phenomena are examined through this lens. First, automation anxiety is analyzed as a driver of authoritarian political orientations, explained via Lacanian enjoyment and Adorno's concept of pathological projection. Second, algorithmic management is shown to intensify labor, contributing to a sense of “self-optimization stress.” Third, rather than portraying workers as passive objects of digitalization, the chapter foregrounds ways of subjective repudiation of self-optimization, for instance through humor. Drawing on qualitative empirical research alongside theoretical arguments, the chapter emphasizes that a critical psychology of work must hold individual experience and structural conditions in productive tension, resisting both reductionist individualism and structural determinism.

Keywords: Algorithmic Management; Automation Anxiety; Enjoyment; Lacan; Psychoanalysis; Stress (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035331055
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