The perverse dimension of management

La dimension perverse du management

Mathias Naudin () and Benoît Blanchard
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Mathias Naudin: IGS - Groupe IGS, IGS - Institut de Gestion Sociale - Institut de Gestion Sociale
Benoît Blanchard: Institut Edouard Claparède

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Abstract: While many authors observe in our society the transition from neurotic relational modes to relational modes of a perverse nature, our purpose is to observe how management, in its essence as in its effects, includes a perverse dimension. To this end, by combining long field observations with a critical literature review, we seek to establish the main characteristics of management (aims, foundations, pillars). On the perverse dimension, we are essentially interested in what underlies perversion in its relational dynamics (by insisting on the need to reify the other and to enjoy his or her degradation) and the way in which it can fall within a social field. Management examined through this interpretive framework reveals many perverse dimensions: it appears as an ideological fetish that catalyzes perverse social tendencies, perverts institutional frameworks, while the procedures and dynamics that underpin and express it reproduce a typically perverse functioning (illusion of omnipotence, narcissistic seduction, modification and reversal of the rules and framework of the social game, notably by the negation of the subjectivity of individuals who are, moreover, attracted, normalized, and instrumentalized; diversion of intrapsychic entities and identifications through the imposition of managerial imperatives and the dissolution of subjectivity, deployment of devitalized scripts and procedures without a subject, or the evacuation of conflictuality and thought). Ultimately, in essence as in its effects, management promotes the emergence of perverse psychic nuclei in subjects and, on an adaptive level, perverse individual and collective defense modes. In other words, management favors perverts and perverse behavior, particularly because they have become socially effective.

Keywords: Management; Perversity; Perverse; Reification; Process; Suffering at work; Perversité; Perversion; Pervers narcissique; Réification; Procédure; Souffrance au travail (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02-14
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Published in Revue internationale de psychosociologie et de gestion des comportements organisationnels, 2019, Vol. XXIV (59), pp.107-137. ⟨10.3917/rips1.059.0107⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03719456

DOI: 10.3917/rips1.059.0107

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