Managerialization of work and technological change

The managerialization of work, whose origins can be traced back to Taylorism, is a far-reaching process of rationalization and labor discipline, expressed in the corporate culture of modern capitalism. Its rationale lies in creating the best possible conditions for increasing productivity and reducing costs in order to generate value and accumulate capital in relation to labor.

Over time, various forms of managerialization have become established. Taylorism and Fordism, due to the conditions of the era, adopted a work management strategy based on routinization and mechanized labor. This fostered the consolidation of the Fordist wage relationship, characterized by the institutionalization of relatively modest social benefits for workers.

The “golden 30 years” of capitalism reached their decline towards the middle of the 1970s. It was not the technological factor that brought an end to the Fordist consensus but the generalization of organizational techniques linked to Toyotism and human capital that gradually consolidated a new managerial order.

The fixity in jobs had shown strong limitations for capital accumulation and a new managerial rationality began to consolidate: to make flexible in such a way as to find the greatest productive consumption of the workforce along with the greatest possible reduction of labor costs.

Flexibility went from being a technique used by some companies to lighten the routinization of work, to a post-Fordist management strategy consolidated in the 1990s.

Alongside flexibility, post-Fordist management also developed techniques for controlling employee engagement, given the need to adopt more autonomous work arrangements and to instill a sense of purpose in tasks. These managerial approaches led to a productive consumption of labor that extends beyond technical skills to encompass the entirety of subjectivity (soft skills), incorporating senses and emotions into a framework of economic intelligibility for capital accumulation. The effects of this system became evident in the forms of labor exclusion, precarious employment, and informality.

The emergence of AI in the last decade occurred when post-Fordist corporate culture was already firmly established. Algorithmic management makes flexibility and control strategies "more efficient" and pushes them to their extremes. Thus, for example, the loss of labor rights for workers on the most well-known digital platforms is not merely a "technological" phenomenon but rather a reflection of value judgments surrounding management's use of technology.

Another aspect we cannot overlook is the problem of gender inequality. In Latin American labor markets, women are more likely to be employed in informal, part-time jobs with lower productivity and lower pay. Meanwhile, in managerial and executive positions, male dominance is striking: women hold only 15% of management positions.

Debates surrounding the “future of work” cannot be considered solely from a technological perspective. It is necessary to understand how the process of managerialization creates the conditions for a particular use of artificial intelligence. Faced with trends toward widespread job insecurity and the consolidation of gender inequalities, what alternatives for resistance and/or reversal of this trend are available to trade unions, social organizations, and progressive politics in general?

The issue of migration is, by definition, a complex field, encompassing a range of processes that can extend from natural migrations to forced displacements, raising questions that reach the very limits of (im)mobility. At the same time, it compels us to transcend the representational constraints, both academic and colloquial, of understanding human displacement as an inevitable fate. It is therefore necessary to propose the development of new conceptual representations to recognize subjects in transition, critiquing the victimizing view of migrants as expelled and without an agenda, and thus redefining social incorporation and integration. Mobility, an inherent characteristic for the understanding, reproduction, and possibility of human beings and the rest of nature, becomes migration, and the process/phenomenon becomes a problem when it crosses or challenges the state-centric boundaries within which the territories of the modern-colonial world have been organized. From this perspective, human (im)mobility is inherent to and representative of the characteristics,

To understand social evolution through reflection on human (in)mobilities it is necessary to cross disciplinary boundaries because while mobility and migration traverse geographical territories, social transformation crosses all socio-environmental dimensions.

The seminar will address questions surrounding the dimensions involved in (im)mobility processes; the dynamics of interaction between actors, factors, and (im)mobility processes; the dimensions that influence the emergence and proliferation of a spectrum ranging from the dynamic habitability of the world to forced displacement; the subjective transformation of these populations and their subjectivities; and other emerging issues. These questions will be addressed methodologically to provide tools for formulating research within an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary framework. Collaborative reflections will contribute to the classic categories of mobility and migration, considering the relevance of incorporating the notion of (im)mobility and permanent flight due to its analytical capacity to enhance the understanding of the complexity and interrelation between human, social, and environmental processes. This includes the various configurations of rootedness and permanence, both voluntary and forced, which lend a more structural and systemic character to understanding the processes of socio-environmental justice and sustainability.

Overall objective.

• To analyze the changes that are currently taking place in the forms of work organization in light of the managerialization of work.
• Understanding that current transformations in work processes occur both through decisions about how to organize work and through the use of artificial intelligence.

Specific objectives.

• Describe the process of managerialization of work and its different phases throughout modern capitalism.
• Analyze the constitutive matrix of post-Fordist management and algorithmic management and their effects on job insecurity
• Understanding the forms that gender inequalities take in the current managerialization process.
• Open debates about the unsustainability of life under managerial rationality.
• Explore the alternatives available in social movements, trade union organizations and international bodies in the face of the trend towards the generalization of precarity and the consolidation of gender inequalities in the workplace.

• Subordination of work to management
• Post-Fordist management
• Algorithmic management
• Work in contexts of exclusion
• Precariousness of life?
• Gender inequalities and work
• What work ethic for what technological change?
• Universal basic income and its debates

Alvarez Newman, Diego and Dovio, Mariana (2022): What future for work? Neoliberal rationality and cycles of state promotion of labor flexibility (1991-2020); ISBN 978-987-47157-7-7; Topos Editorial of IPEHCS; Neuquén.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1998): Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Chapter I “The Meaning of Work: An Introduction to the Work Ethic”. GEDISA Publishers. Coriat, Benjamin (2008): The Workshop and the Stopwatch. Essay on Taylorism, Fordism and Mass Production. Chapters II, III, IV. Holloway, John (1988): Nissan's Red Rose, Cuadernos del Sur No. 6, Buenos Aires

Neffa, JC (1999): Crisis and emergence of new production models; Virtual Library, CLACSO.
Álvarez Newman, D. (2018). The hegemony of capital. Study on the device of involvement in work. Chapter II “The formation of the Managerial Order”. University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Social Sciences; Teseo Publishing House.

Zangaro, M. (2011). Subjectivity and work: management as a governing device. Work and society, (16), 163-177.

Rodriguez, Pablo (2018): Algorithmic Governmentality. On the Forms of Subjectivation in the Metadata Society. National University of Comahue. Faculty of Humanities. Center for Studies in Philosophy of Culture.

Srnicek, Nick (2018): Platform Capitalism. Chapter II “Platform Capitalism”. Ed Caja Negra; Buenos Aires. Chapter II.

Szlechter, Diego and Zangaro, Marcela (2020): Big data and people analytics: intimacy and emotions in human resource management. INNOVAR Magazine (30) (78).

Castillo Fernández, Dídimo. Development model, job insecurity and new social inequalities in Latin America. CEPAL Review No. 136, (2022). 47-64.

ILO. World Employment and Social Outlook. Trends 2023.

Sen, Amartya K. A New Examination of Inequality. Madrid, Alianza, 2021.

Stiglitz, Joseph E. Employment, social justice and the well-being of society. International Labour Review, vol. 121, no. 1-2 (2002). 9-31.

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2022): Weak growth and a global crisis are hindering employment recovery in Latin America and the Caribbean. Labour Overview Series for Latin America and the Caribbean 2022.

World Health Organization and International Labor Organization (WHO/ILO) (2021): Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury, 2000–2016.
PUN NGAI; JENNY CHAN; MARK SELDEN (2014): Dying for an iPhone. Apple, Foxconn and the struggles of workers in China. Chapter I “A suicide survivor”. Continente Editions.

The basic requirements for taking a seminar are:

• Availability of at least 4 hours per week to dedicate to the seminar course.
• Internet access.
• Reasonable handling of communication and computer tools.
• Language proficiency in the language in which the course will be taught. The official languages ​​are Spanish and Portuguese.

The seminars last 12 weeks, plus the completion of a final project. A total of 90 hours of dedication will be credited.

A course consists of twelve classes, each accompanied by required reading bibliography, supplementary bibliography, discussion forums and training activities proposed by the teaching team, partial deliveries and a final project.
The course is online and asynchronous. Some instructors may propose synchronous activities. In those cases, the time and date will be agreed upon beforehand between the teaching team and the students to ensure everyone's participation.
To pass the seminar, you must participate in at least 80% of the discussion forums and activities proposed by the teachers, have completed the scheduled partial deliveries, and pass the final work.

The possible payment methods are credit card, bank transfer and bank deposit.