ABSTRACT

In the previous chapter I described the powerful pressures that are revitalizing the role of the individual within contemporary society. After the long period when individuals seemed to be dominated by systems reinforced by the power of organizational design, I foresee the emergence of a context where organizing assumes a completely different meaning. The power of systems designed on the basis of goals and ideologies has been well described by Foucault (1995) in his critique of the objectification of human beings in modernity, as well as by Burawoy (1982), who spent time as a blue-collar worker in both Western and Communist factories. Burawoy provided ample evidence that the texture of how work had been organized impacted on the level of oppression of workers. Despite the existence of two very different political, economic, and social systems, organizing replicated the same compression of individual identity. However, the time has now come to hope for a different approach to organizing corporations, and possibly social systems. The pressures for change that I have analyzed stem from two processes: one at the individual level, with the urge to satisfy the three universal basic needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness; and one at the societal level, with the emergence of post-materialism (Inglehart, 2015), and the demand by individuals to live fuller lives.