ABSTRACT
Quality of Work Life (QWL) is an increasingly common interest around the world, especially in corporate settings. A recent Google search for the keywords "quality of work life" in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, and English revealed close to a billion results. This chapter describes the reasons that provide the essential foundation for the improvement of organizational practices and work management using Brazil as a reference. A review of the literature on labor and health science focused on Organizational and Work Psychology and Administration and on technical and government reports shows three groups of interdependent factors that merge to shape growing interest on QWL. The first group is concerned with the ongoing productive restructuring process that, since 1965 to 1975, has been supported by the New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT). The second group derives from evidence that problems with the production of goods and services may inflict costs for workers. The third group is a combination of the previous groups.
