ABSTRACT
The NGO Alpha is a humanitarian organization, funded from European sources, in which managers trust that work practices will arise naturally out of the humanitarian commitment of its employees. The headquarters comprise employees, mostly twenty-five- to thirty-five-year-old social sciences graduates, who are well remunerated. In urban Romania, where the enterprises author have studied were situated, life contrasts radically with rural areas, because of the difference in the organization of daily work: in the countryside tasks are still dictated by the seasons and the consequent amount of work they bring, whereas in the city the hours of work are strictly regulated and the watch or clock gives the measure. The socialist period was characterized by the gradual imposition of the state as manager of people’s daily time.
