Humanazing management: Foundation, precautions and prospects
(2020) 36th European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) annual meeting — Location: Hamburg, Germany (7.July.2020)
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- In a time of digitalization, artificial intelligence and automation, the spectre of the de-humanization of work is present for consideration in the managerial literature. Consequentially, efforts to humanize workplaces may be needed to counter both the robotization of labour and, more broadly, the financialization of management. Notions of humanization have developed in various disciplines, although Marxian and materially informed analyses are particularly attentive to the manifestation of humanity at work. In the field of social psychology, for example, de-humanization refers to the defensive development of distorted perceptions of “others”, often minorities, who are portrayed as lacking depth and complexity, or treated as objects rather than fellow humans (Haslam, 2006; Waytz et al., 2015). In the field of management, early contributions on computerization pointed to the risk of dehumanized work and alienated employees (Rourke & Brookes, 1967), while others interpreted this movement towards automation as an opportunity to re-humanize work (Simon, 1977). De-humanization has also been studied as a side-effect of specific management practices, such as change management (McKendall, 1993) or contemporary office designs (Donis & Taskin, 2018). Along with research suggesting management may produce (de-)humanization, some scholars in management studies have come to consider humanization as a means to more fundamental change, which may renew management research, teaching and practices, towards the production of alternatives futures. In this paper, we identify two main perspectives in this vein.
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Taskin, L., & Al Amoudi, I. (2020). Humanazing management: Foundation, precautions and prospects. 36th European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) annual meeting, Hamburg, Germany. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/119425