Temporal flexibility and the transformations of work and organizations have fostered the adoption of “hyperwork” behaviors among multimedia and IT services employees. This raises the following questions: Do these behaviors reveal a form of control over work? And how do businesses support their development in terms of organizational and managerial practices? Using a systemic and psychosocial approach, the qualitative analysis conducted based on twenty-two biographical interviews highlights five situations of control at work. These results reveal the diversity of the forms of control. Although they are sometimes underpinned by managerial manipulation, leading to organizational over-affiliation, they can also be based on a harmful organization of work, perceived as a way of testing oneself.
Keywords
- Long work hours
- control
- subjectivity
- organization of work
- managerial practices
- hyperwork