New working conditions and old ways of management: the quality of work life in question

Abstract

Portraying another historical moment of the trajectory of the work, the 21th century begins anticipating contradictions of a world boiling. The intense search for survival and domination of markets sets the tone of corporate actions that shape and consolidate, based on technological innovations, the so-called productive restructuring. This report describes research both quantitative e qualitative, survey mode, held at the Brazilian federal judiciary. The study had as theoretical framework the Ergonomics of Activity and aimed to know the perception of workers surveyed regarding the characterization and evaluation of the dimensions working conditions and organization of work. To collect data we used the Inventory of Evaluation of Quality of Work Life, an instrument that encompasses quantitative and qualitative parts. The data had been treated with the aid of SPSS and Alceste software, respectively. The results show that workers assess working conditions more positively, placing this dimension in the form of “welfare moderate”. The dimension organization of work, in turn, was negatively evaluated, showing the predominance of representations of discomfort at work. The results provided elements for new studies of factors related to the organization of work and important subsidies for the formulation of policy and QWL program to the organizational context.