Governance. The behaviors of “new generations” and their expectations are stirring and moving current thinking about work. Transformations in mentalities with regard to professional activity, whether they result in disengagement, indifference with regard to the long-term project of companies or a remarkable lack ofaffectio societatisare presented as a characteristic of new entrants to the job market, these “young people” who must be understood in order to attract them, interest them and, in the best case scenario, retain them.
In reality, the decline in the importance of professional activity in assessing quality of life affects all generations. The oldest ones make no secret of waiting for retirement without regret and the middle generations seek to “reduce the pace” to work less and live better. The distancing from professional activity is global and does not only concern young French people.
It is, in fact, just one avatar among others of the “societalization” of capitalism. The culture of singularity supported by digital technologies has encouraged individuals to act autonomously, while remaining connected by social networks, applications and tools that build, in new ways, common worlds.
As a result, traditional institutions (Churches, States, unions, parties) have in turn been disqualified in favor of direct arrangements of contact between individuals – exchanges of information, collaborations and solidarity, which, even ephemeral, are effective in the to the extent that they can be infinitely renewed. Between individuals, it seems that no intermediate body is essential to create society, hence the global phenomenon of “societalization” of capitalism.
The disrepute of the company
The ultimate great institution celebrated as such, particularly during the so-called neoliberal wave of the 1990s, the company was in turn affected by this process of symbolic devaluation with, as a consequence, an emotional and effective disinvestment in it. There is therefore no point in invoking a crisis of “work value” or the meaning of work, because we continue to work intensely in our societies and find meaning there, but in a thousand individual and independent ways: the company is only a stopgap, often experienced as an absurd system of constraints.
It has itself encouraged its own disrepute over the last thirty years: real work made invisible by the obsession with financial results; chronic instability of strategies discouraging employee loyalty; crumbling of work collectives in favor of individualization of performance, etc. The company was no longer thought of and managed as a community, but as a simple productive mechanism. No wonder it no longer excites the passion of its collaborators.
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