Cultura organizacional e controle dos trabalhadores: estudo de uma fábrica de calçados no interior do Ceará

Abstract

The study focuses on the forms of exploitation, alienation and control over the new working class of the footwear industry in the provincial cities of Ceará, and its relation to the flexible accumulation, with analysis centered in organizational culture and control strategies adopted by a company from the south of the country, attracted by tax incentives, and abundant inexpensive and still forming labor class. We tested the hypothesis of heterogeneity of the production model adopted by the company, in special labor relations, questioning the discourse of flexibility to meet daily experiences lived by workers; and, after a critical analysis of the organizational and cultural category, we described and analyzed the culture embodied in labor relations, verifying in particular, if this culture is a relevant element of class conformation, instrument of labor control in the company taken as a locus of research. Due to the object specificity, surrounded by contradictions, we adopted the historical and dialectic method, with a qualitative research because it involves interpretation of the phenomenon and attribution of significance, using this description to explain the elements of the production process, aspects and cultural and organizational strategies, compiled from company publications and reports of workers. We use the case study as proceeding and explored the phenomenon in two fields: one of them was directed to the productive restructuring paradigm, and to the category of organizational culture; and the other emphasizing the specific culture of the footwear factory, going through labor relations, and registering the contradictions between the values and assumptions formally assumed by the company with the expressions perceived by the workers. We try to see the hypothesis of conservative relationships in adaptation to the productive processes to the flexible model and its heterogeneous character was confirmed in labor relations into the factory, while we find evidence to question the positive organizational culture of this company as a phenomenon that seeks control subjectivity of workers. We did something little experienced in studies of labor relations: the a description of an organizational culture of a factory space, with limits and contradictions in the case of a company whose installations follows the model of recent industrialization of the State of Ceará.