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ABSTRACT
This study proposes and uses a multipolar qualitative methodology for the
investigation of the meanings of corporate work under the impact of the technical-scientific
knowledge. Based on the constructionist epistemology and on a heideggerian approach,
this methodology made possible the description of such phenomenon under the
Management perspective, but also under the Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy views.
Study starts with empirical data, collected by interviews and in publications, and analyzes
them based on conceptual contributions from the four referred poles. As a result, this
investigation proposes reflexivity, impermanence and entanglement as meanings of the
corporate work that culminate in the paradoxical work. It also demonstrates that the impact
of knowledge occurs in a reflexive spiral of complexification, continuously affecting
individuals and work processes; describes the impermanent character of the work ruled by
time, by neophilia and by uncertainties that make precarious the very subjective experience
of worker; and proposes that this work becomes entangled due to the way it is managed,
and is an entangling work, for embarrassing the individual in its techniques, logics and
dissonances. The paradoxical essence that emerges from this appreciation of corporate
work is described on the following scopes: its reflexivity does not prevent its rationality to
be fragile; its dynamism coexists with the difficulty to achieve substantive organizational
changes; its entanglement compromises the possibilities of an apparently reachable well-
being; its focus on present ends up to be emptied; and its purpose of individual sustenance
becomes unsustainable due to hyperconsumption. But the conclusions of the study do no
describe a definitive phenomenon. At the ending, it points out possibilities of living with
the paradoxical work as well as possibilities of its transformation.
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