Human management and self-care: a proposal based on Foucault

Abstract

Purpose

The main purpose of this research is to support corporate Human Management, based on the notion of subject and subjectivity in relation to Foucault's proposal of self-care, as a search for overcoming the disjunction that exists today between economic organisations and the people who make them up.

Design/methodology/approach

This study aims at creating a proposal based on Foucault's theory of self-care through which the care of others is salvaged for human management, from the perspective of the philosophical intention to make life a “work of art”. To such end, a qualitative methodology was used based on the hermeneutics that served as the methodology to review Foucault's work. Subsequently, research was conducted on scientific data, and the following variables were analysed: Subject, Subjectivity and Self-care by means of a cross-reference search with the human management and organisation variables. This provides meaning and interpretation to reality, from the idea of constructing subjectivity in turn from an ethical–aesthetic resistance.

Findings

The ethical concern that gave rise to this study is based on the characteristics of economic rationality, which is imposed on business organisations and affects not only the behaviour of people but also the interventions or interpretations about other. Thus, Foucault's self-care becomes a possibility not only to take care of oneself but also, in terms of the main goal of human management, to take care of others.

Originality/value

From this research, it is possible to break the excluding paradigm traced from the various theoretical positions of the subject present in the vision of human management, for an inclusive vision, which, without ignoring the economic objective established by the organisations, allows approaching the subject from the pragmatic point of view alone. As can be seen in the course of this article, it was intended, from hermeneutics as a possibility and search for meaning, to approach Human Management from a critical viewpoint accompanied by Foucault, who allowed to approach the notion of subject and subjectivity from the care of oneself, with the intention of proposing an ethical stance towards the subject working in the company, as a way to see oneself and to look at others. In this sense, the impact of the research is placed, from this perspective, in the teaching and practice of Human Management as an area of productive organisations.

Citation

Hernández, B.Y., Toro-Jaramillo, I.-D. and Vélez, O.A. (2022), "Human management and self-care: a proposal based on Foucault", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 35 No. 4/5, pp. 780-791. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-03-2022-0074