Acceso usuarios
Pamela Frías Castro
, Alvaro Soto Roy
El presente artículo discute el difícil lugar de la autoridad en los espacios de trabajo y los ejes vinculados a sus transformaciones: el primero, de carácter organizacional, refiere a la tendencia recurrente en los modelos de gestión y organización a desdibujar el rol de la autoridad y quitarle protagonismo en la gestión de la fuerza laboral; el segundo eje, de tipo societal, refiere a ciertas orientaciones culturales que se constatan en la sociedad chilena hacia una expectativa de horizontalización en las relaciones sociales, que impone nuevos retos al ejercicio de la autoridad y que se expresa con particular claridad en la escena laboral. Actualmente, en la confluencia de estos ejes, la autoridad representa para las empresas, un espacio de desafío y tensión.
Se presenta un estudio cualitativo que se pregunta por el ejercicio de la autoridad en aquellas organizaciones del sector servicios de la industria que más radicalmente asumen los principios del nuevo management y que, al mismo tiempo, se esfuerzan por atraer y retener a quienes portarían las nuevas orientaciones culturales de horizontalidad: los y las jóvenes (a partir de aquí, los jóvenes). Se entrevistó en profundidad a doce jóvenes profesionales que trabajan en empresas altamente rankeadas. Los resultados refieren a los esfuerzos de las empresas por modificar esquemas de organización que llevan a desdibujar el rol de autoridad formal, las maneras en que esta se transforma, así como los espacios de ambigüedad y tensión sobre los cuales se despliega el ejercicio de autoridad.
The article analyzes and describes the changes, tensions and challenges found in the exercise of authority in the workplace, specifically, in organizations that have been systematically evaluated by young people as the best places to work.
As a context, we understand that transformations in the exercise of authority must be understood from the confluence of two elements. In the first place, an organizational transformation, associated with the tendency of current management and organization models to blur the role of authority and take away its prominence in the management of the workforce and, secondly, a transformation at the societal level, which in the case of Chile, refer to certain cultural orientations towards an expectation of greater horizontality in relationships with others, which imposes new challenges to the exercise of authority. The confluence of both transformations is key in the current understanding of the exercise of authority, which are expressed in the workplace, showing that authority represents a space of challenge and tension for both, organizations and individuals.
Between 2019 and 2020, 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with young professionals between 21 and 35 years old, who work in companies in the service sector of the industry, in order to understand the forms and tensions associated with the exercise of authority and control place of this in those organizations that more radically assume the principles of the new management and that, at the same time, strive to attract and retain young people, who would carry the new cultural orientations of horizontality.
The service industry in Chile represents the largest productive matrix, constituting one of the main sources of employment - especially for young people - being relevant to address the question of the exercise of authority in this productive sector.
The results of the interviews made it possible to characterize the efforts made by organizations to modify organization and management schemes that lead to blurring the role of formal authority. In this way, initiatives that used to be exclusively attributed to formal authority stand out, but that today we see progressively being transferred to the execution line, such as encouraging the group and orienting it towards organizational purposes; distribute and regulate tasks and times; control and correct deviations from expected performance; facilitate the work environment and relationships between those who make up the teams. We identified 3 areas of organizational initiatives that account for the blurring of the formal leadership, which refer to the commitment to objective systems and open information, the introduction of collaborative work managerial methodologies and flat organizational structures. It should be noted that the process of blurring the role of the formal authority as a result of the organizational initiatives does specific appearances in which the systems, methodologies and structures fail to guarantee the expected performance.
At the same time, the results of the study reveal the ways in which authority is transformed, as well as the spaces of ambiguity and tension on which its exercise unfolds, identifying four fields of tension linked to the place and the ambiguous moment in which it is exercised within the framework of the new organization and management practices. In each of these fields - daily bond, delegate, act or intervene and, accompany - we find demands and evaluations towards authority, subtleties and ambiguities about how authority should be exercised and possibilities of falling into lack, which together reveal an exercise of authority in permanent tension.
