WORK AND HEALTH IN TRANSITION: TRENDS OF SUBJECTIFICATION IN APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
Authors:   Institute of Psychology, University of Innsbruck (Austria), Hornung Severin , Weigl Matthias ,   Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, LMU University of Munich (Germany) and Institute for Patient Safety (IfPS), University Hospital Bonn (Germany), Herbig Britta ,   Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, LMU University of Munich (Germany), Glaser Jürgen ,   Institute of Psychology, University of Innsbruck (Austria)
Published: May 2021

"Reported is the synthesis of a series of seven studies on work and health, conducted collaboratively by researchers in applied psychology and occupational medicine. This qualitative meta-study develops a framework, in which reviewed studies are structured, aggregated, integrated, and interpreted in a theory-guided iterative process of themed analysis. Building on empirical results, the subsequent interpretive integration seeks to demonstrate, how overarching, pervasive, and in psychological research typically underemphasized tendencies of “subjectification” manifest in exemplary work contexts, research topics, and results. Subjectification of work is operationalized in dimensions of work intensification (performance focus), work internalization (goal adoption), and work individualization (job personalization). A meta-dimension is work insecurity (personal risk), cultivated in contemporary management ideologies of employee self-reliance. Following thematic description, content-analytical structuring criteria include: a) focus on work task (activity) versus working conditions (context); b) primary (close, direct, explicit) versus secondary (inferred, indirect, subtle) references to and/or indication for identified tendencies of subjectification; and c) theoretically assumed and empirically examined relationships with negative (psychopathological) and positive (psychosalutogenic) short, medium, and longer-term attitudinal and health-related work effects, as well as the personality-shaping impact of long-term occupational socialization. Psychological aspects of work tasks are core to 4 studies, 3 focus on working conditions and organizational practices. References to intensification were dominant in 4 studies, whereas 5 include internalization processes, and 3 predominantly focus on individualization of work. All studies share secondary or indirect references to other subjectifying tendencies. Examined work effects were aggregated into a matrix of short, medium and long-term positive and negative manifestations of health and wellbeing. Results suggest tensions and pressures arising from the motivational individualization of work tasks and conditions, resulting internalization of organizational interests and goals (e.g., performance, efficiency, costs), coupled with system-inherent tendencies of work intensification. These dysfunctional dynamics constitute risks factors for psychologically detrimental or harmful forms of self-management, self-control, and self-endangering work behavior, as manifestations of “internalized” incompatibilities between work and health in the neoliberal workplace, aggravated by existential threats associated with political-economic crisis. Outlined are implications of subjectification for a critical reevaluation and reorientation of basic theoretical assumptions of research and practice in applied psychology and occupational health."