ILPC 2026

 In this paper, we make a critical examination of the link between the control mechanisms deployed from management in labor processes influenced by the new techniques of Human Resources Management (HRM) and the intensification of exploitation over work. For this purpose, we review the continuities and changes of management tradition, going through the benchmarks of management studies and the functionalist organizational theory in order to identify the traits that define the historical specificity of HRM. With this, we argue that the novelty of this paradigm is that it understands the gravitating role of subjectivity in the process of valuation of goods and services.

To defend this thesis, we discuss later the theoretical assumptions of HRM along with some critical guidelines, such as "Critical Management Studies" and "Sociology of Critical Capacity, from the viewpoint of control and conflict in the labor process. We claim that these perspectives take work relations to be comparable to social links in other types of social spaces or organizations: the strategies deployed from HRM facilitate "social integration" or "consensual domination" in the company. However, they ignore the structurally antagonistic nature of labor relations in capitalism. It is not so much integration or domination that is intensified with HRM, but rather an expansion of mechanisms of exploitation towards other dimensions of social life.

Therefore, the central question is how these exploitation mechanisms are concealed. Following the contributions of Labor Process Theory, we argue that this phenomenon develops through an increase in the worker’s relative control on the productive processes. Furthermore, we suggest that HRM deploys normative control mechanisms that, by appropriating the discursive criticism and resistance practices that workers may generate at the workplace, seek to empower them by means of appealing to their social skills. The real power of HRM lies in knowing how to take advantage of the dimensions of social life that were previously not fully exploitable: emotions, personality, attitudes and life trajectories.

In short, the process of real subsumption of the labor process by capital intensifies, but this time without the need to objectify the work in the machine as "dead labor". For HRM, the target is workers’ subjectivities, that is, the importance of normatively molding the moral and emotional character of "living labor" in accordance with the interests of the company.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that these exploitation mechanisms do not necessarily have the success alleged by the performative discourse of HRM. Their normative foundations find it difficult to respond successfully to the expectations that the increase in relative control is generating in the labor force, in addition to the fact that these mechanisms have particularly damaging effects on the workers’ mental health. Thus, we suggest reframing the discussion about HRM on the new possibilities of effective resistance and the process of politicization that might open within the framework of this new management paradigm.