Work Rage: The Invention of a Human Resource Management Anti-Conflictual Fable:
Kim Turcot DiFruscia
Abstract
This paper discusses the use of the concept of "work rage“ in human resource management. "Work rage“ is a construct that serves a dual purpose in contemporary personnel management: first, as a means of control and individualization of workers through psychotherapeutic governance, and second, as a way to position human resource managers as providers of expertise on how to limit problems caused by troublesome laborers. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Quebec and the eastern United States.