This chapter discusses recent changes in work organization and their impacts
on occupational health and safety. In the last decades of the 20th century, changes in the
technological, social and economic context, such as automation of production
processes, globalization of markets, financialization and new social demands fostered
the emergence of new rationales for production and as a consequence new rationales of
work organization. Some of the main aspects of New Forms of Work Organization
(NFWO) are presented: flexibility, autonomy, the importance of workers’ competence
and engagement and management by goals, represented by Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs). We then propose that within NFWO there may be some paradoxes that workers
are obliged to deal with. Beyond NFWO, some new configurations of firms, notably
those based on network features, are also presented, and their relation with NFWO is
discussed. In this new context organization, there are new work pathologies, namely the
psychological ones, ordinarily named “stress”. Final discussion points to the fact that
the absence of prescribed tasks created new constraints that are behind the bullying at
work. The actual augmentation of psychological suffering and mental diseases is the
consequence of the performance control through KPIs that are present in management
systems diffused in the corporate governance of global organizations and networks.
Keywords: Automation, bullying, competence, global productive chains, global
productive networks, hazards exportation, immaterial work, international division
of labor, key performance indicators, occupational health and safety, peripheral
countries, stress, worker engagement, work ergonomic analysis, work organization.
