Thibaud Brière explains how, under the guise of humanistic values, the management can sometimes lead to an ill-being and suffering in employees.
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The book. In the reception room of the head office, on the platform, the CEO faces about fifty new employees. “At home you are free. Really. There is neither hierarchy nor leaders, you are your own boss. It is expressly forbidden to give orders. What do you want, I am a disciple of May 68, I I have the authority in horror: I want us to be disposed of in my company! “Gadama Inc. is not any company: it presents itself as a faithful application of” participatory democracy “.
When it comes to entering the group as a philosopher, Thibaud Brière enthusiastically accepts. “Except that everything did not go as planned. I was gradually convinced of the perversity of the mode of management I was responsible for promoting, in the use that was done,” reveals the author of Toxic Management (Robert Laffont). The book delivers a glazing testimony on the manipulation of consciousness that is exercised today in the world of the company.
If the name is fictitious, Gadama Inc. really exists. It is a society considered as a managerial reference, with which many others come to look for their inspiration. It is a prefiguration of what will tomorrow be the world of work: in a network, between peers, not hierarchical, participatory, points out the one who joined it between 2012 and 2018.
The imperative of transparency
The corporate philosopher participates in the meetings of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, animates training for technicians and managers and circulates in the signs of the different subsidiaries. Recruited to identify the values of the company, in order to disseminate them then and to establish a climate of trust, it must in reality transmit orders under cover of humanistic values, to adhere to the members of the organization to the particular doctrine of the CEO – “like Amazon, Google and Apple have instituted the function of” Chief Evangelist Officer “, which has the merit of clarity”.
On a welcome day for the newcomers, the president and the main shareholder, renamed “Founder”, insists on the total transparency that everyone has to show, and concludes his intervention by referring to the recruitment of ‘a homemade philosopher, entirely free in his remarks, to whom he speaks. “At the end of my intervention – moderate and cautious since I have just started -, it expressly asks me to keep some of my most incisive criticisms for the meetings of the Board of Directors.”
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