This report aims to treat one of the biggest cultural challenges for modern workplaces
in Denmark; the challenge of growing psychological work pressure in organizations
around the country. To introduce this challenge, Danish philosopher and experienced
business manager in several prominent Danish organizations Morten Albæk, will
provide his insights from modern organizational-culture and thereby provide an idea
of how real and present the challenge of psychological work pressure is to Danish
organizations. Furthermore, this report will introduce the concept of Human Resource
Management, to investigate the foundation for modern organizational culture, to
evaluate its conditions for preventing psychological work pressure. To answer this
question, the report will present Danish philosopher Ole Fogh Kirkeby, and his theory
of “The Free Organization”, which is an idealistic theory of how organizations can add
more freedom to their culture, and thereby improve the conditions for the respective
organization to prevent psychological work pressure within their organization.
Thereafter, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, and his idea of development of
ideologies within any given culture, will provide insights to how cultural development
is problematic, and how the individual responsibilities are problematic to clarify within
a cultural problem. Both Kirkeby and Zizek´s notions of cultural life and development
– and the relative conditions to control this development - will hereafter be applied in
an analysis of the most relevant notions from Human Resource Management.
Thereby, Zizek and Kirkeby’s theories will provide an analysis of Human Resource
Management to clarify and investigate the question of an organization´s cultural
conditions for preventing psychological work pressure, which will lead to a discussion
of the reports problem statement: How are an organization´s cultural conditions for
preventing psychological work pressure? This problem statement will hereby be
subject to a critical comparative notion-analysis, in which Kirkeby and Zizek will
provide the cultural-philosophical notions, which will be applied in a critically
discussing analysis of relevant Human Resource Management phenomena, which will
provide insights to an organization´s cultural conditions for preventing psychological
work pressure. Thereby this report will treat the problem of psychological work
pressure from a cultural-philosophical perspective, through analyzing the foundations
for modern organizational culture, and its effect on the conditions for preventing
psychological work pressure in the best possible manner