Exhaustion and performativity: the relationship between psychosocial factors and burnout syndrome in companies.

Abstract

Current forms of management are based on the meritocratic discourse of self-entrepreneurship, seting people against each other and, at the same time, against themselves, in an exhausting logic of performativity and an exacerbated "cult" of performance and productivity. This logic is now revered as a new ethos, that of competitiveness between workers, which inevitably leads to illness through the daily overtaxing of human limits. Herein, we discuss burnout syndrome from a sociogenic perspective, i.e., as a severe consequence of contemporary work processes on worker health. The World Health Organization's recognition of burnout syndrome as a work-related mental illness opened debate with global repercussions. As information about the syndrome has disseminated, certain aspects have been trivialized, with analysis tending to focus on personal weakness, which individualizes the treatment and prevention of symptoms. This type of analysis, although important for highlighting the debate, overlooks the socio-historical and psychosocial aspects of burnout. Thus, the discussion was based on an analysis of the sociogenic aspects of the syndrome with a view to identifying and preventing the syndrome, caring for affected workers, and improving work environments.