Além do sucedâneo da motivação

Abstract

The image of how people function in organizations underlying current theories about motivation inside organizations is contradicted by the author's experience of how people actually behave. This led him to criticise both concept of motivation and its theoretically unsatisfactory basis as being contrary to reality.The argument in this article uses a metacriticalapproach, viewing the concept of motivation and related theories as scientific inventions. The author's hypothesis is that motivation is a surrogate for meaning in work and life, something which has desappearedmore and more in modern business concerns as a result of fragmentation and splitting of work. The search for a new interpretation of meaning can only be successful if social scientists, managers and workers realizethat death is a reality of life: humanization is only possible if human mortality is taken into consideration.