FROM FLEXIBLE ORGANIZATION TO STRESS ON THE WORKPLACE

Abstract

The flexibility of the workforce, which manifests itself in different forms (from
lifelong learning to various types of work contracts), has made the term precarity current,
which, in absence of a suitable term in the Macedonian language, is simply taken over
from the French, as well as the English speaking countries. Precarity, above all, means a
condition of temporariness, i.e. uncertainty in the domain of labor. On the other hand,
plenty of sociological analyses show that, in its essence, the flexibility of the workforce
means a process of adaptation of the workforce to the conditions of the enterprise, the
conditions of the immediate and wider environment. The thesis we are developing in this
text is: the processes of adaptation developed to the level of absurdity, besides the
condition of precarity, lead to a long-term stress at the workplace. The stress at the
workplace is determined as a condition of a maladaptation of the employees to the
organizational conditions that are considered static, as if they were natural laws that
cannot be changed, and the man, who is a natural being, is forced to change his/her own
nature to keep his/her job. Through the existing analyses within sociology, we will try to
get acquainted with the Macedonian society from this perspective.