e-conference: “Institutional psychological harassment”
When work organisation and pathogenic management push the victim to extremes!

with Marie PEZE , Doctor of Psychology, psychoanalyst, former legal expert, Head of the “Souffrance et travail” consultation network and Mr Nicolas VIARD, from the “l’Atelier des Droits”, law firm founded by Mr Rachel SAADA , Lawyer at the Paris Bar, former staff representative and trade unionist – he followed the France Telecom case.

Among the elements constituting pathogenic management, there are punitive practices that put the agent in a situation of constant jus­tification by destroying the recognition of work, paradoxical injunctions by setting objectives without giving the means, permanent reor­ganisations destabilising the personnel and participating in the loss of the meaning of work, the staging of disappearance by removing tasks to entrust them to someone else without valid justification, by erasing the colleague from the organisation chart, com­munication that is almost exclusively downward…

And then there are all the different forms of misuse: the misuse of managerial authority by setting objectives without providing the means, the misuse of organisational authority by arbitrarily modifying the working conditions or the essential attributions of the workplace, the misuse of the subordination relationship by refusing to dialogue, by insidious or insulting remarks, by denigration…These are all elements recognised by experts as pathogenic management practices that inevitably produce psychosocial risks.

Pathogenic management and psychosocial risks (PSR) PSRs are defined as risks to mental, physical and social health, generated by employment conditions and organisational and relational factors likely to interact with mental functioning.