Human dignity in the organizational context and its different conceptions

Abstract

This article aims to understand the meaning of human dignity in the organizational context and its different conceptions. It is a review of the literature, where the meaning of human dignity was initially investigated, rescuing its historical and philosophical roots. Afterwards, we sought to understand how dignity is being studied in the organizational environment, especially in the area of humanized management of people. The results point out that human dignity has several meanings, which change over time and space. Already, organizational dignity is studied taking into account both the internal and external environment of the organization. The internal environment is treated in the perspective of dignity in organizations and the external environment from the perspective of the dignity of organizations. It is proposed, therefore, a complementarity between these two conceptions - dignity in and of organizations - in order to obtain a more accurate view of the dignity in the organizational context. One of the limits of the study is that it has not investigated empirically what scholars in the area think about the complementarity pointed out, which can be done in another study, constituting a research agenda. As for innovation, it is possible to rethink the management of people, in the direction of recovering the dignity of the human person in the work environment.