THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF FULFILLMENT IN MANAGEMENT: BEYOND JOB SATISFACTION TOWARD AN ONTOLOGY OF HUMANISTIC WORK

Abstract

This critical hermeneutic essay fundamentally aims to problematize the category of job satisfaction, transcending its traditional conception as a performance and productivity metric to position it within the horizon of an ontology of humanistic work. In contemporary times, satisfaction has been reduced to a psychometric variable stripped of its ontological essence, operating under an instrumental rationality that prioritizes systemic efficiency over the dignity of being. Through a rigorous dialectical review, the architecture of classical management is confronted with the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, allowing corporate well-being to be deconstructed as a biopolitical control device and a normalization of the productive subject. The research argues that true fulfillment is not a conditioned response to extrinsic stimuli; rather, it emerges from a managerial assertiveness understood as the ethical recognition of alterity—the Face of the other—and the promotion of free subjectivity against the hegemony of the "burnout society." The categories of Dasein and Lebenswelt (life-world) are employed to propose that work must be reclaimed as a space for existential realization rather than a disguised self-exploitation mediated by performance. It is concluded that contemporary management must evolve from the simple technical administration of human resources toward a praxis of ontological mediation, capable of managing meanings, purposes, and hopes in a world marked by automation. This phenomenological shift confirms that fulfillment is both a political and existential category that guarantees the ethical sustainability of modern organizations.