WORKERS AND A WORK IN THE CONTEXT OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITY STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
work in the context of public service; planning and strategic management of public educational institutions; Activity Clinic; professional gender; professional intergender.
In recent decades, public administration has been marked by the riset of managerialism in a neoliberal economic context characterized by precarious employment. Public universities have adopted management models guided by discourses of performance, excellence, and productivity. Given this scenario, the objective of this study is to conduct an analysis of work, from the perspective of a team involved in the strategic planning and management of a public higher education institution. To this end, the theoretical and methodological framework of the Activity Clinic is used to define, analyze, and problematize the elements that characterize this work, with an emphasis on both contributory aspects and obstacles to its realization. The specific objectives are: to promote transformations in work activities in the context in question, identifying the elements of professional praxis that favor and/or hinder self-recognition and the precarization of work and the worker, and the relationship between it and the quality of labor performance; to analyze the dialectical relationship between the activities and the genres of the occupations that reference the team's work, portraying their impact on the collective; to contribute conceptually to the Activity Clinic based on the context in question; and contribute to the intensification of the discussions regarding strategic public university management, based on the perspective of the Clinic adopted, in terms of the analysis of the processes of carrying out work activities. The method included individual semi-structured interviews and a group debate on their responses, as well as photo workshop and instruction to the double, conducted with employees of a public university. The analysis of all the material obtained was based on analytical tools provided by the Activity Clinic, with the additional support from Thematic Analysis. The main findings, which impacted the quality of work, the worker, and the institution itself, were: a modification in a specific activity and the changes observed in other employees' activities throughout the clinical experience; the recommendation, made by the subjects, that work analyses be carried out in unit contexts and in the university's strategic management , in the latter through periodic review of the institutional strategy, revising documents such as plans, policies, and regulations; the assessment of the suitability of the hybrid (in-person and remote) work modality for the team and its activities, including as a tool for maintaining the collective formed; the intertwining of forms of precarity/precarization and (self-)recognition for the health of work and the worker; and the confirmation of the existence of the professional intergender, as a complementary concept to the gender concept of the Activity Clinic.