SUBJECTIVITYAND COPING WITH DEATH: BUILDING PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN DAILY LIFEThis study aimed to understand how work practices and people management are designed and built in daily life, in a place whose work requires coping with death. This is a qualitative study which followed the routine of 4 morticians, 1 on-call manager, 1 administrative manager and 1 mortuary make-up artist in their working environment, a small funeral company in Porto Alegre. Data was collected using ethnographic techniques (CAVEDON, 2003) and the interpretation performed by content analysis (MINAYO, 2010). The findings were grouped into four categories understood as part of the process of subjectivation of practice/ knowledge in face of death: 1) resizing the certainties; 2) knowledge at/about the work in face of death reframing; 3) being a worker shaped by the representation of death in society; and 4) management being construed in the context of death. We have seen that these professionals create and reinvent their practices, starting from a process of reframing and naturalizing death. The organizational environment, in line with Certeau (2008), is a space where workers use their own meanings in the management of themselves and their daily life.
Keywords:
Small Business Management; Funeral Homes; Subjectivity; Daily Life; Death