According to its mainstream approach, management has turned organizations into hierarchical forms of organization and work management. By denying its political and ideological dimensions, the Management Theory has become part of the business concerns, teaching professionals how to act according to an instrumental rationality. In counterpoint to this scenario of injustice and exploitation, self-management arises, a form of management that is democratic and non-hierarchical, despite the drawbacks that still remain. The goal of this work is to understand the challenges that the workers who chose to work under the self-management concept face. We interviewed specialists from three organizations - ANTEAG, UNISOL and UNITRABALHO. The interviews were analyzed through the method of content analysis. For these professionals, self-management implies a need for a change in the subjectivity in the workers, who are used to a hierarchical and non-democratic kind of work. We argue that in order to understand the difficulty of implementing self-management in organizations, a concept of subjectivity that embraces not only the individual but also the collective feature should be adopted. The concept of subjectivity as being both individual and collective suggests that the challenges encountered in the practice of self-management are deeper than they first appear to be, although they might be solved sooner than we think.
Self-management; Subjectivity; Solidary Economy