The so-called high performance systems reflect the organizations' need to strengthen worker involvement in order to respond more quickly to demands for results. Despite the fact that high performance practices promote work intensification and increasing stress levels, and thus restrict quality of life and well-being at work, high performance companies tend to appeal to a large number of qualified professionals; which gives rise to the question about the mechanisms that promote such attractiveness. In order to investigate this issue, this study focuses on the discourse of human resources professionals in high-performance companies operating in Brazil. The research was conducted through in-depth interviews with these professionals, based on broad questions about their recruitment and selection practices. The arguments and motives that permeate the professionals' discourse were analyzed in light of the conceptual repertoire of Critical Theory, particularly the debate about the rationalities that guide social action. The examination of the discourses points to an instrumentally oriented communication and a systematic distortion of the communicative process within organizations, at the expense of work-life balance and individual and interpersonal well-being.
Job intensification; Rationality; Critical theory; Communicative distortion.
