The PENSAR® Method: psychosocial governance — Part I: the operational gap
Keywords:
psychosocial risks, organizational governance, workplace mental health, occupational risk management, Design Science ResearchAbstract
Over the past decade, work-related psychosocial risks have become an explicit object of regulation and institutional accountability. In Brazil, the revision of Regulatory Standard No. 1 and Law No. 14,831/2024 shifted the subject from the domain of voluntary benefits to that of documented management obligations. An operational gap nevertheless remains: the literature offers robust explanatory models of work-related illness and consistent evidence on isolated interventions, yet little guidance on how an organization sustains, over time, a cycle of measurement, standard setting, simulation, deployment, and review of psychosocial factors. This is the first of three sequential parts presenting the PENSAR® Method as an artifact of organizational psychosocial governance, conducted under the principles of Design Science Research. Part I carries out the problem-identification and grounding activities: it delimits the psychosocial environment as a legitimate object of management; systematizes the Demand-Control, Effort-Reward Imbalance, and Job Demands-Resources models; incorporates the contribution of the psychodynamics of work and the constructs of psychological safety, organizational justice, and climate; examines the requirements of psychosocial measurement; and demonstrates that the remaining gap is not explanatory but one of design.
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