Corporate welfare through the ages
A recently published book highlights the distinguishing traits useful to understand the history and evolution of “corporate welfare”.
Corporate welfare is not a new invention, and the same is true for that kind of corporate attitude we call social responsibility. This is a far from trivial observation that, nonetheless, needs to be remembered in an era where talk of the “new” approach of businesses mindful of their social and financial impact is increasingly widespread – enterprises acting as social, and not merely economic, actors have always been a thing, and left a positive mark, just as much as good production culture did. As such, looking at the history of corporate welfare proves very useful, especially when outlined by research studies such as the one by Valerio Varini (University of Milano-Bicocca), entitled
“Eccitare il lavoro. Il welfare aziendale, una trama di lungo periodo” (“Stimulating employment. Corporate welfare, an age-old story”).
Varini begins by considering the concept of welfare and pinpointing its key characteristics, before moving on to summarise its great evolutionary periods – the era of corporate paternalism, the time (between the two wars) when welfare was considered a corporate function, and finally the period (after the Second World War) when welfare became an issue of negotiations, and in each section the author juxtaposes theorical and historical reasoning. There are several instances of enterprises that, over time, integrated the kind of corporate welfare some believe was just “discovered” today, accompanied by an analysis of its features and evolutions.
In his conclusions, Varini writes how “corporate welfare, in its continued existence, reveals its ultimate essence – it embodies knowledge arisen from work, which is the basis of a business and must be acknowledged as a means to meet the many needs of workers.” Varini’s work is an effective summary of the history of corporate welfare – to be read and added to one’s collection.
Eccitare il lavoro. Il welfare aziendale, una trama di lungo periodo (“Stimulating employment. Corporate welfare, an age-old story”)
Valerio Varini
Impresa Sociale, 2/2023
A recently published book highlights the distinguishing traits useful to understand the history and evolution of “corporate welfare”.
Corporate welfare is not a new invention, and the same is true for that kind of corporate attitude we call social responsibility. This is a far from trivial observation that, nonetheless, needs to be remembered in an era where talk of the “new” approach of businesses mindful of their social and financial impact is increasingly widespread – enterprises acting as social, and not merely economic, actors have always been a thing, and left a positive mark, just as much as good production culture did. As such, looking at the history of corporate welfare proves very useful, especially when outlined by research studies such as the one by Valerio Varini (University of Milano-Bicocca), entitled
“Eccitare il lavoro. Il welfare aziendale, una trama di lungo periodo” (“Stimulating employment. Corporate welfare, an age-old story”).
Varini begins by considering the concept of welfare and pinpointing its key characteristics, before moving on to summarise its great evolutionary periods – the era of corporate paternalism, the time (between the two wars) when welfare was considered a corporate function, and finally the period (after the Second World War) when welfare became an issue of negotiations, and in each section the author juxtaposes theorical and historical reasoning. There are several instances of enterprises that, over time, integrated the kind of corporate welfare some believe was just “discovered” today, accompanied by an analysis of its features and evolutions.
In his conclusions, Varini writes how “corporate welfare, in its continued existence, reveals its ultimate essence – it embodies knowledge arisen from work, which is the basis of a business and must be acknowledged as a means to meet the many needs of workers.” Varini’s work is an effective summary of the history of corporate welfare – to be read and added to one’s collection.
Eccitare il lavoro. Il welfare aziendale, una trama di lungo periodo (“Stimulating employment. Corporate welfare, an age-old story”)
Valerio Varini
Impresa Sociale, 2/2023