A piece of research from ISTAT and from La Sapienza University provides the statistical bases for an improved analysis of an important aspect of manufacturing culture

We work together to achieve better results. Not just from the point of view of the accounts, but also of the ambience in the factory. This assumption, which may appear in certain cases formulaic and banal, that of good relationships between the parties who interact in the organisation of manufacturing, in fact remains one which has not been fully achieved and needs to be so, using tools which require fine-tuning in practice. This is the case, for example, for supplementary company employment contracts. As a manifestation of a particular type of industrial relations culture and thus of corporate culture, supplementary employment contracts still need to be well understood and well exploited.

Laura Bisio, Stefania Cardinaleschi (both from ISTAT) together with Riccardo Leoni (from the University of Bergamo and the CIRET La Sapienza University, Rome), have tried to analyse, from a statistical perspective, the role of the decentralised supplementary employment contract with respect to company productivity specifically in order to achieve an improved definition of the state of the art of this aspect of corporate culture.

The basis of the investigation was the recent database prepared by ISTAT, which contains information relating to companies belonging to the private sector and employing more than 10 people (excluding agriculture).

The research obviously develops its momentum from the framework of the decentralised contracts in Italy, to which is also linked a description of the reference institutional layout, before progressing immediately to a series of working hypotheses for the authors and in particular to the definition of the principal question: how supplementary employment contracts can influence company productivity. Subsequently the research moves on to a section of statistical analysis of the data in order to arrive finally at a series of conclusions.

From this work it transpires, over and above the technical aspect relating to industrial relations and statistical analysis, that in particular, as the authors explain, “productivity is not so much influenced by the specific single practices and subjects set down by contract, as by the entire range of these items, including therein the practice of company bonuses”.With several important specifications. The unilateral awarding of bonuses to staff, for example, “does not have any improvement effect on productivity”. What does count strongly, furthermore, is the organisational layout at the top of the company and the one which relates to the relationships between the company and its ownership.

The work of Laura Bisio, Stefania Cardinaleschi and Riccardo Leoni is certainly not an easy and free-flowing read, but has the merit of providing a sound basis for a series of observations which are extremely helpful in defining a corporate culture which builds up over time, but which must also be set against the rules and industrial relations which influence the formation of a company environment which is in a state of continual adaptation and development.

Contrattazioni integrative aziendali e produttività: nuove evidenze empiriche sulle imprese italiane (Supplementary corporate employment contracts and productivity: new empirical evidence about Italian companies)

Laura Bisio, Stefania Cardinaleschi, Riccardo Leoni

ISTAT “Sistema Informativo sulla Contrattazione Aziendale”(Information System relating to Corporate Contracts) , October 2017

Contrattazioni integrative aziendali e produttività: nuove evidenze empiriche sulle imprese italiane

People can also fight the Mafia by going to the theatre. And by going to the theatre precisely there, in Brianza, where the families of the ‘ndrangheta put down roots a long time ago, doing business, devastating the land and public administration, corrupting and trampling over politicians and entrepreneurs. At the theatre, to involve spectators in “Dicei storie proprio così” (Ten stories just so), brought to the stage by Giulia Minoli and Emanuela Giordano (who is also the director), first at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan and, last night at Teatro San Rocco in Seregno, the heart of Brianza, precisely the land of innovative enterprises but also of Mafia trafficking, documented not only by judicial inquiries and court sentences but also by an up-to-date research commissioned by Assolombarda and conducted by Mattia Maestri for the Cross, the Observatory on organised crime of the University of Milan, directed by professor Nando Dalla Chiesa (Wednesday morning, the performance will be dedicated to an audience of students, prepared through a series of meetings in schools). The initiative has the active support of Assolombarda, which has been engaged at length in protecting good businesses and promoting market culture, in its deeply-rooted conviction that legality is an essential factor in competitiveness and that the Mafias are enemies of the market, an obstacle to economic growth.The Anti-Mafia theatre is not an event, therefore.But rather a step in a long journey of legality, involving social and economic players, schools, people from the institutions.A strategic choice of civility.

Legality, the economy, quality of institutions are the topics that had the most resonance during the “Stati generali contro le mafie” (General states against the Mafias), organised specifically in Milan by the Ministry of Justice and by the Municipality on 23rd and 24th, with the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and with the participation of Ministers, magistrates, exponents of law and order, economists, businessmen and scholars. A commitment against corruption, “a theft of democracy”, to use the effective expression of President Mattarella and a door into public administration opened for Mafia bosses, but also a phenomenon that, dangerously widespread, should not be confused outright with the Mafia. An assumption of responsibility against Mafia infiltration in politics. And insistence on economic issues.

The Mafia clans move seamlessly in contexts of shady finance, they occupy international tax havens, they launder the proceeds of illegal businesses, they corrupt financial and economic circuits (the Ministry of the Economy and Banca d’Italia are aware of the danger posed by these transactions). They find great deals in the opportunities offered by the “digital” world to shift money (“There will be a Totò Riina with IT skills,” says Alessandro Pansa, general manager of the Department of Information for security, the coordination of the “Secret Services”). And they must be fought using international agreements involving the coordination between supervisory authorities, magistracies, police forces. But repression, albeit essential, is not everything. Political commitments, as well as social and cultural ones, are necessary.

“A pact for legality with companies”, proposes the Italian Home Secretary Marco Minniti (“IlSole24Ore”, 25 November), a revitalisation and a revival of the Protocol of Legality signed between the Interior Ministry and Confindustria in 2010. It is a prospect that Assolombarda fully agrees with. Minniti insists: “The economic world must be aware that the Mafia economy pollutes and distorts and therefore must make up a critical mass with the institutions to defend legality. Mine is an appeal to all the associations and in particular to Confindustria”. It is an important appeal, to be welcomed and implemented, even and most of all on the territories where the Mafias have evolved to dangerous levels for some time. Such as Lombardy and Milan, rich and attractive areas, also for capitals of illicit origin, for criminal activities.

“Market Mafia”, some magistrates call it, “a Mafia that no longer shoots people but that has converted to the logic of the market”. An accurate statement, if it refers to drugs, to human trafficking, to “services” such as the disposal of toxic waste or to the prostitution and cocaine “ring”. But “market” is perhaps the wrong word: because “market” is word of value, it refers to competition, to rules, comparison, transparency, lawful activities by companies, fair exchanges. Cosa Nostra, ‘ndrangheta, Camorra are instead shadows, lawlessness, dirty deals, use of violence to beat the competition. It is not a question of terminology, but of the substance of the values of the economy. Market and Mafia, in short, are on different sides of civil society. Indeed, on opposite sides. The Mafia is an enemy of the market. With the Mafia, the market does not grow, but instead dies.

It is precisely in this awareness that lies the choice made some years back by Assolombarda for legality as the backbone of corporate culture, and which has been reconfirmed over time. Entrepreneurs have been told repeatedly: the Mafia is not a service agency to solve problems of permit granting, or credit recovery, to be awarded a contract, to beat a competitor, to evade tax with false invoices, to overcome a corporate or trade union obstacle. The relationship with a Mafia clan seems to be an easy shortcut, but it ruins a company forever. And the other companies are consequently damaged. In short, the Mafia is a tumour, a poison. To be avoided. And fought.

The choice of civil theatre and the involvement of schools, in the “microcosm” of Monza, is a step in this virtuous direction. The strengthening in Milan of relations between Assolombarda and the Courthouse, the institutions, law and order, is the cornerstone of the commitment for legality and competitiveness. The stimuli for better corporate and market culture are essential. The “Mafia deals” are not only barbaric but also a very bad deal for the Lombardy of good businesses.

An important book, which marries economic reasoning with good social practices, has been published in Italy

A company is there to make profits and nothing else. This is a categorical statement which can be justified to a degree, but which is only partly true when viewed against the reality of life. It is certainly true to say that accounts should show profits, and that manufacturing should be carried out in an optimal and efficient manner. There are other considerations in addition to these, however. This is how it is, at least, in any well-rounded company that deserves such a description. The synthesis exists in those production cultures which keep an eye on the accounts but also on their people, on efficiency but also beyond the scope of technical prowess. A good company, to summarise, not only optimises its production cycle but also its place in the world. And it avoids falling into the traps of calculations at all costs and of optimisation taken to extremes. It is precisely on the subject of the risks of optimisation, and on how to overcome them and achieve a different sort of economy, that Julian Nida-Rümelin, professor of philosophy and political theory at the University of Munich in Bavaria, has deliberated. With his “Per un’economia umana. La trappola dell’ottimizzazione”,  (For a humane economy. The snare of optimisation), Nida-Rümelin has set down on paper a wide-ranging journey between philosophy and economy which starts from the classic canons of rationalistic economic reasoning in order to reach conclusions which are important, not to say surprising.

The book builds on the consideration of the “definitive defeat of the homo oeconomicus” interpreted as the “driving optimizer of what becomes a self-destructive economic system if it is not tempered by humane measures for contentment”. For Nida-Rümelin it is possible to attain a different and more modern type of economy by retrieving forgotten principles and ethics, which hark back to classical philosophy and to the ancient virtues, to ethics and to dialogue rather than to opposition, to calculation and to dispute. “The result is not a utopia – specifies the author -. The position at stake is not the description of a desirable state of affairs, which is neither achievable nor something for the near future, but rather the pragmatic conditions of a humane economic praxis”.

The book is therefore strictly divided into three parts. First of all a clear analysis of the concepts of economic rationality and of the idea of optimisation; then a recollection of the classical Greek philosophy of values and virtues considered as inalienable by the author: reliability, capacity for judgement, strength of decision-making, respect, loyalty and attentiveness. The book ends with a discourse about how it may be possible to reconcile economic optimisation with reasonable and acceptable good practices.

Articulated into chapters which are clearly separated by concepts, the book by Nida-Rümelin is interesting reading, and worth the effort even if at times this may prove challenging; nevertheless, the author’s writing evolves steadily, in a way which allows it to be tackled by anyone who truly wishes to understand the direction in which the economy may be going. Pure nourishment for a good company culture which needs to be a common heritage. In the final lines of the book the author writes that “ the task of moulding a humane economic praxis is such that it requires the cooperation of a great number of different parties: employers and employees, associations and trades unions, managers, corporate advisors and employee representatives, parliaments and governments, citizens and the civil society”.

The quotation from Plato which concludes Nida-Rümelin’s literary enterprise is both beautiful and important: “It will not be the demon that chooses you, but you who chooses the demon. The first one out will first of all choose the life to which necessity binds him. Virtue has no masters; the more each one of you honours it, the more of it you will have; those who honour it least will have the least of it. It is nevertheless the responsibility of the chooser. God is not to blame”.

Per un’economia umana. La trappola dell’ottimizzazione (For a humane economy. The snare of optimisation)

Julian Nida-Rümelin

Franco Angeli, 2017

Milan without the EMA. After a close call and three voting sessions, initially in the lead and then on a par with Amsterdam, the draw picked Amsterdam as the headquarters for the European Medicines Agency. What a pity. It is not a defeat. But rather the consequence of a rule that makes us suffer the variability of fate. Milan did not win, this is true, after a good choral battle that lasted several months. Nevertheless, it remains a city of excellence, with the well-perceived identity of an open, cultured, plural, attractive metropolis. Still worthy of getting a great deal of attention, in the heart of Europe.

Milan has plenty to offer. “Its identity is a sum of identities”, according to Giuseppe Lupo, an attentive scholar of relations between literature and industry, who dedicated a beautiful novel to the city set between the economic boom and the “light weight” of the “Milan to drink”, entitled “Gli anni del nostro incanto” (The years of our enchantment), Marsilio (presented at Assolombarda for BookCity and “La settimana della cultura d’impresa” [Corporate Culture Week]). Milan, the “Hanseatic city” of relations and trade, according to Aldo Bonomi, a sociologist capable of eccentric visionary definitions, from the “infinite city” to “molecular capitalism”. Milan, a place of synthesis, in short. Mechatronic factories and financial services, skyscrapers designed by “superstars” and places of sophisticated popular contemporary art (Pirelli’s HangarBicocca, with “The seven celestial palaces” by Kiefer and the Prada Foundation are fine examples), universities and design. Milan, a city of knowledge. And of culture. Milan, proud of its history and hungry for the future, able to climb to the top of all the international rankings on attractiveness and quality of life. Milan, open and inclusive, “You become Milanese”, in the words of Carlo Castellaneta, born in Milan to a family originally from Puglia.But also “it isn’t cold in Milan”, written in 1949 by the ultra-Neapolitan Giuseppe Marotta and published by Valentino Bompiani, leader of Milanese publishing for more than half a century: the warm charm of hospitality.

Milan, naturally, a city of science, before and after the race for the EMA. And therefore a city of research. And a polytechnic culture interwoven with questions, doubts, discoveries, success and back to square one. Milan always in motion.

The city, in its transformations, can also be interpreted from a microcosm. For example, from the most recent of its universities, the Humanitas: international medicine for 1200 students, three Nobel Prizes among the teaching body, an investment of 100 million Euros, all private, for cutting-edge digital laboratories, among the largest and most innovative in Europe. To inaugurate the new campus last week, together with a couple of ministers came the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella: “Research has changed the conditions of life and improved them. This is of primary importance. And it must be supported in all ways, both organisational and financial”. And Gianfelice Rocca, Chairman of Humanitas Group: “A strategic platform for the development of Milan under the banner of science and innovation. An example of an eco-system based on public-private collaboration”. Life sciences, health and quality of life: another aspect of the identity and of the possibilities of development of a European metropolis.

International Milan, therefore: 13 thousand of its 180 thousand university students in fact come from abroad; 3,600 multinational companies are located there (90 of which with a turnover of more than a billion), 750 offering high innovation. Pharmaceutical companies are among the most excellent: 60% of pharmaceutical production in Italy is concentrated in Lombardy. Human Technopole, dedicated to the settlements of research centres and companies specialised in “Life sciences” and the “City of Health” in the former industrial areas of Sesto San Giovanni will strengthen this framework.

So a Scientific Milan, too. But also, concurrently, Milan capable of critical reflections. Of a focus on the civilisation of comparison and dialogue that is specifically essential to science. Dialectic Milan.

“We must not hesitate to enter the quicksand of a culture that forces us to resume the art of rhetoric. Therefore, more than adorning our brain with mere concepts, it is necessary to organise the mind properly so that it becomes the moral guide in the journey of existence which has now become so complex and jagged”, according to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, who addressed the students of Università Cattolica in Milan, in the Lectio for the opening of the academic year. New questions for the difficult times in which we are living, research to find the keys to interpreting the present.

Restlessness and research are another essential aspect of Milan, rooted in its history, from Leonardo to the reflections of the circles of the Enlightenment, from the 19th Century “Politecnico” of Carlo Cattaneo to the critical habits of scientists who developed in the laboratories of both universities and companies, such as Giulio Natta, Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964.

Scientific debate is customary in Milan. On the more sophisticated technical issues. And on theoretical and ethical ones too. The dilemmas of science are discussed in the preparation of the “Dialoghi di vita buona” (Good life dialogues) in the Curia, in an open and sincere debate with several Lay components of the city. And the scientific words resound in the theatres, in “1927 – Monologo quantistico” (1927 – Quantum monologue) by Gabriella Greison at Teatro Menotti and in the preparation of “Copenhagen”, on the bill at Piccolo Teatro: the conversation between two great physicists, Niels Bohr and Karl Heisenberg, on the moral dilemmas related to atomic energy.

In Milanese philosophical circles, the reflection of a great scientist, Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, is back in discussion: “The whole scientific knowledge is uncertain; scientists are accustomed to living with doubt and uncertainty. This type of experience is valuable, and the way I see it, even beyond science. When facing a new situation, it is necessary to leave the door open onto the unknown, to admit the possibility of not knowing exactly how things stand; otherwise, we might not be able…to find solutions. This freedom to doubt is fundamental in science and I believe in other fields too. A centuries-long fight has been necessary to conquer the right to doubt, to uncertainty: let us bear that in mind and not allow the subject to be dropped gradually. As a scientist, I know the great merit of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, and I know that such a philosophy makes it possible to progress, the result of freedom of thought. And as a scientist I feel the responsibility to proclaim the value of this freedom, and to teach that doubt should not be feared, but willingly accepted as possibility of new potential for human beings. If we are unsure, and we know this, we have a chance to improve the situation. In science, doubt is clearly a value… It is important to doubt. And doubt should not instil fear, but it should be welcomed as a valuable opportunity”.

Milan, in time, must learn to let things move not frenetically but in a fertile, creative manner, precisely marked by good science, it must learn to seek the profound meaning of better development. The battle for the EMA now belongs to yesterday. The legacy of that battle is fully topical.

An original story of computing fosters the growth of a more comprehensive manufacturing culture

The adventure of doing business is the result of other human and technological adventures. It is the fulfilment of what is generally referred to as the entrepreneurial spirit, but which is most commonly known as the restlessness of men and women who are not satisfied with their lot. And those who use genius and technologies to reach their goal. This is what happened at the time of the first industrial revolution and it is happening again today. And we need to understand the history, the evolutions, the stops and the accelerations of this journey. One of the most significant examples in this sense concerns computers and computing. Reading “Macchine per pensare” (Thinking machines) by Francesco Varanini is therefore a must-have experience.

Varanini (an anthropologist and subsequently a manager, consultant and trainer and concurrently a literary critic, an advocate for what is referred to as humanistic IT), starts with a consideration: choosing how machines can intervene in everyday life, in work and in our relationships, constitutes an ethical-moral choice for our future. This statement is however immediately followed by an observation: information technology – the daughter of a single philosophical tradition, from Descartes to Turing, via Frege, Russell and Hilbert – ignores Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and too often remains the field of action of technicians who are not always aware of the very history of their discipline and of the consequences of their actions. Besides, philosophers and scientists, those to whom we delegate most of our understanding of life and of the universe, devoid for that matter of technical knowledge, end up disregarding information technology.

All of us are right in the middle of this situation. And therefore so are businesses and those who live and work there.

With the aim of providing the tools to understand, Varanini thus retraces the history of computing from the twenties and thirties of last century to the modern day, and he does so in an original, captivating, practically unique way.

The entire narrative is permeated by the dual nature of computing. The initial project aimed to build a machine intended to compensate for human flaws, forcing control, rules, order, accuracy. At the same time, another project overturned this intent: the power of the machine can be used – this is where the personal computer comes in – to support man as he takes charge of his own autonomy and as he assumes responsibility, establishing individual freedom.

Varanini then illustrates the technical and human aspects, scientific adventures and the shared feeling which, on the one hand, make up the history of computing and, on the other, the general cultural baggage that becomes part of the company since it is necessary better to understand what computers are and what role they now play within production organisation.

By making use of extensive and significant historical and technological knowledge, Varanini has written an essay and at the same time a historical novel (which, among other things, will continue with “Pitts, Bush, Nelson. Tre storia di computing” (Pitts, Bush, Nelson. Three computing stories).It is not an easy book, but rather a book that you should read letting yourselves be guided by a style that unfolds between philosophy and science, between humanism and technology in an unusual way ,with a writing style that leaves its mark.

Macchine per pensare. L’informatica come prosecuzione della filosofia con altri mezzi (Thinking machines. Information technology as the continuation of the philosophy with other means)

Francesco Varanini

Guerini e Associati, 2016

The latest economic survey of industrial and service companies has just been published by Banca d’Italia

Being responsible entrepreneurs and managers  helps the company, it is good for production organisation and it enhances proper manufacturing culture. And being responsible also means having reliable information better to understand the world that surrounds us. We need good sources.

This is why it is useful to read one of the last reports by Banca d’Italia. The “economic survey of industrial and service companies” just released by the Italian central bank takes a photograph that is particularly useful to gain greater awareness with respect to where an individual stands and where companies stand. And especially on what their prospects might be.

A horizon that, among other things, appears a little brighter than it used to. “The share of companies in industry in the strict sense and services that have reported a growth in turnover in the first nine months of 2017 compared to a year earlier has gone up to about 50%, a value close to that recorded in the two years preceding the sovereign debt crisis of the Euro zone,” the survey report in fact explains. It would appear that both the domestic and the international markets are improving, and entrepreneurs are even talking about sales expansion over the coming months. Employment levels are also on the rise, as well as the share of companies who have seen an upward trend in their investments.

However, what is of interest here is something else. It is the very nature of the survey. Banca d’Italia, in other words, is allowing the system of industrial production and services to take a snapshot, a genuine selfie, to reflect collectively on its own status and on general forecasts that emerge from the feeling shared by entrepreneurs and managers struggling with company management as well as with the related forecasts. Certainly, we are talking about a survey which owing to its very nature concerns a limited number of companies (in this case approximately three thousand industrial companies), but the result is also a sort of snapshot of the practical outcome of Italian business culture: every company illustrates its condition and all these stories put together compose a single picture.

It is owing to this characteristic – in addition to the objective statistical data -, that the survey is of particular interest and useful precisely to acquire a greater awareness of the industrial system at national level. The report produced by Banca d’Italia is also written with the usual characteristics of the Central Institute: clarity and brevity. A good read.

Sondaggio congiunturale sulle imprese industriali e dei servizi (Economic survey of industrial and service companies)

et.al.

Banca d’Italia, 9th November 2017

“Founding libraries is like building public barns, piling up stock to tackle the winter of the spirit that, according to many clues, I hate to say is coming”. The words of Marguerite Yourcenar, from the pages of “Memorie di Adriano” (Hadrian’s Memoirs), are on the pediment of the large wall at the entrance of the Pirelli Library, in the building that hosts the Group’s Headquarters in Bicocca. And they provide a sense of the initiative, the corporate Library to be precise, which binds company and culture, knowledge and skills, the pleasure of text and the quality of work in that special community that forms a company, a large company. We live in times of crisis (in the duality of risks but also opportunities for change) and metamorphoses (we have talked about it several times in these blogs on corporate culture). Good books make it easier to understand and to get around better.

The image of the “winter of the spirit” that worried emperor Hadrian in times of existential and intellectual balance sheets, i.e. at the end of his life experience, may perhaps appear too pessimistic. Of course, current times are also controversial, packed with worries. And the idea of bringing books closer to barns is in any case effective and appropriate.

“La cultura come il pane” (Culture like bread) was the title of an article which, on “Pirelli – Rivista d’informazione e tecnica” (Pirelli – information and technique magazine), in 1951, provided a balance sheet of the activities of the Pirelli Cultural Centre, a place for meetings and debates about literature, drama, film, science. A popular theme. “Pane e alfabeto” (Bread and alphabet), was the wording, at the turn of the 20th Century, on the façade of the “Forno del pane” (Bakery) commissioned in Bologna by Mayor Francesco Zanardi to supply cheap food and cultural initiatives: today, that is where the headquarters of the highly popular MAMbo, the Museum of Modern Art, stand.

With a book space open every day for those who work at Pirelli, in Bicocca, the company once again confirms its relationship with culture. Indeed, better still, it reiterates that it is culture. Not a conjunction. But a synthesis. Books in the Library as a stimulus for widespread culture. The Library as an element of a complex system of corporate welfare. But also as the cornerstone of a better quality of the work environment, which positively affects the sense of belonging, the pride of identity. The Library as a place of value. And of values.

The corporate Library in Bicocca is now celebrating its first birthday. It was opened in October 2016, together with that of the Bollate factory and the extension of the library in the Settimo Torinese Industrial Pole. Indeed, to be specific, the Library has been “reopened”. History has it, in fact, that the first Pirelli library dates back to 1928, a cutting-edge choice in Italy: combining reading with working, pages with productivity. In 1957, exactly sixty years ago, a revival, in a modern and welcoming space in the large factory in Viale Sarca (there were about 11,000 volumes; and in 1961, according to a survey by the company paper “Fatti e Notizie” (Facts and News), 87% of employees preferred fiction books: Moravia, Pasolini, Papini, Bertolucci, Alvaro… but some also borrowed great “classics”, from Virgil to Ariosto and some even took Proust down from the shelves). The basic criterion, in those 1950s oozing extraordinary resourcefulness and industriousness, in a dynamic Milan filled with factories, offices, skyscrapers and metro trains, is explained in “Fatti e Notizie”: “The library should in fact be home to man and not just to books… Readers should give – and can give – a direct contribution, based on personal experience and consisting of advice, tips, reports on the life of the library… The library, this home of ours that is already social in purpose and friendly in spirit, will always be increasingly more functional: a living, dynamic being…”.

In close partnership with the Library, at the time, the Pirelli Cultural Centre was also busy: meetings, readings, debates, with the participation of Cesare Pavese, Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo, Carlo Bo, Giorgio Bassani and the then young talents Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Dino Buzzati, Gillo Dorfles, but also men from the stage and from the film world, including Luchino Visconti and Giorgio Strehler and musicians, from John Cage to Karheinz Stockhausen. Many of them were “signatures” of Pirelli Magazine. The images from that time testify to a large crowd of an attentive audience.

Last year came the initiatives for the new library. A comfortable environment that invites reading and discussion about the books. More than 4,000 volumes (a figure that grows from month to month, with donations and purchases, increasingly often suggested by employees: the shelves have room for 10,000 books). And attendance records that are constantly on the rise: registered library users come to 300, out of 1600 employees who work in Bicocca; in a year, on average, each of them borrowed 6 books. Almost 70 registered users in Bollate, out of 300 employees; 3 books on average, for each of them.

Which books are usually borrowed? Editorial news, in 18% of cases. Essays, in 7.5%. Comics, in 5.5%. And children’s books, in 22%. Narrative covers the remaining 47.5%. Plenty pick classics. One piece of information worthy of mention is this: the request for children’s books is the one that is growing the most. Parents who get their children used to being confident around the written word with good illustrations. A small yet significant sign of civilization.

Books, moreover, are woven together with the history and facts of Pirelli. Among the most recent, often curated by the Pirelli Foundation, are the “Racconti di Lavoro” (Tales of work) with historical and contemporary photos and writings, among others, by Erri De Luca and Jean-Paul Fitoussi (published by Mondadori), “Cent’anni per lo sport” (One Hundred Years for sports) (again, Mondadori), the two communication volumes published by Corraini (“Una musa tra le ruote” (A muse between wheels) and “La Pubblicità con la P maiuscola”(Pirelli advertising with a capital P”), “Pirelli – Innovazione e passione” (Pirelli – Innovation and passion) by Carlo Bellavite Pellegrini, published by Il Mulino, and, for the international market, by Third Millennium Publishing.  And, again, the books about the Pirelli Calendar, published over time by Rizzoli, Mondadori and Taschen. On the other hand, precisely one of the main books in European literature, “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, is what inspired the latest Pirelli Calendar presented with great success last week in New York: pictures by Tim Walker, just a game between the imagination and dreams, a constant link between design and topical issues. Even the most recent Pirelli Balance Sheets were devised with reference to books: they include writings by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Guillermo Martinez, William Least Heater-Moon, Javier Cercas, Hanif Khureishi, Javier Marìas. Business, culture, books, in short. There is no guarantee that Mallarmé was right in stating that “the world is made to end up in a book”. But books are certainly an indispensable tool to explain the world well and its assumptions of change.

The Bicocca Library is now celebrating its birthday. With a conversation about Milan, books, food (literature is packed with stories about the pleasure of good food and spending quality time at the table): on the stage of the great hall of the cooling tower, on the afternoon of 20th November at 6:30 pm, a conversation is set to take place between Alessandro Robecchi, brilliant author of noir set in Milan (the latest is called “Torto marcio” (rotten wrong), published in January by Sellerio: a new adventure for Carlo Monterossi, author of a hugely successful TV trash show, a fan of Bob Dylan, a clumsy detective by accident) and Filippo La Mantia, “host and cook” as he defines himself, one of the stars of the finest food culture in Milan.

“Pane e culture” (Bread and culture), therefore, to return to the brilliant synthesis of the Pirelli Cultural Centre which we mentioned at the beginning. Books, in the Library, are a good opportunity to spend quality time together.

Research just published on Impresa Progetto (Project Enterprise), Electronic Journal of Management, addresses and explains exhaustively the theme of job crafting

 Those who are satisfied work better. And if satisfaction is achieved through a path in which the workers play a leading role, the work is more productive, consistent with their own particular skill sets, approached in a more active and concrete manner, and less problematic. Job satisfaction and the ways to achieve it are one of the new frontiers of management  and more generally of good corporate governance. A cultural goal, before being an organisational goal.

One aspect of job satisfaction was the focus of work by Davide De Gennaro (researcher of the Department of Law at the University of Naples “Parthenope”), Filomena Buonocore (Associate Professor         of Business Organisation, Department of Law, University of Naples Parthenope) and Maria Ferrara (Professor of Business Organisation, Department     of Business Studies, University of Naples Parthenope). Their “Il significato del job crafting nell’organizzazione del lavoro. Inquadramento teorico, tendenze evolutive e prospettive manageriali”  (The meaning of job crafting in the organisation of work. Theoretical framework, evolutionary trends and managerial prospects) which was just published takes into consideration job crafting i.e. the practice which “means         for a    worker to behave proactively so as to make his or her job more rewarding and consistent with their own inclinations and skills”. This way, the authors explain, the actual possibility of changing the tasks of a worker is not only an exclusive power of management , but above all the possibility of workers affecting their activity also counts, and in a positive way, on their productivity and therefore on business results.

De Gennaro, Buonocore and Ferrara then examine job crafting both under a historical profile, as well as under a methodological profile, providing a thorough definition and especially analysing the aspects linked to the person and to the context.  The research however attempts to identify not only a new theoretical setting, but above all a series of good practices to be used in business. Job crafting, they explain for example, generates positive or negative effects “based on the way in which  managers allocate duties”. The three researchers particularly suggest that more room should be left for workers in the implementation of job crafting with respect to the more widespread custom.

The article by De Gennaro, Buonocore and Ferrara is very useful for a reason: it clarifies a subject that is still little known and it provides simply and exhaustively the most important elements to understand.

Il significato del job crafting nell’organizzazione del lavoro. Inquadramento teorico, tendenze evolutive e prospettive manageriali (The meaning of job crafting in the organisation of work. Theoretical framework, evolutionary trends and managerial prospects)

Davide de Gennaro, Filomena Buonocore, Maria Ferrara

Impresa Progetto, Electronic Journal of Management, 2, 2017

A book by Cambridge University Press tackles the topic of manufacturing cultures in areas others than the West

Companies seen as porous bodies which absorb suggestions and principles from the system in which they operate; and which spread just as many. Manufacturing cultures that build their own ethic but not one that is independent from the rest of society. This is what also happens in emerging countries. This latter situation is quite particular, and it should be understood in full. Especially at a time when globalisation is a pervasive phenomenon and which we cannot ignore.

This is what Douglas Jondle and Alexandre Ardchvili have done in their “Ethical business cultures in emerging markets” which was just published. The book deals with the topic of business ethics from the point of view of developing countries. The authors start with an observation. Previous research on business cultures and on the ethics of entrepreneurial cultures have focused almost exclusively on the studies dedicated to large multinational corporations from a handful of developed countries. Other companies have almost completely been forgotten.

The literary work of Jondle and Ardchvili looks instead to what can be described as the intersection of the development of human resources and the management of human resources in business cultures present in the four BRIC countries and in four other rapidly growing emerging economies: those of Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey. It looks, in other words, to that part of the world with which “the industrialised West” now has to deal with continuously yet which it often does not know in-depth.

The book then compares the perceptions of managers and employees of the companies in those countries, comparing them with the US economy, in other words with the Western business culture par excellence. In addition to this, Jondle and Ardchvili investigate the economic and socio-cultural context and the business ethics in each of these countries, including the implications for research and practice.

“Ethical business cultures in emerging markets” is a good tool to realise the existence of different cultural worlds within companies that apparently may instead appear uniform. A theoretical approach, which can however have extensive operational repercussions on those who work with emerging countries.

Ethical business cultures in emerging markets

Douglas Jondle , Alexandre Ardchvili

Cambridge University Press, 2017

“Festìna lente”. Make haste slowly, move swiftly but also cautiously. The phrase is attributed by the historian Suetonius to the emperor Augustus, builder of the Empire. It was the motto of Aldo Manuzio, typographer and editor in Renaissance Venice, the utmost in merchant splendour. And it inspired the emblem of the fleet of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of a powerful, rich, cultured, cosmopolitan sixteenth-century Florence: the coat of arms, which is still clearly visible today on the decorations of Palazzo Vecchio, was a turtle topped by a sail swollen with wind. The phrase seems like an oxymoron, a complicated game of oppositions and denials. Instead, it has the force of intelligence and the depth of a good perspective: speed and caution. An original sense of the proper use of time.

“Festìna lente” could be today the summary of the discussions that were opened in Milan on the future of the metropolis, starting precisely with the considerations of the mayor Beppe Sala made during an interview with Corriere della Sera (24 September): Milan must “slow down”, focus on a better quality of life, overcome the frenzy of profitable rhythms at all costs, critically rethink the myths of “speed”. There are, in Sala’s reflections, some wise basic considerations: the twentieth-century ideology of “endless progress” has entered crisis mode, the Futurist culture of speed as a value deserves a place in memory and in precious art collections (works by Boccioni and Balla, witnesses of time and timeless masterpieces), the economy needs to overcome the obsession of quantity and insist instead on quality, sustainability and on strategies for a better and more balanced development (this is suggested by plenty of good international economic literature, as remembered by the admonition of Pope Francesco for a “just economy”). This leads to a sharp suggestion: Milan, economic locomotive, may be a positive paradigm for the entire Italian system looking towards Europe.

Therefore a broad debate. With critical interventions such as Alberto Alesina’s and Francesco Giavazzi’s (“Milan must not stop but improve”). And positive attention, such as that of Carlo Bonomi, Chairman of Assolombarda. “Slower and more productive, that’s the right move to live better. And only electric cars on the road from 2030”. Sala insists: “The speed of Milan cannot be questioned even for a moment, if by this we mean its capacity to be ready and reactive to the stresses originating from the world that surrounds it and to which it intensely wishes to belong”. But putting to one side “an idea of speed as daughter of progress specifically of the last century” and if anything using the new technologies to live better.

“Festìna lente”, indeed. We must learn to think about the meaning and the value of time.

There’s the positive speed of digital connections that improve traffic, services, medicine, assistance, research, entertainment of a “smart city” (“Milan as European capital of 5G, in the era of superfast Internet”, announces Aldo Bisio, CEO of Vodafone Italia, speaking of strong investment in European projects concerning health, safety, energy, education, etc.). And there is the slowness necessary for in-depth public debates, for participation, for inclusion. What is slow is democracy, but indispensable, better still, for a balanced civil coexistence, the rapidity of technocratic choices. What has to be fast, i.e. effective and efficient, is the implementation of the decisions taken democratically and responsibly in the interest of citizens.

What is fast, very fast, neurotic even, is the predatory finance which fosters advantages on rapid mutations of trends in securities and foreign currencies in the global markets. But what is slow is the pace of manufacturing, of factories, of industrial work (places with strong business and personal values that need to be rediscovered).

Also slow is research that, after repeated attempts, leads to errors, rethinking and new paths, to the “discovery of the molecule that limits tumour growth” (an Italian success by researchers of the Humanitas guided by a great scientist, Alberto Mantovani). Yet the process of patents and the production of the pharmaceutical industry must be fast, according to criteria of competitiveness.

The game of the oxymoron could go on almost indefinitely. The examples given are necessary to explain that the contrast between “slow” and “rock” is fine for a fun and original television pun, but not for a serious debate on the future of Milan. Ideas need time. Frenzy is the enemy of innovative projects and of good policy itself.

A commendable indication comes from Renzo Piano, who as a great architect and Senator for life, has destined culture and resources to the project for the “mending” and gentrification of suburbs (Ponte Lambro, in Milan): slowness is “reflection, asking yourselves questions, thinking about the right way to tackle the issues related to life and to the city” (Corriere della Sera, 30 October). He goes on to say: “My task is to sow something, to light a conscience. Milan today can be leader of a profound thought that is not happy descent but rather rebirth without deleting history”. It takes time to do it well.