Although showing an improvement over the previous decade, the statistics on the presence and above all the role of women in companies and institutions leave no room for much doubt about the necessary action to be taken in order to achieve gender equality in the workplace. Out of 197 heads of government only 22 are women, while only 20% of parliamentary seats worldwide are occupied by women. If we look at the top 500 world corporations in the Fortune ranking, only 18 have female managing directors. Clearly this aspect is also involved in the type of culture adopted by a company. With wholly unexpected situations which crop up when a woman starts to talk about her life within companies, possibly those of a very high level.

This is the case of Sheryl Sandberg, 43 years old, American politician and entrepreneur and current Facebook COO. In her Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead she tells of her work experience in some of the world’s most successful companies, taking a look at what women can do to help themselves, also by changing the culture of the company where they work.

The book contains an interesting idea: if the majority of women are asked whether they have the right to equality in the workplace and the answer is a resounding “yes”, when the same women are asked whether they feel able to ask for a rise, promotion or equal pay, a certain degree of reticence creeps into their answers.

Sheryl Sandberg therefore narrates, explores and identifies crucial passages, examples and stories which explain how far companies, women and men also have to go in order to solve problems of cohabiting and corporate culture. This produces an updated and disenchanted cross-section of the presence and role of women in US companies and institutions, a snapshot of the myth of equal opportunities and the situation of women at work in the USA which suggests and can teach a great deal also to companies in other countries.

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Sheryl Sandberg

Alfred A. Knopf, 2013

Facciamoci avanti: le donne, il lavoro e la voglia di riuscire

Sheryl Sandberg

Mondadori, 2013

Corporate culture changes as the corporation evolves. This would seem an obvious statement, yet in fact the opposite is true. The change in the culture of a company is influenced by its evolution yet, in turn, it can also affect, even heavily, the dynamics whereby decisions are taken, how the markets are viewed, the methods of staff management and how customers and their satisfaction are seen. All this then becomes complicated when the company in question is multinational or when it changes from local to global.

What happens then?

Some of the answers come from Maria S. Plakhotnik, associate professor at Florida International University, who covers, succinctly and clearly, the most significant literature on the subject and bases her reasoning on an observation of the way in which many companies, having gone global, change their markets, structure, processes, approaches and culture, just as other global firms attempt to build a new type of organisational culture based on values and beliefs which are comprehensive and winning for the employees, aside from their native country, race or professional experience. In order to identify better the type of company examined under the microscope Plakhotnik coins the idea of geocentric companies, i.e. those firms which transcend cultural differences in order to build set-ups that are new in human and organisational terms. More particularly the research takes into consideration the relations and relationships built between those working in the company and the culture which the same, globalised, company tends to create internally.

On closer inspection this is an interesting exercise at a time when increasingly in companies people from widely differing countries and cultural areas find themselves working side by side.

That of Maria Plakhotnik is therefore an interesting journey into a new way of understanding corporate culture, increasingly based on the global yet which also has to reckon with local forces and feelings.

Geocentric Corporate Organizational Culture and Employee National Identity

Maria S. Plakhotnik

in Proceedings of the Seventh Annual College of Education Research Conference: Urban and International Education Section (pp. 117-122). Miami: Florida International University, USA.

Pirelli has three strengths: “people, people and more people”. The statement by Marco Tronchetti Provera from some years ago is a recurring theme in conversations about the values and corporate culture of the Group. It is also echoed in declarations by many other great entrepreneurs and managers. The latest was pronounced by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo: “At Ferrari we value people” (la Repubblica, 7 April). There we have it: people, their abilities, their culture, their drive to do things and do them well. In a country like Italy which is low on raw materials and ranks high in the manufacturing industry (creating value with transformation), the priorities of any programme for growth should in fact relate to people, i.e. the growth of human capital and social capital, the network of positive relations. Culture and education, therefore. And yet, when we look at the most recent Eurostat figures we can see that Italy lags behind other EU countries in terms of public investments in culture and education. France allocates 2.5% of public expenditure to the two areas, the UK 2.1, Germany 1.8. The EU average is 2.2. Greece, with its extreme economic problems, 1.2. And Italy? Just 1.1, half the European average, a pittance. The figures confirm for the umpteenth time a situation already known, that of lack of responsibility by public administrators in safeguarding and valuing Italy’s historical, cultural and environmental heritage and in the forming of a new heritage (investments in contemporary art and culture). Private companies, who do in fact invest and often generously, cannot naturally make up for the lack of investment by public bodies.

Another figure adds to the alarm: the widespread return to emigration. In 2012 79 thousand Italians left Italy. 35 thousand are aged between 20 and 40 years old, an increase of 28% over the previous year. They go to Germany and other EU countries, Switzerland, Latin America, the USA, in search of better working and living conditions. Human capital lost, a broken network of relations and skills.

To sum up, Italy does not invest in culture and training and has lost a large part of the capital it has built up. Companies suffer from this and Italy finds itself older, poorer, less dynamic and less ready for growth.

In an age of unbridled consumerism and plenty (in which however all the cracks are starting to show), it is worth asking the question seriously “how much is abundance?”, i.e. what is the “right” limit in the pursuit, for example, of profit, buying goods, the boldest commercial strategies and market, corporate and personal success. We live immersed in the market economy which is now presenting us with the bill which one way or the other has to be paid.

The means of doing this in the best possible way, achieving not so much a different economy but above all a “good life”, is taught to us by an increasingly well-populated group of thinkers. How Much is Enough by Robert and Edward Skidelsky (father and son, the former an economist at the University of Warwick, the latter a philosopher with the University of Exeter) represents a rare example of a breakneck journey along an unusual, appealing, closely packed and surprising road towards the finishing line of new economic and social set-ups, a more advanced way of conducting business and a modern and sustainable market concept.

The two Skidelskys accompany the reader as good advocates who knowledgably handle the divisible whole of their two subjects using a light yet precise style of writing, rich yet within everyone’s reach. Starting with a famous essay by John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, the authors explore the birth and the growth of the current market and production system, the rise of entrepreneurship and of questions linked to profit, the economics and philosophy steps to be taken to give meaning to everything. Economics and corporate culture are connected to social changes, the latter to the development of the needs for tangible and intangible sustenance, all this in order to arrive at a series of elements for a new life made up of material and (above all) immaterial essential goods. Some of the top names in economics and philosophy of the last century act as guides along the journey.

Quanto è abbastanza

Robert e Edward Skidelsky

Mondadori, 2013

How are ethics and corporate organisation interlinked? What is the upshot of interaction between the daily life of production organisations and action by individuals? How much is “ethical” in a company? These are not questions that are ends in themselves but queries whose answers are useful for understanding further how corporate culture evolves, the conduct by companies with respect to production, the market and the work force, the degree of freedom of the latter and the structures where they work.

However for a better understanding guides and cognitive maps are needed, such as the one written by Carl Rhodes (University of Leicester) and Edward Wray-Bliss (Deakin University, Australia).

The ethical difference of Organization, which appeared recently in the magazine of the same name, is a true handbook that guides us through 20 years of literature produced in order to analyse the links between ethics, companies, organisation and individuals.

While traditional corporate ethics, the two authors explain, focuses on the ethicality of the organisations themselves, the pivotal questions which have emerged in two decades of studies also concern the way in which individuals interact ethically in respect of the corporate organisations and how some corporate agreements can be challenged politically in the name of ethics. The latter therefore can be transformed from a positive element of management also into a paradoxical restraint on development when it reflects the interests of the few to the detriment of those of many.

Rhodes and Wray-Bliss however go further, eventually identifying in corporate (and social) systems a business ethic and also an ethics of consensus and an ethics of difference, different faces of a same concept which are often however confused in practice.

A clear explanation is given in around ten pages of the links and bonds between the particular ethic adopted in companies and society and the processes of growth of companies, their culture, nature and perception.

The ethical difference of Organization

Carl Rhodes, Edward Wray-Bliss

Organization, 2013 20: 39

“In Italy, production has been at a standstill for far too long,” said the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Branchard (in an interview with Il Sole24Ore of 28 March). How well we know that. These words of foreboding coming from the highest levels of the IMF are actually helpful, though, in getting policymakers to bring about reforms (in the areas of bureaucracy and fighting corruption, taxation, civil justice, infrastructures, education, research, and the job market) as quickly as possible to help improve Italian production and facilitate growth and internationalisation for businesses.

Nonetheless, over the last decade, Italian businesses have done a great deal in order to become more competitive. They have reorganised, opened up more to international markets, brought about innovation in both products and processes, worked to assert themselves as high-quality international manufacturers in the areas of automation, advanced engineering, food and agriculture, interior design and fashion, all industries that epitomise Italian quality (along with areas such as engineering, specialist chemicals and pharmaceuticals, rubber, nautical, etc.). However, overall productivity remains low due to limitations within the Italian system as a whole. But it is also the responsibility of the community of businesses that have remained small and under-capitalised, held back by a capitalism rooted in the family business that has not yet managed to realise the full potential of a virtuous synthesis of family entrepreneurship and sound management.

In order to be more productive, we will need to see a radical transformation in the culture of enterprise towards the rules and strategies of a more open market, thereby closing the book on excessive government support and focusing on public industrial policies based on innovation, research and growth, while also promoting collaboration within business districts, meta-districts and “long value chains” of international scope.

In other words, we need to see a leap from “entrepreneurial solitude” towards “collaborative competition”. At the heart of increased productivity at the level of both the individual company and the system as a whole, there needs to be an understanding of one of the key words: competitiveness, from the Latin cum petere, i.e. to set a target and seek to achieve it together.

“The term ‘culture of enterprise’ refers to that shared story of daily life that characterizes the commitment of an organization and its approach towards the business community and towards society as a whole.” It is this concept, as expressed in the “Manifesto on the Culture of Enterprise” drafted by Confindustria, that explains why the culture of an organisation is so important to how the business operates and grows.

Especially in these turbulent times, the issue of culture of enterprise is crucial to any respectable business strategy.

But how can it be achieved? And, more importantly, which examples are to be followed and which avoided? A nice, useful answer to these questions can be found in “Strategia e cultura d’impresa. Come favorire strategie di successo impostando al meglio la cultura aziendale” (Strategy and culture of enterprise. How to promote successful strategies through a well-designed corporate culture), a work by Hermann Simon and Danilo Zatta which takes a pragmatic approach to the matter and seeks to understand how, in practice, an organisation’s culture can impact on business performance, both financially and otherwise.

Simon and Zatta begin with a theoretical study of all phases in the evolution of the enterprise before moving on to a careful analysis of how to guide and manage a culture of enterprise in a manner that can help to improve strategy. Along side the theoretical concepts, however, there are also a series of case studies from Italy (e.g. Fiat, Technogym, System, Diesel etc.) and abroad (e.g. Nestlé, Würth, Lufthansa, Gore, etc.) covering both theory and practice, so that readers can get a precise idea of the interactions between a culture of enterprise and profits and how the first can usefully influence the second.

So “Strategia e cultura d’impresa” is a sort of guidebook for a topic that is not easy to get a good grasp of and a manual that complements well another work by the same authors, “Aziende vincenti: Campioni nascosti del 21° secolo”, which covers the factors that make for a successful business and describes recent Italian and international success stories.

Strategia e cultura d’impresa. Come favorire strategie di successo impostando al meglio la cultura aziendale

by Hermann Simon and Danilo Zatta

Il Sole 24 Ore

Aziende vincenti: campioni nascosti del 21° secolo

by Hermann Simon and Danilo Zatta

Hoepli

The impresa BBF (the “beautiful and well made” – Bello e Ben Fatto, or “BBF” – enterprise) exists, resists and is making progress. In times of crisis and hardship that appear almost unending, the army of Italian manufacturers that export these “BBF” products are showing what it takes to be successful in the world of manufacturing and are clear indication of how a culture of enterprise leads to a culture of quality in exports. And this is a strategy that is looking to be the only way – at least for now – for Italian industry to make inroads in the current economy.

As such, it is important to understand where these imprese BBF are and what exactly it is that they are doing. How are they facing their challenges, and what exactly is special about their manufacturing techniques? Of course, the most typical examples of Italian beauty and quality are fashion, cuisine, footwear and interior design. And a report that has just come out of the Confindustria research centre, Le imprese produttrici di export italiano di qualità:  identikit e performance (Manufacturers of quality Italian exports: who they are and how they perform), give us a clear overview of the situation, while outlining their key characteristics and future potential.

In just a few figures, Confindustria is able to tell us all that needs to be said in order to understand what a significant segment of the country’s manufacturers are doing.

Accounting for one-fifth of all manufacturers, these imprese BBF all share certain characteristics: they are smaller than average, but they focus more on the international marketplace and have been able to diversify more than the rest, but their recovery has been slower than those of the non-BBF firms. The study also points to another key characteristic: most imprese BBF are either small or very small enterprises, with over half having fewer than 49 employees and a fair number of these having fewer than nine.

In other words, microbusinesses that have great production capacities and a culture that backs that up – a culture of quality and of a form of know-how that, according to some accounts of the crisis, would seem to have disappeared, or at least faded a great deal, but which is actually going strong and should definitely be fostered and made to grow even more.

Le imprese produttrici di export italiano di qualità:  identikit e performance

Centro Studi Confindustria

Note no. 2013-3, March 2013

The bottom line. In the black. The business imperative: to make a profit. Without profit, there are no wages, no investment, no new jobs, no income for the business owner or the shareholders (“create shareholder value”, as the recent mantra in business goes). Profits, of course. No question there. If anything, the question is how to get there (by obeying the law, the rules of the market, respecting the rights of the workers and all those who interact with the business, protecting the environment, ensuring safety, and so on). And what else a good business needs to be, apart from profitable.  This is what Adriano Olivetti had to say in a speech to Olivetti workers in Pozzuoli in 1955: “Can industry find a purpose? Is it to be found only in profit ratios? Is there not something more intriguing beyond outward performance? A destination? A vocation in the day-to-day workings of the factory?” Rhetorical questions that point to values, dignity, pride in a job well done, in a job that is of use to the community. And that’s the operative word: “community”. In the new Edizioni di Comunità (“Community Editions”, a republication of a project called for by Olivetti in 1946), in a short book entitled Ai lavoratori (To the workers) after a lovely preface by Luciano Gallino, we find the republication of both the Pozzuoli speech and a similar one given in 1954 to employees in Ivrea. The factory and society. Industry and general responsibility. Beyond mere profits. Nearly sixty years later, the same views can be found in the work of Marina Capizzi and Ulderico Capucci and their interviews with sixty business leaders for the Assolombarda-Bocconi Observatory. They speak of “value”, and when asked for whom, this is the conclusion reached: “The strategy of value that emerges as a new path to competitiveness is founded on the concept of mutual benefit and on the production of benefits for others that are either directly or indirectly involved. In order to be long-lasting, the generation of profit must come through the production of benefits for others. Benefits that do not concern only buyers or the shareholders, but also the end users, the suppliers, the community, etc.” So long-term profitability in the hands of all stakeholders. Good advice – neither old nor new – for combating the crisis.

Long live small enterprise, able to hang on in spite of it all, making Italy what it is by opening up every morning and not going home till night. This is the typical idea one has of the small business, but what are they truly like?

The most recent snapshot of Italian small enterprise has been taken by Giulio Sapelli – economist, economic historian and a university instructor with experience working in many businesses – in his book Elogio della piccolo impresa (In praise of small enterprise), a concise work of just over a hundred pages and which unites business theory and history to draw a bitterly realistic portrait of the small-scale manufacturer in Italy – businesses often doomed to be crushed by an economy that has no room for them, but which still manage to reinvigorate themselves by taking advantage of unexpected resources and an extraordinary culture of enterprise.

Beginning with a theoretical overview mixed with testimonials from businesspeople in a range of industries, Sapelli then looks into a number of key aspects such as the role of the business owner’s family, relations with banks and with government (as delays in payment loom), and the contribution of youth (with generational shifts being a determinant factor for small manufacturers), all up and down the Italian peninsula where these businesses have made history. In the book, Sapelli describes the characteristics of small-scale manufacturing in Italy today: “It is based on people and so an trust, on the unending flexibility that families and individuals are capable of in the face of countless missteps. And this is why we are seeing a sort of homeostasis with the market and politics, which our social construct forms and reforms in the midst of a vital economy and other contexts. But this is not growth because it is something that is created prior to and outside of the marketplace. Certainly, it acts within the marketplace, but it defends itself from the market in the face of attacks on its individual and family makeup. It seeks to survive. Of course, it could grow, but then it would no longer be small enterprise.”

Both theory and practice through numerous experiences as told by the business owners themselves. The result is a breath-taking race through recent Italian industrial history, looking at businesses both inside and out, as well as the risks of the present and the challenges of the future.

Elogio della piccola impresa

Giulio Sapelli

Il Mulino, 2013 (in Italian)