A recently published book about HR widens practices and horizons in an area that is key to enterprises

Working women and men are the essential resources for success. In the past, companies used to “manage” these resources, while today they aim to “enhance” them through appropriate approaches. Le 5 lenti dell’HR (The five lenses of HR), a recently published book by Alessandro Rimassa, revolves around these tangle of topics.

The work is based on an observation: “Staff management” has been seen as a mere secondary, auxiliary function for a long time, only good for some things and for some people, whose support role mostly lacked really quantifiable goals. Then the concept of “HR manager” arose and developed into a more poignant Chief People Officer and People & Culture Manager. As designations evolved, so did the tasks and features of a “Head of staff”. A change in functions and culture that needs to be explored and properly understood, and that, to gain a better insight, can be articulated into a more defined path: from the management of recruitment and dismissals to caring for people in the workplace.

Starting from all this, Rimassa highlights how those at the head of an organisation need people in order to actualise their strategy and grow the business, but, above all, need to build a “people’s strategy”. This is, once again, a cultural change and requires, above all, a reassessment of how complex and challenging the role of those who deal with people is, as well as the fact that HR functions can no longer remain secondary.

Thus, the book proposes to “adopt five different lenses”– individually and more often all together. A design lens, to plan the best product that will meet the needs of the people and the company; a marketing lens, to create unique experiences that encourage employees not only to stay on at a company but also to become its chief representatives; a learning lens, to guide a continuous learning process; a technology lens, to invest in digitisation and information accessibility; a well-being lens, to build working environments where everyone feels at ease and more content, and therefore becomes more productive, finding their own place in both individual and professional terms.

This work by Alessandro Rimassa tries to summarise all this using precise and technical language and as such does not always make for an easy read – this does not detract from its usefulness, however, thought it does require to be read with great attention. A book that can really teach a lot to those who are truly committed to enhance people working in enterprises.

Le 5 lenti dell’HR (The five lenses of HR)

Alessandro Rimassa

Egea, 2023

The CEO of the Bank of Italy provides a clear overview of the past and present of international relationships

Globalisation as something to be first understood and then properly managed, so as not to leave anyone behind and not be overtaken by events. Once more, what is needed are the right tools. This is why “Globalizzazione e frammentazione” (“Globalisation and fragmentation”) is useful to read – a contribution written by Luigi Federico Signorini (CEO of the Bank of Italy) for Geopolitica, geodemografia e il mondo di domani (Geopolitics, geodemographics and the world of tomorrow), event organised by the Polo Universitario delle Scienze Sociali of Florence, held at the beginning of April 2023.

Signorini outlines, in just a few pages, what happened in the last decades, paying particular attention to the economy but also considering other aspects of the global social system. And he immediately starts with a clarification that elucidates the topic: “The word ‘globalisation,’ he explains, “may mean different things in different contexts or depending on alternative viewpoints. Globalisation understood in its widest sense comprises not only economic, but also technological, social, cultural and political aspects; aspects that it is not easy to untangle. At the same time, it has generated – and keeps on generating – criticism, enthusiasm and fear that cannot be ascribed to just one dimension, whether economic, social or technological. That being said, I believe that following the evolution of this process from an economics viewpoint allows to capture some significant aspects that might contribute to the current debate, highlighting – or at least attempting to highlight – the risks of today and the prospects of tomorrow”.

Hence, the CEO of the Bank of Italy provides a broad narration of what happened over the past twenty years, including just a few numbers (which is a merit) yet several considerations that readers will find easy to grasp. Further, he defines some points that are often left neglected. “If we consider the whole of humanity as a single community,” he emphasises, “the decrease in inequality achieved in the last decades has actually been extraordinary and the contribution that globalisation made to this phenomenon is undeniable. Yet, the evolution of inequality within countries, especially advanced countries is, to say the least, much more controversial”.

Thus, the globalisation defined by Signorini is a non-linear, non-homogeneous one, though he provides readers with the right elements required to understand and assess the situation, up to our present day, marked by the unexpected eruption of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

As such, Signorini’s contribution not only represents an excellent example of what a clear analysis should be, but also a key tool to comprehend what is happening around us. To be read and retained.

Globalizzazione e frammentazione (“Globalisation and fragmentation”)

Luigi Federico Signorini

Geopolitica, geodemografia e il mondo di domani event, Polo Universitario delle Scienze Sociali, Florence, 5 April 2023

And so, the ship sails on – to transpose the vivid metaphor from the title of one of Federico Fellini’s exemplary film to real life. In spite of everything. In spite of inefficient bureaucracy and slow and warped judicial practices weighing it down. In spite of the rust that’s slowing down our productive gears – as Italy continues to lag behind in European ranks. In spite of a precarious feeling permeating the employment sphere, especially disheartening the younger generations and women (as President Sergio Mattarella aptly reminded us in his speech on 1 May, International Workers’ Day). In spite of a public debt that keeps on ticking up – also in relation to the Gross Domestic Product – and continues to exert a worrying pressure on Italy’s vulnerable condition as well as on its social, and therefore political, balance.

The ship sails on all the same, as the latest GDP data attests, showing a rise of 0.5% in the first quarter of 2023 – more than was expected and better than that of France and Germany – and sufficient to drive up this year’s growth to 0.8%, with a chance of reaching a satisfactory 1% by the end of 2023 (higher than the alarming predictions made by the IMF and the Bank of Italy).

“Favourable winds are blowing and steering the course of the Italian economy”, comments the Centro Studi Confindustria research centre, likewise pleased with a drop in gas prices that is “bolstering the confidence” of people and enterprises, as well as contributing to the reduction of inflation (which is nevertheless still high, with negative consequences on purchasing power and thus on the quality of life of millions of families).

According to ISTAT, this GDP growth is pretty much reliant on all factors involved, from domestic demand and export to manufacturing and services (starting with tourism).

Now, the key question is, “How do we keep on growing?” On newspaper Il Foglio (30 April), Dario Di Vico rightly warns us not to squander the opportunities arising from investments generated by the PNRR (Italian recovery and resilience plan) and not to scatter resources by implementing tax cuts and redistributive benefits for particular social classes. Rather, we should target, through discerning policies, the material and digital infrastructures of which Italy is still in dire need of (education and training, healthcare and hospitals, railways, ports and telecommunication networks, including investments in 5G, regarding which the government continues to drag its feet).

This is the crucial issue that both government and political and social forces must prove to be able to competently tackle, so as to also consolidate Italy’s leading role within the EU context (also closing the chapter on the ESM, whose failed ratification of the ESM damages and undermines Italy’s credibility).

The GDP growth experienced at the beginning of 2023 brings back to the fore those comparisons – already widely discussed – between the extraordinary dynamism exhibited by the Italian economy in 2021 and 2022, during which the GDP rose of almost 11%, and that of its golden era, the booming 1950s and 1960s. Such a performance was largely due to those companies that invested, innovated and conquered their place on the international markets, companies that fully exploited the opportunities generated by new digital technologies as well as by the smart and effective “Industry 4.0” fiscal stimulus.

A lesson that’s still valid today. Indeed, we need to facilitate the environmental and digital twin transition, which several companies and whole production chains are already embracing, and the government should reward the most proactive economic actors.

After all, there’s plenty of economics literature explaining how to do it, as minister Giorgetti is well aware of. Moreover, actual tangible proposals are being made by territorial entrepreneurial association Confindustria, regional associations more deeply involved in development processes – from Assolombarda to the Unione Industriali Torino – and organisations in the Emilia and Veneto regions, as well as professional associations (related to mechatronics, avionics, chemical, pharmaceutical, agrifood, etc.).

What do companies need, then, in order to keep on driving sustainable development, employment, wealth and well-being, change? It’s always the same answer:

they need Europe – European industrial and tax policies, shared European decisions concerning raw material, safety and defence. They need a Europe not overpowered by “Atlanticism” – however important the special relations built on alliance and shared values and interests we have with the United States – but able to drive better competitiveness than China, India, and the other global protagonists, from South America to Africa.

Companies need people, and therefore long-term training schemes and qualified (or at least skilled) human resources, as well as smart immigration policies.

They need political and cultural decisions that will strengthen and revive the concept of “Made in Italy” throughout the world (going beyond the platitudes and provincial stereotypes depicting the “typical” Italian people). As such, they need international and cultural policies able to enhance Italy’s extraordinary distinguishing feature: a “polytechnic culture” that blends humanities and sciences, an aptitude for “beauty” and an attitude for high-tech innovation.

Essentially, companies need long-term certainties in order to invest and consolidate their competitiveness, as well as a fiscal stimulus promoting productivity (tied to salaries and performance bonuses, so as to significantly improve employees’ purchasing power). And, moreover, they need strong support in order to withstand the expansion of open markets and effective competitiveness (thus, ultimately, not having to capitulate to corporations and protected businesses, as the ongoing issue concerning beach concessions illustrates).

Confindustria, aware that boundaries can be overcome (through productive public spending) and opportunities seized, is right in reiterating that the public debt must be tackled and progressively reduced – just as the reforms to the new EU Stability and Growth Pact indicate. This would stave off risky negative assessments by international rating agencies and large global financial operators, which may increase the costs of loans to finance the public debt and thus decrease the resources available to public services and for development investments (indeed, Goldman Sachs’s recent doubtful assessments of Italian bonds are setting off some alarm bells).

Thus: the “Italian ship” sails on, to everyone’s satisfaction, though it does so amidst shallows and rocks, in treacherous waters, and it can’t afford to make any mistakes.

(photo Getty Images)

One of the many documents that reconstruct the history of Industrie Pirelli is a Diploma of Honour dated 1894. The first diploma of its kind, it was made out to “Signori Pirelli & C.” by the Esposizioni Riunite di Milano for “The bold and unique Italian initiative in the cables industry”. It was followed by a long series of awards and certificates obtained by the company for its participation in trade fairs and exhibitions, but also in sports races and competitions. Lithographic prints on fine paper, of various sizes, measuring up to 50 x 70 cm, the diplomas are often adorned with decorations or drawings, some of them signed. In the 1920s, a Liberty (Art Nouveau) and Art Deco style dominated, as can be seen in Diploma no. 1447, which was awarded for the company’s participation in the second Eritrean Trade Fair, in 1925. It is signed by Giulio Casanova, a Bolognese architect and artist specialised in ornamental decoration. The style also appears in the one signed by G. Valerio, issued to Dopolavoro Pirelli for its second place in the Donatello football cup, in 1928.

Several diplomas were created in the early 1930s by artists and illustrators who had taken up engraving by collaborating with L’Eroica magazine, which was founded in La Spezia in 1911. Publio Morbiducci designed diploma no. 1643, which was awarded at the Tripoli Trade Fair in 1930. Adalberto Migliorati created diploma of merit no. 1700, which was given to Alberto Pirelli at the Milan International Foundry Exhibition of 1931. And Francesco Fortunato Gamba put his name to the diploma dated 1932, which was handed to Società Italiana Pirelli as a founding member of the Casa di Redempzione Sociale of the Compagnia di San Paolo in Niguarda, Milan.

The diplomas certifying the company’s participation in the 1934 and 1935 trade fairs in Padua were created by the painter Antonio Menegazzo, known as Amen. An illustrator and poster designer from Padua, he devoted himself to painting in the post-war period before emigrating to South America and the United States, where he achieved fame as a painter who was much loved by American film stars. “Amen” was also the artist behind an advertisement for tyre paint made by Gumax, probably a company owned by Pirelli, as the enormous painted Stella Bianca tyre, now in the Salce Collection in Treviso, would appear to suggest. Among the names that often crop up in Pirelli advertising, there are also those of Manlio Parrini, who created the diplomas for the aeronautical show at the Fiera di Milano, and Armando Pomi, who put his name to the diploma that went to Dopolavoro Pirelli, which came sixth in the second category at the Torneo E. Massei, in 1931.

The names of two Belgian artists also appear prominently in the collection of diplomas: Antoine “Anto” Carte and Louis Buisseret designed two Grand Prix diplomas that were given out respectively at the 1930 Exposition Internationale in Antwerp and the Brussels International Exposition in 1935.

These precious documents testify to the company’s successes, and to its long-standing connections with the world of art and illustration.

The reissue of a classic of economic theory provides the chance to review market and production

The market as the expression of “mutual assistance” in meeting “reciprocal needs”, with business transactions seen as relationships rather than conflicts and “public happiness” as the end goal of a (good) economy. An economy attentive to people is, basically, a civil economy. Current themes that we find – and rediscover – in an economic debate from a few centuries ago, written by eminent forerunner Antonio Genovesi, whose Lezioni di economia civile (Lessons in civil economy) have recently been reissued.

Genovesi, an eclectic philosopher from Naples, can rightly be considered one of the founders of modern economics. Forgotten by too many and for too long, Genovesi was the first, in Europe, to hold a professorship in economics (established in Naples in 1754) and his lessons have shaped this work (so much so that it is subdivided into two parts, i.e. first and second semesters).

The economy is thus scrutinised and explained from a viewpoint similar, but not exactly alike, to that of pre-eminently classic economic thought such as that of Adam Smith, who wrote his The wealth of nations around the same time. The similarity lies in Genovesi sharing with Smith the same critical views of the feudal world and the conviction that the market should contribute to building a freer and more egalitarian world. Their opinions, however, differ in that while the Scottish thinker holds a pessimistic view of humanity, which he saw as moulded by individual self-interest (the common good as entrusted to the market’s “invisible hand”), the Neapolitan scholar was persuaded that an individual is determined by the balance of two forces: self-interest and social support – in essence, Genovesi believed that an individual is shaped by relationships conducive to reciprocity. In other words, Smith only saw the selfish side of humanity while Genovesi saw its relational one.

Lessons are based on this premise, and deal not only with market, exchanges, profits, prices and much more, but also expand to include civil life, its rules, its civil virtues, up to the definition of ”common goods” as the foundation of society, and something for which the economy must strive.

The reissue of Lessons, which includes a comprehensive essay by Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, allows us to appreciate, in our own era, an economic vision conceived in the 18th century yet even more relevant today. In the first pages, Genovesi writes how “in an educated and polite society, studies in civil economics are useful to all social classes”. Genovesi’s work is superb, a book to be read and reread knowing that we can all learn from him, which is indeed a great opportunity.

Lezioni di economia civile (Lessons in civil economy)

Antonio Genovesi

Vita e Pensiero, 2023

A thesis debated at the University of Padua unambiguously deals with two controversial and much discussed topics

Development that is mindful of the environment and the role of enterprises within the territory and social system in which they operate. Two very (and increasingly) important and well-known (though perhaps not sufficiently explored) issues. Indeed, as it happens with all great notions nowadays: everyone talks about them but without going into sufficient depth. In order to properly understand such topics, effective overviews such as the research thesis written by Lorenzo Visentini, debated at the University of Padua, Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences and Applied Psychology, come in handy.

Entitled “The evoluzione della sostenibilità nei processi economici” (“The evolution of sustainability in economic processes”), Visentini’s work offers indeed a candid overview of topics related to sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, as well as their interrelations.

The study rests on the notion that “sustainability, not only in environmental terms, is a theme increasingly at the heart of day-to-day life for people, companies and enterprises. The latter, in particular, tend to be more involved in the debate, especially since being sustainable is no longer a goal but a starting point in order to be competitive on the market”. To tackle the debate on environmental and social compatibility of enterprises, as well as their related responsibilities, Visentini first begins by looking at the concept of sustainable development and, in a subsequent chapter, at corporate social responsibility, before examining them from the perspective of the changes currently affecting the business world. What arises is a picture highlighting the features of topics that generate heated debates, often controversial yet always stimulating and valuable.

Visentini succeeds in crystallising complex and contentious themes for his readers – themes that also affect corporate management and culture – and thus his research work represents an excellent guide on their current state of play.

L’evoluzione della sostenibilità nei processi economici (“The evolution of sustainability in economic processes”)

Lorenzo Visentini

Thesis, University of Padua, Department of Philosophy, Social Science, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology, Master’s Degree in Continuing Education Sciences, 2023

Here it is: the 61st edition of the Milan Design Week, scheduled as always for mid-April – more crowded, more dynamic and further abounding in events and business opportunities with every passing year. The stage of one of the most important global appointments devoted to furnishing, with exhibitions at the Salone del Mobile in Fiera fair, as well as Fuorisalone events that, nowadays, span across twenty neighbourhoods – from the Brera and Tortona central “districts” to the lively suburbs on the outskirts of Lambrate.

And here they are – unique concepts blending “design culture” and “product culture”, arising from an ever intensifying dialogue whose identity is increasingly defined by old and new international leading design figures and manufacturing companies, which – in the Lombardy region and especially in Milan and Brianza – also boast outstanding feats of engineering: indeed, the “top-of-the-range” furnishing that catches the eye of the most sophisticated clientèle in New York and Shanghai also features metal hinges that ensure perfect performance over time.

“Grabby Milan”, summarises la Repubblica (18 April), referring to the fact that “events, exhibitions, celebrities, show rooms and areas have never been as profuse” as during this Design Week. Here are the figures: 1,200 events, 1,962 exhibitors, 327,000 expected visitors, of which 65% coming from abroad, with a substantial American and Chinese presence (last here they amounted to 262,000 visitors), generating €223.2 million – 37% more than the previous edition.

Milan attracting talent and business, then. Milan as the focal point of one of the most competitive ‘Made in Italy’ sectors. And yet, amidst this vortex of great events ranging from furnishing to fashion, Milan is nonetheless showing some cracks – more noticeable to its inhabitants than its international guests – that betray the presence of some hardship and tension concealed behind its “thousand lights”, raising fears about a possible fall, over a medium to long period, from its great economic and social heights. In fact, as concisely emphasised by newspaper Corriere della Sera in a leading article by Dario Di Vico on the Milan Furniture Fair (17 April): “While we celebrate the virtues of beauty, the shadow of a city that is losing its inclusive nature looms increasingly larger”.

Let’s attempt to better understand the situation, while remaining aware that “events follow a sinuous course” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty) and that the distinguishing feature of most dynamic metropolises is precisely that their growth is steeped in contrasts and contradictions, rifts and conflicts, and that it’s down to politicians and public administrations – as well as to a civil society’s feeling of social sensibility – to devise and implement reforms and remedies to resolutely smooth out edges and rough patches.

Let’s look at some more figures, then, so as to gain an informed view of this phenomenon: the Italian furnishing industry comprises 16,000 companies and over 125,000 workers, and in 2022 its turnover was of €28.1 billion – an increase of 11% from the previous year, and the Intesa Sanpaolo’s Study and Research Department forecasts that the sector’s growth spanning from 2019 (pre-Covid) to 2025 will amount to a total 42.4%. An extraordinary expansion rate for an industry that makes up 3.4% of the Italian manufacturing sector, an increase that, as well as substantiating Italy’s international reputation, also helps consolidating the perception of high-quality and reliable ‘Made in Italy’ goods all over the world.

60% of Italian enterprises is mostly based in the Lombardy region, followed by Piedmont, Veneto and Emilia Romagna, although we find a significant presence in the south of Italy, too, such as in the Campania and Puglia regions (the “lounge district” in Altamura, for instance). The sector also counts over 20,000 design and services professionals, vigorously driving the creative side of products and materials, as well as a continuously evolving “quality Italian lifestyle” increasingly embraced by the whole world.

Proof of this can be found in the “Design Economy” report curated by the Symbola Foundation, Deloitte Private and PoliDesign (and supported by ADI, the Italian Association for Industrial Design, promoter of “Il Compasso d’Oro” – the Golden Compass Award – the industry’s highest recognition), which illustrates how Italy has now overtaken Germany – its main competitor – as the top country in Europe for number of companies, turnover and workers (Il Sole24Ore, 15 April).

A significant European record, achieved over time and, nowadays, also built on the environmental and social sustainability of manufacturing companies, which benefits both territories and supply chains as well as being a key competitive factor. Ermete Realacci, president of Symbola, explains that: “The identification of sustainable products as better quality products is a formidable drive for the Italian economy. The transition represents a great opportunity. Yet, we need to tackle it by drawing on the country’s strengths. And design is precisely one of them”.

Milan, the capital of such processes, enjoys their advantages and feeds on their development, just like a real global city with an extraordinary ability for blending culture and manufacturing, product design and quality, cutting-edge technologies and aesthetics, scientific research and the humanities, aware of its industrial history while looking to the future.

Sturdy Milan. Attractive Milan. Talented and dynamic Milan.

Yet, is Milan still as inclusive as it always used to be?

A question on which recent criticism has been focusing, criticism by those who do care about Milan’s fate, as well as its economic and social balance – those who are witnessing, with justified alarm, the skyrocketing of living costs, and more especially housing costs.

The property boom, in terms of both purchase and rental, threatens to drive the middle class out of town, together with young working couples, creative talent, students and professors from the city’s ten universities that fuel the “knowledge economy” engine and act as social glue.

And it’s these “great events” that are warping the housing market.

Here are some figures, just to get the idea: between July and December 2022, accommodation searches on Airbnb increased by over 2,000% and during the Milan Furniture Fair the “price trend” of €181 per night doubled, and even tripled, in the “design districts”, rising to over €500 (Corriere della Sera). Under such conditions, the phenomenon of highly profitable “short-term rentals” grows while the market for regular and long-term rentals freezes. Milan becomes an urban space for occasional city users and loses its citizens, and thus its welcoming nature shifts, community values decline and, over time, social deterioration and civic degradation might take over.

A phenomenon that’s been at the centre of public opinion for a long time now, and a topic to which Milan’s public administration, under the lead of mayor Beppe Sala – as well as other municipalities in the metropolitan area – have been paying very much attention.

A situation that’s sparking reflections about the introduction of restrictions on “short-term rentals” (Paris implemented strict constraint measures a long time ago) and the need for policies and urban decisions that take social housing into consideration. With a clear strategic aim: revitalise, in these changing times, the Milanese tradition founded on the strong tie between production and inclusiveness, international economic competitiveness and social support.

As Dario Di Vico believes, Milan “can take back control over its own fate, can figure out how to manage its evolution as a global city by tackling both the old problems and the new issues that inequitable modern times inevitably generate, can reconnect the threads that snapped and mend the social bonds that came undone. However, this entails that those who are able to effectively contribute to this process cannot make the mistake of looking the other way and cynically believe that things will just take care of themselves”.

(photo Getty Images)

A performance is planned for this evening at the Teatro Franco Parenti. The work is a theatre training project entitled “L’umana impresa. La fabbrica degli attori” organised by the Associazione Pier Lombardo in collaboration with the Pirelli Foundation.

Here it is. That’s my machine. I’ve worked on it for over twenty years.” He goes around the calender machine, runs his rough hand over the peeling paint, moves a knob, lifts a lever, strokes a gear… And again he says: “Over twenty years…” He smiles an affectionate sort of smile, as one might when speaking of a friend or a family member. And the memories flood back.

The storage facility is at the back of the old factory on the western outskirts of Settimo Torinese. It has been closed for some years now, its place taken by a new factory with avant-garde architecture, robots and computers, diffused lighting and the highest safety standards: a “beautiful factory”, sustainable and extremely productive. And all the old machines, which bring to mind the twentieth century and old assembly lines in noisy, smoke-filled workshops, are now piled up in a large room, waiting to be scrapped. Ready for the foundry, from which they will emerge as brand-new raw materials for iron and steel. But for the moment, they just summon up memories.

“I first entered the factory in the mid-1980s. A worker. And I learnt quickly: precision, skill, a feeling for the materials, and great care. Working on time. And well.” Fatigue, strength, tensions, conflicts, changes. Work, in any case. And teamwork. “We used to meet up in the shift change room, to hand over the job, explain about some problem with a machine, and calculate production numbers. And to talk about us, about our families, the contract that was to be signed, the prize for achieving production targets.”

Being together, in other words. Thriving, with the satisfaction of a profession that gave not just wages but also pride in a job well done. And this pride remains, even now that everything has been replaced, adopting the rules and rhythms of digital manufacturing. People learn to use and control the machines with an iPad. We meet up, between generations.

“The time has come for the young, for tech engineers. But we, older workers, have experience. So it’s up to us to advise, to teach.”

He talks and remembers and explains. He runs his hand over the roller that the rubber went around. He leans forward and gets up from the operator’s seat, recalling once familiar movements. He has mastered every movement, revealing long-formed habits and care.

“She taught me a lot, she did,” he confides, gazing at the silent, inoperative calender machine, as if it were a person. And he says how machines are not just materials and gears, for they also have a sort of soul. “And the machine, docile, assists him…”, wrote an engineer-poet who loved factories, many years ago.

The worker does not know who that engineer was, and he has never read those pages. But he well understands those words, having learnt from real life experience. “This was my machine…”, he repeats. He bows his head for one last look, and then he turns and walks away.

by Antonio Calabrò

The complex relations between production and culture organisations are analysed in a thesis debated at the University of Padua

Enterprises and culture, entrepreneurs caring for more than just profit, and factories as sites that no longer stand merely for production, struggle and labour, but much more – in other words, corporate patronage, the latest evolution of good production culture, where enterprises stands beside artists and art exhibitions: a phenomenon to be explored and developed. This is why reading “Mecenatismo industriale dall’800 a oggi. Il caso Veneto tra identità storica e comunicazione presente” (“Industrial patronage from the 19th century to today. The Venetian case, amid historic identity and present communication”), is worth reading – a thesis debated by Luca Turato as part of the Master’s in Communication Strategies programme at the University of Padua.

The research work unravels from a question: the concept of patronage has been tied, for a long time, to the relationship between patron and artist, but what happens when enterprises becomes patrons? It then continues by pointing out that – unlike traditional patronage – the relation between enterprise and culture offers several nuances that make for “an interesting research study for the understanding of the terms and purposes of such relationships”.

Thus, Turato begins his work with a historical summary of the relationships between patron and artist, before moving on to an exploration of industrial patronage from the 19th century to today. He then considers the present circumstances of this phenomenon, scrutinising “the cultural industry”, non-profit experiences, the role of grants and that of corporate museums.

Another research layer, explains the author, is then integrated through the analysis of a specific case study – that of Venetian enterprises – based on specific research undertaken by a monitoring body set up by Confindustria Veneto, which carried out a census of industrial patronage in 2016 and in 2022.

Turato’s conclusions are quite enlightening: enterprises that get closer to culture may do so not only for ethical and moral reasons, but also to give concrete form to their social responsibility towards the regions, which can then become the foundation of new relationships between production and social systems.

Mecenatismo industriale dall’800 a oggi. Il caso Veneto tra identità storica e comunicazione presente (“Industrial patronage from the 19th century to today. The Venetian case, amid historic identity and present communication”)

Luca Turato

Thesis, University of Padua, Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies, Department of Historical, Geographical and Ancient Studies, Master’s in Communication Strategies, 2023

A recently published book offers different readings and perspectives of reality

A change of pace in order to keep pace – something that should affect us all, including those entrepreneurs and managers who really want to open up a new horizon for their companies, as we all need to start looking at the world with fresh eyes. This is why reading – with great care – Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world), written by Andrea Graziosi (professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples), proves very useful.

Graziosi’s book takes its cue from two events: on the one hand, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and on the other, the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine. He draws his conclusion by considering, first, the need to review our notions, our categories, and our interpretation of the past, as well as of the present. Covid and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, according to Graziosi, have all of a sudden brought under the spotlight the evolution and the crisis of Western societies and, in the process, have revealed how the categories we grew up with and used to interpret the 20th century – and our own lives – are now obsolete.

In other words, the author considers how much what we consider “Modern”, i.e. the “continuously evolving product of rapid transformation that began in Central-Western Europe about four centuries ago, needs updating – an update closely linked to scientific, technical and economic development”.

The book is subdivided into two distinct parts: the first hundred pages or thereabouts include a careful analysis of the concept of “Modern” and its evolution from World War Two until today, including the end of the farming world, individualism, the fall in birth rates and the extraordinary step forward in life expectancy, but also a decreased vitality in social systems and the coalescence of new reactionary movements, and then the difficult reassembly of plural collectivities in ethnic and racial terms. In the second part, however, Graziosi tackles “issues and prospects” related to the evolution of the notion of “Modern”, a notion that has shaped our lives until recently. Here, the author focuses on what we could do to rescue, through innovation and despite its current crises, a certain kind of Western world and modernity that nonetheless, despite all its flaws, succeeded in advancing freedom and human dignity more than any other known system, and he achieves this by focusing on the project – accomplished yet still ongoing – whose final aim is a united Europe.

Occidenti e Modernità certainly requires some careful reading and, perhaps, even further rereadings as events unfold.

Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world)

Andrea Graziosi

Il Mulino, 2023