Ninth Variation
A model of coexistence inspired by the concept of conviviality is central to humanistic management. A historical reference for this model is the Platonic Convivium or Symposium, which must however know how to tackle the current need for living in multiple and simultaneous existential dimensions. A convocational corporation is the ideal context for its realization.

The desire to give greater meaning to one’s existence goes through new forms of conviviality and solidarity. This is confirmed by a survey commissioned by Confesercenti (Federation of Italian Trade, Tourism and Service) and carried out by S3.Studium, entitled The future of consumption in Italy in 2008, directed by Fabiana Cutrano and Stefano Palumbo. Sharing one’s experience of life and consumption will become a priority for an increasing number of people: in consequence, over the next five years, all convivial consumption will generally increase, i.e. things to be shared in company, that creates and strengthens relationships. Consumption characterized by the growth, apart from that of a communicative nature, of the cultural components, “with a consequent social differentiation increasingly hinging on the style symbol (namely on the ability of goods to express the culture, taste and style of the individual)”.

Within the organizational experience, we are also at a similar turning point, marked by the move from decision making to sense making. The downfall of the sole organizational principle, the disintegration of the regulating capacity of the best ways, the infinite development of local organizational policies, and the irrepressible multiplicity of functional viewpoints linked in a network in order to enrich the response to an increasingly demanding external context, have deferred, weakened and frayed the possibilities of automated development in a prescribed sense. Vice versa, they have brought about the growing need to construct new senses (sense making), in a retroactive process, taking form only after the organizational action had developed during an experience in which, at this point, first one plays the game and them asks what rules were used. To arrive at this, the practice is a “conversation of humanity”, in which narration has a fundamental role, as have all of the distinguishing abilities related to it. Meaning and memory are not just “a photographic plate”, but also a continuous processing of the past and the actions that developed therein: meaning emerges from the narrations of which men have been the authors or, more precisely, the singers and poets. The awareness that man reasons by stories is thus fundamental. Not that narration was of little importance in the past. It is just that it was a monotonous narration, one-way and predictable. The narrative schema was composed of fixed structures. While humanistic management lives in free and dynamic narrations. But, more than anything, a single representation is no longer sufficient. As many representations are needed as there are “corporate channels”. The collective memory lives on traditional accounts, myths, sedimented values, but also channel surfing. The news is made up of episodes that capture the public’s attention to the point that they are forgotten a week after and substituted by others. The writers of soap operas, for example, have understood that the only way to avoid channel surfing is to capture the audience and “do the channel surfing yourself”. Thus, everything is in continuous movement in soap opera episodes: they sleep with everyone and then they marry everyone. The same thing happens in corporations: mergers, changes and managerial seat swapping. The typical soap opera screenplay offers a more useful criterion of interpretation than many other self-important and “scientific” schemas of corporate evolutionary dynamics. If this is true, to give value to the contributions of individuals, to increase skills, creative narratives are necessary, new stories or that, as in the soap operas, seem new ever day, even though they have intrinsic rituals. There narrations, as well as being written, must also be seen, listened to and experienced. They are necessary for all the colours, the sounds, the scents and the flavours of the world to remotivate, to underline ability and to activate talents.

Naturally, for this to happen, adequate structural conditions are also needed. A suitable context for developing meaningful narrative is that defined by the convivial or convocational corporation. Convocation is an active invitation; it is the stirring of the other’s discursive initiative, starting from the recognition on principle of its authority as something else. It is the development of dialogical relations, which take charge not only of usefully employing a given relationship, but also of constructing/reconstructing the premises. Making the organized work cognitive, finally sanctioned with the advent of the Internet, renders this way of understanding the organization even more plausible. In the corporate symposium of the 21^st century, the general model for the creation and diffusion of knowledge is the network relationship, in which the actors form a connection with each other, via shared tools, in specific communications networks.

However, none of this must overshadow the significance of face-to-face contact. Since cognitive work is not concentrated in designated physical places, tendentially separate from society, it is difficult to imagine that, as such, it can act as a kernel of processes of social aggregation. It is significant that the possibility of teleconferencing has not caused the end of business trips. There is a close functional relationship between virtual community and factual meeting place. The virtual ones are not community but simple connections – not infrequently manic – if they do not generate or are not complementary to direct contact, to side-by-side work.

Go to Intro