An organization or company that wants to improve and strengthen its working environment must be able to create spaces of inclusion that allow the unique activity carried out by each person who works there to flourish and prosper within a common project. Only in this way is it possible to say that ethics becomes the principle around which a company is built, and for this it is essential that it is able to:
- Promote a space where each person can question and evaluate their contribution;
- Stimulate each person's potential/capabilities;
- To develop spaces of freedom and creativity;
- Building trust and equity;
- Caring for each other;
- Generating living communities.
The complexity of the company and its functional and hierarchical organization can introduce a great distance between what is experienced by each person who works there, and the process of composing the different functions that each person performs - alienation is proof of this. The great challenge for a company that takes into account an ethic of generosity is to know to what extent the company allows (or not) those who work there to actively share the uniqueness that comes from the same life experience. Organizational creativity within the company will be greater the more the different interactions between people intensify. Depending on how they interact, their vital force intensifies or atrophies, and this is crucial in a company.
Dialogue and communication are fundamental to company life, but dialogue only manifests itself as common action, in the strong sense of the term, if everyone experiences solidarity in their way of interacting, in other words, the same power of being that comes from life, which is common to all.
Collective action that focuses solely on the objective to be achieved in the functional organization of tasks hides the fact that these tasks only have reality because they are lived by each person. Collective action is only collective if it is experienced as collective, that is, as the fruit of the living interaction of the people who work in the company and who dynamically take charge of all the different tasks and functions they perform, far beyond a merely instrumental performance.
Collective action that is based on the separation of people, in which everyone does their own thing in their own corner, is purely abstract, atomized action that is not based on the experience of actively shared action. For there to be collective action in the strong sense of the term, people need to feel and actually be involved in the process of organizing their different activities and functions.
When the actions carried out by each individual do not develop in a cooperative way, it is because the very reality of their collective action is profoundly modified, and sometimes even perverted, in which association takes place outside of individual subjectivity and becomes merely instrumental and objectified exteriority. The power of common action can only be experienced when people actively articulate with each other and for this to really happen, the conditions must be created for them to be able to live the roles they have to play in a dynamic way, and this will be a decisive role for managers and top management.
However, collective action can be completely devitalized. The way in which each person is called upon to interact with others concerns the way in which the reality of acting in common is experienced, the belief in this action and its possibility of involvement is central, hence the importance of searching for the meaning of what is done. There are ways of acting that weaken people's belief in common action, namely when there is neither dialogue nor sharing, communication is practically non-existent and management is too centralized and hierarchical, where leadership is not seen and experienced as a service, but as an autocratic power.
There is only true collective action when we experience and share, in the very singularity of our different actions, the life that has its original strength in each person's "I can". That's why the role of ethics in the company is to turn the company into a living working environment in which the life of each person who works there is intensified by valuing their uniqueness, through sharing and conviviality that always generates more life.
In my recently released book, "Ethics in Business: An Ontological Perspective", I develop these themes in greater depth.
