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Innovation, Market and Society

Innovation, Market and Society

28 Feb 2012 | Non categorizzato

Professor Bruni, in your an article published in Nuova Umanità you offer a very unique description of the entrepreneur. Can you explain where the figures of the investor, manager and speculator have become confused with that of the entrepreneur innovator? Much has to do with the financial revolution that has affected the economy (praxis and theory) over the past twenty years . . . due to globalisation. The West has slowed its growth, but has not wanted to reduce its consumption. With new technical instruments, creative finance then promised a growth phase in consumption without growth in revenue. The result was that many entrepreneurs were transformed into speculators, thinking of making profit through speculation, stepping outside of their traditional sector and calling. A second reason was the standardization of business cultures on the trail of a strong force in Anglo Saxon culture. The European and Italian tradition of business administration were characterized by a strong attention to the communitarian and social dimension, because of the presence of a Catholic-communitarian paradigm. This, along with the primary causes of the financial revolution, caused managers to assume an ever more central role in the big corporations, at the expense of traditional entrepreneurs. Nowadays there is an enormous need to launch a new season of entrepreneurship, if we want to come out of this crisis, and reduce the burden of speculators. Beginning with Schumpter’s theory of economic development, you describe the market as a “righteous relay” between innovation and imitation (. . .) but the profit, for the innovator, is essentially limited to the amount of time that elapses between the innovation and the imitation. What can be done to avoid that such a “righteous relay” will generate reciprocal damage between businesses?     Here politics plays an important role and, in general, the institutions, which, through appropriate regulations to protect  competition and the proper functioning of the markets, see to it that the relay is virtuous and not vicious. But a co-essential role is carried out by civil society, the citizen-consumers who with their buying choices must reward those businesses that have acted ethically, and “punish” (by changing businesses) those with predatory and aggressive attitudes. The market functions and produces fruits for society when it has a proper relationship with the institutions and with civil society. Finally you outline the characteristics of “civil competition” in which competition is not played out, Company A against Company B to avoid Client C, but on the basis of Company A for Client C and Company B for Client C. Could you explain the positive effects that this different way of seeing competition produces? What examples of “civil competition” can you give us? In the first place it helps to give a different tone to market trading. Our reading and descriptions of the world are very important for the behaviors. If I read the market to be a battle that must be won, when I go to trade on the market, or also at work, I tend to approach it with a mental and spiritual attitude that very much influences the results that I obtain and the happiness (or unhappiness) that I experience. If instead I see the market as a grand network of cooperative relations, I promotes creation of relational goods even during “economic” moments of my life, and individual and collective happiness grows. Moreover, reading the market as cooperation is closer to the vision of the great classical figures of economic history (Smith, Mill, Einaudi and, nowadays, Sen or Hirschman) and it is closer to what millions of people experience every day, working and exchanging not only in the field of social economy.

Innovation, Market and Society

Work and the rediscovery of a social awareness

20 Feb 2012 | Non categorizzato

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“In the name of God who created them, human beings must be aware of their sociality, of their social nature, otherwise they are not completely human. In fact, another of their characteristics, according to the Bible, besides communion with God, besides being required to support themselves and dedicate themselves to work, is sociality – the interweaving of human relationships. We know what sociality means for God. It means to love others as ourselves. As ourselves, not less. Indeed, to love them with a love which, since it comes from more than one person, becomes reciprocal; and, because it is inspired by Christ, generates unity. Herein lies the meaning of what we stressed, namely that we walk through life together being one heart and one soul. Our collective spirituality, derived from the Gospel, not only can contribute to, but can be of vital importance in finding solutions to the present problems of the working world. In this spirituality, every person in the working world (from the owner to the administrator, from the director to the technicians, from office workers to laborers) in order to build solidarity with others, must love everyone in such a way that he or she becomes “one” with the others. In this spirituality, mutual love leads to reciprocal understanding, to sharing the fatigue of the others, to making our own the problems of the others and to seeking solutions together. It leads us to find common agreements for new forms of organizations in the working world. All come to share and participate together in the means of production, and in the fruits and profits. With what consequences? If, previously, for example, for individual laborers, industrialized work was synonymous with being crushed and deprived of their personality, with being unable to see the fruits of their intelligence and efforts, now because they consider their own all that regards the others as well, work cannot help but take on meaning, indeed a stimulating meaning. What is needed, therefore, is a new … vast social awareness. Indeed, since the economy of each country is so linked to that of other nations, the situation requires a “global” social awareness as the Pope has also affirmed. Who is capable of helping individuals to fully achieve this and to regard themselves as members of one great human family… “without denying man’s origins and the membership of his family, his people and his nation, or the obligations arising there from…”?[1] Who can accomplish this after human beings have shattered their union with God through sin, thus seriously compromising over and over again, communion with other brothers and sisters and therefore human solidarity? Who can do it? Only Christ can – he who is so often relegated to our private life. Only his supernatural and universal love – so often considered as something limited to people’s prayer life and is instead the indispensable leaven for the whole of human existence in all its expressions. It is only with his love that we can build confidently a world of lasting justice and peace. As far as work is concerned, it is only with his love that selfishness and hatred – often considered the law of social life – can be eliminated. It is with his love that working communities will witness how unity rather than conflict can truly improve work. With his love the life of society itself will not be conceived as a struggle against someone but as a commitment to grow together. Therefore only a new civilization based on love will be capable of offering a solution to the complex problems of the world of work.” Chiara Lubich, Rome, 3 June 1984

[1] John Paul II, Address to the International Labor Organization in Geneva. June 15, 1982, n. 10.

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