RISULTATI RICERCA

This paper pays tribute to Paulo Freire a hundred years after his birth in September 1921. It outlines a global scenario against which his ideas and insights can be measured: Neoliberalism, a global pandemic, fake news, a still Darwinian world at the heart of a North-South imperial politics, a culture of militarisation, a sense of fatalism where the present highlights the limits of what is possible, the ideology of ideological death and planetary devastation leading to the ever presence of people striving to move from South to South and South to North to eke out a living still, for many, on the margins of society. Freire’s never ending politics of hope and the urge to dream the possible dream rooted in one’s existential situation, his emphasis on a politics of solidarity and from below through social movements and the ever important pedagogy of the question, problematization, constitute an antidote to what is awry in this ‘grand and terrible world’. Praxis (action resulting from reflection on previous action), to be distinguished from mere practice (prassi in Italian - habitual behaviour) and dialectical thinking, lie at the heart of Freire’s antidote in these times.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate new trajectories in staff recruitment and training that could be strategic for Italian SMEs in improving their human resource skills and successfully facing the technological and organisational challenges accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. To achieve this, qualitative research was carried out from March to October 2021 involving Italian experts of the SME world. Findings have shown that the structuring/formalisation of recruitment and training activities may be useful for SMEs to deal with the economic downturn begun in 2020. These processes require the implementation of shared initiatives involving the wider participation of the employer associations, unions, local institutions and other social actors.

The lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced millions of workers to experiment with new forms of remote work using digital devices in unexpected ways. Many researchers have described this mass experience above all from the point of view of the advantages and disadvantages for the company and of the positive and negative aspects for the worker. But the changes in technology and organization associated with remote work have not been examined in depth. This article studies technological and organizational changes and their connection with the autonomy and participation of workers. From the qualitative investigations of five cases it emerges that in fact remote work has allowed a partial increase in autonomy and a consequent development of teamwork. It was perceived as a growth in the direct participation of workers which in turn has strengthened innovation. However, differences emerged between the companies. In cases of low level of innovation, team development has remained within the functional areas and technological innovation has concerned the communication platforms and improvements in existing systems. Instead, in cases of high level of innovation, the teams have developed the cross-functional dimension and the use of 4.0 technologies has been intensified.

The spreading of remote work in Italy following the Coronavirus pandemic has brought numerous challenges that have prompted trade unions to include this form of work as a matter of collective bargaining. The article aims to study unions’ everyday bargaining practices, by investigating how the main union guide-lines on remote work have been implemented during the pandemic. Based on empirical data collected in Veneto and starting from the perspective of union officials and representatives, the article sheds light on unions’ bargaining practices concerning access to remote work, remote workers’ income, working time, and workloads. The analysis permits us to stress that union practitioners adapt the strategies of their union organisations to the specific sectors and workplaces in which they are embedded, according to the specific needs of the workforce they represent and to how they perceive their own bargaining power. We argue that the different variables - geographical level, sector, previous bargaining experience, unionists' ideological position, perception of their own bargaining power - intersect with each other, producing a variable geometry of bargaining practices with regard to remote work.

In Italy corporate restructuring crises are traditionally managed by companies through communication to the workers' representatives about the negative impacts on production structures and on workplaces. Therefore, the trade union representatives adopt defensive methods focused on minimizing the impacts on employment. The role of representatives is subordinate to that of managers who have the goal of making decisions and minimizing the interference of trade unions. Workers also play a secondary role in supporting the union in the negotiation process. In the two corporate cases studied, instead, the possibility emerges for trade union representatives to play a proactive role and to collaborate with management in an agreed solution to the crisis that is more favourable to workers. To arrive at these positive solutions, the fundamental role is played by organizational and technological innovation that significantly improves company performance, as supported by the direct participation of workers. In these cases, coordination between the factors at stake is ensured by the ability of the actors to manage a risky and complex innovative process in a shared way.

L’attivazione corporea ed emotiva di fronte al dolore è stata collegata al desiderio di aiutare l’altro. Basandosi su precedenti ricerche di neuroestetica, e sul concetto di Conoscenza Relazionale Estetica nel quadro della terapia della Gestalt, la ricerca ha indagato le reazioni di 29 individui di fronte a immagini di dolore e sentimenti neutri, in rappresentazioni artistiche e in foto di attori. Gli individui sono stati testati con SCL-90-R, MAIA e IRI. I risultati confermano l’ipotesi che il desiderio di aiutare è connesso con l’attivazione corporea-emozionale, con la capacità di sentire il proprio corpo e tuttavia tenere l’emozione dell’altro. L’attivazione corporeo-emotiva è stata mostrata solo nella rappresentazione artistica del dolore. Una possibile spiegazione è che il "movimento" che attiva una persona di fronte al dolore è meglio espresso nelle immagini artistiche.

In questo articolo, estratto dal suo ultimo libro, Erving Polster sottolinea un aspetto parti-colare, che caratterizza l’interazione tra paziente e terapeuta: l’incanto. Scaturisce dalla sensa-zione che la persona prova nell’esplorare la propria esperienza di vita mentre il terapeuta la ascolta con un interesse che va oltre la semplice attenzione. Dopo averne delineato il significa-to, l’Autore offre due esempi illuminanti - uno tratto dalla propria esperienza formativa, l’altro relativo a un lavoro clinico da lui condotto - per poi approfondire l’incanto che si sperimenta davanti a "testimoni", nelle situazioni di gruppo. Nei Life Focus Community Groups - l’ultimo contributo che Polster ha offerto alla dimensione sociale della psicoterapia -l’esperienza dell’incanto è data proprio dal concentrarsi su un unico tema con un senso di appartenenza re-ciproca.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the developments in co-determination at workplace level as well as at the level of supervisory boards during and after the financial and economic crisis of 2007-2009. In Germany, co-determination is not only considered a way to develop industrial democracy, but also a way of increasing the efficiency and competitiveness of companies. Various studies show that co-determination contributes to the competitiveness of companies and that co-determined companies have also recovered from the financial and economic crisis more quickly. Although co-determination has a positive influence on the productivity, innovative capacity and competitiveness of companies, there is a growing number of companies that put in place strategies aimed at avoiding co-determination. However, despite the reduced spread of co-determination the German participation model has survived so far and is still part of the key institutional settings of German industrial relations. This is also due to the fact that the German co-determination system has always shown a remarkable capacity to adapt to new developments. The most recent examples in this regard are the Works Council Modernisation Act and the Act on Corporate Due Diligence in Supply Chains. That also means that basically co-determination has proved to be a stable yet flexible institution. Today, employee participation thus appears to be a helpful instrument for successfully managing transformation processes.

The present article shall analyse how organizations can activate stakeholder participation processes. Specifically, this article examines select participatory projects that were identified, developed and implemented within a network of Italian social cooperatives focusing on work integration. An area, therefore, in which worker participation is geared at pursuing explicit social objectives whilst enhancing innovative capacity, thus improving overall competitiveness and economic sustainability. Within this context, the paper focuses in particular on the organizational processes and schemes that promote stakeholder empowerment and active involvement, beyond the existence of formal governance structures and management bodies. The paper is structured in two parts. The first draws from the literature to analyse the importance of participation within companies, focusing on social enterprises, and discusses the structural and procedural features of inclusive governance. The second part examines the experience of the CAUTO network of social cooperatives in Italy and its participatory practices, paying particular attention to the key features of the organizational context in which they arose, the project structure that characterized them, and their replicability in other contexts.

Scopo di questo articolo è dimostrare come l’es rappresenti un importante fondamento teo-rico dell’attuale psicoterapia della Gestalt, orientata alla relazione. Gli autori di Gestalt Therapy ridefiniscono il concetto psicoanalitico di es in un’ottica fenomenologica, considerandolo sia come la fase iniziale del processo di contatto, sia come un particolare modo del processo stes-so. Inteso in quest’ultima accezione, l’es è il funzionamento del sé nel rilassamento e nella non integrazione. Nel lavoro clinico centrato sull’individuo, il funzionamento es del sé è alla base del continuum di consapevolezza. In un’ottica orientata invece alla relazione, il funzionamento es costituisce per il terapeuta uno strumento di conoscenza del campo. Il funzionamento es, inoltre, favorisce una condivisione intima tra paziente e terapeuta, che somiglia a una forma di meditazione a due e rappresenta un’apertura della psicoterapia alla dimensione spirituale.

Questo scritto nasce da un interesse per la dimensione clinica e comunitaria dell’espe¬rienza umana e da uno sguardo alla psicopatologia vista nel riverbero del vivere sociale. L’esperienza del rapporto tra pari e la dimensione orizzontale sono considerati la chiave di lettura del para-digma fraterno e occasione per superare il paradigma narcisistico. Il fraterno è visto non solo come esperienza specifica della vita familiare ma come richiamo al vivere comunitario e sociale di un oggi bisognoso di nuovi strumenti dello stare insieme. Le autrici descrivono il contesto sociale in cui si inserisce il tema della fraternità approfondendone le numerose sfaccettature. Su questo sfondo, analizzano il tema dal punto di vista della psicoterapia della Gestalt, sofferman-dosi sul concetto di intenzionalità di contatto fraterno e sulla dimensione orizzontale nella clini-ca.

L’articolo riporta la trascrizione di un dialogo tra Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb e Momcilo Jankovic sul tema de "Il lutto nei bambini". Nella prima parte, Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb sottolinea come l’intenzionalità di contatto è alla base di ogni relazione per la psicoterapia della Gestalt, che utilizza uno sguardo fenomenologico ed estetico per sostenere nel bambino quello che funziona, che è vitale e ha bisogno di riconoscimento. Le riflessioni di Momcilo Jankovic sottolineano la necessità di integrare sempre di più il mondo medico e quello psicologico. Egli descrive il suo approccio con i bambini malati sottolineando l’importanza di "esserci" per l’altro in maniera sincera e serena, con la capacità di costruire un dialogo basato sul rispetto del bambino e dei suoi tempi di assimilazione della malattia.

Worker-recovered firms represent a new type of cooperatives, created through workers’ buyouts (WBOs), whereby workers buy the property of the firm to re-structure, rescue or convert it. In Italy, recovery is supported by a vast legislative apparatus (such as the Marcora Law) and by the cooperative world. This paper reflects on the processes of resistance to closure and the resulting job loss that al-low experimenting with new organizational practices within a different logic of management, such as solidarity and job protection. Presenting a case study with an inductive chain of reasoning we identify the articulation of institutional opportunities present in the Italian context and highlight which organizational processes are generated in the recovery and conversion of a WBO firm characterized as a "hybrid organization". The paper first focuses on the Italian context with reference to existing secondary data and published material, clarifying why this organizational transformation must be explained within an institutional framework. It then outlines the theoretical background that allowed us to explore the organizational functioning of WBOs through the framework of institutional theory. Finally, we present the results and conclude with a discussion of our empirical and theoretical contribution.