Abstract
The paper describes a highly specific Italian action research experience, connected with the trade unions, going through different phases from the 1970s to the present day. The journey is not only a journey through time but also through different approaches. It ranges from the initial experience focusing on health and safety problems at the workplace involving the workers as co-designers of new working environments to today’s search conference experience. For each phase there is a full description and comment on the methods utilised by the research group. The main methodological shift described in the paper is the one from discussion groups, based on Bion’s thinking, to the search conferences, based on Emery’s line of thinking. Both are oriented to the subjectivity of the people involved, although in the discussion group experience the research groups considered the subjectivity of the people involved as the subject of the observation. The researchers’ aim of was to acquire a reliable knowledge of what was at stake and to pass it on to the union that organised the research in order to promote actions. Hence, the action-research circuit is based upon different actors and the process is integrated only from the point of view of the union. In the search conference experience the researchers are involved in a co-design process and so the action-research circuit is really integrated from the researchers’ perspective; there are, of course, multiple perspectives in this case and this opens up epistemological problems that are not discussed in the paper.
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Notes
For example, unlike what has been observed at Comau, where the company management shows that it wants to substitute all the lost values and criteria with the sole value of obedience, in the perspective of building an identity of obedient-worker upon which to found the evaluation and recognition criteria.
For anyone wishing to read about the crisis at Olivetti from a difference standpoint, see the interesting chapter written by Francesco Novara.
The interventions in relation to the question: here they are considered not just from the ideational standpoint, but also from the emotive one.
Published by Rosenberg & Sellier, Turin, 1986
On this specific topic several projects have been performed, in particular an analysis on the participative Zanussi system, an analysis on the industrial relations system at Seabo and at AGAC, both public utilities services companies, based in Bologna and Reggio Emilia, respectively.
The research reports are delivered to all the participants, they are given the time to read them and specific opportunities for discussion are created with the participation of all the organisational levels that are important for the researchers to receive a validation of the performed analysis. Moreover, the reports relate nearly the whole thinking of the interviewees and the discussions occurring within the groups (the phrases and the literal expressions used are reported). This technique allows the group or the individual to clearly recognise him/herself and to clearly identify the contribution provided to the analysis.
A sociological and economic analysis of the new working relations and the new modes of labour organisation increasing shows a multiplicity of time-management practices that, while not existing even in the period when there predominated the Fordist productive and time organisation model, they are now more diffuse, sometimes the subject of regulation and sometimes left to informality.
We mean the flexibility deriving from the interventions on the organisational structure and on the workers, and which thus originates from an elastic organisation that allows for continuous adaptations to the external variances.
Among the most exhaustive studies we can cite the one edited by Belussi, “Nuovi modelli di impresa, gerarchie organizzative ed impresa a rete”, (New company models, organisational hierarchies and network companies)
These considerations derive from a study performed by the University of Modena entitled “Il settore tessile abbigliamento in Emilia Romagna. Cambiamento strutturale e strategie dell’Impresa e del mercato del lavoro”, (The textile-clothing sector in Emilia Romagna. Structural change, company strategies and the labour market’) available at IpL and from Ansaloni and Ballotta, “Innovazione nelle forme e nell’organizzazione del lavoro in agricoltura e nell’industria agroalimentare in Emilia Romagna”, (Innovation in the forms and in the organisation of work in agriculture and in the food industry in Emilia Romagna).
Y. Clot, JY. Rochez Y. Shwartz, cited in Jacquot, 1999
As demonstrated by a study of the French Labour Inspectorate of the Rhone-Alpes region, “La ruée vers l’heure des nouveaux temps modernes”, cited in the report “Trasformazioni del Lavoro e cambiamenti del diritto del lavoro in Europa”, (Transformations in work and changes in labour law in Europe) Rif. DGV/98/776 DGV
As observed by Belussi and Garibaldo (1996) there is no single organisational model and a modality that can be applied tout court, but the best experiences are built up through a mix with original and creative elements of the local culture.
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Mancini, G., Sbordone, F. The history of an Italian action research experience. AI & Soc 18, 175–207 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-003-0275-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-003-0275-9