ENTI 2010 – Strasbourg

François SILVA, professor, director of social economy and management chair at School of Business and Management Tours Poitiers, France. Associate professor at the Centre National des Arts et Métiers. Sociologist by training, he is further involved in associative life as president of Ce-dS (Circle of Societal Development Studies), Vice-Chairman of the IAS (International Association of Social Audit) and president of Human Resources without Borders.

From 20th to the 21st century: a change of values towards a social-ecological transition.

Du 20ème siècle au 21ème siècle, vers une transition socio écologique : un changement des valeurs.

Del siglo 20 al siglo 21, hacia una transición socio-ecológica : un cambio de los valores.

This communication is part of work undertaken over many years around the role of technology in our society and how, ostensibly, we’re switching to other logics.

Modernity has been the expression of human control over himself and nature through reason in a bid to unlimited expansion and hence mean that growth could be endless. Emerging from the 16th century it became the dominant mode during the 19th century in the West.

The whole process engineers approach has been to optimize work organization seeking to rationalize the process. Thus was developed the scientific organization of work (OST). Since the first industrial revolution, the history of the business is a result of productivity gains. Thus, we will be able to produce larger quantities with fewer resources (human, energy, material …) and more quickly. This is a consequence of changes in work organization and introduction of new tools.

We find throughout the 20th century the idea that the work organization should be structured and restructured on a principle of rationalization, ignoring all attempts at emotional in the company.

However, the 20th century was the awareness and questioning of a number of facts:

- The Earth is finite,

- The power of science and technology can destroy humanity,

- Progress generates more and more disappointment, disillusionment and anxiety. The worrying prospects of global warming symbolize the limits of the mastery of nature by human reason and reason is not humanity (the Holocaust camps of Siberia)

- Our method of consumption and production is not a model for the rest of the planet, which if passed, would require today’s 4-5 extra planets to sustain energy, raw materials and agricultural products, excluding waste management and release of CO ².

Thus, modernity is now reaching its limits and contradictions. Today we are in an intermediate phase between two paradigms (modern and post modern) clashing.

The organization of the 21st century must take account of its stakeholders, and shareholders as the contributor of investment is just one among many. Own the assets can not give him the power. He must share it with other stakeholders. There is a principle of regulation and mediation between stakeholders to make decisions. This organization will define its objectives by articulating three dimensions around which none can be marginalized: economic efficiency in response to market needs, the social and societal implications, the environmental impacts of its products / services (in their entire life cycles) and its operating process.

The organization will decline in its operating methods and processes by taking into account the three dimensions mentioned above. The organization becomes an organizing process. The “HRM” (Human Resources Management) turns into coaching the collective of work so that everyone is in a position to behave in accordance with the principles, norms and values sought and claimed. Everyone working on collaborative principles often in remote and virtual forms such as new technologies enable more and more. But this “HRM” is no longer fundamentally management but plays a regulatory and mediation role between the actors, and the quotes made HRM.

If we compare the operation and business of the 20th century and compare it with that of the organization that will emerge in the 21st century, we see clearly that we are witnessing a change of values: as a vector of profit-making and motivation looking for consistency between practices and values claimed. We are at the heart of ethical issues.

Related posts:

1. Thursday November 18th, first day of “Ecological and Social Innovation”
2. Welcome speech, Vincent Horvat