Stressing the central role of integrity in order to be a successful firm

GIUDICI, ERNESTINA;CABONI, FEDERICA;POLLNOW GALVAO RAMOS, BIANCA FRANCINE

2012-01-01

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Abstract

This chapter, taking the existing literature regarding integrity and humanistic management in-to consideration, have the aim to understand if it is possible build a model that can provide answers to the following questions: In what ways should firms act to respect the value of in-tegrity? What kind of tools should be used? What key aspects should be exploited? As Aristotle stated, humans are, by nature, “social animal” and this natural tendency is com-pletely expressed inside organizations, that may be defined as a community of human beings that work together to reach specific goals. This definition means that an organization’s es-sential element is the “relationships” among human beings that must work “together”. If rela-tionships constitute the basic element, then clearly the “central” element of each organization are the human beings to which the indicated relationships refer. Clearly, integrity may not be pursued by an organization without taking the centrality of hu-mans into consideration. The results of the Authors research highlight that the concept of in-tegrity has become so important that it crosses the boundaries of the organization because it is necessary take into consideration both the internal (organization) and external (context) values to highlight the holistic meaning of integrity. This consideration is exactly the concept of sustainable integrity that the Authors propose and that clearly emerge from the analyzed companies.