Business, profit and solidarity
The speech by Paolo Longobardi, honorary president of Unimpresa
The past two years have provided us with some fundamental lessons, which deserve reflection now that 2021 has just ended. There is still uncertainty, there is still an aura of fear, but the future must be faced with confidence, relying (above all) on what we have learned.
In the midst of the global pandemic, Covid has highlighted that, in the face of tragedies and disasters, one must always react, on the one hand trying to never stop business activity, because the engine of the economy is essential. for the life of citizens, on the other hand by systematically thinking of solidarity with the weakest.
Business and solidarity are a combination on which, since its origins, a company has based its raison d'etre, aware that profit must be sought and it is certainly a positive element, but those who pursue it have the obligation to protect those who find themselves in situations of social hardship. It is not a question, mind you, of a moralistic appeal (it is an exercise from which I gladly keep away); if anything, I refer to that ethical sense of business activity that must be developed and must have, among its many forms, also attention to social responsibility. Here, however, it should be emphasized that corporate social responsibility is not the communication tool, perhaps not particularly useful, into which it has been transformed in recent decades. Social responsibility is true, concrete, material, solid, lasting solidarity: when ethics becomes business and business becomes truly ethical.
In this sense, I think of the many entrepreneur friends who have achieved brilliant results and excellent goals with their activities, but, at the same time, have never stopped giving to those in need. Business ethics is this: the awareness of having the duty to give back to the community, with the aim of contributing to reducing social inequalities. Inequalities that the pandemic, unfortunately, is widening more and more and here the contribution of solidarity will have an important role, in the coming years, in reducing them.
Before March 2020, we have repeatedly analyzed the area of social hardship, estimating that there are almost 10 million Italians at risk of poverty and this very large segment of our population is destined to grow significantly in the near future. Moreover, the instruments launched in recent years with the declared aim of "abolishing poverty" have been transformed – as was perhaps the ill-concealed intention of those who proposed them – into formidable means of electoral propaganda: public subsidies which then become money of electoral exchange.
In short, no laws are needed, any regulatory imposition for redistribution would be in vain: it is a question of accepting and, in perspective, of consolidating a net change of the economic paradigm: to the three existing items – revenues, profits and dividends – the fourth pillar must be added: solidarity. In my opinion, it is a paradigm that is well introduced in the world of micro and small businesses in our country, those that represent the backbone of the Italian economy and are the beating heart of Unimpresa. The reason is simple: in small companies, the head of the company almost always coincides with the owner / shareholder and this means drastically shortening both direct contact with real life and the possibility of putting into practice gestures of solidarity whose effects they arrive immediately on the territories.
The more significant the size of the company, on the other hand, the more the chain of command is lengthened and, consequently, the more difficult it is both to identify people's needs and to define, first, and then direct economic interventions to attack social unease. Without forgetting, I am referring to the large industrial and financial groups listed on the stock exchange, that if the shareholders are investment funds characterized by a speculative approach, the objective of solidarity becomes almost an impossible mission. If, again, those funds are foreign – almost half of Piazza Affari's list is in foreign hands – then the difficulty is easily understood.
However, surrender is not allowed. Covid taught us: everything is possible, everything can be overturned, the unimaginable becomes ordinary. That of widespread and structural solidarity is a challenge to be faced, starting from the first instant of 2022 which begins today. A challenge to be faced starting from the bottom, with examples and not with propaganda, not with facade communication. Starting right from the micro and small businesses that, in terms of lessons, are able to give them to anyone.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/impresa-il-profitto-e-la-solidarieta/ on Sat, 01 Jan 2022 09:59:50 +0000.