4\empowerment at the basis of cooperation |
|
Introduction
If it is true that Rebel Alliance has initially been created to take care of digital content productions and that digital technologies and techniques are still its “daily bread and butter”, it is also true that since its establishment, Rebel Alliance's founders noticed that the market needs something else.
In this period of profound change, super-specialisation is certainly an opportunity to consider, but a strategic interdisciplinary thought, capable of offering 360° consultancy in those areas that need a connection between humanistic and technological knowledge, represents a competitive advantage skill possessed by just a few Small and Medium Enterprise (SME); with the purpose of gaining the right instruments to effectively answer urgent issues and growing difficulties which characterise competition in the market of digital film and the audiovisual industry.
A market which is crowded by a multitude of professionals, the majority of whom appeared only in recent years.
However only a few of them are really qualified.
This is not because they are unable to master techniques and technologies, but mainly because they come from a cultural and managerial background which is too specialised or too closely linked to their product disclosing.
The division between those who “really know how to operate like a company in all of its managerial functions” and the majority of those young newcomers who instead “don't know how to operate with responsible ethic because they are unaware of their lack of specialisation”, is constantly growing.
This phenomenon, added to the so-called “cultural digital divide” which still effects that wide range of Italian producers, directors and screenwriters afraid of the “unknown”, represents that resistance to innovation we still generally witness in Italy.
This does not refer exclusively to the Content Industry and all of its aspects such as Cinema and Audiovisual (therefore favouring the sector's innovation), but is usually implied in all other sectors of the economy. [1]
Following, we proceed in the introduction of organizational principles to which the Rebel Alliance Empowering System inspires.
It is now time to introduce two considerations:
- The first one is the explanation of the concept of empowerment in the social sphere of the model considering the relationship between individuals and organised groups of people.
- The second one goes from the concept of empowerment to the explanation of new business relationships such as virtual supply chain and cooperative networks is the most suitable for our industry.
The concept of Empowerment at the basis of cooperation
The English word Empowerment, means a collection of knowledge, team working skills and duties aimed to help an individual or a company to reach final goals and plan strategies in order to fulfil them using their initial resources.
Empowerment is a process of social action through which people, companies and communities acquire skills in order to change their social and political environment and improve their quality of life.
Such a definition examines the psychological aspect of empowerment as well as the organizational one, presenting it as a constructed multi-level.
This multi-level approach was originally proposed by Rappaport (1984) and was then examined more thoroughly by Zimmerman, who gave a clear description of the three levels of analysis: psychological, organizational and community.
Zimmerman (2000) points out that the three levels of analysis are closely connected to each other, even if explained separately.
1.Psychological Empowerment is generated by the junction of three elements:
Organizational Empowerment includes processes and structures that improve its members' participation and the efficiency to reach its aims.
An organization that authorises its members to fully control their own existence is considered an “empowering” organization; an organization that successfully develops political decisions and has an influence on them, is considered as an “empowered” organization. These features can both exist in an empowerment organization.
3. Community Empowerment. Empowerment at a community level is a collective action aimed to improving the quality of life and the connections between organizations and social agents. Through Community Empowerment we have the “competent community” (Iscoe, 1974), in which citizens have “competences, motivation and resources to run activities aimed at life improvement”.
In his revision of the description of empowerment, Wallerstein highlighted a series of features of empowerment:
There are many different classifications of empowerment in literature; among these, two have been chosen which are based on the constructed multilevel of empowerment.
The first classification was proposed by Cox and Parsons (1944): the two authors stated that strategic actions finalised towards empowerment are a continuum, which go from individual empowerment to a social and political level. Based on the focus of the action, it is now possible to distinguish four dimensions:
i. personal dimension
ii. interpersonal dimension
iii. micro-environmental and organizational dimension
iv. micro-environmental and social/political dimension.
A similar classification was illustrated by Labonte and Laverak in 2000. This was made by rethinking the “welfare state” for solving problems in studies of Healthcare reform.
Labonte and Laverak described empowerment as a process that develops through a dynamic and evolutionary continuum including:
Labonte's classification is particularly interesting because it fits within a conceptual field and attempts to describe two different approaches to the Healthcare offer:
“bottom-up” (empowerment in the community) and “top down” [2] (campaigns of prevention in the public Health system). Finally, Lebonte's studies are an important bibliographical reference to Wallerstein's report.
Empowerment is then both a process and a concept based on two essential elements: the knowledge of a will for efficient actions finalised at reaching a goal, and the ability to understand the influence of personal actions on events. All with the aim of reaching targets, regardless if their personal, social, political, corporate or humanitarian implications.
Empowerment is a methodological approach needed to facilitate the control of professional and personal life. It is a way of efficient planning and acting, but most of all it is a brand new epistemological approach to front the change: towards the individual, the group and society.
It is not a philosophy of research for the best tactical strategy to solve problems, but it is the explanation of a strategy for the improvement of possibilities, choices and freedom.
In our case we will briefly consider the concept of empowerment in company organization to reach corporate objectives, considering its psychological implications.
Psychology of empowerment
It is part of a well-empowered psychological condition for one to have power of self-control, to feel useful, to realise that his power can affect events, to possess great self-esteem, to consider failure as a moment of learning, and so on. However, this condition is something that develops through time and it should be hoped that in future one can reach complete success by following the philosophical empowerment approach.
Empowered is not a person, an organization or a company who has reached all its goals, but someone (or something) capable of facing life and its challenges. Capable of coping with both success and failure.
Towards the weaker parts of population, an approach based on empowerment provides action for support and proposals of new social opportunities following three directions: creating power to generate alternatives to what already exists, knowing how and where to access the resources, increasing self-esteem and motivation. At the same time it provides self-conscious help which the subject in difficulty handles to improve the situation.
Such psychological action could also be used as a support for victims of physical and psychological violence who have lost their self-esteem and cannot escape their victimization.
Empowerment could also help these victims retake control of their lives, creating solutions to be more responsible for their own «destiny».
Empowerment in business management
Within companies, the old model of work management was based on hierarchy, «cascade» directives, the attitude of avoiding responsibilities by handing them to others and the general frustration and alienation of workers. There was often great competition.
The model based on empowerment promotes the participation of all members. It spreads self-esteem and reliability, cooperation and general improvement.
With this kind of organization, the individual is more aware of his strength. He does not fear sudden changes, but instead learns to manage them. He is capable of taking risks, recognizes his own mistakes without fearing other people's judgement. He socializes with his information and takes positive action.
With these objectives, empowerment represents a revolution in the traditional organizational relationship.
One of the focus of this change is leadership. This has to include the sharing of decisions, the induction to independence and sense of responsibility. The search for the individual and/or company's needs (formative, relational and existential), helping professional growth through the application of empowerment.
Above all, an empowering leadership has to be capable of delegating and promoting the formation of independent working teams that can arrange times and organizational models, relationships with other teams, work shifts and meetings, even within the shared strategy.
Empowerment of the individual subsequently becomes the empowerment of the organization, with all its consequential economic advantages, and much more!
Empowerment is strictly connected to the concept of change.
Change can sometimes be difficult as it can turn into renunciation, in the form of abandoning established procedures and/or approaches, and prevent the demolishing of cultural resistance to the new necessary procedures.
The strength of empowerment is that even if it proposes new alternatives, it does not force one to forget what is “already known”. These alternatives can be added among all the known ones that we could choose from, not once and for all, but any time we want.
If it is true that Rebel Alliance has initially been created to take care of digital content productions and that digital technologies and techniques are still its “daily bread and butter”, it is also true that since its establishment, Rebel Alliance's founders noticed that the market needs something else.
In this period of profound change, super-specialisation is certainly an opportunity to consider, but a strategic interdisciplinary thought, capable of offering 360° consultancy in those areas that need a connection between humanistic and technological knowledge, represents a competitive advantage skill possessed by just a few Small and Medium Enterprise (SME); with the purpose of gaining the right instruments to effectively answer urgent issues and growing difficulties which characterise competition in the market of digital film and the audiovisual industry.
A market which is crowded by a multitude of professionals, the majority of whom appeared only in recent years.
However only a few of them are really qualified.
This is not because they are unable to master techniques and technologies, but mainly because they come from a cultural and managerial background which is too specialised or too closely linked to their product disclosing.
The division between those who “really know how to operate like a company in all of its managerial functions” and the majority of those young newcomers who instead “don't know how to operate with responsible ethic because they are unaware of their lack of specialisation”, is constantly growing.
This phenomenon, added to the so-called “cultural digital divide” which still effects that wide range of Italian producers, directors and screenwriters afraid of the “unknown”, represents that resistance to innovation we still generally witness in Italy.
This does not refer exclusively to the Content Industry and all of its aspects such as Cinema and Audiovisual (therefore favouring the sector's innovation), but is usually implied in all other sectors of the economy. [1]
Following, we proceed in the introduction of organizational principles to which the Rebel Alliance Empowering System inspires.
It is now time to introduce two considerations:
- The first one is the explanation of the concept of empowerment in the social sphere of the model considering the relationship between individuals and organised groups of people.
- The second one goes from the concept of empowerment to the explanation of new business relationships such as virtual supply chain and cooperative networks is the most suitable for our industry.
The concept of Empowerment at the basis of cooperation
The English word Empowerment, means a collection of knowledge, team working skills and duties aimed to help an individual or a company to reach final goals and plan strategies in order to fulfil them using their initial resources.
Empowerment is a process of social action through which people, companies and communities acquire skills in order to change their social and political environment and improve their quality of life.
Such a definition examines the psychological aspect of empowerment as well as the organizational one, presenting it as a constructed multi-level.
This multi-level approach was originally proposed by Rappaport (1984) and was then examined more thoroughly by Zimmerman, who gave a clear description of the three levels of analysis: psychological, organizational and community.
Zimmerman (2000) points out that the three levels of analysis are closely connected to each other, even if explained separately.
1.Psychological Empowerment is generated by the junction of three elements:
- the personal conviction of controlling all decisions on which a life depends (personal component);
- the understanding of a self social and political environment (interpersonal component);
- taking part in collective activities aimed at interacting with the social and political environment (behavioural component).
Organizational Empowerment includes processes and structures that improve its members' participation and the efficiency to reach its aims.
An organization that authorises its members to fully control their own existence is considered an “empowering” organization; an organization that successfully develops political decisions and has an influence on them, is considered as an “empowered” organization. These features can both exist in an empowerment organization.
3. Community Empowerment. Empowerment at a community level is a collective action aimed to improving the quality of life and the connections between organizations and social agents. Through Community Empowerment we have the “competent community” (Iscoe, 1974), in which citizens have “competences, motivation and resources to run activities aimed at life improvement”.
In his revision of the description of empowerment, Wallerstein highlighted a series of features of empowerment:
- Empowerment can be seen both as a process and a solution (Swift e Levine, 1987).
- It is a concept turned to the action with the aim of removing formal and informal obstacles and changing power relationships between communities, institutions and governments. It is based on the assumption that communities' cultural structures are strengthened by dialogue and action (Freire, 1970).
- It is specific to culture, society and population and therefore calls for the action to be in the local empowerment context.
- It is a dynamic interaction between internal major abilities and the overcome of external obstacles to resources (Speer and Hughey, 1995).
There are many different classifications of empowerment in literature; among these, two have been chosen which are based on the constructed multilevel of empowerment.
The first classification was proposed by Cox and Parsons (1944): the two authors stated that strategic actions finalised towards empowerment are a continuum, which go from individual empowerment to a social and political level. Based on the focus of the action, it is now possible to distinguish four dimensions:
i. personal dimension
ii. interpersonal dimension
iii. micro-environmental and organizational dimension
iv. micro-environmental and social/political dimension.
A similar classification was illustrated by Labonte and Laverak in 2000. This was made by rethinking the “welfare state” for solving problems in studies of Healthcare reform.
Labonte and Laverak described empowerment as a process that develops through a dynamic and evolutionary continuum including:
- personal empowerment
- development of small supporting groups
- organizations of community
- partnership between organizations
- social and political action
Labonte's classification is particularly interesting because it fits within a conceptual field and attempts to describe two different approaches to the Healthcare offer:
“bottom-up” (empowerment in the community) and “top down” [2] (campaigns of prevention in the public Health system). Finally, Lebonte's studies are an important bibliographical reference to Wallerstein's report.
Empowerment is then both a process and a concept based on two essential elements: the knowledge of a will for efficient actions finalised at reaching a goal, and the ability to understand the influence of personal actions on events. All with the aim of reaching targets, regardless if their personal, social, political, corporate or humanitarian implications.
Empowerment is a methodological approach needed to facilitate the control of professional and personal life. It is a way of efficient planning and acting, but most of all it is a brand new epistemological approach to front the change: towards the individual, the group and society.
It is not a philosophy of research for the best tactical strategy to solve problems, but it is the explanation of a strategy for the improvement of possibilities, choices and freedom.
In our case we will briefly consider the concept of empowerment in company organization to reach corporate objectives, considering its psychological implications.
Psychology of empowerment
It is part of a well-empowered psychological condition for one to have power of self-control, to feel useful, to realise that his power can affect events, to possess great self-esteem, to consider failure as a moment of learning, and so on. However, this condition is something that develops through time and it should be hoped that in future one can reach complete success by following the philosophical empowerment approach.
Empowered is not a person, an organization or a company who has reached all its goals, but someone (or something) capable of facing life and its challenges. Capable of coping with both success and failure.
Towards the weaker parts of population, an approach based on empowerment provides action for support and proposals of new social opportunities following three directions: creating power to generate alternatives to what already exists, knowing how and where to access the resources, increasing self-esteem and motivation. At the same time it provides self-conscious help which the subject in difficulty handles to improve the situation.
Such psychological action could also be used as a support for victims of physical and psychological violence who have lost their self-esteem and cannot escape their victimization.
Empowerment could also help these victims retake control of their lives, creating solutions to be more responsible for their own «destiny».
Empowerment in business management
Within companies, the old model of work management was based on hierarchy, «cascade» directives, the attitude of avoiding responsibilities by handing them to others and the general frustration and alienation of workers. There was often great competition.
The model based on empowerment promotes the participation of all members. It spreads self-esteem and reliability, cooperation and general improvement.
With this kind of organization, the individual is more aware of his strength. He does not fear sudden changes, but instead learns to manage them. He is capable of taking risks, recognizes his own mistakes without fearing other people's judgement. He socializes with his information and takes positive action.
With these objectives, empowerment represents a revolution in the traditional organizational relationship.
One of the focus of this change is leadership. This has to include the sharing of decisions, the induction to independence and sense of responsibility. The search for the individual and/or company's needs (formative, relational and existential), helping professional growth through the application of empowerment.
Above all, an empowering leadership has to be capable of delegating and promoting the formation of independent working teams that can arrange times and organizational models, relationships with other teams, work shifts and meetings, even within the shared strategy.
Empowerment of the individual subsequently becomes the empowerment of the organization, with all its consequential economic advantages, and much more!
Empowerment is strictly connected to the concept of change.
Change can sometimes be difficult as it can turn into renunciation, in the form of abandoning established procedures and/or approaches, and prevent the demolishing of cultural resistance to the new necessary procedures.
The strength of empowerment is that even if it proposes new alternatives, it does not force one to forget what is “already known”. These alternatives can be added among all the known ones that we could choose from, not once and for all, but any time we want.
[1] The effect and importance that communication and information technologies have on our economy and way of living is an indisputable fact. Various researches have demonstrated that a large part of the European population is still deprived of the benefits of information development, clearly compromising the economy. For this reason, the European Union has recently financed the activation of a wide range programme aimed at closing the cultural digital divide, especially among older people. Since 2002, Rebel Alliance works together with universities and local government authorities, planning and developing new ways of fighting the cultural digital divide in Italy.
[2] Top-down and bottom-up models are strategies of knowledge and data processing. They may be applied to systemic and humanistic theories. Generally, these are part of a methodology used to analyse problematic situations and hypothesise on their solutions: The concept of a problematic situation can apply in various fields such as programming a computer software, the solution of a mathematical problem, the creation of a text or any other practical/operative problem. The top-down model is a general vision of the system without analysing it in its parts. Each part of the system (decomposition, specialisation and identification) is subsequently analysed adding more details about its planning. Each new part can be analysed again in even more detail in order to finalise the model. The top-down model is usually designed using black boxes which simplify their filling but do not allow their elementary mechanism to be understood. This is different from the bottom-up model, in which the design shows detailed explanation of its individual parts. These parts are connected with each other to create bigger components. The bigger components are connected with each other until they form a complete system. Strategies based on the bottom-up data circulation are sufficient as they are built on the knowledge that any variation that can affect the system's elements.