Apresentação de trabalho no 'Research Workshop Economy of Communion - towards a new economic culture', Vargem Grande Paulista - SP, 2011.

1. Workshop: Economy of Communion, towards a new economic culture May 25-28, 2011 Mariapolis Ginetta (Vargem G. Paulista), Brazil Mauricio C. Serafim - Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (Brazil) M. Licia PaglioneUniversità“G. d’Annunzio” - Chieti-Pescara (Italy) FROM RATIONALITY TO RELATIONALITYThe Economy of Communion enterprise as a case of Substantive Integrative Organization

2. ResearchAreaandTheoretical Approach Economic Sociology (Substantive Organization) ParadigmofGift

3. Key Question The EoC enterprises are able to create and strengthen social ties, not only among its own members but also with those who, according to the theoretical approach, can be called “anonymous” or “strangers”to the economic life? In other words, can be the EoC enterprises considered as systems of gift or, according to some brazilian researchers, as integrative substantive organizations?

4. Methodology exploratory and qualitative field research(in Brazil, October-December 2008, envolving the six companies included in Spartaco Business Center - Cotia (SP) - and another three which are related to it, located in Vargem G. Paulista (SP). research instruments and techniques: - documental analysis - interviews (to entrepreneurs [11], people in need (the 'poor') [11], and members of the EoC committee dealing, among other activities, with the allocation of the resources for such people [8]) - non-participant observation

5. Results [1] In addition to the obvious dynamics of market exchange, there is the presence of an exchange based on reciprocity typical of the gift. This co-presence(SALSANO, 2008) of market exchange and reciprocity in the EoC enterprises seems possible effect of a paradoxical administrative action, raised by mixed motivations (obligation, freedom, interest, gratuitoussness) and also by a paradoxical logic (unconditional conditionality) similar to those observed in a gift (CAILLÉ, 2002). Among these motivations observed in the EoC administrative action, a main is the gratuitoussness, or according to EoC actors, the love-agape. This, in our view, represents the element that enables and sustains a “mood of unconditionality” (CAILLÉ, 2002) necessary, according to the gift theory, to generate and nurture reciprocity, i.e. non-instrumental and non-hierarchical ties, but “properly human and social bonds” (GODBOUT, 1999) between entrepreneurs, workers, clients, competitors… and poor, integrating them, “strangers” to economic system, in the economic and organizational dynamics.

6. Results [2] The gratuitoussness and the unconditionality, as motivation and logic of action, add to the economic values commonly known (use and exchange), a third value, defined “value of bond”. The gratuitoussness and the unconditionality show up, then, as elements capable to transforming an economic organization in a substantive one, characterized by an not primarily instrumental rationality and by the capability to create bonds between the members themselves. But the gratuitoussness and the unconditionality can also be considered as elements capable to “open” a substantive organization, transforming it in a integrative substantive organization, that is able to bond with people who are “strangers” to economic and organization life (the poor), integrating them in an active way (as opposed to passive, as in philanthropy) in economic dynamics.

7. EoCadministrativeaction and EoCasan Integrative SubstantiveOrganization gratuitoussnessunconditionality gratuitoussnessunconditionality gratuitoussnessunconditionality