Humanizing Business: A Long Journey

As noted in the Introduction, under the concept of company, we will group together a variety of institutions which are all associations of people with a common purpose, and who are organized and joined together to achieve specific, declared goals. In a business context, they aim to carry out commercial or industrial activities, including the production, distribution, or consumption of products or services (This definition includes big companies or corporations, with complex organizations sometimes worldwide, and middle and small enterprises with not so complex organization). Our goal in this first chapter is to review how human beings have been considered in business throughout history, within companies or similar institutions, along with some general remarks on historical context. The chapter begins with a brief review of medieval guilds, the activity of merchants in the Commercial Revolution, and the emergence of chartered companies within the system termed mercantilism. It continues with a look at factory workers in the first and second Industrial Revolutions (1764 to 1914). The following section focuses on the place of the person in significant management theories once managers began to play a crucial role in leading business organizations while subject to scarcely any control (approximately 1915 to 1975). During this period, people went from being seen as producers, with a labor cost, to being viewed as human resources, with a focus on using human capabilities and the possibilities of motivating them to improve the bottom line. Some more human perspectives were also introduced during this period. The last section focuses on more recent situations, including the influence of shareholder capitalism and some recent attempts at humanizing business, such as some promising initiatives proposed by practitioners, academic developments, and claims in favor of humanizing business put forward by international organizations and certain moral voices. The chapter concludes with the challenge of putting persons at the center of the company, not only for its contribution to profits but above all for the sake of people themselves.