The Pillars of Organizational Togetherness and the Spirit of Community

In the organizational setting, the spirit of community is realized through the sense of organizational togetherness. Organizational togetherness has three basic pillars: “living-together”, “working-together”, and “hoping-together”. Living-togetherness involves the unconditional concern for basic human rights and the existential anxiety about the meaning of the organizational life. Working-togetherness refers to the practice of values/virtues (such as caring and compassion, mutual support and respect, collaboration, and altruism), self-realization processes, relational harmony, and the existentiality of the “being-in-dialogue”). Hoping-togetherness expresses a basic orientation towards the future, the existential anxiety towards the survival of humankind, and an infinite passion for the Infinite. In this chapter, the corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, or global citizenship reports of three American companies (Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and Walt Disney) are analyzed (from 2009 to 2019), to examine how they may convey one or the other pillar of organizational togetherness. We have found that Southwest Airlines put the emphasis on living-togetherness, while Starbucks made a slight focus on hoping-togetherness. Walt Disney was much more concerned with living-togetherness and hoping-togetherness than with working-togetherness. The emphasis on a given pillar of organizational togetherness expresses the way a company understands the development of the spirit of community throughout its corporate discourse.