A Constructive Vision of Businesses: On Freddy Sarfati’s “L’Entreprise autrement”

As Hubert Landier pointed out in his article on disengagement at work, published in the November issue of Futuribles, the classical business management model looks increasingly limited and needs to be challenged. The motivation and well-being of staff is at issue here, but also the smooth operation and economic profitability of companies.

Dominique Méda’s review of Freddy Sarfati’s book proposing a new way of operating within companies provides striking confirmation of this. In L’Entreprise autrement (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010), Freddy Sarfati, a “self-made man” who set up his own business some 40 years ago, shows how companies have become “toxic” through the surveillance and mistrust of their own employees and through slavish compliance to financial diktat. Drawing on his personal experience, he shows that things can be very different and that a humanistic enterprise, operating with complete trust in its employees and in a close understanding with them, has every chance of succeeding as well, if not better than, others. This is a management lesson we hear too seldom, yet which ought to be widely disseminated among CEOs and HR managers in Western societies.