A Participative Model to Make Changes into Non Profit Organizations. The Experience of the Social Cooperative Il Sestante (Tv)

A social enterprise has cyclically to redefine itself as organizational system. The challenge is put it into practice in a real participant way by a specific attention to members’ needs, problems, relational and working difficulties and, at the same time, to the social enterprise collective identity. The aim is the development and the strenghtening of the social enterprise as reflexive social subjectivity. This work presents the many years’ experience enacted in this way the social cooperative Il Sestante, in Treviso (region of Veneto, Italy). The working process that is presented consists in two phases. The first phase includes the whole path that led to (a) the definition of co-ope working areas through (a.1) a knowledge process of the situation among the members; (a.2) through an implementation process of the co-op’s values; and, in the end (a.3) through a looking on process of the general functions of every area. Instead the second phase (b) pertains to the definition of specific functions (b.1), (b.2) of the structure of every area and (b.3) the election of representatives. This experience of participated working organization was the object of a research seminar among 11 Italian social enterprises that treated of "The relation between organization and participation: which criticalities and which future perspectives?". The account reporting of the research seminar is in the second part of the article.

Keywords: Social Enterprise, Profit System, Participant Working Way

Andrea Pozzobon, Lucia di Palma, Stefano Buzzati, Andrea Conficoni, Un modello partecipativo di cambiamento per le organizzazioni non profit. L’esperienza della cooperativa sociale il Sestante di Treviso in "SOCIOLOGIA E POLITICHE SOCIALI" 2/2011, pp 185-213, DOI: 10.3280/SP2011-002007