Homo homini lupus
The phrase "A man is a wolf to another man" was taken up by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes to speak of selfishness in human behavior where the law of the strongest prevails. The business world was for a long time a faithful portrait of this philosophy, where empathy and communication represent a weakness rather than a fundamental value in human relationships.
Even today, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, there are still people who doubt the "legitimacy" of communication within organizations. They doubt their management, because they consider that there is nothing else to say beyond what they say.
This vision, typical of industrial thought, organized production processes in an assembly line that dehumanizes relationships. People came to be understood as cogs in a machinery that does not know of feelings or subjectivities. Films like Charles Chaplin's "Modern Times" or Fritz Lang's spectacular "Metropolis" masterfully illustrate this alienation.
Fortunately, this form of production organization has begun to crack, with such a rapid pace in recent decades that signs of its decline are already evident.
The new generations take up criticism of industrial organization and propose new ways of approaching organizations, closer to freedom, empathy and emotional well-being.
But what does it really mean to manage communication?
