Solidarity is an ‘unthought’ in the fields of organizational theory and management sciences. However, it is an increasingly important feature in the management of organizations. The contemporary world suffers from a double the abusive exploitation of natural resources endangers the balance of the climate and biodiversity, while growing inequalities condemn our ability to maintain a balanced society. These unsustainabilities are mutually reinforcing and call for the affirmation of a double solidarity, which unites humans among themselves, and links humans and nonhumans. Such an effort cannot be decreed. It must be organized. Based on numerous grassroots initiatives and citizens’ experimentations that are being invented every day around the world and on a historical and anthropological approach, this book explores different ways of combining solidarity and organization. Solidarity-based management, governance of the commons, and Buen Vivir approaches are some of the perspectives analyzed in the context of a North-South dialogue in order to formulate the conceptual framework and practical steps of a social and environmental transition. It offers both theoretical background and living examples to students, professors and researchers to better understand and better teach new avenues for management.

In the course of this work, we have explored two paths. The first led us from organization to solidarity. We have shown that the organization of solidarity could not avoid questioning the definition of the economy. The reference to the Polanyian framework allowed us to lay the foundations of a substantive management likely to consider reciprocity, redistribution, and domestic sharing as principles alongside market exchange. This is how we have studied the possibility for this type of management to engage in a process of re-embedding fictitious goods. We have seen with Gueirrero Ramos that a management decision can be based on a substan- tive rationality, that is, on a rationality in value, and that it is necessary to rethink the question of time and space in order to hope to open up perspectives on a new theory of organizations. Guerreiro Ramos’ thought thus completes the work initiated by Polanyi and extends it by questioning the fundamentals of organization theory.The second path that the book has sought to explore is based on the opposite perspective. It has led us to question the means of solidarizing the organization. This time, the analysis raised questions related to democratic solidarity. To compensate for the corporatist mechanisms of community closure, solidary management can be read in the opening of the governance of organizations to multiple actors or stakeholders or in the inclusiveness of its approach. From then on, the questions that arise are those of democratic governance, solidarity-based territories, the reconciliation of the economic and the social, and social innovation. In terms of sustainable management, the work of the Ostrom school is also particularly relevant because it began with the preservation of the natural commons. The strength of this school of thought was that it did not stop there, and it opened up the question of the commons to resources other than natural ones. In particular, the merging of analysis with free software actors has allowed this theoretical framework to develop valuable thinking on self-organization and the management of new forms of collective property in relation to the digital.

The book Solidarity and Organization: Toward New Avenues for Management is part of a research work initiated between two countries: France and Brazil. Thus, it is the opportunity to create a dialogue between two literatures, two cultures, two hemispheres (North and South). The authors open the debate about the prevalence of Anglo-Saxon approach on the field of management sciences and claim that solidarity has been forgotten. Based on the work of solidarist authors, they open new avenues for management by highlighting the relevance of concepts such as solidarity economy, democratic governance, organizational pluralism, social movements, emancipation, global South, postcolonialism, and gender. The authors aim to propose a conceptual framework that can recognize the plurality of organizations and the social diversity of our economic systems. The contribution of the book is to draw on another management in the face of major social and environmental challenges and to open up possibilities for the transition to more sustainable models.

The book is also available in French and Portuguese.