“It’s been shown that organizations run better when employees internalize the company’s mission and work for something more than objectives”, said Carlos Rey Peña, the Director of the UIC's Department of Management by Missions and Corporate Governance (DPM), in reference to the second edition of the International Symposium “Companies with a Human Face”, organized by the DPM and sponsored by Deloitte.

Almost 200 people participated in the symposium, which aimed to promote humanist ideals in the corporate environment and was attended by well-known academics and business leaders. The symposium promoted a business approach that has an increased focus on people and the meaning of the work they do. A study carried out by the department using a sample of 2,700 managers of 65 companies in different sectors that was presented at the congress Global Innovation and Knowledge Academy (GIKA) in July 2013, showed that a sense of purpose is correlated with the desire to learn and innovate. “People don’t just work for money (extrinsic motivation); they also need to give a sense of purpose to their work (transcendent motivation)”, added Rey Peña. 

“The economic crisis is encouraging companies to question some of their guiding principles of the last few years and to consider new, more humanistic approaches and styles of management that are not exclusively focused on profit and financial indicators”, said Miquel Bastons, Assistant Director of the DPM Department, at the previous edition of the event, held in February 2013.

The 2014 edition featured talks in the morning on economics, business and humanism from Alejandro Llano, Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad de Navarra; Juan M. Serrano, the founding partner of Transforma; and Josep M. Pujol, the President of Ficosa International.

In the afternoon, there was a roundtable session that presented successful cases of management by missions. Representatives of the companies that make up the department participated, including Manuel Jiménez-Maña, the Managing Director of the Jiménez Maña Corporation; Joan Pere Salom, the Director of Human Capital at Deloitte; Rufino Orejas, the Managing Director of Industrial Química del Nalón; Eduard Fitó, the Director of Corporate Development at Semillas Fitó; and Jon San Cristóbal, the General Director of Huf Portuguesa. 

The symposium was opened by Dr. Jaume Armengou, the Vice Rector of Academic Organization and the Teaching Staff at the UIC. The closing ceremony was presided over by Francesc Homs i Ferret, the President of the Academic and Social Council of the UIC, and Jaume Buxó, the Managing Partner of Deloitte in Catalonia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands and Andorra.

About the Department of Management by Missions and Corporate Governance

The Department of Management by Missions and Corporate Governance is part of the UIC Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences and is directed by Dr. Carlos Rey and Dr. Miquel Bastons, as assistant director. Management by Missions is a business leadership and organization model based on people, their motivations, their values and the importance of their actions. This translates into a system of governance and organization which incorporates the company mission into management systems and promotes commitment from company members. The department works with companies from different sectors who are especially concerned with the involvement of their staff in their company mission. The participating companies are the Jiménez Maña Corporation (the main partner), Aitex, Industrial Química del Nalón, JJC General Contractors, Kern Pharma, Huf and Semillas Fitó.