Renzo Rosso
Professor of Hydraulic
and Maritime Construction
and Hydrology in Milan
IL FATTO QUOTIDIANO
Not only in Italy, but throughout Europe, the axiom of management control is the beacon that guides the company, both in the business world and in those of public services or functions. Faith in its saving function stems from a pessimistic view of human nature, since it presupposes that individuals and officials, elected or appointed or even merely charged as public servants, actually behave as rational and selfish actors. And that the same happens throughout the hierarchical chain of the company, where absolute loyalty is claimed. In short, it is taken for granted that, at best, men are rascals who do their own business; at worst they do nothing sensible.
It is a shared vision also in the Americas, but European pessimism declines it with particular fervor: the human being is always and in any case a sinner...
IL FATTO QUOTIDIANO
Not only in Italy, but throughout Europe, the axiom of management control is the beacon that guides the company, both in the business world and in those of public services or functions. Faith in its saving function stems from a pessimistic view of human nature, since it presupposes that individuals and officials, elected or appointed or even merely charged as public servants, actually behave as rational and selfish actors. And that the same happens throughout the hierarchical chain of the company, where absolute loyalty is claimed. In short, it is taken for granted that, at best, men are rascals who do their own business; at worst they do nothing sensible.
It is a shared vision also in the Americas, but European pessimism declines it with particular fervor: the human being is always and in any case a sinner...
if he cannot prove otherwise. In the United States the opposite is still true: the burden of proof lies with the controller, as shown by the investigation of the president led by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. For this reason, the punishment, severe in the USA, is less so in Europe; even more modest in Italy, especially for the rascals who repent and then repeat their rogues without shame.
Within the Italian university, students and teachers, researchers and technicians are all sinners, rascals by default and the obsession with management control has become pervasive. As Elena Dusi tells on the Republic of last June 13: "an Italian scientist who wants to buy any research tool must follow 40 procedures". Although the funds for the purchase come from funding that the scientist has painstakingly procured, since the institution does not even provide him with the desktop with which to read the directives given every day by email. The student, if he is not branded as a big baby, is still treated as a consumer. And in the teachers' careers, the organizational and bureaucratic functions increasingly weigh on the promotion of a scholar, suitable on the basis of national scientific qualification.
By chance, I reread an article that I published in a magazine that has now disappeared (In Europa, vol. 10, n.3). It was the year 2000, when I recounted: "A progressive pessimism, a symptom of a possible reversal of the trend, is taking the place of the slightly fanciful enthusiasm (of the 90s) to discover Europe. The financing mechanisms have become brainy, more favorable to the support of the technological establishment than to innovation, and reflect the insistent need for involvement of public and private industry in research. This turns into projects that are very far from scientific frontiers, but rather aimed at revisiting professional experiences, embellished with the make-up of innovative research. With this attitude, the system is turning towards absolute bureaucratization, which favors the glossy relations to the detriment of the substance of innovative contributions ".
Speaking of young researchers, especially from the South, I wrote: "They also have to deal with the current academic regularization, masked by recruitment autonomy, which threatens to make our universities age suddenly, eliminating entire generations from the world of research. They have to ride the real or fake privatization of scientific and academic institutions, which makes every scientific investment be weighed against temporal horizons measurable in days, at most weeks or months. And they must sail on the embarrassment and bewilderment in the face of the emergency that is the economic engine of investments. The European identity is not yet visible from Brussels and Strasbourg, but it is even more distant if you look at it from Locride ”.
After twenty years, the pessimism of those considerations was not entirely unfounded.
Within the Italian university, students and teachers, researchers and technicians are all sinners, rascals by default and the obsession with management control has become pervasive. As Elena Dusi tells on the Republic of last June 13: "an Italian scientist who wants to buy any research tool must follow 40 procedures". Although the funds for the purchase come from funding that the scientist has painstakingly procured, since the institution does not even provide him with the desktop with which to read the directives given every day by email. The student, if he is not branded as a big baby, is still treated as a consumer. And in the teachers' careers, the organizational and bureaucratic functions increasingly weigh on the promotion of a scholar, suitable on the basis of national scientific qualification.
By chance, I reread an article that I published in a magazine that has now disappeared (In Europa, vol. 10, n.3). It was the year 2000, when I recounted: "A progressive pessimism, a symptom of a possible reversal of the trend, is taking the place of the slightly fanciful enthusiasm (of the 90s) to discover Europe. The financing mechanisms have become brainy, more favorable to the support of the technological establishment than to innovation, and reflect the insistent need for involvement of public and private industry in research. This turns into projects that are very far from scientific frontiers, but rather aimed at revisiting professional experiences, embellished with the make-up of innovative research. With this attitude, the system is turning towards absolute bureaucratization, which favors the glossy relations to the detriment of the substance of innovative contributions ".
Speaking of young researchers, especially from the South, I wrote: "They also have to deal with the current academic regularization, masked by recruitment autonomy, which threatens to make our universities age suddenly, eliminating entire generations from the world of research. They have to ride the real or fake privatization of scientific and academic institutions, which makes every scientific investment be weighed against temporal horizons measurable in days, at most weeks or months. And they must sail on the embarrassment and bewilderment in the face of the emergency that is the economic engine of investments. The European identity is not yet visible from Brussels and Strasbourg, but it is even more distant if you look at it from Locride ”.
After twenty years, the pessimism of those considerations was not entirely unfounded.
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