IL FUTURO DEL LAVORO SI CHIAMA “SMART WORKING”? RIFLESSIONI E PROSPETTIVE

[Autom. eng. transl.] Scholars of organizational issues - who have always been interested in the theme of work, its evolution and its relationship with technology - have been wondering for some time about the meaning of a label such as Smart Working (SW), an expression that indicates ways of carrying out the work performance aimed at loosening the traditional constraints of time and place and directed towards logics of discretion and accountability towards work objectives, in a context in which the potential of technology plays a significant enabling role. Company practice - in turn constantly looking for appropriate solutions to the changes that market dynamics and competition require - began experimenting with this method with pilot projects a little over a decade ago, which usually involved limited numbers of workers and which, when consolidated, continued to concern a small part of the corporate population for a few days of effective usability. Until 2019, Eurostat data indicated that less than 4% of total employees worked remotely in Italy, a percentage that was almost one and a half points lower than the European average. Modest values. It is from February 2020 with the alarm for the spread of Covid-19, that the attention towards the SW has assumed an unprecedented intensity, so much so that the last week of that month marked a moment of turning point in the history of SW in Italy, inaugurating the "massive" phase of this way of working. The SW - as well as the international literature, starting from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development-CIPD which had described its nature over a decade ago, proposes it to us - is signaled as something new and different. Thanks to the evolution of the technological context and its most recent developments both mobile and wireless, whose enabling role is anything but neutral, this method of providing work performance is characterized by a profound (and deeply assimilated) change in the culture of management, which affects people, processes and spaces, all aspects that need to be focused. The SW is in fact the result of careful organizational planning that consistently combines the characteristics of the job with managerial skills. And which acknowledges that the SW may not adapt to all types of work - there are jobs necessarily (still?) linked to space-time variables; but not even to all workers - who, due to personality characteristics, socialization and affiliation needs, are more comfortable in contexts of physical proximity; and least of all to all companies – due to the specifics of the business (at least until the technological and market conditions change), due to culture or because inadequate equipment continues to be used. Now that the subject continues to be talked about in a perspective of "new" normality, it is certainly useful to examine it by trying to set aside the partisan attitudes - those of the supporters (who always and in any case judge it as the high road for a job that thus becomes "better ”, more reconcilable and livable) and those of his critics (who look with a basic skepticism at every initiative that is placed under this hat, emphasizing the risk of a working life without borders, with increasing stress). And starting from the idea that the SW constitutes the way to the future of work, that the "new" normal cannot fail to deal with it. The intent of this paper is to offer a contribution to the consolidation of a reflection on what SW is and can be, what challenges it poses both on the individual and on the organizational side and what opportunities its precise understanding can offer. And to underline for which ra