The Irene Vázquez Chair “Person-Centered Company” was born within the IDDI (Institute for Integral Management Development) of the UFV as an ambitious applied research project, which aims to develop, from an anthropological foundation, a comprehensive methodology for the transformation of people, teams and organizations, in which the person is always at the center, thus promoting the process of humanization of companies. With this research, IDDI and UFV want to contribute to install in today’s organizations, in a concrete and practical way, a new logic: that of people and the common good. This logic is very different from the mercantile and profit-driven logic installed in many companies and in a large part of society. Contributing to the common good requires cooperation between people and demands a different approach to that of utility and profit. 

Changing a long-standing inertia and creating a new paradigm requires an enormous effort:

1. To rethink the basis of the current modelsof organizational development and to make an individual and systemic change
2. To install new ways of acting, throughnew methodologiesas dialógicas of change and development of people, teams and organizations, created from this new logic
3. Generate an internal unityaround this new vision and new ways of acting

We have been observing for some time that the current economic context calls for agile companies that are highly flexible to change, with aligned people and teams capable of responding to market demands with speed and innovation; companies that can reach the customer agilely and in which there is a high level of commitment, cooperation and transversality.

Our starting hypothesis is that, in order to create organizations capable of responding to this environment, we have to turn the organization and the management of its processes on the axis of what is properly human, on the axis of the PERSON.

To this end, we are developing a methodology for changing people, teams and organizations with the aim of approaching a much more human business model that we call the “Person-Centered Company”, a company that maximizes its profit towards the common good, integrating the good of all its stakeholders and that, on this path, also maximizes its profitability and its capacity to respond efficiently to today’s challenges.

True to our purpose, we define a new business model whose purpose is not profit or economic performance, but rather that these are only a necessary means to obtain the end: the service of the common good and human development in the community.

Based on this, the Person-Centered Company (PCC) is one that is capable of understanding itself from this new logic and, therefore, placing the person at the center. It is a responsible company capable of generating relationships with all its stakeholders. They are organizations aware of their responsibility to create a better world and to promote human development and the happiness of people.

The PCC embraces and integrates in its culture, in a particular and unique way, the values of the encounter. Values that converge towards the ends of Truth, Good, Beauty and Unity, the only ones capable of mobilizing the human heart and giving fullness to the person.

These values are taken to all relationships – interpersonal, group or systemic – to multiply the generation of value for the company itself and for the people who are part of it, as well as the level of satisfaction of the latter.

What we seek from the Chair is to develop companies and organizations.

• Capable of generating the necessary spaces for cooperation and internal and external dialogueand that the company ceases to be understood as an open system and begins to be understood as a dialogic community, a web of relationships and conversations, understanding dialogue as a privileged vehicle of encounter
• Where the misunderstanding, the conflict and dysfunctionalityof the teams are managed in order to extract from them lessons learned that allow progress towards the ideal of the desired company
• That they have clarity about their missionn and that this implies a meaningful project that transcends it, that transforms reality and contributes value to society and the world by focusing on meaningful and noble aims, capable of mobilizing the human being
• Capable of harmonizing the achievement of profit with its ultimate purposeand managing the relationship with all its stakeholders, including the owners of capital
• That they place the good of the individual and the unfolding of his or her vocation at the center and are capable of overcoming the polarity of the individual good and the good of the whole. The person-centered dialogic enterprise takes into account the fullness and development of the person in all his or her dimensions. In this way, people feel treated as unique, worthy, valuable and responsible and can grow and develop in a job that allows them to bring their talents into play and give the best of themselves, establishing enriching links that play a constructive role in their development process and in that of the organization as a whole