Abstract
Through a qualitative survey that involved the use of a semi-structured interview, the authors wanted to investigate, within a sample of Comau managers and partners, which elements of value for participants, company, and territory had been generated by the Comau e.DO Experience Project. The objective was to describe the experiences, images, and representations associated with the value produced by the e.DO Experience. The value for participants was explained in terms of skill creation, value for new citizenship, empowerment, and inspiring and orienteering for working. The value for company was described not only in relation to the development of the brand or the core business but also and above all in function of an authentic social responsibility and growth/recognition of internal staff. The value for territory concerns instead the creation of ecosystems between company, community, institutions and territory, educational innovation, cultural dissemination, and promotion of the development of capabilities.
TopIntroduction
The starting hypothesis is that the Educational Robotics initiatives undertaken by Comau through e.DO Robot and the e.DO Experience Project have enabled the generation of shared value among Participants, Company and Territory. The assumption is that the many promoters, whether they are Comau managers or partners of third-party companies, have been driven by shared goals and interests but, at the same time, their perceptions and representations of the different activities and the value they have generated may present peculiar and unique elements. Here the goal is to capture the variety of different perspectives, so as to portray a complete and in-depth picture of the different levels of value generated for the territory, the companies involved and the participants.
The research objective involves describing a series of value-sharing experiences implemented through the e.DO robot. Consistently with the purposes mentioned above, the methodology employed is that of interpretive phenomenology, whose main object of study is the understanding of an experience (Richards, Morse, 2008). This qualitative phase is designed to meet the needs of exploration of the phenomenon studied; in fact, it is intended to provide preliminary information for understanding the topic studied and to direct the creation of an in-depth survey, discussed in the next chapter.
This phase of the research involved the administration of 14 interviews, one of the privileged tools for collecting data within the phenomenological approach, equally divided between Comau managers (7 interviews) and Comau partners (7 interviews). This choice of sampling made it possible to involve representative actors who were heterogeneous in terms of role, vision and - in the case of the partners – the organizations they belonged to. Their contribution made it possible to outline elements in common or divergence between the various organizations involved, so as to provide indications for structuring the subsequent survey, which will be addressed to a larger sample.
Figure 1 shows the interview outline.
TopData Collection And Processing
An overview of the interviews is presented in this section
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Respondents’ characteristics, by reporting their answers to the first 3 framing questions.
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Answers related to SECTION A - OVERALL organized by value levels (Participants, Company and Territory);
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Analysis of the images described by the respondents;
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Respondents' answers referring to section B – AREAS OF VALUE;
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Summary synopsis of the main elements collected during the interviews through the questions contained in Section C-PILLARS OF VALUE.