IN a recent “TED Talk,” Rainer Strack, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, shed light on what jobseekers are currently looking for. He emphasized that the top four topics are not around money but are all around culture (e.g., good relationships with superior and colleagues; good work-life balance, etc.) and the top priority worldwide consists in being appreciated for our work. In brief, we could wonder, for example, if we get a “thank you” in our daily work activity, beyond our annual bonus payment once a year.

The need to be recognized in and for our jobs is becoming more and more fundamental. However, it is not always easy to recognize all those acts that characterize our daily work routines, especially when we talk about acts of care and giving. These acts cannot be quantified and could vary from helping a colleague experiencing a difficult private or professional situation to freely providing mentorship activities to our junior collaborators. Acts of giving could even arise during specific occasions. For example, when employees offer lunch to their colleagues, or simply coffee during snack times. Managers or leaders could also adopt these kinds of acts when they decide to give more time off to workers who are going through family or health problems.

Given this picture, practices of solidarity — which might even be led by ties of friendship — can permeate our organizational spaces and could remain invisible, therefore, without a proper recognition. On the one hand, in the moment in which we want to measure those acts, they could lose a part of their intrinsic gratuitousness. On the other hand, promoting acts of care, giving and solidarity could be a way to promote people’s human flourishing even within the organizational boundaries. Therefore, making acts of mutual help and care visible could foster their enhancement in the workplace, but this practice should be conducted with caution.

One step toward this path could be the one of naming these acts through the expression “agapic behaviors.” But where does the adjective “agapic” come from? The sociologist Boltanski argued that “agape” consists of a higher form of love compared to philia and eros; it is a completely unconditioned gift, and it does not require any form of reciprocation. In any case, giving to someone implies the beginning of a relationship that could reach the beauty of friendship even within the company boundaries. In the field of business ethics, professor Domènec Melé connected agape to the love of benevolence, blending it to the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, according to which people have a spontaneous and voluntary tendency to associate with each other and aim at building relations based on mutual interest, pleasure and friendship.

Put simply, agapic behaviors could be considered as common-good-oriented acts that start from fraternal relationships among individuals. Agapic behaviors contribute both to building social cohesion and bond creation, and to construct an organizational culture that integrates employees within the organization. Since they derive from anti-dogmatic procedures, through agapic behaviors, workers feel free to express who they really are within their work setting; in other terms, agapic behaviors could thus promote a sense of genuine authenticity in the workplace.

Fostering agapic behaviors in the workplace could help to transcend the contract logic and to embrace a logic of reciprocity, based on mutual care, support and aid at different hierarchical levels. Managers would need to be closer to their employees to really recognize their work activity, an activity that includes even those invisible acts abovementioned. Dedicating more time and space to workers would reinforce both membership strategies and a sense of belonging to the company culture. Furthermore, to foster the development of a community of people striving for a common mission, managers could organize moments of “sharing” based on listening to workers’ stories and needs which could even incorporate hints of their agapic acts.

To sum up, the scattered spirit of donation for donation’s sake could pervade even the organizational context and should be managed with prudence. Indeed, if on the one side, the donation is the non-assumption of a return, on the other part, a lack of return does not imply an agapic gesture but a frustrating absence of expected reciprocation.

Roberta Sferrazzo is associate professor of Organization Studies and Ethics at Audencia Business School. Her research background navigates between critical and ethical perspectives applied to the fields of organization studies and management through a multidisciplinary approach. She is author of several articles published in international journals, such as British Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management Studies and Work, Employment and Society. She recently investigated an ethical approach to management in her monograph, “Civil Economy and Organisation. Toward Ethical Business Management” (Palgrave Macmillan).