Alla famiglia

I've learnt a very beautiful Italian term - alla famiglia, it means 'we are family'. (Grace, correct me if I am wrong).

The concept of family seems very dynamic in our culture. Sometimes 'family' does not mean anything about kinship. Just take a very simple example, our company has an idea that all colleague in all regions are in a family. We share sympathy, love, and caring. We support, appreciate and forgive each others all the time.

Sound fantastic? Of course, the real situation is much more complicated than this. Politics forms once more than one person exists, not to mention actually we have numbers of regional offices, peer circles and individuals interlock with each others. In fact, we compete resource, we show off our performance and we fight for power.

And, sometimes I believe the idea of alla famiglia legitimates the exploitation to employees (include me). As long as you are one of the family members, you are expected to do something to achieve the solidarity, to sacrifice yourself sometimes to do a favour to the whole 'family'. It makes you feel embarrasses being too 'individualistic'. It is not appreciated if you wish to calculate how much you wish to get from the company (especially in monetary sense)

I had worked for several years after graduation, and I form my philosophy, i.e., you could devote in your job, you should be nice to your colleague and contribute to your company, and good team spirit is very important to maintain the harmonic relationship in your workplace. You could also make friends and make fun with your colleague (although it is not that easy, that is why I treasure my relationship my nice colleague). However, the relationship between myself and the company is mainly based on economic mutual benefit. The company pays me for my effort and contribution, but not because my boss is my parent and give me pocket money. I do not believe 'alla famiglia' concept is feasible in any office management.

Is 'Confucianism' really that influential in our culture?