Winning Hearts — Rebuilding Identification at Forgiatura Emiliana

A four-round, advanced organizational-behavior simulation set inside Forgiatura Emiliana S.p.A., a 1,850-person precision metal-forging firm in Italy's Emilia-Romagna 'Motor Valley' (FY2025 revenue €310M, EBIT down to 4.1%). For six decades it was a proud paternalistic family firm where workers spoke of 'la famiglia' with genuine pride; two years ago a private-equity fund bought it, cut 220 jobs in two rounds of layoffs, froze the historic profit-share and churned through two CEOs. The famous pride has curdled into cynicism. You are the newly installed third CEO. On day one the engagement pulse lands: the organizational identification index has collapsed to 31/100 (sector norm 60, the firm's own 2021 level 74). Voluntary attrition runs at 19%/yr among the most skilled forgers (€4.2M/yr), discretionary effort is down 40%, the lean-production system central to the EBIT plan sits stuck at 22% adoption, and a union strike ballot is 45 days out. The board wants EBIT back to 8% in 24 months — but the people who must deliver it no longer feel the company is theirs. Your only resources are symbols, words and reward signals, plus a €6M people-and-engagement envelope over four rounds; every gesture is read by a workforce primed to detect insincerity. Using Bergami's integration of cognitive identification ('I define myself as part of this company') and affective/relational identification ('I feel proud, attached, connected'), you (1) diagnose the identity gap, separating which group lost which kind of identification and why; (2) design the symbolic and communication strategy — the honest heritage narrative, a credible CEO listening tour, and a co-designed 'Officina Nostra' lean relaunch rather than a rename by fiat; (3) allocate the €6M to reward signals that re-link individual identity to the collective — trigger-based profit-share reinstatement, craft-mastery recognition and investing in supervisors as identity carriers, never leading with cash; and (4) take a coherent, keepable commitment into the works-council meeting to defuse the strike ballot without buying a hollow peace, then defend the identification-first-then-performance sequence to the board. The math rewards feeding BOTH halves of identification, acknowledging the rupture honestly, co-ownership over fiat, and a credible commitment — and punishes the five classic errors: leading with money, staying silent on the layoffs and frozen profit-share, over-promising to win peace, relaunching the change program top-down, and feeding only one half of identification. Final KPIs track the Identification Index, Cognitive ID, Affective ID and workforce Credibility against the €6M envelope.