What is the state of our world today – a personal appreciation. Human beings in the western world have become more individualistic, more egoist, driven to maximize their personal benefit. Some are greedy. But there are also corporations and philanthropists, strongly engaged in helping nations and people out of poverty, to build sustainable livelihoods.
Let’s try to look at our legacy. Why should shareholders renounce their dividends or CEOs give up their bonus for a better world, on behalf of research, innovation, start-up investments, NGO for a better world, or pay more tax to help reduce CO2 emissions and climate change, or help to halt deforestation? Why should they give up their luxury car or their penthouse at the lakeside? They work heavily, have high responsibilities and from their perspective they deserve such compensation and benefits.
Why should a 60+ person give their best years to help stop climate change? Why should they care? They will be gone anyway, when the real problem start emerging? Really? Our medical system has become so performing, that we can expect to live a long live, beyond 80 or 90 years. What about their responsibility towards our children and grandchildren and the children, yet unborn? What about their responsibility towards a world which become more and more unstable, unbalanced and unequal?
Enterprises worldwide strive to increase their productivity. Individual competition is fierce. It is about the survival of the youngest and the fittest. We could call it “capitalist Darwinism”. This workplace competition can include psychological harassment like backstabbing, mobbing, racism and exclusion turned against foreign workforce. Inequality can be caused through groupthink, favoritism, nepotism and lobbying. Employees are not supposed to be critical or to think, they just have to perform and deliver to maximize shareholder value and they will be laid off when product demand decreases. There are many means and tools for groupthink and social exclusion including social networks. Nowadays, anyone can hack and enter a private computer system exploring all your files and activities on your computer. Hackers can activate the camera of your computer and explore your privacy, where you are right now or analyze what your are typing on your keyboard. Lack of trust, lack of privacy and data exposure leads to a society of mistrust, leading to self-protection, isolation, paranoia, depression and aggressiveness.
Being compliant at the workplace and never challenging the status quo becomes a strategy for survival, trying to prevent for being laid off. In today’s business and corporate world profit is king. It is a culture of fear and coercion, a culture of failure at each hierarchical level of the organization.
Let’s take another view, one of you as the owner of your own business. It is business warfare. The cake of opportunity has become very small, and you have to fight for every crumb. You are exposed to the same type of mobbing, groupthink. Depending in which market and industry your business is active, you will be exposed to heavy political and industrial lobbying. Your computers may be hacked as well. You are exposed to international competition in your own local markets, even if you are a small company. Your business might very well become substituted. Your ideas, your products and services can be easily copied from your webpages, your patent rights are ignored in some countries, basically everything becomes transparent to anyone, since you also have to promote, sell your products and services.
Some people might identify themselves with these views. To quote Yves Bonnefoy: “Nous vivons dans un monde qui est une image de la réalité. C’est notre exil.” Yes, we are all well aware about the business realities. Still I think it is important to address and discuss the issues and to come up with better solutions. With today’s triple crisis and challenges you need to be open minded and creative.
Who can you trust in the business world? You have to be aware of the tactics used in a very competitive, international and multi-cultural environment. As Andy Grove as president and CEO from Intel used to say: you have to be paranoia to survive in today’s business world.
Whatever means and models we could come up with to justify a corporate system, based on coercion, repression and exploitation, such corporate system will fail. Using coercion and repression at the workplace will in the long run destabilize our society and destroy our cultural values and believes.
Also, today the difference between the “haves” and “have not” is growing. There no longer are enough jobs for everyone, even for highly experienced and educated people. In an economy of sufficiency, consumer demand will decrease. At the same time, product and service demand will shift. Markets will be stirred, the 99% sufficiency consumers and new geographical segments will emerge driven through the sustainability mainstream.
According to the philosopher Frithjof Bergmann, a new and adequate job model is needed for all the people around the world. Bergmann proposes a model, he calls the “New Work” http://newworknewculture.com/ . In which way did society deal with the 1930 Great Depression? We should review the 1930 Great Depression in analogy, to understand, what has worked well, and which failures led to WWII http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression .
Company downsizing to maximize shareholder value, no jobs for the younger generations, laid off baby boomers, who have become unaffordable for companies because of high social costs, taken in charge by the state social system. A society, exposed to increased stress, a society desperately looking for jobs, with increasing health problems including burn out, depression. Social costs increase, so do state debts with no solutions in sight.
According to George Magnus and Jean-Claude Trichet, the European financial system is highly exposed to systemic failure. The USA is narrowly watching and engaged in the developments of the EU zone, so is China, both depending on the good economic functioning of the Euro Zone.
What about climate change? Annual CO2 emissions in the USA are 20 tons per capita, China and Switzerland more or less produce the same 6 tons per capita. But we have to look to the world’s total and growing population and CO2 emissions, impacting our climate at a global scale. What are the 8% of GDP for China compared to the economic risk, described by Nicholas Stern, for the business as usual scenario or BAU climate change suggesting welfare reduction by an amount equivalent to a reduction in consumption per head of between 5 and 20%?
Even if in Switzerland we might feel complacent thanks to a strong work ethic and economy, a strong democracy and political system, an excellent education system and quality of life. Still we are part of that global climate and economic system, from which our nation’s welfare depends.
Over the last years, developed nations have outplaced some of their polluting industries into countries with weaker environmental laws and regulation, continuing to destroy the environment and adding to global warming. Those nations and organizations would have access physically and financially to alternative fuel and production types, still they opted for low cost and less controlled production, without considering the harm caused to the local communities and their environment.
How do we differ from each other? Why and how are societies, nations and cultures different? Which ones are more supportive to fight climate change? Which nations will be most affected through climate change, risking their social stability, water and food security? Which nations still ignore to tackle the climate change issue and continue to release large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere? Although we are aware of these problems, we seem to have reached the limit of our intellectual and operational capacity to deal with these global crises.
When considering our major achievement over the last 60 years, our strong reliance on oil and fossil fuel puts our achievements in a new light. Newly emerged economies and large populations want to reach the same western standards of living, relying heavily on fossil fuels. From a resource and global footprint perspective, we would need 8 additional planet Earths.
There is a strong capital shift from West to East. While the economy in the USA and in the European countries weakens and might even fall into a depression, the spread between the rich and middle class increases. Post-2008 government support and rescue measures have prevented financial collapse. But did they also help to strengthen the economy in a sustainable way? People from the middle class, trying to maintain their lifestyle and level of consumption in taking up more credits, incur the risk to further slide into indebtedness and poverty. Will the BRICS nations and the G20 find solutions to stabilize the global economy? How will quota, voting and veto power been distributed within the IMF? How would global interests be best represented to solve the current crises?
Under the current developments, what could be a possible path for multinationals? With weakening economy and large income disparities, consumption and spending continues to drop. High quality products will meet the demand of the 1%. Businesses of mass consumption need to strip off all input, production, marketing, sales and distribution processes which will not be needed anymore. The 99% sufficiency consumers need to be supplied through different means. They need to spend their money for their basic needs, vital goods and dwelling.
While your company can benefit from high income customers, realizing high margin, you can actually engage in the 99% who have high work ethics and strongly adhere to the economic, social and environmental triple bottom line. While as a company you will benefit from high quality, zero-footprint and 100% renewable resources, your local products have a strong identity and brand, linked to origin, quality and tradition. People are highly motivated by their work, giving sense and meaning to their lives, in line with their climate ethics, commitment and values for sustainability. They appreciate nature and services provided by surrounding ecosystems. They have again time to produce quality, protecting environment and climate. They have again time to care for their families and children and the local community and social life.
Alternative economic support include philanthropic funded programs, public-private partnership engaging private companies, local public sector to support individual and micro-organizations through micro-credits for sustainable business development in developing countries, including platforms like KIVA http://www.kiva.org/ .
There is strong awareness and consciousness of stakeholder power. There is a strong democratic system in place and adherence to equal rights, valuing equality among all people. The corporate business world is fully integrated into this system.
Values include equal opportunity and fair competition, open and trusted system of communication, full transparency and openness to critics and suggestions for improvement. There is a common sense of enterprise shared through regular meetings and exchanges among all people, in public, private and work life.
To quote Thomas L. Friedman, the world has become “hot (warmer, with the model described above), flat and crowded” and also more open, democratic, equal, fair and healthier.
There is a new economy of meaning, meeting the needs of our society and civilization, meeting the needs of our climate and environment. It is the revival of our cities, better and healthier, and of community life. It needs to be organized, but the organization is flat, non-bureaucratic and straight forward. It is sharing of fulfillment and plenitude among your family members, friends and within your community. It is back to nature. It is hands on to a carbon-free society, water, food and shelter for everyone. It is a new beginning or as we refer to in Switzerland as “neustart Schweiz” http://neustartschweiz.ch/ .
As we already experience in today’s global economy, GDP levels vary from one nation to the other. If the economy in the industrialized nations remain weak due to a decrease in consumption, the human power should not be wasted. Is there a path to a sustainable community building on programs such as created under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps ?
We have the choice. We can opt for a business as usual scenario, exposing our civilization to the risks of climate change. On the other hand, we can direct our power and energy towards peace and freedom in making concessions, successfully achieving a sustainable development of our planet, creating jobs for everyone, towards an economy of meaning and sufficiency, where there is a healthy life, enough vital resources and shelter for everyone, everywhere in the world, today and in the future.
In Capitalism at the Crossroads, Stuart L. Hart refers to the indigenous enterprise, or an enterprise strongly rooted in the native and local culture, knowledge, tradition, values and believes. Developing on the evolution of corporations, Stuart Hart refers to 3rd generation enterprise as facilitator of a local, native knowledge based, distributed corporate model. The potential and opportunity for corporate engagement with the 4 bn people living at the base of the pyramid (BoP) with daily income below USD 1, has been brought into evidence through C.K. Prahalad, Stuart Hart and Ted London. Local knowledge and education, as well as covering energy and communication needs and access to information are crucial. How real are these opportunities? Are those opportunities still open for the developing world that has gone through imperialistic and neo-colonial experiences? In some nations, there might still exist deep wounds that need time for healing. I believe it is an important opportunity for all of us to work together to find common and democratic solutions for our entire world.
Transformation will not always be easy and need encouragement and support. Individuals must make concession. They will not be able to meet all their expectations, which they aspired during a strong economy. Transformation should be based on common visions and goals, at the same time meeting the fundamental needs of all nations. Transformation should be based on transparency and openness, mutual trust and the sharing of our needs and values together with our families, friends and communities.
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