INTERVIEW - ROBERT THEOBALD

The main message appears to be that maximum economic growth coupled with all the steps necessary to achieve international competitiveness provides a desirable route into the future. The problem is that this strategy has either resulted in a huge increase in inequality or unemployment throughout the developed world.

Highlighted by lampertina

Ever since Adam Smith we have known that business requires:

• social cohesion,
• predictability, often premised on law but really based on the prevalence of a set of cultural norms,
• a basically level playing field without excessive bribery or bureaucratic interference.

Up to the present time business has assumed that these are basically "free goods." Trends throughout the world suggest that they are all under challenge. It is in the narrow self-interest of business to become involved in maintaining the cultural and political pre-conditions for its activities.

Highlighted by lampertina

MAI dramatically limits the opportunity for communities and nation-states to preserve their own priorities and places commercial interests above community and cultural desires.

Highlighted by lampertina

Recent developments in such corporations as Shell show that they now recognise that they have been blind-sided by failing to look at human rights questions.

Q. Do you then see corporations as part of the societal learning process which is currently taking place?

I continue to be surprised by the failure of those in the social change movement to recognise that corporations have moved further in shifting their organisational styles than academia, media, non-profits and political systems. I believe that business has many lessons to teach the rest of society.

Highlighted by lampertina

so long as the stock market rewards short-term financial profits corporations will be driven in perverse directions. Given that we are indeed moving into a knowledge economy, it is the people that corporations can attract and hold which are their most important product. Accounting practices must change to reflect this new reality.

Highlighted by lampertina

Business and the financial sector need to understand that they are necessarily involved in a massive choice process. Tom Atlee, a close colleague, argues that "the world is getting better and better and worse and worse faster and faster." There are two mutually exclusive futures. Continued exclusive concentration on purely economic issues will lead to a "race to the bottom."

Highlighted by lampertina

focus on social responsibility and business ethics and to mobilise the groundswell of support which already exists. This latter route is quite possible and is where long-term profits will be found. Cultural directions are constantly challenging negative behaviours.

Highlighted by lampertina

Q. The MAI seems to be based on the assumption that increasing and institutionalising deregulation will make the world more predictable and better for business.

I believe that those who accept this conclusion are deluding themselves. I do not believe that a world run entirely on economic priorities can be stable or serve the interests of business. In Reworking Success I state that there are three requirements for a viable twenty-first century:

• ecological integrity,
• effective decision-making, and
• social cohesion.

These preconditions will not be achieved on the basis of economic dynamics alone.

Highlighted by lampertina