| Kenneth L. Murrell Department of Management/MIS The University of West Florida Pensacola, Florida 32514-5752 904-474-2316 kmurrell@uwf.edu |
In approaching the task of adding dialogue to the work and words of David Korten, I feel an extremely heavy weight of responsibility. Since the early 80's, I have both known of Dr. Korten's work through published sources, in particular his 1990 book Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda, and been impressed with his passion for learning and his depth of experience outside the U.S. Both of us were part of the Development Management Network, meeting annually just prior to the American Public Administration national conferences and often again during the Society for International Development meetings in Washington. Having been a part of numerous academic discussions and personal conversations about his work in Asia and Latin America, I was most impressed with his involvement in major development projects nearly worldwide. What impressed me even more was David's understanding and appreciation of organization development and his business school background. These were very rare qualities for an international development professional, sad to say.
I was also fortunate to follow David by almost 20 years to Addis Ababa and to see first-hand his impact on that country's development management. His legacy of assistance and education survived even after the overthrow of the Haile Selassie government and then the coming and going of the Mengistu-led communist regime. Dr. Korten's commitment to action guided by management and OD theory has been one of the most notable accomplishments in his long career extending over three decades on four continents.
To structure this dialogue I will follow fairly closely the layout of the book and move from section to section and focus my comments on the issues raised in the order presented. To start, though, I would like to first draw attention to the significance of the acknowledgment section and the prologue to When Corporations Rule the World.
Dr. Korten's circle of friends and colleagues is without doubt a most important element of this book. With the author's many years living and working outside the US he has been in close contact with and heavily influenced by many of the world's most informed intellectuals and change agents. These knowledgeable individuals are not available for continued discussions to those readers limited by their experiences on only one continent. Most of us are never likely to be able to speak to as wide a variety of individuals, or as frequently to work with them, as has David.
In some ways I see this book as far more a collective effort of hundreds of very important voices captured and clarified by one individual. This collective voice is also one that would not have been expressed without a significant amount of support and financial assistance from several philanthropic organizations and by two unique publishing houses that I have come to know over the years as very special organizations in their own right. I believe it is also important to recognize Frances Korten's contribution to this work. In the field of international development she is recognized as one of our best practitioners/intellectuals and a source of tremendous experience and wisdom as it comes to recognizing what global socio-economic development is all about. Very few such strong husband and wife teams exist in the fields of international development and social change. I believe this brings a special quality to their work and this book also.
In the prologue I am struck with the common themes of institutional decay and organizational crises presented from a global perspective. Something of major proportions is happening in our world and no doubt it will affect us all. Significant structural changes and shifting paradigms are occurring; and our institutions around the world are being bombarded with these released energies and demands for change. Those of us involved in social and organizational development have our challenges set out for us and perhaps for the first time in history we also have a major responsibility to play a role in this unfolding drama.
The prologue also gives the human face to a writer I have known and held in very high regard for many years. I always felt David was the first of many intellectuals who had the capacity to not only learn from doing (action research) but who was also the epitome of an enlightened change agent who had committed to take our organizational sciences and change technologies to the developing and nonindustrial regions of the world.
Fifteen years ago when we first crossed paths, this was an extremely unusual mix of skills for an international development professional. The only other person I put in the same category was Dave Brown of Boston University and the Institute for Development Research in Boston. Today there are many more of us with O.D. backgrounds and experience in developing country work, but sadly, there still remains a dearth of well-trained O.D. professionals given the needs of global socio-economic development. While I was working with the UN and other multi-lateral agencies, it was quite apparent that the serious limits to their effectiveness were not just in their policy framework but also in their critical shortage of trained professionals. In all of my experiences, there were very few professionals who had any real training or intellectual grounding in the fields of planned change let alone any expertise in work with transformational change approaches based on the behavioral sciences outside of economics.
Korten's take on all of this is, I believe, evidenced best in his earlier book by Kumarian Press entitled Getting To The 21st Century, in which he effectively argues that externally driven development assistance should not be the answer. Rather, we need effective grassroots and bottom-up organizing to offer real hope for long term sustainable development. I cannot disagree; but since we have such large bureaucracies like the UN interested, we should be willing to bring to them new approaches and work with them to facilitate changes in how they operate. It is unwise to assume they will go away or become more benign as times become more chaotic. At some level, I think we can all agree they are potential partners in development even if their influence is often small in comparison to the power of many large and better organized global corporations.
In When Corporations Rule The World there is a valuable education awaiting the reader in an area that would be nearly impossible to know without the help of David. He has in so many ways "been there and done that" when it comes to looking at the global role of business in much of the world hidden from our limited view. In sharing his experiences and lessons learned in action around the world, he is giving us a rich educational opportunity. But he still demands we make sense of it based on our own beliefs and values. This is what I intend to do over the next several pages.
With section one, "Cowboys in a Spaceship" the book is stating the case that the last half century has been "the most remarkable period in history." Not a difficult claim to support. What is more debatable is the claim of a loss of institutional legitimacy. Is it actually legitimacy we have lost? Or have our increasing expectations grown beyond the capabilities of our too often bureaucratic and cumbersome institutional forms? In this age of crisis there is also an assumption growing that questioning of authority (remember the 60's bumper stickers?) is a required practice. But as in the generation of the 60's, the questioning of authority was seldom matched with a developed replacement for the models of social change that had been used historically. In essence, David seems to hope to finish the work started 30 years ago with a critique. This book also encourages action, but its main contribution may be in its ability to educate us about the needed preparation for action.
What is at risk now globally may not be as obvious to those of us who were a part of the earlier generation of change agents. Before we had the experiences of traveling and working in so many different countries, the strategies of creating social change were much simpler. Considering the notion of a spaceship earth, the clear message is that this fragile planet may not be able to support an increasing population, given what we have come to think of as economic development. The book argues for more global stewardship of our fragile planet. David's observation about the urgency of the crisis of spaceship earth is definitely given credibility considering his global adventures. Accepting this crisis does not mean that we must act without thought but that we hold ourselves to even higher standards of responsibility and learn all we can about working cross-culturally as change agents. We also must be very careful in diagnosing problems and suggesting solutions so as not to be led down paths that could make the situation worse.
The book argues that continual economic growth has shortfalls as a solution but that it may even be sowing the seeds of our own destruction. On this point we have been and will be hearing even more debate pivoting around political ideologies more than clear headed economic analysis or what might pass for that if economics itself had not become so ideological. David's call for a more thoughtful response to the coming crisis is dependent upon our ability to learn how to create better macro-level systems of economics and institutional development. But, because of our historic failures, we have often retreated to an unbridled market philosophy that accepts our impotence to more directly create the world we really want. We then collude with a world full of material riches in the front cars of the train and for those who by birth or good fortune started this life with some very significant material advantages. David's plea seems to be that those of us who still dream the impossible dream of influencing our planetary destiny will team up with those who have the most to lose if a countervailing form of socio-economic influence is not found.
My own concern for this strategy is both its lack of success in the past and the fear that many of those needed to support this approach will not stay involved when the price becomes one that exacts a serious level of commitment rather than the appealing and easy rhetoric of being a community. As most of us have come to realize, community building demands as much as it offers; and when it gets really tough, the commitment often wavers. I do not disagree with the hopes of creating the worlds we want to live in; but the challenges, as I see them, may have to be faced by several generations before real progress occurs. Even if the journey lasts a thousand-years it needs to start now. In what ways can we make the fastest progress? My hope is in education before liberation; but this then calls for serious reform in education, and that is not anything I would be willing to hold my breath for. It is also the challenge I face daily as an educator, so I look for books like this one to educate me, my colleagues, and students. But as a public policy debate, is education the only response to this crises of "institutional legtimacy" or can we create additional options?
In this second section of the book corporate power in America is the starting issue; and, as expected, it is shown clearly to be in its ascendancy. This again is a most supportable claim, but then what is there to do about it? Beyond a good understanding of the how and why of its power, what else is possible? Here the book contributes an important understanding that can help many of us more clearly see our roles as part of a special corporate class. Even if all we do is occasionally serve as consultants (and particularly if we do this while living comfortably in a tenured academic position or if in other ways we gain advantage via our connection to the corporate world), we are vulnerable to being coopted. This will take in the great majority of the country's intellectuals and knowledge workers, and likely most readers of this book that are residents of North America. As part of a special class how much do we want to risk our status and advantages by outright attack or criticism of the hand that feeds us?
Another way of posing this question is asking the proper role one might take if he or she truly believes reform is needed. What if reform (or as many of us believe transformation) is more unlikely to be successful if attempted in an adversarial climate or only through attack? Particularly if the attack is only by a few grassroots organizations that may in many ways need the corporate world more that it needs them.
If it can be shown that another strategy for bringing about change has a higher chance of creating the world we desire then it is not productive to focus energy only attacking an obvious external target. It is likely to be a more sustainable change effort if the energy driving it creates rather than forces change on others. The work of the "Global Excellence in Management" (GEM) initiative using the guiding philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry offers an identifiable alternative to a critique-only approach. GEM as a $3 million plus U.S. Agency for International Development effort is seriously directed to sharing managemental and organizational successes across borders. So far it has been seen to be helpful in strengthening the P.V.O. (Private Voluntary Organizations) and NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations) community and in importance as countervailing powers to unconstrained corporate advancement. This is not to imply that Korten neglects valid action alternatives; it's more a concern that many groups inspired by this book may spend more effort in blaming others than in leading the change efforts within their own communities.
GEM is only one alternative strategy that exists that demonstrates how change may come about by creating new forms and new alliances. These PVOs and NGOs can partially supplant the corporate control so dominant over these several centuries but now truly beginning to show its age. Many writers are arguing for a third way that will be critical in creating new organizational models that transcend the limited libertarian agenda of business and the ideological extremes of revolution. This third way includes the creating of community and the building of networks that may look very much like the new organizational forms that David himself calls for. Business is not one great monolithic villain any more than is every grassroots organization necessarily closer to God. All of these are human institutions; and rather than seeing the battle of the two, it is perhaps more useful to see each as learning from the other. Could we create new forms of social and economic institutions to include even integrated models of not for profit business that has a human agenda of development goals far broader than a narrow band of just economic returns? If these organizations can better respond to the great unmet human needs, then their future existence seems assured.
Much is possible if we stop thinking narrowly dualistic antagonisms and start creating new integrated models of organizations that set about to serve human needs in many different ways. My optimism in giving this third way scenario a chance is based in the ability of humans to eventually both recognize and respond to human needs with new forms of social organization. In doing this, we can create an increasing awareness that we can help foster the type of civil society we desire if we can continually learn to work together more effectively.
If we are trying to do this, we must be able to see beyond the veil of business wealth and power. In short, we must have the potential for the corporate role to be visible and not so hidden as it is now according to Korten. For, if David is right and corporations do practically rule the world, it is especially incumbent on those of us in this democratic society to see behind this obscurity to change what is in part a direct attack on our form of government. This government, defined since our revolution, has been one of, by, and for the people. We can not yet say this true of our global governance. If global corporate rule does become the law of the day, then it will not be because we have not been warned. This warning is what this book does well, even for those many of us that cannot accept every single argument or sentiment of the author.
A world defined by corporate elites, as pictured in chapter seven with the example of Pakistan, is a world that directly threatens the assumptions on which this country was built. This is not a new fear but a growing one where the corporate class and the wealthy elites of the world have much more in common with each other than they do with any of their fellow citizens living within close proximity. Lacking any real democratic political structure for the world, the world's economic elites will likely concoct some form of political control over those not so fortunate or else leave it up to the more organized crime world to manage the masses and leave the really large and powerful businesses alone. Then the only question is how long before either a merger of common interests or an out right duel over control of legitimate and the not so legitimate businesses emerge.
As our civil society fails to create the environments for healthy life, then what will emerge to take on the responsibility will be rule outside our influence. In the worst case scenario, new forms of special interest will emerge to manage the masses. Very few may welcome special interest rule but without organized action civil society and democratic governance could be only a nostalgic memory. On a global level if the corporate libertarians, Korten's corporate rulers, have an open field to run on, why do they think they will be the only competitors? Is there historical evidence that unfettered business is necessarily good business? Without countervailing and legitimate institutional power, the rule of law can easily shift to a rule of might.
All of these questions call for a re-definition of government and business at the local as well as global level, and contrasted with a stepping away from the responsibility to help design that social and economic environment which best serves human needs. Historically laissez faire economic principles have not always enhanced the common good, but neither have the assorted experiments of strong centralized control. We enter the new century with the obvious challenge of reinventing almost everything we might have taken for granted at the threshold of the last century. And, as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently put it, it is the duty of each generation to recreate democracy as best fits the times and not to simply be concerned with pleasing our revolutionary forefathers by remaining consistent and unchanging. Korten argues for fearing corporate rule. I prefer we cooperate in strengthening civil society and democratic responsibilities.
Not if, but when the nation state dies, what stands in the wings to replace it? Business seems to be assuming that globally linked and aligned economic institutions will allow for the orderly and carefully nurtured wealth-creating industries to step forward and manage the planet. There is more to socio-economic development than economics! Living only in this material and limited world of the industrialized west, we sometimes find it difficult relating to the greater and more complex question of what kind of society do we really want to try and create.
Within the naivete of an economics-only perspective lies much wishful thinking for simplicity, without apparent serious concern for the major social issues involved. Business can't simply be allowed to step into the void of the decline of the nation state and take its rightful position as it sees it. The demise of the state will start a catastrophic struggle for power and control. What will move forward when the door continues to open for change will not only be the new organizations and grassroots movements that dreamers like David and I hope for but a myriad of control-oriented sub-cultures. Those to most fear, organized crime and not so organized banditry, are very anxious to increase their power. The role of the church will also have to be reconsidered as will the many other military and para-military movements that either are new or have been around long enough to become nation states.
We may be evolving towards more virulent forms of corporate colonial regimes. There is much evidence presented in the book that this is occurring. Can we assume that is the worst that will happen? No, too many other actors are standing-by, or already moving into place. All of this makes the book's cry for a new way of doing development even more critical. Sadly, what is being proposed by Korten is the most difficult and the hardest to sustain over time. What is required before we move to creating community and a new civil society are the skills to make this happen. Even though much of this can be learned as we go, as in the case of South Africa, the time available to learn enough to get a jump on the other organizing imperatives is limited. Organized crime, state terrorism, and radical religious organizations exist by the hundreds. More than a challenge of expanding global business is facing us, and the scene must be enlarged so that as we work together to help in international development we have a clearer idea who our potential allies are even if we have had doubts or questions about their role in the past.
This then serves to force a question of whether we want to see big business only as the force to fear? This is not to say that many major global corporations should not be feared. I myself am greatly suspicious of the entertainment industry and MTV in particular, but they pale in comparison to the Columbia drug cartel; and I do not even want to imagine the potential for alliances across certain lines of "business" as the power of the state declines.
What David writes is important, but he falls short both with the diagnoses as well as the urgency to pay attention to people-centered development. When the society is not responding to human needs is when other organizations step in. Witness the role of the illicit drug business with the young and the marginalized.
So, in addition to moving faster, what else should we be doing? Many new forms of organization and community development are needed. My best guess is that in the next century, the human and social needs -- which now are not being responded to -- will be served by new hybrid organizational forms that incorporate community, the market, and civil society ethics as new social change organizations. These new organizations and their potential for using quick forming networks and alliances aided by all the new telecommunications devices will have the potential to become new governance systems. These new forms of governance can more easily become governments that are of, by, and for the people. Some say every couple of hundred of years a new revolution is possible, or even necessary.. Given the times we live in, it may be argued major structural and social change is needed.
Where there is a need for a healthier civil society we can mobilize and organize to respond. Particularly if we can help develop market systems that facilitate the development of these new social forms. In doing this, we can create possibilities for a new balance of power. Thus, by adding a third sector responsive to the unmet human needs for safe community, ecological balance and equality of opportunity to the powerful political and economic institutions of today we will be responding proactively to the restructuring presently occurring. If we do not do this, other forms of organized political and economic power will continue to emerge and threaten our survival as they take center stage as sources of illegitimate institutional power.
If only money makes the world go around, then by definition we have a materialistic world and one that will increasingly be in trouble. My happiest moments as a traveler have been in walking through African villages, often as the first white man many children had ever seen, and being treated to a special civility and hospitality I have found nowhere else on the planet. Joy like this I have also experienced in small remote areas of South America and on isolated islands in Indonesia.
In each case, the beauty of the experience was directly related to how removed these locations were from any global economic connection. These were self-sufficient communities of human beings doing best what comes natural to us as a species. They were busy growing their own food, making their own homes, and finding the time for family to both do it well and enjoy it. They were for me examples of healthy civil societies or third sectors rather distinct from typical government or business.
I felt welcome in each setting and had time to play with the children and to appreciate what my own ancestors must have experienced as recently as a hundred years ago. In another hundred years, this existence might have all but disappeared, but for me to feel this special quality of village life has been a rare gift. As alternatives to modern life, these small villages have something to teach. As realistic alternatives to corporate rule or modernization, they stand little chance of offering much to anyone but an overly nostalgic traveler who, after even a few days, would likely be looking to move on to another site.
Korten is not suggesting simple village life as his alternative to a new world of corporate rule. He is, however, hoping for something better than what most of us can see in the way of modernity and the destructive impulses of our overly-materialistic world. What he argues for is some viable alternative to the onslaught of corporate rule. As with Scott Peck's definition of community, it is not the outsider's place to define for the community the nature of the world they should create but only to assist them, if desired, in creating a certain process that gives a voice to all and a way to allow for people to bring out the humaneness of each. In this way, Korten's "people centered development" is a tool for people to help themselves create a way of being with each other valued by them and not necessarily pleasing or approved of by others.
Of course, not all forms of community can coexist if there is not a common set of core values concerning how to live. This coexistence requires some process for people to work with each other beyond the local areas. Here is where coordinating and collaborative mechanisms will need to be developed, and the same process guidelines are offered in doing this as are offered in local community building. In this shrinking world, the demands for organizing and coordinating structures are apparent. What is lacking is a better knowledge of the amazing diversity and common values in such a large global stakeholder group. Information technologies like the world wide web are rapidly developing in a most impressive manner, and future developments of a wired world will make much possible that may have only been a dream a short time ago. In this way corporate rule could be tempered with an emergent global civil society wired together and connected as never before.
Many new and revolutionary processes using breakthrough social and technical systems to aid in socio-economic development are now being created differing from the traditional grand schemes developed by the multi-lateral agencies such as the UN and the World Bank group of agencies. These new approaches are built on both grassroots organizing and global linkages. The International Monetary Fund's use of structural adjustment and the newly formed World Trade Organization have very different modus operandi in working for global change. But, many new and emergent development processes will be born this decade. Change technologies have never been developing faster than now. As one exciting example, the refinement of what has come to be called by Weisbord and others "future search conferences" are engaging thousands of participants, both face-to-face and on-line, in order to create new work organizations and social communities. Hundreds of other examples exist and there is no shortage of creative new ideas emerging in how to aid and facilitate the creation of new civil societies and new forms of work organizations.
Korten and many others believe that it is even more important to help establish alternative methods that are aligned with the values and needs of local networks, non-profit groups and other non-governmental agencies. This kind of response to the world's concerns focuses on the local situation and tries to be helpful more in a facilitative and educational role than an economic or directive role. From an O.D. perspective, this means working with the clients where they are and recognizing the risk if that too often ignores or puts as a secondary concern the current economic environment. At a romantic level this has great appeal but it would not always be a wise course of action to forget the human drive to acquire as well as our social and spiritual needs.
Again, the question is how to discover the proper balance between both social and economic concerns and how to help groups and social movements better understand the many powerful forces working in their environment. This need, then, becomes a call for more books like this one that reach beyond the "taken-for-granted" assertions that there is only one way to play the game. Books that offer a critique, an alternative view of the world and what might be done to improve it, are far too rare. The strength of the book being discussed here is in its global perspective and the fact that it represents the voices of so many from worlds too often left out of the important conversations. This book helps us see behind the money game to the influence game.
In this fifth section, the successes of the corporate model are weighed against what is almost a quaint notion of "social responsibility." As with our own best individual intentions with each new year's resolution, we often do not quite hold ourselves up to the standards we have set as our ideals. Because of this common form of human infallibility, we need structural forms of influence created to counter the law of the commons. Given our global corporation's best resolutions the larger the system the more chance the abuse of the common good will occur if there are no structural constraints. Our conception of social responsibility as it was formed in earlier days of corporate life in America is as far removed from today as the types of products these great industrial giants produced some thirty or forty years ago. We have an obvious need to recreate a structure that encourages social responsibility not just at the national level but at the global level in ways we never could have even understood in the past.
Corporations are created to profit by producing things for the material good of the many. The most pressing human needs following the great depression and the second world war in the same century were often material. Today, a very different set of human needs are growing and becoming much more apparent.
People want help in improving their quality of life. Once our marketing genius and the media is redirected to respond to and help visualize those fundamental needs we will see new corporations and institutions created. As in all of human history organizations are created to respond to critical human needs.
We can create the organizations we need by putting people back in the picture. People can again be central.
This will happen in many ways, as we refocus the public policy debate and demand that these new and largely unmet social needs become focused on. To promote the markets for serving human needs is not heresy in terms of socio-economic development; it is just new thinking. Bill Halal's recent book The New Management: Democracy and Enterprise are Transforming Organizations is arguing for just such a use of market mechanisms to redirect corporations toward serving both the internal and external customer.
The question of what role government should play could be an even more common discussion than which teams have the greatest chance of winning the Super Bowl or the World Cup. For a democratic society to redirect its attention it cannot leave it up to government or business alone but must make the issue of central concern to both and to educate the broader public in every way imaginable.
This will not likely occur on its own, so David's call for an enhanced role for what many call the third sector is starting to catch on in many different places. This empowerment of the non-governmental and volunteer sector is much of the focus of Jeremy Rifkind's new book, The End Of Work, and several other new works from authors including Amatai Etzioni are defining a new communitarian view. This new call for community and the emergent third sector holds much hope for creating additional responses to the crises at hand. At the global level, there is evidence this is also occurring and Korten's book adds power to the call. Even more so is his previously mentioned Getting To The 21st Century published in 1990.
All the evils described in Korten's current book are not only the result of a growing global business hegemony, but many directly relate to a human selfishness and materialism that will not simply change by stopping the expansion of global business power. In the next section, David offers some advice and hope for reclaiming our power. Many of these problems were created by our own desires to live a certain life style and to have a certain quality of life. Now can we clearly see how this dream has some real significant hidden costs. The issue suggests an important lesson I hope we never forget. Our OD profession has a special responsibility helping others also learn these lessons. More books on this theme might have the potential of helping to counter the often heard refrain that our young generations may never have it as good as their parents. To provide richer opportunities for our young, an honorable tradition for at least most of this country's existence, can still be a dream given we begin to see the real limits of our material world and its crass assumptions that more is always better. To help the next generation have a better life is not about giving them more material gifts but in helping them create a better world.
This final section might contain David's greatest gifts. He provides workable cases and situations where people have taken on their larger responsibilities and have grown to set out their own destinies. In particular, he has shown us in the ecological revolution that people can make a better world and that their successes are contagious. His picture of an awakened civil society should be considered very carefully. We need a national discussion on this and that discussion should precede the decision whether we do or do not get a tax cut. How in the world can a society know its resource needs until it sets out a vision of what it is trying to be. The lack of dialogue on this question is very discouraging. Increasingly, partisan politics with a focus on winning votes via sound bites rather than any kind of a deep and penetrating analysis appear to be driving out the social interaction and dialogue we need.
Locally we need to create processes at the organizational level that help to set out policy direction that can energize. Globally we need and may soon gather thousands of participants from around the world to work in building community and setting out global goals and procedures for doing development work. Our new computer aided communication revolution gives us a means to finally work both locally and globally. It offers us a rich potential for creating new forms of organization that do not need geographic proximity to allow interpersonal connections. This rapidly emergent human spirit of global communication can accomplish things only dreamed of before. Guided and coordinated across vast distances as if they did not exist, the internet and world wide web allow us to connect and then discuss serious issues and organize to create more desirable futures. New governing and facilitating structures invented will help in harnessing this potential power.
When these new forms of organization are brought to bear on our social and economic problems, the fear of an unconstrained corporate rule could be lessened. Thus, the goals of David's book can be achieved but not only through the decline of corporate power but perhaps more through the development of networked communities and a stronger global civil society. Many of us argue that large and centralized systems not linked to their surrounding communities are not always in positions of power but in many ways are very vulnerable to the changes in the world that we are now only beginning to glimpse.
An old empowerment adage is that if you can only see power as zero-sum, then it may be a very long time before any one or any institution will be cooperating in giving up what they perceive as a scarce item. However if instead of a zero-sum scenario we can conceptualize the challenge as one of learning how to go about creating new market directed responses to an almost unlimited set of unmet human needs the role of the corporation becomes very important to our mutual well-being. In this way, we could potentially interest corporations to more effectively respond to the many unmet human needs.
To accept corporations as allies in socio-economic development is not such a difficult concept. As this book is read by many corporate leaders, I would bet the reaction would be far more positive than many might expect. There are many enlightened and socially responsible corporate leaders in this country and in other parts of the world in my experience. The challenge that is most important is to get them into this discussion and work together to form new partnerships and organizations. To cross the lines between social and economic development in new ways is to truly not leave the people out, even those working inside the corporate world.