Another Financial Times Contributor calls for New Order

[Lumi]

Another Financial Times Contributor calls for New Order

Another voice calling for a new world emerging after the economic crisis was featured the day before yesterday on the infamous globalist weekly paper, the Financial Times.

Boston University Professor of Management, James E. Post, comments in his article ?A new order fit for the post-crisis world? on the financial crisis and the ?new order? he sees emerging from its ruins. Post is just one of many being featured in the Financial Times and other outlets that now join in the choir singing for world government like it?s going out of style. Post starts out by quoting General Electric?s chief executive Jeffrey Immelt, who pointed out in the company?s annual report: ?The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be regulator and also an industry policy champion, a financier and a key partner.?

?Mister Immelt?s diagnosis?, Post writes, ?amplifies the advice of Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to Barack Obama, the US president, who observed it was important to ?never waste a crisis?. A genuine crisis permits an executive to take transformative action with maximum support and minimal objection.?


?A d v e r t i s e m e n t
?While the disturbing ring to these words is spray painted with seemingly sensible language, Post is nevertheless unable to hide the true meaning behind them: ?Schools need to seize the opportunity latent in the global economic crisis to move into a reset world.?

A little further on, Post advocates that business schools should ?build scenarios for a post-crisis world. Schools cannot assume the world will return to ?normal?. They must make a critical estimate of the structural and behavioural dimensions of the profound change occurring in the global economy and prepare a curriculum fit for the times.?

In his article, James E. Post clearly advocates that teachers and students alike quickly adapt to the new world order. If we don?t, he remarks, the U.S. might go the way of Iceland. Post:

?Unthinkable? Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has warned EU colleagues that there are no laws to prevent other nations from following Iceland into the abyss.?

You might have guessed it, the only way to avoid doom and destruction is a new world order to remedy all of our ills. The professor ends on a mantra that has been well rehearsed for decades and now resounds all over the place:

?Human nature does not change quickly but it does adapt through crisis. Many financial sacred cows have been slain and a new order is emerging.?

Source:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/760b2828-3843-11de-9211-00144feabdc0.html

 

[Lumi]

A new order fit for the post-crisis world

A new order fit for the post-crisis world

A new order fit for the post-crisis world
By James E Post


The voice of change is ringing across the global economy. As chief executive Jeffrey Immelt, wrote in General Electric's annual report: "The global economy and capitalism will be reset in several important ways. The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be regulator and also an industry policy champion, a financier and a key partner."

Mr Immelt's diagnosis amplifies the advice of Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to Barack Obama, the US president, who observed it was important to "never waste a crisis". A genuine crisis permits an executive to take transformative action with maximum support and minimal objection.

Business schools should heed this advice. Many are laden with entrenched interests that constrain the possibility of deep change. Schools need to seize the opportunity latent in the global economic crisis to move into a reset world.

Four steps business schools should pursue are:- * Build scenarios for a post-crisis world. Schools cannot assume the world will return to "normal". They must make a critical estimate of the structural and behavioural dimensions of the profound change occurring in the global economy and prepare a curriculum fit for the times.

One can extrapolate a variety of scenarios from the current situation and challenge status quo assumptions - for example the Iceland scenario, in which nations go bankrupt. Unthinkable? Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has warned EU colleagues that there are no laws to prevent other nations from following Iceland into the abyss.

There is the Japanese history of tortuous, zig-zagging fiscal and monetary policy. In the Germany of the 1920s, widespread unemployment, financial ruin and social anger combine to produce a state of political revolution. No one can say with certainty that any of these scenarios will, or will not, become reality in some part of the world of 2010. The challenge to business educators is to prepare students to see these possibilities for the future. * Build for sustainability. Superficial teaching about ecological risk is not sufficient. Leaders should press faculty to shape the new systems thinking that is essential for tomorrow's businesses. Energy consumption, climate change, sustainable farming and food preparation are some of the many dimensions that face radical change. * Promote new entrepreneurship. Schools must develop programmes that demonstrate new ways to integrate social and economic mission. The heart of the new enterprise is no longer a layer of social responsibility on top of greed and economic self-interest but an integrated social and economic mission that frames executive thinking about business purpose in the 21st century. * Rethink financial engineering. Schools need to jettison the financial engineering curriculum in favour of a reformulated "foundations of finance" curriculum of value-based financial principles. They should rethink the premises of risk-based financial management and the role of capital in the global economy. Capital's role will not be as it has been and the management of risk has changed. Indeed, the mindset of risk versus reward is undergoing cataclysmic challenge. Some enterprises are now too large to fail, government has become the insurer of last resort and old and new fail-safes alike have lost credibility.

Human nature does not change quickly but it does adapt through crisis. Many financial sacred cows have been slain and a new order is emerging. Business schools - and our economic system - cry out for leaders whose understanding of public interest reaches well beyond return on investment. The depth of this crisis will heighten the call for change in the way our economic and social institutions are managed and governed.

Having been the training ground for many of those responsible for the current problems, schools must now reinvent themselves as part of the solution.

The writer is John F Smith Jr professor in management, business policy and law at the Boston University School of Management