Editorial. Europe and globalisation

Citation

Coleman, J. (1998), "Editorial. Europe and globalisation", European Business Review, Vol. 98 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.1998.05498aab.006

Editorial. Europe and globalisation

Edited byJohn Coleman

Editorial

Europe and globalisation

In the late twentieth century it has become a cliché to say that the world is getting ever smaller and to talk about the global village. It might be truer to say that the world is getting ever larger and that governments, organisations and companies are losing touch with the people they govern, employ or serve.

Europe has a twofold problem. Not only does the European Union tend to lose touch with its peoples but it also has difficulties with the world outside its boundaries. It is towards this latter problem that this issue is mainly directed. Except for Noriko Hama's comments on Lawrence Lindsey's earlier article on American currency union all the present contributors are concerned with matters happening outside the Union which, nevertheless, have a crucial bearing on Europe's future.

It appears to be the collective belief of European governments that they are involved in ruthless global competition with Asia and the USA. How far, then, can those governments take notice of what their own peoples want when they perceive themselves to be fighting an economic war for their very existence? Perhaps this is the dilemma that all politicians are facing in the modern world: conflict between the demands of economic existence and the hopes of their electorates. In that situation the latter usually have to go by the board.

More thought perhaps should go into defining the goal we are after if the conflict is to be even partially resolved. H.G. Wells expressed his view of the goal very clearly:

For my own part I shall keep to the right road and not try the left. Neither goes straight to the goal we have to attain, the goal of scientifically organised economic world unity, but though the road may be rocky and tortuous, it is, I believe, far more likely to get there in the end than the left.

A different definition of the goal is given in David Korten's contribution. At first sight it might appear to be against free trade and economic growth. A closer look will reveal that within those moral and physical limits most of us would take for granted Korten upholds the tenets of free competition. Most of us would not mean free trade to include hard drugs, for instance. Most of us would not think the kind of growth that results from broken marriages or murders should be included in what we mean by the term growth. The questions which this article raises for the world are very much questions that Europe should ask and are in the area where Europe should manifest the leadership which this continent has traditionally shown. In concluding his article Korten shows that his thinking is really based on traditional conservative values: "we should break up the largest corporations to restore the conditions essential for the efficient function of competitive markets". Korten would surely have agreed with Adam Smith: "People of the same trade seldom get together even for merriment and diversion but (when they do) the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices". Sadly the first point does not seem to be so true today. Business consultancies and advertising groups tend not so much to promote the awareness of products as to create conspiracies against the public and push prices up, while taking a good rake off for themselves.

Geoff Tansey, whether we agree with him or not, confronts us with what is going on in the world in the field of genetic engineering. Thomas Ország-Land, writing about Hungary, a prospective new member of the European Union, again makes us aware of the limits we have to apply to entirely free economic activity.

Judith Ryser raises the question of what the global information age will do for humanity in the twenty-first century and in essence she asks if in Europe it will be used to make the continent a democratic network or a centralised imperial power?