Publications

Citation

(2002), "Publications", Foresight, Vol. 4 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2002.27304fae.001

Publications

Publications for listing in this section should be sent to Graham May, Reviews Editor, foresight, Principal Lecturer in Futures Research, Leeds Metropolitan University, School of the Built Environment, Brunswick Building, Leeds LS2 8BU, UK.

Note: items including a code (e.g. FS 24:8/351) are abbreviated versions of abstracts selected from Future Survey, published by the World Future Society (for more information see http://www.wfs.org/wfs/fsurv.htm)

Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet

Lisa Nakamura (Routledge, New York, 2002, 169 pages)

The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics and Change

Vaclav Smil (MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2002, 346 pages, £21.95)

The Future of US CapitalismFrederic L. Pryor (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2002, 447 pages, $40.00, FS 24:8/351)

Discusses problems of poor predictions, internal influences on the economic system (saving and economic growth, economic fluctuations and financial crises, economic inequality, globalization), and external influences on the economic system (natural resources and the environment, social factors, political factors). Some forecasts:

1. 1.

   A stormy economic atmosphere: declining economic growth, increasing volatility, widening income inequality, unsteadily rising globalization which may lead to a serious national backlash;

2. 2.

   Declining economic competition: international concentration of industry will continue, reinforced by strategic partnerships and alliances, and will likely lead to less competition despite the prospect of e-commerce;

3. 3.

   Mixed prospects for regulation: globalization points toward less regulation of industry, but several forces point to more government regulation (more severe business cycles, the decline in savings, and possible drastic decline in environmental conditions);

4. 4.

   Evolution of business enterprises: the global merger wave may continue for the next few decades, and a growing share of the labor force will be employed in giant firms spanning continents ("the vision of many small enterprises participating in a relatively perfect competitive market has become increasingly obsolete");

5. 5.

   Trends in ownership: the most striking change in the pattern of ownership is the rising share of corporate equities held by financial intermediaries, indicating a widening gap between individuals and asset managers;

6. 6.

   Evolution of government spending: in the long run, the share of US public expenditures to GDP will rise, not due to a more socialist ideology, but because of an aging population and the relatively meager assets many people bring into their retirement years;

7. 7.

   The economic system in 2050: overall level of government intervention will be roughly the same, quality of life will deteriorate, economic life will be more pitiless, more people will feel powerless to influence policies and events (expenditures on internal security, pensions, and health will increase, primarily to palliate political discontent that might erupt into serious strife);

8. 8.

   Policy ineffectiveness: "policy steps necessary to alleviate emerging economic problems will either not be taken or will prove ineffective, either in design or implementation", due to complexity of the problems and well-funded interests that will fight to prevent solutions. "As a result, the US economic system will evolve in many different ways toward a capitalism with an inhuman face. I hope I'm wrong."

The Civil Corporation: The New Economy of Corporate CitizenshipSimon Zadek (Earthscan, London and Sterling, VA, 2001, 257 pages, $29.95, FS 24:8/363)

"The role of business in society is the 21st Century's most important and contentious public policy issue." Business is increasingly molding societal values and norms, and underpinning how communities address social and environmental imperatives. Recent years have seen the emergence of "corporate citizenship", where firms seek to gain broader trust and legitimacy through visibly enhancing their non-financial performance. Today, the focus is shifting from philanthropy to the impact of core business activities across the many dimensions of sustainable development. This book seeks to establish what should and can realistically be expected from the business community in addressing these imperatives and aspirations.

The aspiration of sustainable development leads many people to talk of the need to create "sustainable business", but this creates more confusion than good. There is little point in blaming pigs for not being able to fly – and little point in condemning an organization for something beyond its control. "A business's contribution to sustainable development needs to be understood in terms of its viable options and what it makes of them … Whether and how a corporation acts within its degrees of freedom must be the test of responsibility." These are the fundamentals of the civil corporation – "one that takes full advantage of opportunities for learning and action in building social and environmental objectives into its core business by effectively developing its internal values and competencies."

Chapter topics include:

1. 1.

   Civil governance: the emergence of NGOs acting as civil regulators of corporations through public campaigning and other forms of pressure is one of the notable features of the last decade (but business has been able to penetrate more deeply into the NGO community, sometimes undermining new challenges);

2. 2.

   Civil navigation: there are no magic bullets to create civil corporations (in fairness it must be said that "it is early days" – barely 15 years since environmental management systems began to be taken seriously, and it is too early to say which standards and guidelines will make most sense for any one company, e.g. the pragmatic ISO14000 series or the more daunting "natural step"); "effective civil navigation lies at the heart of making the most out of the opportunities afforded by the new economy of corporate citizenship … the trick is not to place all one's bets on a particular approach";

3. 3.

   Ethical futures: good corporation citizenship efforts follow three pathways: Oasis (a small group of companies aligns their strategies with sustainable development, but most businesses choose not to engage), Desert (over time, the desert encroaches on the oasis, with an erosion of earlier win-win areas), and Mecca (leading companies achieve positive change, encouraging other companies to move in similar directions);

4. 4.

   Financial success: doing good does not guarantee financial success over time, just as being less-than-ethical does not guarantee disaster (Ben & Jerry's and The Body Shop, the two ethical business icons of the 1960s, showed healthy financial results for many years and built strong positions in niche markets; "more recently, however, both have fared poorly in financial terms, despite maintaining a strong social and environmental performance");

5. 5.

   The three generations of corporate citizenship: being responsible in ways that may add commercial value to the business, being responsible and prospering, making a significant contribution to major problems;

6. 6.

   The new civil governance: the current partnership boom is a predictable outcome of the new economy; the UN's Global Compact launched in July 2000 "will be looked back on as a red-letter day in the evolution of global governance."

Governance and Food Security in an Age of GlobalizationRobert L. Paarlberg (Food, Agriculture and the Environment, Discussion Paper 36, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, 2002, 58 pages)

The Internet Weather: Balancing Continuous Change and Constant Truths

James W. Moore (John Wiley, New York, 2002, 246 pages, £20.95)

Living in the Corporate Zoo: Life and Work in 2010

Richard Scase (Capstone, Oxford, 2002, 198 pages, £16.99)

Making Time: Time and Management in Modern Organizations

Edited by Richard Whipp, Barbara Adam and Ida Sabelis (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, 222 pages, £50.00)

Managing in the Next SocietyPeter F. Drucker (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2002, 321 pages, $24.95, FS 24:8/366)

Previously published essays from recent years by the legendary author of 32 earlier books on management, economics, and society. The title essay on The Next Society, first appearing in The Economist in fall 2001, describes the next society as a knowledge society with three main traits: borderlessness, upward mobility available to everyone through easily acquired formal education, and the potential for failure as well as success. Together, these characteristics will make the knowledge society a highly competitive one, for organizations and individuals alike.

The dominant factor in the next society will be rapid growth in the older population and rapid shrinking of the younger generation. Politicians everywhere still promise to save pension systems, but "in another 25 years people will have to keep working until their mid-1970s, health permitting", and benefits for healthy pensioners will be substantially lower than they are today. The growing number of older people will participate in the labor force in many new and different ways – as temporaries, part-timers, consultants, etc. "Within 20-25 years, perhaps as many as half the people who work for an organization will not be employed by it, certainly not full-time." Markets of the developed world have been dominated by the values of the young, but many markets are catering to those over 50. "The fastest-growing industry in any developed country may turn out to be the continuing education of already well-educated adults, based on values that are all but incompatible with those of the youth culture." Most of it will be delivered in nontraditional ways and places.

Other essays discuss the information society, the exploding world of the Internet, information literacy, the central challenge of e-commerce, financial services, the changing world economy, Japanese society, and civilizing the city (increasingly a top priority in all countries). Of special interest is "They're not employees, they're people" (from the Harvard Business Review, Spring, 2002), pointing to the fastest-growing business service in the USA during the 1990s as the professional employer organization (PEO). There are now at least 1,800 of these "coemployers" of 2.5-3 million blue collar and white collar workers, with their own trade association. PEOs like temp agencies, have vastly expanded their scope in recent years, taking care of bookkeeping, employee relations, legal compliance, hiring, training, etc. The PEO industry is growing at 30 per cent a year, and "expects to be the coemployer of 10 million American workers by 2005". This outsourcing of employees and employee relations is an international trend. These people may no longer legally be the organization's employees, but they will still be the organization's resource and key to its performance. Employee relations can and should be systematized, but that should make people relations all the more important.

The Naked Leader: The True Paths to Success are Finally RevealedDavid Taylor (Capstone, Oxford, 2002, 240 pages, £12.99)

Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence will Transform our World

Douglas Mulhall (Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2002, $28, 392 pages)

Reaching Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020: Getting the Priorities and Responsibilities Right

(International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, 2002, 34 pages)

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday LifeRichard Florida (Basic Books, New York, 2002, 404 pages, $27.50, FS 24:8/372)

Creativity – the ability to create meaningful new forms – is now the decisive source of competitive advantage in virtually every industry. It is the most highly prized commodity in our economy – yet it is not a "commodity". Creativity comes with people, who must be motivated and nurtured in a multitude of ways, by employers and the communities where they locate. Creative people do not just cluster where the jobs are – they cluster in places that are centers of creativity and where they like to live (e.g. New York, Boston, Washington, SF Bay Area, Seattle, Austin). Some 38 million Americans (30 per cent of the work force) belong to this new creative class (including people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music, and entertainment), whose economic function is to create new ideas, technology, and/or content. Those in the working class and the service class are primarily paid to execute according to plan, while those in the creative class are primarily paid to create. "The big story unfolding now – one that has been unfolding for some time – is the rise of the creative class, the great emerging class of our time." Over the twentieth century, this class has increased tenfold; since 1980, it has more than doubled. It will continue to grow in coming decades.

The creative class is strongly oriented to large cities and regions that offer a variety of economic opportunities, a stimulating environment, and amenities for every possible lifestyle. In addition to large places, smaller places like Boulder, Santa Fe, and Gainesville are attractive. "One of the most significant fault lines of our age is the growing geographic segregation of the creative class and the other classes."

Key topics include the "no-collar workplace" (reflecting casual dress and self-management), the experiential lifestyle (favoring individuality and rich experiences), erratic and irregular work schedules (the core issue is not when we work, but our intensified use of time), the creative ethos (human creativity is multifaceted and multidimensional, demanding organizations and environments that allow creativity), the creative economy (creativity is the key driver; knowledge and information are merely tools and materials of creativity), the new class structure (the creative class includes the super-creative core of some 15 million workers and a broader group of creative professionals), job factors valued by creatives (flexibility, professional development, challenge, stimulating colleagues, good location), the horizontal labor market (instead of moving up the ranks, people move laterally; "Americans now change jobs on average every 3.5 years – a figure that has been declining steadily for every age group"), the Big Morph (a synthesis of the Protestant ethic of hard work with the hedonistic bohemian ethic), and the geography of creativity (introduces the creativity index for a region, with San Francisco, Austin, San Diego, Boston, and Seattle ranking highest, and Memphis, Norfolk, Las Vegas, Buffalo, and Louisville the lowest).

Other ideas: the "Three Ts of economic development" (technology, talent, and tolerance of immigrants and gays), building creative capital (a critique of Robert Putnam's call for building traditional social capital), the world of weak ties (in contrast to the traditional world of strong ties – although we should not adopt lives composed entirely of weak ties), building the creative community ("the bottom line is that cities need a people climate even more than they need a business climate"), why people are returning to urban areas (crime is down, cities are the prime location for the creative lifestyle and are centers of creativity; the presence of a major research university is a huge advantage in the creative economy), and the need for the creative class to grow beyond being "cyberselfish" and assume more responsibility (to be effective, the creative class may have to invent new forms of collective action, to overcome a fractured and incoherent society).

The Radical Center: The Future of American PoliticsTed Halstead and Michael Lind (Doubleday, New York, 2001, 264 pages, $24.95, FS 24:8/400)

In December 2000, the Gallup Poll asked Americans about their political affiliation, finding that 42 per cent identified themselves as independent than as Democrats or Republicans. A clear plurality of Americans have become so hostile to the two parties that have defined US politics for the past century that they preferred "neither of the above". Analysts like to talk about electoral "realignments" in favor of one party or another, but what is occurring here is a large-scale political "dealignment". Having been captured by their own extremes, "both parties are increasingly incapable of promoting majority views across a wide range of issues … [and] neither has proven itself capable of rising to the challenges of the next century. Our nation's politics are dominated by two feuding dinosaurs." The moderate majority of Americans – composed of self-identified independents, along with significant numbers of centrist Republicans and Democrats – feel most alienated by today's increasingly dogmatic two-party system. Although their numbers far outweigh those of the special interest groups on the right and left, the latter continue to wield more political power due to the archaic design of our electoral process that limits political choices. This fuels popular resentment against the political system, and perpetuates the illusion of a sharply divided nation, when in fact the alienated majority is far more interested in finding common ground than in fighting culture wars.

The sources of America's next transformation are in full view: the twin revolutions in infotech and biotech, the graying and browning of our population, and increasing globalization of knowledge and commerce. But our major political parties have failed to rise to the occasion by reinventing themselves and updating their programs. What America needs is a compelling national vision to guide us into a postindustrial future, along with a coherent program for how to get there. But our reigning political duopoly has only fueled a false sense of national division while sending a large portion of the electorate into temporary hiding. A great many of the obsolete programs and institutions of new deal America are beginning to crumble. A new political program, tailored to the new realities of information age America, is outlined here as the "radical center" to emphasize the need for wholesale revamping, not tinkering at the margin.

The purpose of the radical centrist program is to further expand America's perennial goals of individual liberty, equal opportunity, and national unity in the new circumstances of the information age. Any new political program worthy of the information age must advocate more choices: voting choices, educational choices, medical choices, retirement choices, lifestyle choices, and career choices. If individual citizens are to be empowered with greater decision-making power, then many of today's institutions must be redesigned to become more citizen-based. "Broadening individual choice by means of a citizen-based reform agenda represents a significant departure from the past." A second guiding principle of radical centrism is that twenty-first century citizens can and should be held to a higher personal standard by expanding the definition of civic duty.

Some specific proposals:

• •

  severing the link between employers and provision of benefits, and doing away with distinctions between full-time and part-time workers (rather, a mandatory private health care system is needed for all Americans to ensure full coverage of the poorest and least healthy);

• •

  progressive privatization of social security, based on mandatory retirement savings for all workers, public subsidies to top off accounts of low-income workers, and a guaranteed safety net for those who fall through the cracks;

• •

  promotion of universal capitalism: the key to upward mobility and personal wealth creation is ownership of capital assets (every American child should be endowed with individual financial assets at birth);

• •

  upgrading electoral systems to provide more options for voters;

• •

  eliminating the antiquated patchwork of state sales taxes and replacing it with a simple and progressive national consumption tax;

• •

  national equalization of school funding on a per pupil basis would pave the way for numerous educational improvements;

• •

  aspire to be a unified melting-pot nation instead of a polarized multicultural one;

• •

  expansion of the nonprofit institutions, religious and secular, that provide care for the young, the old, and the needy;

• •

  to prevent a potential genetic divide, legalize germ-line therapy – but only to eliminate the grossest kinds of defects, while making it accessible to all citizens on the basis of need rather than wealth (germ-line intervention for enhancement should be prohibited altogether, worldwide; "the well-being and unity of our nation must always supersede the individual rights of its citizens").

Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020: Proceedings of an International Conference, September 4-6, 2001, Bonn, Germany (International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, 2002, 282 pages)

What Went Wrong at Enron: Everyone's Guide to the Largest Bankruptcy in US History

Peter C. Fusaro and Ross M. Miller (John Wiley, Chichester, 2002, £11.50)

Wiring Governments

John A. O'Looney (Quorum Books, London, 2001, 325 pages, £53.95)