The Futures Foundation

Cultural diversity is now an economic asset for Europe, Alain Ruche of the European Commission[1] said at the Salzburg Global Seminar on Thursday (17/4/08).   And it is especially an asset in the emerging generation of international relations between knowledge-based societies.

At its meeting in Lisbon in 2000, the European Union agreed to a strategy aimed at making Europe the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. In his paper Alain Ruche drew on the work of scholars and thinkers around the world, including several Australian futurists, to demonstrate that this strategy needs further reform.

“The EU has understood the emergence of knowledge as an economic resource, but not as yet as the main resource in the knowledge society,” he said.

“We need to address the education challenge facing a knowledge society. Colleges and universities in Europe are still educating students for a world that no longer exists. 

“Our youth feels bewildered and overwhelmed like ‘strangers in a strange land’”, he said.  “Even the changes that have been proposed remain within the industrial worldview. Education needs a larger perspective, a global and multifaceted approach to local knowledge: we belong to the same planet, with a shared destiny and shared vulnerability. 

“Education will also incorporate the possibility of multiple futures.  Foresight is going to play a greater role in higher education, for a simple reason: as Jan Lee Martin says, ‘if we want to change the future, it is easier to do it before it happens’.[2]

Changes in the behaviour of organisations also have a big impact in the knowledge society, Mr Ruche said, noting that the current corporate culture gap needs to be explored.*

“A wider view of corporate success is needed which goes beyond maximising profit in the short term and integrates negative externalities (for the environment, the workers, the society). There is a greater demand from stakeholders for more accountability from organisations.  Soon every firm will have to integrate Corporate Social Responsibility in its normal functions if it wants to survive.  This means that human resources management changes as well, including selection and recruitment. 

“Organisations cannot force their employees to be creative: ‘the shift from perspiration to inspiration also means a shift from material incentives to less tangible motivations like shared goals and values’*.  Creative people in the US amount to 26% of adults. Sixty-six per cent of them are women. They are consumers with another profile, with new values. ‘More and more firms will want to show that they mean to meet the real needs of the community, rather than maximise dividends for their shareholders.  It is not the matter of profit-making that is under challenge now, but the manner of profit-making. It is already clear that making profits at the expense of others is no longer seen as acceptable.’*”

The way we measure performance is a key contributor to outcomes, and Mr Ruche noted that the knowledge society raises this question with more intensity than usual.  “There seems to be a diverging path along time between wellbeing and economic welfare. 

“There is a real need to incorporate ‘what’s wrong with the official future’[3], in particular as this area is largely ignored in public and political debate. Alternative indicators to the GDP, in particular the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) invented many years ago by Hazel Henderson, clearly show that natural wellbeing has rated much less than GDP.”

Returning to his central argument, Mr Ruche explained how cultural diversity can open new prospects for external relations.

“Since most projects in future will require collaboration with others who are different, high levels of social competence become critical. This could mean that Western cultures centred on individualism have some disadvantage in relation to more sociocentric societies such as Asia, and also indigenous tribal communities. 

“Understanding human relations and group dynamics, leadership and unconscious dimensions of these issues becomes a core competence.  So as Marc Luyckx wrote, ‘culture becomes central in the knowledge economy because it fosters creativity’.

“This means that cultural diversity becomes an asset.”

Referring to variations in cultures and different interpretations of our origins, he quoted the Australian-based futurist, Sohail Inayatullah. “While the map showing that Chinese explorer Zheng He (in 1421) knew the entire world may be a forgery, ‘we discovered you’ can become the new story[4].

“More than ever Europe is a multiple and heterogeneous society with non-fixed, multiple identities which are in continuous evolution and negotiation.  These flexible identities are the soil out of which the Europe of the future will grow.”

In conclusion, Mr Ruche explored possible future roles for the EU in international relations between knowledge societies and reported that the European Commission has started a study on creativity, recognising that innovation and creativity are essential to the long-term growth and social development.

“The EU as a soft power and a symbol of humanism has several inherent assets in this respect and can actively inspire the new architecture of coming global governance. 

Therefore the EU social model must become more mature and at the same time more flexible.”