Role Models & Responsibility

The Cultural Challenges of Capitalism -
ESPRIT St. Gallen Business Review
The Swiss city of St. Gallen was founded by the
great Irish saint, Gallus. It has an outstanding
University and is located in beautiful
countryside of the Appenzeller region. For me it has
Symposium held on the university campus sixteen
years ago, as a participant in a debate with Joshka
Fischer, who was then the shadow German foreign
minister. It was a debate I relished. I spoke second
and having listened to Fischer’s argument decided
to throw away my prepared notes and pick up the
gauntlet which he had thrown down. Since then I have
been invited each year to co-chair the symposium
which has been a great honour and pleasure.
One reason I love the Symposium is that it is multidisciplinary.
It brings together people from the worlds
of business, politics, academia, science, sociology,
philosophy, international relations and even theology.
It grew out of the student revolt of 1968 in Europe
when student protests led to violence on the streets
universities and some universities being closed for a
period of time. I was then a young lecturer at the London
protest in the UK which led to the School being closed for
six weeks in 1969, something unheard of until that time
in an institution which espoused a liberal approach to
learning. The events of 1968 forced politicians, business
leaders, public intellectuals, writers and students to ask
profound questions about the values of the society as
well as its future.
democratic political institutions and a civil society
made up of many different kinds of institutions and
associations. These give stability and vitality to society
while at the same time reaching out to those in need. It
is because of my commitment to these values that I have
continued to accept the honour of being invited to chair
the symposium year after year.
the ideals for which the University and the St. Gallen
Symposium stand. It is the worst crisis since the Great
Depression of the 1930’s. It is now six years since the
crisis happened and we have not yet fully recovered from
its consequences and in some countries GDP is still below
its 2008 level.
I believe the crisis is proving to be an axial point for
modern capitalism.
It is impossible to understand the crisis simply by
looking at the events of 2007 and 2008 or even the years
immediately preceding them. The crisis followed three
decades of globalization which led to a steady yearon-year
increase in global prosperity accompanied by
a remarkable reduction in extreme poverty especially
in China. These were years of extraordinary political
change: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of
Communism, the rise of militant Islam, the emergence of
the BRIC’s economies and the shift of the global economic
centre of gravity from West to East. They were years
which witnessed a remarkable revolution in technology
- in computing, information technology, biotechnology,
nanotechnology, fuel and energy technology and new
materials technology.
I believe the crisis is
proving to be an
axial point for
modern capitalism.
Despite these trends, the crisis has undermined
were introduced have proved painful for most people.
The crisis has highlighted the growing inequality in the
distribution of income in all Western countries which has>
Winter 2013 - 9