Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

9

Linking Individualism to Communalism

Albert Koopman

Defining the First and Third Worlds is not an easy task. You may feel that it lies in the difference between rich and poor. You may also have an understanding that, generally, the industrialized west is the First World, while the developing countries are Third World. Both these views place the two worlds within a context in which you have old-style communism at the one end as a political system, and maybe capitalism/liberalism at the other. Looking at it simplistically, the continuum from left to right softens with socialism moving to mixed and then to free markets.

Since the industrial age, during the period 1900 to the present day, the world has advanced incredibly. With the advent of computer technology, biotechnology, advances in TV and video technology – all of which impacted on people – there has been a dissemination of information which humankind has never experienced before. People are in touch with the whole world and, indirectly, information has shrunk the world into a “global village.” There is, therefore, an increased awareness amongst individuals of each other's aspirations, belief systems, and expectations. People are changing through information but the “isms” are not coping. Surely it is wrong to continue viewing the left/right debate in the old-fashioned unidimensional way? Given the global state of affairs it has become an anachronism. New-paradigm managers simply have to take new cognizance of people, their ...