Global Trends and Regional Development

Nikolai Genov, Nikolai Genov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136633461
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Humangeographie

For millennia, contact between societies was limited to trade or wars, a situation that changed profoundly with the development of global markets serving industrialization. The outcome was the emergence of one global human civilization, and one common future that will depend on the capacity of individuals and societies to manage the potentials for social development.

This edited collection is dedicated to the discussion of four global trends: upgrading the rationality of organizations, individualization, the spreading of instrumental activism and universalization of value-normative systems. The mutual influence of these interrelated trends brings about both constructive and destructive effects in social life, social integration and change.

Contributors examine questions such as: How do global trends pave their way in regions? What are the similarities and differences of regional development? How do agencies cope with the challenges of global trends in regional development?

1 Introduction

The Challenge of Four Global Trends

Nikolai Genov

We live in conditions in which everyone is increasingly involved in global economic, political, and cultural processes. These might be analytically differentiated and specified as various global trends. John Naisbitt (1982) first tried to systematically conceptualize the ongoing megatrends by focusing largely on changes in the content and organization of economic processes. Naisbitt’s study became a bestseller due not only to his intellectual achievement alone. It appeared in the context of the flourishing academic and nonacademic studies in the field of futurology. While it is no longer in fashion, the relevance of the topics dealt with by futurologists remains. Political think tanks continue to work in the same direction in order to facilitate strategic planning. Various institutions compete in the production of prognostic reports on global trends (Kennedy, Messner, and Nuscheler 2002; Global Trends 2008; Debiel 2010).

Following Naisbitt’s pattern, such reports typically define global trends on an ad hoc basis. Efforts to systematically reproduce and explain global trends are rare. The outcomes of recent attempts to prepare indexes of societies’ levels of globalization (Dreher, Gaston, and Martens 2008) support this observation. The social sciences’ capacity for systematic conceptualization of global processes has not yet reached the necessary level of sophistication. The crucial issue in this context is the precise definition of global trends and their mutual impacts. Social sciences still need systematic combinations of long-term diachronic studies and sequences of synchronic comparisons in order to achieve this aim in a satisfactory manner. Research has already brought about some valuable results in this area (Martinelli 2007). The task outstanding concerns the search for generalizable and empirically testable statements about social regularities. These statements should mostly refer to the processes that follow the great geographic discoveries and the subsequent emergence of the global markets of goods, services, capital, and labor. Thus, the questions guiding the following analysis and discussions will be the following: Which subject fields might be most suitable for this type of analysis and conclusions? What might be the added value of this analysis and its potential outcomes?

FOUR GLOBAL TRENDS: CONCEPTS AND CONTROVERSIAL MANIFESTATIONS

The concepts of society and societal development remain the most sophisticated frameworks for the study of social change. The strength of these frameworks is based on the historical fact that studies of social structures, their functioning, and change have been largely related to the modern nation-state. Talcott Parsons expanded the historical perspective of the concept of society by defining it broadly as “the type of social system characterized by the highest level of self-sufficiency relative to its environments, including other social systems” (Parsons 1971: 8). This was a fruitful conceptualization in both theoretical and methodological terms. Nevertheless, it was somewhat obsolete even at the time of its formulation. In the 1960s, the moving forces of supra-societal globalization had already become the major moving forces of societal change. After the Second World War, societies had to reorient their priorities from the rearrangement of internal structures toward adaptation to the global technological division of labor, the fierce competition within global markets, the global political insecurity, and the global convergence and divergence of cultures. The implication was the need to radically reorient the methodology of the social sciences. The traditional dominance of the concept of society in social science’s conceptual schemes had the implication of methodological societalism. The limitation of this approach could only be overcome by opening society-centered methodology toward processes of global relevance. This requires a reorientation of social science methodology to methodological globalism. Its ontological reference is the global society. This is the conceptual framework and methodological approach, which is currently most promising in the efforts to adequately describe and explain societal, regional, and global development.

How can this theoretical and methodological shift be efficiently implemented? There is no simple answer to this question. Globalization is complex and dynamic, thus leading to the reproduction of social and cognitive uncertainties (Turner 2010). In order to reduce cognitive uncertainties, one should start from the very core of globalization. It is marked by the intensive processing of matter and energy worldwide. This processing has natural limitations on earth. And given these limitations, we witness the rapidly growing global relevance of the perception, storage, processing, and use of information. Only at first glance are the main actors in information processes individuals. In reality, the most relevant actors orienting, managing, and using information processes in modern societies are economic, political, and cultural organizations. The impetus for the increasing relevance of the processing information comes largely from the need of organizations to strengthen the cognitive basis of their decisions and actions. The outcome of this cognitive advancement is the upgrading of organizational efficiency through streamlined organizational performance in competitive environments. Both the improvement of the cognitive basis of organizational activities and the increase in organizational efficiency characterize the global trend of upgrading the rationality of organizations.

The global trend of upgrading the rationality of organizations is manifest and influential at all structural levels of social life, from person-to-person interactions in grassroots politics to economic enterprises and exchange in global markets. The major structural mechanisms implementing this global trend are the differentiation and integration of organizational units. The involved agencies of individual and collective actors initiate and perform these processes on the basis of organizational learning and activity. Given the large variety of structural and actor-related factors influencing organizational processes, this trend is never linear, nor is it characterized by constructive effects alone. On the contrary, the upgrading of organizational rationality is usually accompanied by the emergence, dispersion, and impact of organizational pathologies. Both the differentiation and integration of structures and the functions of organizations might tend to pathological extremes. Organizational actors might become the source of organizational rationalities and irrationalities, or factors in their reproduction. Thus, the global trend under scrutiny is inherently controversial. Under certain circumstances, the organizational pathologies, which occur as by-products of the upgrading of organizational rationality, might come to dominate the situation.

The efficient handling of organizational pathologies in modern organizations could be temporarily achieved by strengthening hierarchical control. But organizational experience worldwide demonstrates that an alternative approach is more efficient in the long run. This approach stresses the increasing reliance on the initiative and responsibility of individuals acting in organizations. The need of modern organizations to support the increasing autonomy of individuals is the core of the global trend of individualization. Its major mechanisms are twofold. The structural dimension of the process is marked by the differentiation and enlargement of social spaces available for the orientation, decision, and action of individuals. The action dimension of individualization is represented by the increasing cognitive capacities of individuals for autonomous orientations, decisions, and actions. The major channel for achieving this effect on the large scale is education. Both dimensions of individualization are dynamically intertwined. The differentiation and enlargement of social spaces available for the autonomy of individuals often comes about as a result of their struggle to change organizational structures.

Thus, individualization comes as a blessing for millions of human beings, since it implies growing relevance of the rights and freedoms of the individual. However, the rise of individual rights and freedoms has its price: It always implies rise of individual responsibility. Placing exclusive stress on the rights and freedoms of individuals, while disregarding or underrating the concurrent rise in responsibilities, implies social pathologies undermining social solidarity as the glue of social life. Thus, advances in individualization are controversial in both their course and outcomes (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). Individualization might come about at the expense of various forms of the common good more generally, and of various forms of solidarity more particularly.

Emile Durkheim elaborated the point that solidarity in traditional societies was based on shared definitions of the sacred and related ultimate values. Referring to Max Weber’s interpretation of the emergence and development of the capitalist (or modern, industrial) society, one may generalize Durkheim’s point in the sense that individuals in modern societies have moved from the fundamental value-normative orientation focused on the sacred, toward a value-normative orientation focused on mundane commercial effects. Such effects are measured by monetary criteria. In non-pathological orientations and actions, money is only an instrument for achieving ultimate ends. Talcott Parsons expanded on this interpretation of the Weberian historical analysis by concluding that the actions of individuals and organizations are increasingly guided by principles of instrumental activism oriented toward commercial success and related consumption. This value-normative reorientation originated in northwestern Europe and subsequently spread all over the world. This process might be defined as global trend of spreading of instrumental activism.

This is a global trend characterizing orientations, actions, and structural effects in all areas and at all levels of social interaction in present-day societies. The major mechanism behind the trend is the development of production and services that generate the more intensive accumulation of capital. This makes the comparability of the results of all actions on the basis of monetary measures possible. The universalized monetary measure of success and failure in all action spheres is the most efficient mechanism for the mobilization of individual and collective actors. As seen from another vantage point, it is also the most efficient mechanism for the adequate remuneration of achievement and the punishment of failure. This value-normative and behavioral shift from ultimate to instrumental market orientations caused tremendous advances in the conquest of the natural and social world by both individuals and organizations. However, it is exactly this conquest and dominance of the natural and social world by profit-focused intentions and market forces that poses tremendous challenges to the economic, political, cultural, and environmental sustainability of social life. Karl Polanyi was certainly correct in his conclusion, “To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment … would result in the demolition of society” (2001 [1944]: 73). The economic and social developments after 2008 impressively corroborated the relevance of Polanyi’s warning.

The efforts to resolve similar organizational issues worldwide, the similar options for individualization, and the challenges of universalized commercialization on the global scale bring about and sustain the global universalization of value-normative systems. Its relevance is represented by two ideas that are widely regarded as the core of the new civic religion of present-day advanced societies. The first is the idea of universal human rights. The second is the concept of economic, political, cultural, and environmental sustainability. Both ideas have tremendous mobilizing power. At the same time, they are the basis of the modern rationalized ethic of responsibility and its legal incorporations. As seen from this point of view, they might be regarded as the modern development of basic ideas of the European Enlightenment, like the Kantian categorical imperative. As seen from another perspective, the global trend of the universalization of value-normative systems inevitably meets resistance since it clashes with local cultural traditions or local interests. This trend also clashes with parallel processes of the specification of value-normative preferences due to progressing structural and functional differentiation of action spheres. In addition, both the idea of universal human rights and sustainability can be used and abused through the representation of powerful interests and in the pressure on others to comply with them. In all these cases the universalization of value-normative systems is inevitably accompanied by the emergence, influence, and resistance of value-normative particularisms. The increasing variety in patterns of the division of labor, social status, group interests, cultural preferences, and lifestyles bring about and sustain particularistic value-normative orientations. Universalization of value-normative systems and value-normative particularisms might be complementary and enrich each other. However, their relationships might be full of tensions, as well. The events of September 11, 2001 provided the impressive evidence that these tensions can indeed evolve into conflicts with far-reaching consequences.

Therefore, all four global trends are internally controversial since the global triumph of each is accompanied by both constructive and destructive, functional and dysfunctional effects. The same applies to the mutual influence of the four trends. Upgrading the rationality of organizations provides the material and organizational resources for creative individualization, efficient implementation of instrumental activism, and real respect for universal human rights. Likewise, progressing individualization makes the upgrading the rationality of modern organizations possible, and provides energy and information for the spread of instrumental activism and humanistic meaning for the universalization of value-normative systems. The spread of instrumental activism presses for the further upgrading the rationality of organizations, invigorates individualization, and provides material conditions for observing human rights and implementing the requirements of sustainability. Last but not least, the cognitive, moral, and practical spread of the influence of universal human rights and principles of sustainability provide the base for the cultural legitimacy of the three other global trends under scrutiny.

Simultaneously, advances in upgrading the rationality of organizations might restrict the social spaces needed for individualization by imposing on individuals the “iron cage” (Max Weber) of bureaucratic over-regulations. Organizational pathologies tend to undermine the constructive spread of instrumental activism or encourage value-normative particularisms to thrive. Destructive individualization might take the form of deviation from moral and legal norms, thus making organizational rationality dysfunctional, the spread of instrumental activism criminal, and the universalization of value-normative systems meaningless. The spread of instrumental activism might develop to extremes by fully dominating organizational rationality, transforming individuals to moneymaking machines and demoralizing science, arts, and all other walks of cultural life. Universal human rights might be easily interpreted as the natural rights of the rich and powerful to dominate organizations, to establish barriers hindering the individualization of others, and to achieve limitless command of instrumental activism.

The basic ideas concerning the constructive and destructive potentials of the four global trends and their interactions were first developed at the level of analytical generalizations (Genov 1997) and then applied in the analysis of the rise and fall of Eastern Europe as a global region (Genov 2010). The task in the present volume is more ambitious. These ideas are put to test in the broader context of several global regions and in specific issues. However, the relevant areas for analysis and conclusions are much more differentiated than the present volume may cover. The larger variety of issues and research approaches will be further illustrated just briefly, by indicating the place of the following articles in broader thematic contexts.

UPGRADING THE RATIONALITY OF ORGANIZATIONS: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CONTROVERSIES

George Ritzer was certainly right in identifying the trend toward increasing efficiency, calculability, and predictability in our world dominated by formal organizations. His linking this development to growing organizational rationality and the concomitant organizational irrationalities is also well taken (Ritzer 2011: 14–18). However, his diagnosis of our social world is somewhat misplaced in time and incomplete. The misplacement in time concerns the neglect of earlier radical innovation of assembly lines in the Fordist organization of work and the Taylorist stress on efficiency, calculability, and predictability in the organization of mass production. Both Fordist and Taylorist organizational innovations were later borrowed and transferred to the “assembly line” of the fast-food McDonalds’ restaurants. His diagnosis is then not complete as there was already another organizational innovation that overshadows the relevance of the McDonaldization stressing efficiency, calculability, and predictability in organizations. This more advanced form of upgrading the rationality of organizations is known as innovation management, or change management. This is a radical reorientation from the stabilization and reproduction of established organizational structures and functions toward a permanent stress on change and innovations in and of organizations. This idea of rational command of organizational change will guide the three following examples at the level of supranational organizations, national societies, and companies.

Regional Integration as Change Management

All four chapters in the first part of the present volume are focused on the de...