Abstract
‘Isn’t it clear that a man must have the right to warn the majority, to argue with the majority, to fight with the majority if he believes he holds the truth? Before many can know something, one must know it!’ The words are Dr Stockman’s of An Enemy of the People1 and in a competitive market building upon a Smithian self-interest there might seem to be no room for people like him. Whatever the personal attitudes of the owners, managers and employees, they would feel forced to behave in business like all of their competitors. Such is the logic of the basic driving forces in Western societies. It is a logic that necessitates lean and mean production, the substitution of labour with capital, relocation of production to places with low labour costs — also known as social dumping — or to places with less stringent environmental demands and/or less costly safety regulations.
The traditional way to prevent this happening has been to use state intervention and regulation to curb the worst cases. But today many of the traditional harnesses on an unbridled market economy have been removed, such as controls on capital movements, trade across borders or regulation of sectors like transport, telecommunication, energy, utilities and so on.
With this in mind we may ask whether there exists an alternative to state intervention that would contain or change the direction of the logic from within the logic itself. In other words, is it possible for a single or a few entrepreneurs to change the logic in such a way that external regulation is avoided or reduced, while finding answers to the problems and concerns caused by that logic?
Of course there is a risk that these answers may consist of just a kind of exploitative riding of the waves of concerns and offering strange, Potemkin-like answers to for instance the clamour for environmental responsibility.
Responsible entrepreneurship is something else, though. It consists in understanding genuine concerns and using one’s special knowledge in a certain field, to experiment and develop constantly improving answers to these concerns, giving a concrete form to emerging values, and raising the expectations of all those having these concerns.
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References
Arthur Miller An Enemy of the People, p 71. Adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s En Folkefiende 1994
Lecture by Sartre given in 1946 and quoted in Kaufmann, W (ed) Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre New York: Meridian Books 1958.
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In October 1999 chairman Robert Shapiro of Monsanto announced that the company would no longer experiment with terminator technologies. Apparently this decision was a result of widespread protests against terminator seeds.
The internal market in EU has the aim of deregulating a long list of activities and abolishing all non-tariff barriers to the movement of capital goods, people and services.
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It is worth noting that Smith was well aware that basic values were necessary in a society. He spoke of general rules of conduct that have been fixed in our minds by habitual reflection. “Without this sacred regard to general rules, there is no man whose conduct can be much depended upon. It is this which constitutes the most essential difference between a man of principle and honour and a worthless fellow Smith, A. The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1790). Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976 p. 163. In relation to the market Arrow argues that something outside the logic is necessary for the market to function, Some kind of social responsibility is necessary. Arrow, K. J. (1973). Social Responsibility and Economic Efficiency. Public Policy, XXI(3), pp. 303–317. Smith, A. The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1790). Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976
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Overview of Issues discussed at the Consultative Forum, Trade and Policy Forum, The International Chamber of Commerce.
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A view also found in Vogel, S. K. Freer Markets, More Rules — Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries: Cornell University Press 1998
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This refers to the famous story of the fake villages that General Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin had given order to construct along river banks in order to impress Empress Catherine on her inspection tour of the Crimea 1787. I suspect the story is apocryphal, but the trick is not. Today acting like Potemkin would thus mean that one is presenting a false or hollow image hiding a reality that may not look good.
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http://www.cisco.com/en/US/learning/netacad/academy/About.html
Perhaps it is worth noting that Volkswagen produces a luxury car with a 12-cylinder engine to compete with the top segment of BMW and Mercedes, thus expanding at both ends so to speak.
Noting of course the seeming contradiction in listening to the long waves, while ignoring the vogues.
See for instance Petersen, V. C. (2002). op. cit.
James, W. The Will to Believe(1896) In P. K. Moser & A. v. Nat (eds.) Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches. New York: Oxford University Press 1995 p. 21
Ibid
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Petersen, V.C. One Must Know It! A Personal Argument for Self-Regulation and Responsible Entrepreneurship. Philos. of Manag. 6, 159–172 (2008). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20086328
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20086328