Profit or virtue nurtures economic growth?
Western communities, led by Britain and America, have come to accept a type of community organisation that leaves an increasing range of decisions to be resolved in the marketplace.
This, together with the development of the limited liability corporation, has led to the mobilisation of human energies and knowledge on an unprecedented scale. It has led to what is popularly viewed as the most prosperous period for human societies yet experienced.
Less positively, it has also led to a serious threat to the environment in which humans must live, an increasing threat to healthy ecological diversity and a growing range of degenerative diseases. The corporation, committed above all to profit maximisation by its founding articles of association, has shown itself to be increasingly negligent of other concerns.
Today’s Anglo-American global order knows no other way of mass organisation and motivation.
In contrast, the Confucian-Daoist communities of East Asia have long organised themselves though the authority of an administrative class chosen largely for excellence in meeting demanding standards of education and virtue. While by no means without human frailties the mythology of virtue, which is central to this tradition, ensures a high quality of responsibility in the exercise of administrative duties. In the contemporary world this has shown itself to extend to high levels of performance in the implementation of economic development strategies.
The corporations of the Anglo-American world appear to be vulnerable to Confucian-Daoist strategies, most likely because they exploit with discretion and subtlety the widespread Western corporate preoccupation with short-term profit.