Here's an extract from the Delphi Futures Report just published in the 4-yearly series by the International Marketing Department of Georgetown University:

Markets and governance

We see a world-wide push for more corporate transparency and accountability. Quick, ongoing, and public action against nefarious business practices by the industrialized nations is essential for world acceptance of globalization and market forces. The proponents of market-based systems are "selling" the world on two key approaches to doing business. One is the benefit of market forces that results from the interplay of supply and demand. Price signals instead of government fiat gauge the effectiveness of activities. Competition is good and works within a responsible environment of respect for profitability and private property. In exchange for the chance to earn profits, investors provide resources to the most productive and efficient uses.

The second comprises managerial and corporate virtue, vision and veracity. Unless the world can have trust in what firms and their managers say and do, it will be impossible to forge a global commitment between those doing the marketing and the ones being marketed to. It is therefore of vital interest to the proponents of globalization to ensure that corruption, bribery, lack of transparency, and the misleading of stakeholders are relegated to the scrap heap of history. The main remedy will be an early identification of transgressions and the collaboration of the global policy community in administering swift punishment of the executives involved.

Extracted from A FORECAST OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND TRADE SHIFTS: REPORT FROM A DELPHI STUDY
November 3, 2003
Michael R. Czinkota and Ilkka A. Ronkainen

Georgetown University
posted by ..., 12:44 AM  permalink