“The Challenges to Growth and Prosperity”
Probably
one of the oldest questions in economics is the issue of economic growth. How can growth be generated
in the long term in a world that is marked by diminishing returns and scarcity? What role does the growth
of a company play in securing its long-term existence? How important is growth as the basis for a rise
in prosperity and new employment, as a conciliatory element for social conflicts, and as a catalyst
for structural change?
More than 30 years
ago, with its study “Limits to Growth”, the Club of Rome opened up new perspectives in the discussion
about economic growth: it argued that prosperity in the industrialised countries was, even then, adequate,
and that the production and consumption of a steadily rising volume of goods was causing not only an
increasing and unjustifiable burden on the environment but also a scarcity of precious resources; in
other words, there were “natural limits” to economic growth, and those limits should be respected.
Even
when the concerns of the Club of Rome have since acquired further relevance, they should not be observed
in isolation. At the beginning of a new century that is unable to honour the promises emanating from
the euphoria of unrestricted growth and guaranteed prosperity at the end of the previous one, the question
of growth also involves other problems.
The
global society and the separate national economies are marked by constant insecurity and deep-rooted
conflicts between the different cultures. Immovable barriers seem to stand in the way of political reform
in many areas. Having found a way out of the immediate crisis, business is faced with the challenge
of creating strategic and structural incentives in order to promote corporate growth and secure innovation
in the long term.
How much growth is necessary
to guarantee prosperity in the long term? Is growth inevitable? How can sustainable or qualitative growth
be achieved? An ideological, macro-economic and commercial analysis of these questions is now confronted
by an urgent problem: (How) can growth regain its momentum?
The
neglect of past decades has brought urgent structural and psychological steps to a standstill. How can
the conditions for growth in the individual, corporate and social areas be identified and created? And
how, in these self-same areas, can the obstacles to growth be overcome?
