Posts Tagged ‘Economy’

Tendencias: tecnología, economía, empresa, clientes

“Nuevo entorno normal” es la denominación que escoge Oxford Economics, una consultora ligada a la Universidad de Oxford, para refererirse a los tiempos de cambio que vivimos.

La expresión aparece en Digital Megatrends 2015, informe publicado en Abril de 2011 sobre el papel de la tecnología en el mercado actual, realizado junto con AT&T, Cisco, City y SAP.

El informe señala las novedades de este nuevo entorno normal, tras entrevistar a gestores de empresas en Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, de India, de Japón, China, Mejico y Australia (interesantes las salvedades de Rusia y Oriente Medio).

Y hablando de novedades destaca en primer lugar, que hoy los clientes son mas conscientes de los costes y más exigentes. En segundo lugar, destaca que la crisis financiera global tiene un impacto desigual en economías de países desarrollados y países emergentes. Los países desarrollados crecen menos como consecuencia de la crisis, mientras que los emergentes tienen crecimientos ascendentes, a pesar de la crisis. Lo nuevo es que este patrón no fue el caso en crisis anteriores, incluso en crisis con caracter global.

En tercer lugar, destaca que la recesión global va a suponer un desplazamiento del poder económico desde las economías occidentales a los mercados emergentes.

En cuarto lugar los gestores empresariales están convencidos de que la crisis hace crecer la aversión al riesgo, por lo que esperan mayor precaución a la hora de realizar nuevas inversiones.

Un rasgo interesante que ponen de relieve los gestores empresariales es que los gobiernos pierden sintonía con los retos que enfrentan las empresas en este contexto. En este sentido, los gobiernos se alejan tanto de la ciudadanía -y estoy pensando al leer este resultado tanto en movimientos sociales que se han desarrollado en Europa desde la primavera de 2011 – como de las empresas en contextos como el actual.

Los resultados del informe, que está disponible en el siguiente enlace, corresponden a una encuesta global entre ejecutivos realizada en diciembre de 2010. En la composición de entrevistados había un 19% de Estados Unidos, 20% de Reino Unido, 15% de India, 14% de Japón, y 8% de China, Mejico y Australia. Las industrias incluidas en la muestra han sido: servicios financieros (26%), manufacturas (19%), TIC y entretenimiento (18%), productos de consumo (15%), salud y ciencias de la vida (11%). Más de el 52% de las repuestas han sido de ejecutivos que trabajan en empresas con ingresos superiores al billón de dorales USA.

Se señalan cuatro mega tendencias digitales, que en mi opinión dejan fuera muchas especificidades de mercados locales y regionales: 1) Móviles ubiquos, 2) Cloud Computing, 3) Inteligencia de negocio bajo demanda, y 4) social media y colaboración, que se convierten en norma.

Estas tendencias contrastan con la ebullición que se detecta a nivel micro en muchos países, que tiene que ver con todo tipo de negocios y sectores. Los siguientes son unos ejemplos seleccionados en Sri Lanka:

http://www.ceylonartists.com/ Dedicado a la venta de obra de arte

http://www.rositasalons.com/ Mostrando los servicios de un salón de belleza

http://www.tharu.net/ Dedicado a preservar la música clásica de Sri Lanka

http://www.pirulu.com/ Un catálogo de proverbios de Sri Lanka

http://dl.nsf.ac.lk/ El repositorio de contenidos abierto de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Sri Lanka

Sin duda mucho más allá de las cuatro megatendecias señaladas.

Conocer vuestra opinión sobre estos cambios es muy valioso, de modo que os invito a comentar y compartir al pie.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Economy&Trends, Trends No Comments »

The changing boundaries between society and economy in Europe

More than 30 people attended the Conference organized in Venice from May 8th to the 9th, 2009 in honour of professor Colin Crouch 65th anniversary. Attendees ranged from colleagues, to former researchers and students touched by the impact of Colin teaching and bénévolance. The Conference has been held at the University of Warwick new premises at Venice, Cannaregio, 3764 (Palazzo Pesaro-Papafava).

The changing boundaries between society and economy in Europe have been explored in three fields: gender division of work, capitalist diversity and institutional change, and changes in the governance of European societies.

CHANGES IN GENDER DIVISION OF WORK.

Maria José González (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Teresa Jurado (UNED, Madrid) and Manuela Naldini (Turin University) have showed that women have changed a lot in the public sphere, while men have not. They founded that most powerful variable to explain country differences in the role of women was the existence or absence of a professional class.

CAPITALIST DIVERSITY AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE (Chair: Andrea Herrman, Utrech University)

Maarten Keune (European Trade Union Institute) analyses EU Integration and emphasizes the diverse impact of the EU: “the single market has increased the exit options of capital. Keune speaks of the “need of governments to court capital and the need of governments and labour to strengthen competitive corporatism (in corporativist countries)”. He finds the impact of the EU has been higher in labour market (showing wages has been sustainable restrained from 1995), than in the welfare state (where cases are very diverse and range from high restrain in some countries to higher expenditure in others). He sees the national level as remaining key to constraining the markets.

Ulrich Glassmann (University of Cologne) speaks about Continuity and Change in Capitalism. Looking at Italian and German regions over the last decade he finds an increase in demand for dual labour markets in the traditional industries (temporary work contracts have tripled in last decade). Whereas in new growth industries, pressure on firms have forced regions to specialize. Germany has fragmented in two ways: spatially and institutionally with regard to labour and Glassman finds that spatial approaches are receiving a lot attention. He illustrates what this means with the example of regional government policy in the Land of Rhine-Westphalia where the economics Ministry has been absolutely reorganized, areas of policy have been clustered along sectors, and funds are being allocated to the growth sectors. This is a very different approach to what they did before, when sectors with problems were privileged.

THE GOVERNANCE OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES (Chair: Simona Talani, Bath University).

Anton Hemerick (WRR, The Netherlands), speaks about the Reform of the Welfare States, and says that the reason why the Chinese saved so much in the last two decades was that they were saving to cover health cost in case of illness (given that they did not have any health system). “Even though there is an immense window of opportunity for welfare recalibration in Europe, Hemerick sees institutional shortcomings.

Guglielmo Meardi (University of Warwick) analyses Industrial relations after European state traditions. Meardi points out that only 6 per cent of jobs have been lost because of outsourcing in the EU. He finds labour standards do not explain Foreign Direct Investment from Multinationals (quoting Germany and Italy as two examples). He shares evidence showing that productivity of labour increases and even overpasses that of other more productive countries when technology and operations are upgraded in less developed countries (examples of Germany and Poland). He remarks that studies about workers across countries in Europe might not apply same assumptions and share the same conclusions as studies over migrants across the EU because the regulations are two tier and different for the two groups across nation states.

Colin Crouch (Warwick University) sees a change in the structure of the labor force and also in gender competition. This will be leading to different formations that will not be easily explained by old categories. Crouch remarks that social structures of sectors are not the same in different sectors. “We may need to understand industries and sectors before we understand countries”. Thus, politics continues to be very important.

Philippe Schmitter (European University Institute) remarks that “we are in the middle of a dramatic change… and the potentiality for corruption is huge with taxation without representation”. He says that politicians are out of touch with citizens.

Franca Alacevich (University of Florence) se plantea ¿cómo entender

mejor la crisis hoy? Afirma que lo que ocurría a nivel micro en los 1990 nos ayuda a entenderlo mejor: “lo que estaba ocurriendo a nivel macro a nivel sindical (poco) no era lo mismo que ocurría al nivel micro (mucho) en términos de relaciones laborales”. Sin embargo, a diferencia de entonces, las organizaciones sindicales no consiguen representar el mapa de trabajadores (desempleados, emigrantes, trabajadores del sector servicios, muy dispersos geográficamente). Además, dentro de las empresas, ¿Dónde reside la legitimidad de la negociación? Con la externalizacion, la gobernanza se complica. Encuentra que en términos generales estamos viviendo una diáspora sindical con los sindicatos.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Economy&Trends, Trends, Women&Men public sphere No Comments »

Creación de valor en tiempos de crisis

Más allá de la situación que el mundo atraviesa en estos momentos resulta interesante estar atentos a las propuestas de creación de valor en tiempos de crisis. El tema no es fácil de abordar, ya que las fuentes que estoy encontrando son limitadas. La mayor parte de los análisis ponen énfasis en el deterioro de la situación. También recogeré fuentes sobre esta cuestión. Pero comencemos por la parte creativa y las alternativas. Una reflexión de Hal Varian, CFO de Google sobre le mundo que viene dentro de las empresas.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Tech & Contents, Trends No Comments »

Jeffrey Sach on “Sustainability, Growth and Development”

Sachs talked in Expomanagement, Madrid, June 5th, of the crisis of violence and ecology the world faces, projections in 30 years time, and the need to respond to challenges with a new Economics for the 21st. century.

We are in a world of increasing ecological stress, possing new challenges, says Sachs, and Spain is in the epicenter of the challenge. On the down side, Spain is affected by energy dependency and a subtropical Mediterranean climate that is experiencing the effects of droughts and water stress: Water challenges are great. On the problem solving side, Spain is a leader in solar technology and wind tech, with an enormous potential.

The nature of the challenges requires policies of a long term thrust and “a new economics for the 21st. century”. His argument goes as follows: We have arrived at a very populated planet –that poses challenges for this generation not envisioned before. World gross product has increased up to 60.000 trillion dollars, in a world economy more dynamic than ever before in history (See slides here). While most of the word was excluded from economic growth in the twentieth century (growth started steadly in UK, Germany, Anglosaxon, and in the mid 20th century in Japan), this century sees new incomers.

Rising literacy, improved communications, and new models of development explain this success for many new incomers. From 1978 China has doubled its economy every seven years (five continues cycles of impressive growth). And global growth will be doubling in 17 years, according to projections. This explains why oil and food prices are soaring.  We never before faced this scale of population and global growth.

Within this scenario Sachs makes the following predictions about year 2050. He says that in the next 20 years, Asia will catch up and its share of GNP will make more than half of world share. The share of GNP for the West envisioned in his projections goes back to the percentage held by the region of the world in year 1500 (25%).  Latin America also increases its share (measured together with Africa) to more than 25%. In this new scenario, China is seeing closing the growth and development gap in just two generations.

We are facing two crises, according to Sachs. One is a crisis of violence, highly connected with water shortages. The other is a crisis of ecology. Those are crisis for which planetary scale cooperation is needed.

Sachs presents data showing that human society is facing an unprecedented change on all key components of the earth system: land transformation, CO2 transformation, water use, nitrogen, plant invasions, bird extinctions, and marine fisheries. And he argues that extrapolation of production is not an option because ecological chaos would subdue unless there are political responses. Challenges include mass migration, and he predicts an explosion of mass migration from Africa looking for food and water in Europe. He proposes to dissect the technical problems, and design critical paths to take action.

He gives positive examples in Spain, pioneering the technology that could produce huge amounts of energy: Sachs mentions Iberdrola lead in concentrated solar thermo power technology. And he also speaks of the need to use fossils fuel safely, citing the example of Carbon Sequestration Systems. However, there is only one plan in the world, and governments are doing very little on this direction, while private initiative do not take action about it.

He says that “we are fighting wars in dry lands, while we are not investing in dry lands”. He defends mayor investments in agriculture, and direct investments in the poorest populations, so they can escape extreme poverty. Sending food is not the option, but helping the poor with     investment, irrigation and family planning.

Among the challenges:

  • Bigger technological capacities are needed.
  • Governments have to provide themselves with new tools of analysis and new ways of partnership with the private sector. While the public  sector should regulate, the  private sector have to participate.
  • Talking specifically of Spain he mentions that the country needs to find alternatives not to destroy the oceans soil, with new solutions that do not do more of the same.

He quotes in Spanish a speech by President Kennedy in June 1963, after the Cuban Missile Crisis in order to explain the need to talk and make peace to solve problems globaly:  “La razón y el espíritu del ser humano han resuelto a menudo lo irresoluble… por ello podemos volver a hacerlo”.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Economy&Trends, Sustainabiity 1 Comment »