Social Capital Under Pressure: Oh Europe, Where Art Thou?
Presentor
Ursula Brinkmann, Ph.D., Intercultural Business Improvement
SIETAR Europe 2005 Congress in La Colle sur Loup, France, September 21 - 25, 2005
Fukuyama captured what many interculturalists seek to develop: Social
capital - the existence of informal norms that foster cooperation.
Social capital is of key importance to modern economies, as they depend
on services, whose output is notoriously hard to measure. Thus, in
service industries, people need to be able to trust that the other will
do a good job.
Western Europe is often discussed as the place where social capital is
highest. However, a recent analysis suggests that it may be under
pressure in Western Europe because of the very values that define
Western European identity. We rank correlated economic growth rates of
27 countries and these countries rankings on the 7 value clusters
identified Schwartz (1994). Two clusters correlate positively with
growth: Hierarchy and Embeddedness - values dear to Asian countries and
- less so - to the US. Two clusters correlate negatively with growth:
Intellectual Autonomy and Egalitarianism - the values most dear to
Western Europeans.
Economic well-being is important in its own right for social capital -
as Witte (2001), among others, has shown, hostility against foreigners
(certainly the opposite of social capital in a globalizing world)
increases with unemployment. How then can Western Europe preserve its
social capital? Without growth, unemployment will continue to rise and
with it, hostility against foreigners. But if growth depends on
non-Western European values, Western Europe may need to re-evaluate its
values - and in the process, destroy the very capital it needs to
preserve. Is Good Old Europe in trouble?
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