The great enrichment: a humanistic and social scientific account

Abstract

The scientific problem is explaining modern economic growth is its astonishing magnitude-anywhere from a 3,000 to a 10,000 percent increase in real income, a "Great Enrichment." Investment, reallocation, property rights, exploitation cannot explain it. Only the bettering of betterment can, the stunning increase in new ideas, such as the screw propeller on ships or the ball bearing in machines, the modern university for the masses and careers open to talent. Why, then, the new and trade-tested ideas? Because liberty to have a go, as the English say, and a dignity to the wigmakers and telegraph operators having the go made the mass of people bold. Equal liberty and dignity for ordinary people is called "liberalism," and it was new to Europe in the eighteenth century, against old hierarchies. Why the liberalism? It was not deep European superiorities, but the accidents of the Four R's of (German) Reformation, (Dutch) Revolt, (American and French) Revolution, and (Scottish and Scandinavian) Reading. It could have gone the other way, leaving, say, China to have the Great Enrichment, much later. Europe, and then the world, was lucky after 1900. Now China and India have adopted liberalism (in the Chinese case only in the economy), and are catching up.

Thriving in the New Normal: The HR Microfoundations of Capabilities for Business Model Innovation. An Integrated Literature Review

“…For instance, the increasing success of firms seeking growth by operating globally across sectors and markets (Ahlstrom, ; Van Reenen, ) corresponds with the rise of BMIs that allow firms to be more sophisticated in the way they address the ‘compete vs collaborate’ conundrum and other innovation puzzles (Christensen et al, ; Sohl et al, ; Velu, ). Similarly, the fall in poverty in many parts of the world in recent years (Pinkovskiy and Sala‐i‐Martin, ; Si et al, ) corresponds to the rise of locally based, innovative business models such as Grameen Bank’s microfinancing and other initiatives encouraging new ventures and freer markets (McCloskey, , ; Yunus et al, ). These observations suggest that BMI is a crucial factor for firms to enhance performance by thriving in the New Normal, as BMI enables firms to enhance partnerships with competitors, diversify when local markets are saturated, and to meet new consumer demands and opportunities as they are quickly enabled.…”

Managing Technological, Sociopolitical, and Institutional Change in the New Normal

“…However, cybernation and other technological developments such as AI may also provide additional opportunities for firms (Cukier, 2019; Frey, 2019) and increased flexibility for workers (Sundararajan, 2016). Revolutionary improvements in technological performance lead to improved productivity and standards of living (McCloskey, 2016; Nordhaus, 1997). But technological change does not always have to imply high‐end improvements on established technologies and products.…”

Business System And Organizational Innovations In The Digital Era

“…Nowadays information technologies may provide additional opportunities for firms, become a driver that changes all aspects of business performance (Turulja & Bajgoric, 2018). Technological improvements and innovations lead to increase productivity, quality, reduce costs for firms, that perform on global, national or domestic markets (Ahlstrom et al, 2020;Jusoh et al, 2018;McCloskey, 2016).…”