Globalization and Multicultural Societies. Some Views from Europe

Citation

Ricciardelli, M., Urban, S. and Nanopoulos, K. (2006), "Globalization and Multicultural Societies. Some Views from Europe", Society and Business Review, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 282-284. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465680610706364

This book is the American Edition of “Mondialisation et sociétés multiculturelles; L'incertain du future” publied by the previous three editors in 2000 (Paris. Presses Universitaires de France). This first French edition was translated in Italian “Idee per futuro già initiziato: 28 voci sulla globalizzazione” (Rome. Edizioni Lavoro, 2002).

This book proposes 22 original essays discussing the topics of globalization focusing on Europe or from a European point of view. The authors are all well known philosophical, cultural, political or managerial figures such as Ilya Prigogine, Pierre Boulez, Romano Prodi or Philipp de Woot. Not surprisingly, authors's contributions are quite different reflecting the changing dynamic of the realities of globalization.

In concise and strong introduction, Sabine Urban presents the general approach that presided over the conception of this collective book and gives a precise idea of the different parts of the book. The globalization is apprehended as “a long‐term, complex, and evolutionary phenomenon that, in diverse ways, has accompanied humanities for centuries”. Beyond its economical, financial and geographical dimensions, this phenomena is fundamentally a cultural one since it refers “to all aspects of life and involves a large number of people throughout the word”. The contributions have two main characteristics: they emphasis on Europe and they are transdisciniplary.

The contributions are set in three parts that are preluded by Prigogine's essay: “Is the future given?” that seems us a very pertinent question towards business ideology that is persuaded that everything can be put under control and that the future is, by some aspects, “given”. We considerer that most of the businessmen are kind of Hegelians that ignored themselves, the Spirit being replaced by owners value. The first part “Reading Globalization” is made of seven contributions. As a phenomenon, the globalization is a complex and dynamic reality that is apprehended from different angles: epistemological, monetary, social, financial and managerial. The second part: “The Institutional Designs” contains eight essays that are led by Romano Prodi's one. Very roughly, there are two kinds of essays in that part: those that think about on what Europe – more precisely European community‐ could be and those that discuss about what Europe can bring to the globalization as a multimentional phenomenon. The third part “Views and Testimonies” counts five essays. The first four focus on culture (for example: Boulez “The Word of Music”) in a large sense since that encloses a chapter dedicated to food. The last one is quite interesting since it is made of interviews of the mayors of five historical cities of Europe (like Dresden) that insist on the importance of the local and regional communities in the treatment of social problems exacerbated by globalization.

The concluding essay ‐written by Marina Ricciardelli‐ is entitled “Considerations on methods and events”. After having underline that the essays of the book go “far beyond the purely economics aspects of globalization” Ricciardelli considers that there is a consensus among the authors among three “basic assumptions” that are: a common conception of time; the concept of science and the participation. About science, specially in the context of the economic science, Ricciardelli esteems that the contributions reintroduces the debate between complexity, uncertainty and the future specifying that there is some reticence about abandoning the deterministic method.

It seems us that three ideas can be extracted from those contributions in the context of Business and Society field. The first one, underlined by Urban, is the notion of quality. From an European point of view, quality is a master word that should underline the relations between society and business. Secondly, it seems to us, that this book restarts the notion of evolution that is to say that globalization is only a “moment” of the human history, a “moment” in which the business seems predominant, specially the “big business” throughout MNEs. The evolutionary approach underlines that what it is today could be not tomorrow. This introduces our third point: things are too complex and too dynamics to be controlled. Aron said: “there are men that make history but they don't know the history they do!” Therefore, it lays the question of the manageability of our societies. At the organizational level, the endogenous and exogenous governability of (big) organizations can be questioned, especially for MNEs. This very rich and interesting book –that can be read in a discontinuous way since contributions are largely independent – will interest people who want to have a dynamic and a pluridisciplanary understanding of globalization, a phenomenon that can be compared to the past Hellenisation, the Romanisation, the Arabatisation, the Sinisation or the Christianisation. Notice that America seems to ignore such phenomenon until the arrivals of Europeans. Therefore, this book is a precious one for those who are interested by the evolution of the human kind and, narrowly, by a profound understanding of the relations between society and business. On the light of this book, business seems a specific and a contemporary victor of cultural processes.