Don't Take Your Eye Off The Ball
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 07/31/2009
Professor Prabhu Guptara
Professor Prabhu Guptara is Executive Director, Organisational Development, Wolfsberg (a subsidiary of UBS - one of the largest banks in the world). He is also Freeman of the City of London and of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and Chartered Fellow of the of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; he is also Fellow: of the Institute of Directors, of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts Commerce and Manufactures; and he continues to supervise PhD research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as well as to be Visiting Professor at various Universities and Business Schools around the world.
Earlier roles include: a Governor of the Polytechnic of Central London, Member of the Council of the British Institute of Management, of the International Federation of Training & Development Organisations (IFTDO), of the Association for Management Education and Development (UK), of the South East Regional Council of the Confederation of British Industry.
Judge, 1988 National Training Awards, 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1990 & 1991 Deo Gloria Prize for Fiction; Chair of the Panel of Judges, Deo Gloria Prize 1992 & 1993.
Experience with an enormous range of organisations including: Akzo Nobel (Netherlands), the Associated Banks Institute (Germany), Barclays Bank (UK), British Petroleum (UK), the Council of Europe, Cultor (Finland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Groupe Bull (France), Federation of Finnish Engineers (Finland), the International Management Association of Japan, Kemira (Finland), Kraft Jakob Suchard (Switzerland), Leadership Academy (Finland), Nokia Telecommunications (Finland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Sedgwick International Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers (UK), Singapore Institute of Management, Sonatrach (Algeria), Sun Alliance (UK), UNCTAD, Valeo (France), and so on.
Organiser, chair and lecturer by invitation for numerous international conferences, he has contributed widely to radio and television in the UK and other countries (The Money Program, Any Questions) and has written for Financial Times (London, UK), The Guardian, The Times and other publications; articles, for example, in The Gower Handbook of Management, The Gower Handbook of Quality, and the International Encyclopedia of Business & Management (Routledge).
A CD-ROM has been issued of his lecture at the Professorenforum, University of Zurich, titled "Making the World Better - Why it does NOT happen...and what TO DO about it"
Further information available from rbadertscher@coba.ch
His best-known research publication is "Top Executives in the Global 100 Companies and their IT-Competence" (ADVANCE: Management Training Ltd., UK, and Wolfsberg Executive Development Centre, Switzerland, 1998); and he is included in Debrett's People of Today and in Who's Who in the World. Professor Prabhu Guptara lives in Switzerland.
Even if one uses as the basis of calculation the fashionable but ridiculous idea of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), the US and Europe account for around 45% of world GDP and 60% of global personal consumption spending in 2007. Over half of world exports and imports originate from these countries, as do nearly three-fourths of global outward foreign direct investment and a similar share of global mergers or takeover deals.
The rest of the world is inevitably dependent on what happens in the "driver or central economies".
The "marginal or peripheral economies" are always more badly hit than the central economies during a bust phase of the economic cycle, but the peripheral economies rise more quickly during the boom phase.
As the global economy at present bumps along an artifically-sustained bottom, the effects on the peripheral economies are patchy - the "leading peripheral economies" have maintained some sort of equilibrium overall though parts of their economies too have been hit. Meanwhile the "even more peripheral economies" have been uniformly hit.
Of course if your economy was dependent on exports, then it was more likely to be hit by the crisis.
And it is likely to continue to be hit by the crisis unless your government can stimulate internal demand.
Naturally, the more your government tries to stimulate internal demand by spending money or reducing taxes, the weaker it will get in terms of its finances (on China, which is reckoned to be an exception to this rule, I have written skeptically earlier).
A few such countries caught in this dilemma (e.g. Iceland) can try to rush into the arms of larger economic groupings for protection. Most do not have this option.
They should think seriously of adopting one or more complimentary currencies as a mechanism that can help their economies stabilise - and not just in the current crisis. Stabilisation is as much needed when nearing the top of a boom as it is needed when nearing the bottom of a bust. Sphere: Related Content
Professor Prabhu Guptara
