2000 AttitudesValuesBeliefsandtheMic

(Porter, 2000) ⇒ Michael E. Porter. (2000). “Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, and the Microeconomics of Prosperity.” In: * (Harrison & Huntington, 2000) "Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress."

Notes

Attitudes, values, and beliefs that are sometimes collectively referred to as “culture” play an unquestioned role in human behavior and progress. This is evident to me from working in nations, states, regions, inner cities, and companies at widely varying stages of development. The question is not whether culture has a role but how to understand this role in the context of the broader determinants of prosperity. A large literature has explored the links between culture and human progress from various perspectives. In this chapter, I explore a subset of this broader territory — the role of what might be termed “economic culture” in economic progress. Economic culture is defined as the beliefs, attitudes, and values that bear on the economic activities of individuals, organizations, and other institutions.

Although the role of culture in economic progress is unquestioned, interpreting this role in the context of other influences and isolating the independent influence of culture is challenging. Treatments of the role of culture in economic prosperity tend to focus on generic cultural attributes that are deemed desirable, such as hard work, initiative, belief in the value of education, as well as factors drawn from macroeconomics, such as a propensity to save and invest. These are surely relevant to prosperity, but none of these generic attributes is unambiguously correlated with economic progress. Hard work is important, but just as important is what guides and directs the type of work done. Initiative is important, but not all initiative is productive. Education is crucial, but so is the type of education sought and what the education is used to accomplish. Saving is good, but only if the savings are deployed in productive ways.

Indeed, the same cultural attribute can have vastly different implications for economic progress in different societies, or even in the same society at different times. Frugality, for example, served Japan well until its recent prolonged recession; now it is an obstacle to recovery. The investigation of a wide range of successful nations, including the United States, Japan, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, and Costa Rica, reveals wide and subtle cultural differences associated with improving economic circumstances that further belie a simple connection between culture and prosperity.

In this chapter, I will explore the complex links between economic culture and economic progress. The focus here is on prosperity at the level of geographic units such as nations or states. Although I will often refer to nations, in many cases the relevant economic unit can be smaller. There are striking differences in economic prosperity among states and regions within virtually every nation, and some of the reasons may be related to attitudes, values, and beliefs. Many of the same influences can also be applied to thinking about the economic prosperity of groups that cut across geographic units such as, for example, ethnic Chinese.

I will begin by outlining some of the recent learning about the sources of economic prosperity in the modern global economy. I will then draw some tentative links between these sources and the types of beliefs, values, and attitudes that reinforce prosperity. Doing so confronts an important question: Why might unproductive cultures arise and persist? I examine this question in the context of prevailing economic thinking and circumstances over the last century. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the scope for cultural differences in the modern economy and on how the influence of culture may be shifting in light of the economic convergence triggered by the globalization of markets.

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	Author	volume	Date Value	title	type	journal	titleUrl	doi	note	year
2000 AttitudesValuesBeliefsandtheMic	Michael E. Porter			Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, and the Microeconomics of Prosperity						2000