Skepticism in world markets: Colin Mayer at 2010 Skoll World Forum
Colin Mayer, Peter Moores Dean and professor of management studies at the Said Business School at Oxford, talks about skepticism of financial markets. At the Skoll World Forum 2010 opening plenary.
With: Colin Mayer
Good evening. Are you sitting uncomfortably? Then I'll begin. Good evening, and welcome to the 2010 Skoll World Forum. My name is Colin Mayer, I'm dean of the Said Business School, and it's my very great pleasure to welcome you this evening to this seventh world forum. This is a remarkable time to be holding the forum.
Since we last met a year ago, there have been profound shifts in world opinion. Three, I think, are of particular relevance. The first is an inherent and deep rooted skepticism in the efficiency of markets. Until eighteen months ago we trusted financial markets to lie at the apex of a world economic order that financed, incentivized, and allocated the world's resources efficiently.
No more. There is now a deep rooted that financial markets price financial assets, allocate resources, or incentivize participants in markets appropriately. secondly, there is been a fundamental rejection of the mono-valued culture that previously put commercial and economic considerations ahead of all others when now no longer willing to see a world that places profit about people, efficiency about assets, and cost cutting about caring instead a more complex and subtle world is a. that puts the achievements of such social goals as the alleviation of deprivation, poverty, exclusion, and environmental degradation ahead of commercial considerations.
Customer and community value viewed as being self-serving, motivated by greed and self-interest. In the case of commercial and financial organizations, they're even about markets, in particular financial markets, rejects the previous dominance of share holder over customer, employee, and social values and does not trust our institutions or the people who lead them to be enlightened beyond their own self interests.
That address social issues, of particular relevance. Those institutions should work with, rather then against markets and other organizations. But should appreciate the limitations as well as the contributions. This is the movement that is the back drop to this year's forum. And it's one that lends particular poignancy and importance to its deliberation.
We are riding with a wave that is engulfing the world's political agenda and its adding force to what we are all seeking to achieve. Never has the agenda of the Skoll wall forum been more significant Relevant and another has to take your undertaking be more soft after. As a business school, situated in the heart of the university, importance on the social aspects of business, and believe that business and new enterprise should be playing a central role in the drastic is based in the side business school is that its agenda is our agenda.
We want to be a business school that makes a substantial contribution to the education of social entrepreneurs. Even more significantly, we want the ethos and values of social To all that we do as academic researchers, educators and students. The Skoll centers comments it enterprises that are making a real difference.
Even more than that, their interest and enthusiasm pervades each social arena have been heavily influenced by these remarkable scholars. At the Said Business School, our social focus comes from not just teaching and researching it, but because we and our students do it. Jeff, Sally, and all the other members of the Skoll foundation, I salute you for what you have done and achieved and the remarkable difference that you made in developing a new breed of young leaders and we thank you for having made that possible here at Oxford.
And Pamela Pamela. I would like to pay tribute to the tremendous work that you've done in making the Skoll Center such an integral part of what Said Business School stands for Now to the forum. a legend in his time. As a composer, poet, guitarist, percussionist, as well as performer. And since then he is continue to disseminate universal message of the human struggle of the freedom.
he is now an Ambassador to Nelson Mandela's Four Six Six Six Four Foundation. A campaign to help raise global awareness of AIDS
Since we last met a year ago, there have been profound shifts in world opinion. Three, I think, are of particular relevance. The first is an inherent and deep rooted skepticism in the efficiency of markets. Until eighteen months ago we trusted financial markets to lie at the apex of a world economic order that financed, incentivized, and allocated the world's resources efficiently.
No more. There is now a deep rooted that financial markets price financial assets, allocate resources, or incentivize participants in markets appropriately. secondly, there is been a fundamental rejection of the mono-valued culture that previously put commercial and economic considerations ahead of all others when now no longer willing to see a world that places profit about people, efficiency about assets, and cost cutting about caring instead a more complex and subtle world is a. that puts the achievements of such social goals as the alleviation of deprivation, poverty, exclusion, and environmental degradation ahead of commercial considerations.
Customer and community value viewed as being self-serving, motivated by greed and self-interest. In the case of commercial and financial organizations, they're even about markets, in particular financial markets, rejects the previous dominance of share holder over customer, employee, and social values and does not trust our institutions or the people who lead them to be enlightened beyond their own self interests.
That address social issues, of particular relevance. Those institutions should work with, rather then against markets and other organizations. But should appreciate the limitations as well as the contributions. This is the movement that is the back drop to this year's forum. And it's one that lends particular poignancy and importance to its deliberation.
We are riding with a wave that is engulfing the world's political agenda and its adding force to what we are all seeking to achieve. Never has the agenda of the Skoll wall forum been more significant Relevant and another has to take your undertaking be more soft after. As a business school, situated in the heart of the university, importance on the social aspects of business, and believe that business and new enterprise should be playing a central role in the drastic is based in the side business school is that its agenda is our agenda.
We want to be a business school that makes a substantial contribution to the education of social entrepreneurs. Even more significantly, we want the ethos and values of social To all that we do as academic researchers, educators and students. The Skoll centers comments it enterprises that are making a real difference.
Even more than that, their interest and enthusiasm pervades each social arena have been heavily influenced by these remarkable scholars. At the Said Business School, our social focus comes from not just teaching and researching it, but because we and our students do it. Jeff, Sally, and all the other members of the Skoll foundation, I salute you for what you have done and achieved and the remarkable difference that you made in developing a new breed of young leaders and we thank you for having made that possible here at Oxford.
And Pamela Pamela. I would like to pay tribute to the tremendous work that you've done in making the Skoll Center such an integral part of what Said Business School stands for Now to the forum. a legend in his time. As a composer, poet, guitarist, percussionist, as well as performer. And since then he is continue to disseminate universal message of the human struggle of the freedom.
he is now an Ambassador to Nelson Mandela's Four Six Six Six Four Foundation. A campaign to help raise global awareness of AIDS
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