Economic Development's Surprising Secret Weapon - Applied Religion?

As the "jobless recovery" continues and businesses struggle to regain pre-2008 profitability levels, could economic development professionals and government workforce development agencies be overlooking a critical advantage?
Two Harvard researchers think so.
After reviewing and analyzing 40 years of data from 59 countries, Harvard economist Robert Barro and his wife and research partner Rachel McCleary (a researcher at Harvard's Taubman Center) found a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in religious beliefs.
As Michael Fitzgerald points out in the Nov. 15 Boston Globe, "In recent years, Italian economists have presented findings that religion can boost GDP by increasing trust within a society; researchers in the United States showed that religion reduces corruption and increases respect for law in ways that boost overall economic growth. A number of researchers have documented how merchants used religious backgrounds to establish one another’s reliability."
Fitzgerald cites the early 20th century work of Max Weber, a German sociologist who coined the phrase "the Protestant work ethic" after uncovering direct ties between a culture or country's level of prosperity and economic growth.
As economic and workforce development professionals, social engineers and management consultants toil to find ways to motivate people to higher levels of productivity and performance, perhaps they're missing the most effective means of all: applied religion, where people actually do what they believe.
Fitzgerald notes that many governments have spent considerable intellectual and financial capital trying to re-create areas like the successful Silicon Valley, but fail, basically because the necessary culture never gets developed. Why? "While education and rule of law might seem straightforward secular policies, the cultural forces that carry them into a society, including religion, have a lot to do with whether people respect them," he says.
Interestingly, far from a passive approach toward the workplace, both the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian New Testament are quite firm about performance expectations of their followers. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might," directs the author of Ecclesiastes a number of centuries before Christ. Writing to 1st century Christians in what is today western Turkey, the Apostle Paul reaffirms the ancient Hebrew maxim: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." Further in another place, this same Paul sternly warned the Greek followers of Jesus in Thessalonica: "When we were with you, we gave you this rule: If a man will not work, he shall not eat." Paul might not have approved of certain unemployment and welfare programs nearly 2,000 years later.
Accordingly, if a region wants to boost productivity, perhaps the economic professionals could suggest a bit of applied religion, where people actually back up their beliefs with action. Americans looking for performance enhancement may thus quote James, the brother of Jesus and head of the first Jerusalem church, where he wrote: "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith, but has no deeds? ...faith without deeds is dead."
In a recession-torn world, perhaps some food for thought.

Reality Strikes - 2010 Strategic Planning in Uncertain Times

INDIANAPOLIS – Incomprehensible Excel spreadsheets. New government regulations (real or potential). Sleepless nights.

For thousands of companies, August and September traditionally represent a critical time when conflict resolution skills come to fore. Business planning departments send out performance files with 2009 budgetary data and ask executives, directors and managers to come up with some kind of meaningful 2010 forecast and operational goals.

Given limited financial resources and a conservative outlook at best for 2010, interdepartmental quarrels can break into open corporate warfare.

For many – and particularly in a time where the Fed is making vague comments about how they think the economy is “stabilizing” – strategic planning and budgeting can be a nightmare. As one executive told me recently in an expression of dark humor: “Which would I prefer: planning for post-recession growth with no money or getting a root canal? That’s a tough choice.”

With a trimmed-down work force, weak customer demand and anxiety about new government regulation resulting in additional costs, strategists can’t just trot out their 2009 spreadsheets, overlay a 5 percent multiplier and send them back to the accounting department. What’s the new reality? Documented performance.

Read more here.