Recoupling: The Driver of Human Success
This article’s point of departure is that most of life’s challenges are collective challenges, to be addressed through collective action that can be successful only when people act beyond enlightened self-interest. This is the opposite of the methodological individualism that underlies mainstream economic and political analysis. The core idea is that to address our collective challenges, we need to coordinate our collective capacities at a scale and scope at which these challenges occur. As our challenges vary through time, often unpredictably, our capacities are continually in danger of becoming decoupled from our challenges. Thus our survival and wellbeing depends on our success in continually recoupling our capacities with our challenges. Such recoupling invariably involves not just cooperation (working with others to achieve one’s own goals), but also collaboration (working with others towards common goals). When individuals collaborate, they participate in the purposes and welfare of the social groups in which they are embedded. Recoupling deserves to become a central guide for public policy, business strategy and civic action.
Date: 16 November 2023, 14:00 (Thursday, 6th week, Michaelmas 2023)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Seminar Room C & online via Zoom
Speaker: Dennis Snower (President and Founder of the Global Solutions Initiative)
Organising department: Institute for New Economic Thinking
Organiser: Susan Mousley (INET Oxford Admin Team)
Organiser contact email address: events@inet.ox.ac.uk
Part of: INET Oxford Researcher Seminars
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPkfci6EwopT9NkFk28bMfrzBUME1PUFRVRlQwTkQ1TTJaV084N1ZFRTNTNC4u
Booking email: events@inet.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Public
Editor: Susan Mousley