Analysis: Outlook for culture change

The lacklustre performance of the public policies in some areas and dismal failures in other domains are breeding ideas falling in the realm of culture change in state governance and corporate organisational reorientation while ground realities are opening up avenues and freedom for individual enterprise. This is happening when the state policies are in a state of flux, and the country is struggling with much-delayed challenging structural reforms amidst a growing perception that it is symptoms, not the disease, that are being addressed. The view is gaining ground that Pakistan needs a synchronised short-, medium- and long-term home-grown strategy incorporating the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme to manage structural reform and eventually stable economic turnaround. The current mess, it can be argued, can best be addressed by policymakers by facilitating an emerging culture change environment. The founder of the Cultural Management Research Association, scholar Jeff Cartwright, said, as far back as 1999, that a global culture will emerge from people and that it cannot be imposed top–down. It would be by and for the people that affords a new freedom to those who are enterprising.