The demographic crisis associated with the family institution is, in the face of the other three crises that support it (economic, ecological and justice), the most difficult to address and the one with the most consequences in the medium term in the context of organizational life.
As they say in organizational theory, the traditional institutions that support business life are the church, the army, and the family. Fundamental values, whether in final terms, such as trust, or instrumental, such as collaboration (as defined by M. Rokeach in “The Nature of Human Values”), have made Western companies prosper. These traditional values, in turn, have always been formed within family solidarity.
An example taken from the Portuguese diaspora in France may help us in this reflection. The million emigrants who left rural areas (backward?) became the Portuguese-descendant community with more than three million citizens, globally more prosperous than the community of origin.
The values of Portuguese rural society (trust in others and collaboration at work) were, after all, a source of prosperity (Th. Philippon in “Le Capitalisme d'héritiers”). This fact undermines the idea of the underdeveloped country for being rural and illiterate.
In the space of a generation, with another organizational and managerial framework, the same people jumped to development. It should be noted that the same had happened, years before, with Japan supporting its development in three traditional values: the collaborative work of the rice fields, the samurai leadership of learning self-defense and the worship of common ancestors.
What has happened, however, in the field of values in the last 25 years, in Portugal and in the West in general?
Europe has been questioned about this framework of values, by a “political agenda” whose exponent converges in the so-called “wokism”, a movement that proposes to build a relativist world to replace the universalist world, with regard to values, with the family in the line of sight.
A comparison between Europe and Africa: in the years in question, one stagnates and the other more than triples its population (as predicted by A. Sauvy in “L'Europe Submergée” – 1987).
We replaced the founding values of collaborative affection with the supremacy agenda of “abortion and euthanasia”. Let us agree that this “may” not be the best way to defend society and the company, Westerners. The author considered that it was necessary to take care of the European birth rate (of youth employment, in particular) and of productive investment in Africa. Governments, companies and academies have focused on other evaluative frameworks, doing neither the one nor the other.
Is it necessary to draw a picture to understand that Europe will be “submerged” by immigration?
Author Albino Lopes is director of the undergraduate and master's courses in Human Resource Management at ISMAT
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