The liquid thinking

This note is not about management, but about the context and society influencing and determining in high extend the kind of organisations we live and work for.

Zygmunt Bauman is the author of “Liquid life” (2005), a work that describes the contemporary characteristics of modernity: compulsiveness and permanent change.

This book explains that a prevalent feeling in our societies is that called in German: “Unsicherheit”, which is a complex word enclosing three concepts inside: uncertainty, insecurity and vulnerability. It also could have another meaning: the precarious condition, a feeling associated to the extinction of fixed points of trust. Trust disappears on ourselves, the others and towards community and institutions.

He talked also about globalisation with Lukasz Galecki, during an interview published in openDemocracy.net. Here he mentioned: “The main trouble is that the globalisation we are dealing with today is strictly negative. It is based on the breaking down of barriers, allowing for the globalisation of capital, the movement of goods, information, crime, and terrorism, but not of the political and judicial institutions whose basis is national sovereignty. This negative aspect of globalisation has not been followed by the positive aspect, and the instruments of regulation over economic and social processes are not established enough to deal with the reach and consequences of globalisation”.

The complete interview is absolutely recommended: The unwinnable war: an interview with Zygmunt Bauman