Dynamic interactions between the macro-environment, development thinking and
group behaviour
by Frances Stewart1
The social morality that has served as an understructure for economic individualism has been a
legacy of the precapitalist and preindustrial past. This legacy has diminished with time and
with the corrosive contact of the active capitalist values...As individual behaviour has been
increasingly directed to individual advantage, habits and instincts based on communal attitudes
and objectives have lost out. The weakening of traditional social values has made
predominantly capitalist economies more difficult to manage. (Hirsch, 1976, p117-118.)
I. INTRODUCTION
One important hypothesis that emerged from the preliminary investigations for this project is
that groups’ behaviour is greatly influenced by the societal environment in which they operate
(Heyer et al. 1999). This environment encompasses societal institutions or norms, the
structure of the economy, and the resulting distribution of incomes and assets. This paper
aims to explore these macro-micro interactions in a dynamic context - examining how
societal norms and institutions have changed over the post-second world war period, as well
as the structure of the economy, and how these in turn have altered the context of group
behaviour. This is a very ambitious undertaking, and not one to which it will be possible to
do full justice. Yet it is critically important to our general topic. In so far as the macro-
environment is a major influence on group behaviour, it is essential to understand how this
1 This paper forms part of a research programme on ‘Group behaviour and development’
financed by The World Institute for Development Economics Research, directed by Judith
Heyer, Frances Stewart and Rosemary Thorp. . I am grateful for very helpful comments on a
previous draft of the paper from Judith Heyer, Rosemary Thorp and participants at a meeting
on the project in Helsinki, September 1999.