The term paradigm change is a term which has often been used in the past to characterize needed changes in our socio-economic structures as the ineptness of certain traditional policies and attitudes became more and more blatant. We hold the view that the concept of paradigm change has never been more appropriate any time in our recent history than now.

First we would wish to circumscribe and define the concept as we intend to apply it to our prevailing conditions.

It was Dr Thomas Kuhn who first put forward an analysis of the development of scientific theory in which he suggested that science advances through evolutionary and revolutionary periods. Normal science works within an accepted set of rules and spends its time exploring their nooks and crannies. Occasionally, however, there erupts a kind of science that changes the rules, and this he calls paradigmatic science. A paradigm is a scientific theory, yet more than that. It is what the members of a scientific community share; conversely a scientific community consists of people who share a paradigm.

Transposed to societal level, a paradigm would be a situation in which decision-makers from different parts of society share a common world view which link them together. Contingency theory posits that an organization not actually failing must have a high degree of fit not only with the environment but also between the dimensions of technology, structure, innovations of its members and the accompanying control system. Fit is rarely complete or ideal and decision makers are constantly tinkering with one dimension or the other in a process which can be described as normal change.

In Mauritius, the basis of the paradigm can be traced back in our history since as early as the nineteenth century. First the British decided to continue with sugar plantations owned by the French settlers. After the abolition of slavery, the British authorities made sure that labour was available through the system of indentured labour. Around the close of the nineteenth century a system of morcellement resulted in descendants of indentured labourers being allowed to acquire land which was cultivated under sugarcane and the “small planter” community was born. This pattern of land holding created a sizeable “middle class” between the plantocracy and the estate proletariat and reinforced the tendency of the colonial government to identify the interests of the sugar industry, almost without qualification, with those of all the inhabitants of the colony.

<B>External factors beyond our control</B>

The peaceful electoral process which led to independence and the sugar boom which followed some years later only served to reinforce these assumptions in post independence governments. The “shared vision” and public private sector partnership carried into a form of corporatist state which has ever since characterized the polity in Mauritius.

All this is not to say that there was total homogeneity but rather to suggest that up to now, the system whose foundations were laid in the nineteenth century has managed to survive into the twenty-first century. The deep changes which have occurred during this time have sometimes threatened the system but have somehow been contained within its fundamental boundaries.

This is perfectly in line with the paradigmatic theory of Kuhn. The changes which have occurred over the whole of a century has been evolutionary and circumscribed in scope, triggering a normal process of societal change which we can describe as adaptation. The process may also be described as learning, for as society has got information about what is less than adaptive, it has adjusted accordingly.

Thus parameters of our existing paradigm which was put in place in the nineteenth century have sailed through the whole of the twentieth century, not without being challenged from time to time. The rise of the labour movement in the 1930’s or the leftist politics of the 1970’s came closest to undermining the very foundations of the system. Somehow these were contained with the system which showed resilience by deploying a lot of flexibility and adaptability.

The marked difference with what is happening today is that the system is being challenged at its weakest – i.e. by external factors which are beyond its control. For a small open economy like ours, the changing rules of the game imposed by globalization and liberalization is bound to call for more than adaptation. The maladjustment of our system to our environment is of such magnitude that it calls for a radical review of what we have stood for up to now.

The first observation is that we have tended to under-estimate and the magnitude and the speed with which these global phenomenon were going to challenge the very premises on which we have built our socio-economic construct. In the terminology of Kuhn we have moved away from evolutionary change to the realm of discontinuous change – in actual fact we are confronted with the classic case of a PARADIGM SHIFT.

Paradigmatic change requires a radical change in our world and world view and a questioning of the very foundations of our thinking. Translated into the real world this would imply a through review of the assumptions which have guided our strategic thinking over many decades. How does Mauritius emerge from a protected economy reliant on preferential markets and managed trade, into a fully competitive nation, benchmarking its achievements not on our usual partners from Africa or from the Pacific but against the newly emerging nations of eastern and southern Asia?

We need to answer two questions before we proceed any further in this analysis:

– Why is it that in spite of full knowledge of things to come the system plods on until it is confronted with what is inevitable?

– What is the way forward?

<B>Look backward Gaze forward</B>

In replying to the first question it is useful to refer again to Kuhn’s theory of paradigmatic change. Some systems reach a near perfect fit with their environment, as seems to have been the case with Mauritius during its hey days of miracle achiever.

Under such conditions the forces of vested interests and the mere comfort of inertia are such that no one dares challenge any of the premises of such success. Changing any single part seems threatening to the whole and the system develops into a closed one. The main thrust of decision making is one of keeping constant the parameters of the model as the decision makers collude to avoid questioning of their ideology or what they do.

They seem to experience “double-think” a state in which they simultaneously acknowledge and deny aspects of the system which do not work. Thus in spite of the fact that it was known for more than a decade that the Multi Fibre Agreement was due to end in January 2005, this information seems never to have been factored into the strategic thinking of policy makers over the past decade. In the case of sugar it is the magnitude and speed of the event which is shocking but not the fact that it is actually happening. Although in this case some steps have been taken there still is consensus that much more should have been done.

In looking at the way forward we are confronted with a dilemma which lies at the core of change management. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) pointed out that the Roman God Janus had two sets of eyes – one pair focussing on what lay behind, the other on what lay ahead. Similarly the article suggested corporate executives too must constantly look backward, attending to the products and processes of the past, while also gazing forward, preparing for the innovations that will define the future.

This requires that executives explore new opportunities even as they work diligently to exploit existing capabilities – it’s no surprise, conclude the authors of the article, that only few do it well. In the rules of engagement on the globalization front we are similarly confronted with what in negotiations talks are defined as defensive and offensive interests.

The central question, in the context of the dilemma referred to above, is whether it is possible for the same team of people to simultaneously be comfortable on both fronts. An intuitive guess based on what we have been able to observe in our negotiating process, leads to the conclusion that this is indeed very difficult to achieve.

It is interesting to quote from two authors separated by so many years about their respective conclusions on this issue, whose resolution as mentioned before is critical to success of change management.

Thomas Kuhn, writing several decades ago, reached the following conclusion: In a particular case which he had studied:“The new paradigm emerges alongside the old, which continues to exist. If change is to be successful the two must be buffered from each other – physically organizationally and fiscally. Failure to do this inevitably leads to dire consequences.”

The authors of the recent article in HBR wrote the following as concerns the same issue: “We discovered that some companies have actually been quite successful at both exploiting the present and exploring the future, and as we looked more deeply at them we found that they shared some important characteristics. IN PARTICULAR THEY SEPARATE THEIR NEW EXPLORATORY UNITS FROM THEIR TRADITIONAL, EX-PLOITATIVE ONES …”

Applying such a methodology of separating the defense of existing interests from that of the more offensive, forward looking ones will have serious implications for the existing institutional framework of policy dialogue which has been set up within the confiness of the existing paradigm.

Adopting a new paradigm is pregnant with difficulty especially as there will always be proponents of the old paradigm who are not impressed by the arguments for radical change.

<B>Rajiv Servansingh

Deputy Secreatary General</B>

<I>“The rise of the labour movement in the 1930’s or the leftist politics of the 1970’s came closest to undermining the very foundations of the system.”</I>