Changing paradigms of development in an evolutionary perspective

The paper gives an assessment of the theoretical foundations of development planning laid in the 1950s and 1960s, and the conceptual shifts since the turbulent 1970s questioning previous patterns of macroeconomic regulation. The call today is for management styles suited to cope with evolutionary processes. Their crucial elements in the face of overall change are sensitive early diagnosis, flexible adjustment, continuous individual and social learning, the building of technological potential, and self-organization. There is an emerging search for an evolutionary ethics accepting responsibility for the further continuation of life on the planet in view of ecological constraints and recognizing basic principles of evolution such as openness, non-equilibrium, and the positive role of fluctuations in reaching higher levels of complexity and order. Value systems have an ever more explicit impact on the direction of social change.