People are seeking their path in life. They want to be passionate about what they are doing. They want to do the right things. Within organizations they are seeking their purpose. They want to have impact.

Passion, impact and purpose have become buzz words.

But when it comes down to articulating the passion, a purpose and the impact, people excell in making vague statements, like ‘making a difference’, ‘being happy’, ‘being authentic’, ‘being sustainable’.

This book reveals the reasons for that vagueness. And it tells you in seven steps how to determine your own purpose or the purpose of your organization. You will find out what a praxis is, and how to determine your own praxes.

Doing what is most important to you is your praxis, and is also your purpose.

You will discover that a lot of current talk about impact and purpose misses the point. You will figure out how to make sense of purpose explicit and how to evaluate whether you are doing the right things, or not.

Introducing the value-based approach:

This book is dedicated to all those seeking another economics for another economy. It is meant to inspire those seeking a good life, a good society or a good organization. The value based approach is an alternative for the instrumentalist approach that currently prevails. Whereas the latter approach is about the maximization of profit, income, and growth of GDP, the value based approach is about the striving for the highest qualities of life, work, products, organizations and societies. The value based approach shifts the focus from quantities to qualities.
How to steer for qualities? Read the book. The value based approach restores elements of the classical tradition in economics, to be found in the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquino, Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and, more recently, Deirdre McCloskey.

This book is for all those who are seeking a human perspective on economic and organizational processes. It lays the foundations for a value based approach to the economy. The key questions are: “What is important to you or your organisation?” “What is this actions or that organisation good for?” The book is directed at the prevalence of instrumentalist thinking in the current economy and responds to the calls for another economy. Another economy demands another economics. The value based approach is another economics; it focusses on the most important goods such as families, homes, communities, knowledge, and art. It places economic processes in their cultural context. What does it take to do the right thing, as a person, as an organisation, as a society? What is the food to strive for? This book gives directions for the answers. The value based approach restores the ancient idea that quality of life and of society is what the economics is all about. It advocates shifting the focus from quantities (“how much?”) to qualities (“what is important?”).

*Now also available in a Korean translation through the Kyobo Book centre*

Geld is een mysterie. We kunnen niet zonder en willen er altijd meer van. Maar begrijpen we wel wat geld is? Welke prijs het heeft? Hoe het is ontstaan? En hoe het werkt? In dit Elementaire Deeltje ontmaskeren Harry van Dalen en Arjo Klamer het mysterie van dat wat er altijd is geweest en waar we allemaal naar blijven verlangen. Ze vertellen over het ontstaan van geld, onthullen hoe geld wordt gecreëerd en welke rol het in de economie speelt. Zo blijkt geld meer dan een rekeneenheid of een betaalmiddel en is het, ondanks de toenemende globalisering van economisch handelen, ook een symbool van verbinding en gemeenschappelijkheid.

Politici en financiële bestuurders kunnen het zich natuurlijk niet permitteren om te beweren dat het einde van de euro nabij is. Maar de euro valt niet te redden, is de stellige overtuiging van econoom Arjo Klamer. Dat de euro in de problemen is gekomen, ligt niet aan de financiële crisis. Kernprobleem is dat de EU geen volwaardige politieke unie is; er is geen sprake van een hechte Europese gemeenschap. Daardoor is de euro niet houdbaar.

In dit uitdagende boek maakt Arjo Klamer duidelijk dat de val van de euro de kans biedt op een monetair systeem dat veel beter is afgestemd op de huidige dynamische en flexibele wereldeconomie. Maar dan is het van groot belang niet krampachtig vast te houden aan de euro en ons voor te bereiden op de val. – www.nieuwamsterdam.nl

“De serie waar dit een deel van is, lijkt geinspireerd op de bekende ‘dummies’-reeks, maar dan beknopter. In ongeveer 150 pagina’s worden alle economische kernbegrippen behandeld. Tevens wordt een overzicht gegeven van de grote economische theorieen en de auteurs daarvan. Een beknopte en praktische handleiding, ook qua formaat (gebonden uitvoering in pocketformaat). Voor verdieping en achtergronden moeten andere boeken worden geraadpleegd, maar dit boek geeft als inleiding goede aangrijpingspunten. Een aantal schema’s bevat erg kleine letters. Helaas bevat het boek geen literatuuropgave of register.” — Drs. D.A. Bloemendaal

Als nooit tevoren wordt er bezuinigd op de kunsten. PAK AAN bevat vele ideeën, voorstellen, inzichten, en tips die kunstenaars en culturele organisaties, maar ook (lokale) bestuurders en kunstliefhebbers, moeten inspireren om meer kansen te grijpen. De tijd van zwarte pieten en ja-maren is voorbij. Het is tijd om aan te pakken.

“Monetarism emerged in the 1960’s under the leadership of Milton Friedman, who received the Nobel Prize in 1976. Friedman taught at the University of Chicago during this period, developing monetarism as a branch of Frank Knight’s famous “Chicago School” of economics. Monetarists emphasize the role of money and the government’s monetary policy in economic affairs; they vigorously defend the free market in their work.” – Klamer

“Supply side economics, another modern branch of free market economics, emphasizes the harmful role of impediments to production (such as taxes). Robert A. Mundell is often considered the father of this modern school of economic thought. Supply side economics advocates government policies that would stimulate increased overall economic production, rather than to redistribute existing production.” – Reynolds

“Would but that the conversation of economics were characterized by the humor, humility, and humanity with which Arjo Klamer composed this marvelous book. Fortunately, I think the ‘bunch of conversations’ that make up the discipline of economics will be better — more tolerant of dissenters, more inclusive of outsiders, more relevant to students and everyday economists — when economists accept Klamer’s invitation to see how strange their conversational habits really are. And what it takes to change them.” — David Ruccio, University of Notre Dame

“Tot een tijdje terug werden we volgens de statistieken van jaar tot jaar steeds welvarender. Toch kwam er een sluier van chagrijn over ons land te liggen. Hadden we het toen echt zo goed? Nu lijkt het economisch minder te gaan. Betekent dat dat we verder wegzakken in de treurnis, of hebben we de kans om de grauwsluier een beetje weg te trekken?” — Johan Schaberg, NRC Handelsblad

Research Report – A Meeting Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, December 1998, Getty Center, Los Angeles

The Economics of Heritage Conservation: A Discussion
Daniel Bluestone, Arjo Klamer, David Throsby, Randall Mason

The Values of Cultural Heritage: Merging Economic and Cultural Appraisals
Arjo Klamer and Peter-Wim Zuidhof

Preface by  Marta de la Torre, April 1999

It is not a new discovery that economics play a large role in our everyday lives—and an ever larger role in the sphere of culture and the arts. The influence of economic and business thinking presents a significant challenge to the heritage conservation field. We are confronted with a daunting array of economic difficulties and obstacles—as well as new worlds of opportunity. Increasingly we find economic considerations taking precedence over cultural, social, political, and aesthetic values when it comes to making decisions about what heritage is to be conserved. Because this trend is occurring the world over with regard to all types of material heritage, and because our decisions about what and how to conserve are strongly influenced by economic considerations, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) is pursuing the Economics of Heritage Conservation as an area of research.

This report conveys the results of GCI’s initial meeting on this research topic and highlights some specific areas that will receive further consideration and research. An interdisciplinary and international group of scholars and professionals convened for three days in December 1998 to discuss, in broad terms, the potential for collaboration and conflict when economic and cultural values are brought together. We were successful in identifying specific areas of agreement and disagreement. These will form the basis of an ongoing collaboration among economists, scholars of culture, and conservation professionals as we continue our work on this topic. The aim of our Economics project and other conservation research activities is the cultivation of creative, holistic, multidisciplinary, and even speculative thinking about the future of conservation and its role in society. This type of research is essential if cultural heritage and its conservation are to play a productive role in the society of the next millennium. What is at stake when we speak of the role of heritage in society? As this report goes to print, a dreadful, destructive scenario continues to unfold in southeast Europe. This civil, military, political conflict centres on the strong feelings and social bonds that are rooted in heritage—in issues of land and culture.
These events should be an additional caution to those of us concerned with the fate of heritage. We conserve, interpret, manage, and invest in heritage at our peril if we don’t understand the roles it plays in society—for better and for worse—as a lightning rod for cohesion and conflict.

This report consists of the following sections: an essay describing the background, goals, discussions, and conclusions of the December 1998, meeting (accompanied by quotes, in the right-hand column, excerpted from meeting transcripts); the transcript of a public panel discussion held at the J. Paul Getty Museum as part of the meeting; the text of the background research paper prepared in advance of the meeting; and suggestions for further reading. Thanks go to Professor Arjo Klamer and Peter-Wim Zuidhof for their diligent work in creating the
background paper, and for their collaboration in designing and facilitating the meeting. Thanks are also extended to our colleagues from around the world as well as those from the Getty who took part in the December meeting.
I encourage you to join with us in this research, make these questions your own, and contact us with your thoughts and ideas on these topics.

Conference organizers: Marta de la Torre, Randy Mason
Consultant: Arjo Klamer
Conference logistics coordinator: Sheri Saperstein
Report editor: Randy Mason
Design/Production coordinator: Helen Mauchí
Copy editor: Sylvia Tidwell
Copyright ©1999 The J. Paul Getty Trust