Note to policy makers: Don’t forget that business creates jobs

William Polushin is founding director of the Program for International Competitiveness at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, and President of AMAXIS, an international business and operational development services firm.

Jobs, growth, and national prosperity. These words represent the central themes driving economic policy today, from Ottawa to Washington to Brussels to Tokyo to Sydney -- especially as governments and central banks around the world scramble in their efforts to keep our economies from slipping back into recession.

Ultimately, though, it isn't our governments that feel the front-line effects of sliding consumer and business confidence or increasing competition from China, India, Brazil, Mexico and other rapidly developing nations; and it isn't our governments that build the wealth upon which our economies expand and thrive. It's our enterprises/businesses/firms -- small, medium, and large, and across industry.

In a world that is being reshaped by technology, economic globalization, demographic shifts, ever-evolving labour markets, and the rise of BRICs + Mexico + Indonesia + Turkey + South Africa + . . . , it's our enterprises, represented by its owners, managers, and employees, that compete in the global economy. If a particular enterprise -- Canadian or otherwise -- does not possess the necessary knowledge or capacity to compete at a level that is dictated by increasingly integrated and competitive world markets, it will not realize sustainable sales and profit growth, and, as a result, will not be in a position to positively feed into the jobs and growth agenda...

Read full article: The Globe and Mail, September 15, 2011