Research

It's strange, this mood of shifting realities we're dealing with. The pain of rising prices and interest rates and the shock at the petrol pump swirls through the media. And after a decade of low inflation, the impact on business inputs, supply chains and consumer behaviour is thudding home even as the resources sector struggles with meeting soaring demand. To this we add the looming impact of the Federal Government's evolving carbon emissions trading scheme, which is a bit like trying to wrestle with smoke. It comes as decision-making horizons are shrinking sharply and the strategists are busy revising scenarios. Scientific research suggests we are often ill-prepared, unable to countenance change, especially after long periods of prosperity. The psychologists even have a name for the phenomenon - deferred salience, a state in which people forget or have no experience of dealing with adversity and are ill equipped emotionally and pragmatically to respond to a challenging, ambiguous environment.

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