My Take | Exit, voice, and loyalty: choices confronting Hong Kong people today
- Sociologist Albert Hirschman’s famous study with the eponymous title is a humane examination of how people react to difficult, sometimes intolerable, situations directly affecting their lives and livelihoods
When the national security law was first introduced in Hong Kong, firebrand newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai Chee-ying said local people now only have two choices – leave, or stay and fight.
However, Chim Pui-chung, a former lawmaker and pro-China businessman, said au contraire, Hong Kong people should stay and help to rebuild the city after the anti-government unrest of last year.
Perhaps inadvertently, the two men at the opposing sides of the political divide, have summarised the options available to people facing the decline of a body politic, a commercial entity or a social group in which they have invested a significant personal stake.
E xit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations, and States, by the sociologist Albert O. Hirschman, is generally considered a classic in the study of how people respond to organisational decline.
The title of the 1972 book lays out the options claimed by Lai and Chim. Like the wave of emigration before the 1997 handover, some locals are once again actively planning or are already leaving the city for other places they consider safer and/or freer.