Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society

Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society PDF Author: Angela Espinosa
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429956088
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society offers a sound introduction to Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) and clarifies its relevance to support organisational sustainability and self-governance. While the VSM has been known since the early 1980s, it hasn’t been always easy to understand and to apply. It explains the self-transformation methodology to analyse the way organisations manage (or not) their complexity and govern themselves. The work is supported by multiple examples of application in organisations of all scales – from small to multi-national corporations and from organised social networks to communities and national organisations. It clarifies the relevance of Beer’s theory to support systemic learning and change in organisations, and to coach them to self-organise and self-govern. Readers interested in further understanding insights from complex systems and cybernetics theories for designing and transforming organisations will benefit from this book, as it works to offer very detailed insights on how to put the VSM theory into practice. It clarifies how it improves adaptive capabilities, agile and self-regulated structures, more capable of fully implementing corporate sustainability strategies and self-governing themselves. The chapters provide key reading for managers, consultants, practitioners, and post-graduate students working in organisational transformation, governance, and sustainability.

Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society

Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society PDF Author: Angela Espinosa
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429956088
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society offers a sound introduction to Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) and clarifies its relevance to support organisational sustainability and self-governance. While the VSM has been known since the early 1980s, it hasn’t been always easy to understand and to apply. It explains the self-transformation methodology to analyse the way organisations manage (or not) their complexity and govern themselves. The work is supported by multiple examples of application in organisations of all scales – from small to multi-national corporations and from organised social networks to communities and national organisations. It clarifies the relevance of Beer’s theory to support systemic learning and change in organisations, and to coach them to self-organise and self-govern. Readers interested in further understanding insights from complex systems and cybernetics theories for designing and transforming organisations will benefit from this book, as it works to offer very detailed insights on how to put the VSM theory into practice. It clarifies how it improves adaptive capabilities, agile and self-regulated structures, more capable of fully implementing corporate sustainability strategies and self-governing themselves. The chapters provide key reading for managers, consultants, practitioners, and post-graduate students working in organisational transformation, governance, and sustainability.

Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking

Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking PDF Author: Josep M. Coll
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000401812
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking explores a radical new conception of business and management. It is grounded on the reconnection of humans with nature as the new competitive advantage for living organizations and entrepreneurs that aspire to regenerate the economy and drive a positive impact on the planet, in the context of the Anthropocene. Organizations today struggle in finding a balance between maximizing profits and generating value for their stakeholders, the environment and the society at large. This happens in a paradigm shift characterized by unprecedented levels of exponential change and the emergence of disruptive technologies. Adaptability, thus, is becoming the new business imperative. How can, then, entrepreneurs and organizations constantly adapt and, at the same time, design the sustainable futures they’d like? This book uniquely explores the benefits of applying Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking to sustainable management. Grounded in Taoist and Zen Buddhist philosophies, it offers a modern scientific perspective fundamentally based on the concepts of bio-logical adaptability and lifefulness amidst complexity and constant change. The book introduces the new concept of the Gaia organization as a living organism that consciously helps perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. It is subject to the natural laws of transformation and the principles of oneness, emptiness, impermanence, balance, self-regulation and harmonization. Readers will find applied Eastern systems theories such as the Yin-Yang and the Five Elements operationalized through practical methodologies and tools such as T-Qualia and the Zen Business model. They are aimed at guiding Gaia organizations and entrepreneurs in leading sustainable transformations and qualifying economic growth. The book offers a vital toolkit for purpose-driven practitioners, management researchers, students, social entrepreneurs, evaluators and change-makers to reinvent, create and mindfully manage sustainable and agile organizations that drive systemic transformation.

Critical Systems Thinking

Critical Systems Thinking PDF Author: Michael C. Jackson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1394203578
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Understand the full range of systems approaches and how to use them with this innovative overview. Leaders and managers face increasing complexity and uncertainty because technical, organizational, socio-cultural, political, and environmental issues have become intensely interconnected. Systems thinking is recognized as the essential competence for managing complexity. As the demand for systems thinking grows, however, the fragmentation of the field into different methodologies has become a potential liability. Critical systems thinking (CST) shows how this diversity can be a strength rather than a weakness by revealing how different systems methodologies address various aspects of complexity and how they can be used in combination to resolve the messiest of wicked problems. Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioner’s Guide offers, in a single volume, an account of the value of systems thinking and CST in the modern world, an explanation of the pragmatic philosophy and expansion in mindset necessary to embrace CST, and detailed instructions on how to undertake critical systems practice (CSP) using the variety of systems approaches to navigate multi-dimensional complexity. Readers will find: An accessible introduction to systems thinking and CST. A description and critique of the best-known systems methodologies. A guide to the mindset changes, the steps required, and the toolkit necessary to undertake successful CSP. Case studies and examples of CSP. A discussion of the nature of systemic leadership. Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioner’s Guide is ideal for leaders and managers in government, business, the public sector, the professions, and beyond who want to understand the potential of systems thinking and use it in their work. It is essential for systems researchers and practitioners who want a deeper understanding of the field.

Winning Sustainability Strategies

Winning Sustainability Strategies PDF Author: Benoit Leleux
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319974459
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Despite recent optimism and global initiatives, the implementation of corporate sustainability programs has been slow at best, with less than a third of global companies having developed a clear business case for their approach to sustainability. Presenting numerous award-winning cases and examples from companies such as Unilever, Patagonia, Tumi, DSM and Umicore alongside original ideas based upon 20 years of consulting experience, this book reveals how to design and implement a stronger sense of focus and move sustainability programs forward. This proven combination of purpose, direction and speed is dubbed “Vectoring”. Based upon practitioner cases and data analysis from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Vectoring offers a plain-spoken framework to identify the relative position of companies compared to their peers. The framework and its 4 archetypes deliver insights for practitioners to locate inhibitors and overcome them by providing practical suggestions for process improvements. This includes designing and executing new sustainability programs, embedding the SDGs within company strategy and assessing the impact of sustainability programs on competitiveness and valuation. Offering directions for CFOs to shift companies from integrated reporting to integrated thinking in order to accelerate their sustainability programs, Winning Sustainability Strategies shows how to achieve purpose with profit and how to do well by doing good.

Business and Sustainability

Business and Sustainability PDF Author: Achim Lang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319072390
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Demands for sustainability policies have set new challenges for business both on the individual firm level and on the level of organized business interests. This edited volume brings together economic, social, environmental, and cultural dimensions of sustainability that comprise different challenges for business processes and activities. The aim is to develop an overarching framework to the study of sustainability and business and to advance an interdisciplinary analytical perspective. The book establishes a balanced account that equally represents business as problem causers as well as problem solvers, and therefore responds to the urgent need to investigate the intersection between sustainability issues and business participation.

Transgovernance

Transgovernance PDF Author: Louis Meuleman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3642280099
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
‘Transgovernance: Advancing Sustainability Governance’ analyses the question what recent and ongoing changes in the relations between politics, science and media – together characterized as the emergence of a knowledge democracy – may imply for governance for sustainable development, on global and other levels of societal decision making, and the other way around: How can the discussion on sustainable development contribute to a knowledge democracy? How can concepts such as second modernity, reflexivity, configuration theory, (meta)governance theory and cultural theory contribute to a ‘transgovernance’ approach which goes beyond mainstream sustainability governance? This volume presents contributions from various angles: international relations, governance and metagovernance theory, (environmental) economics and innovation science. It offers challenging insights regarding institutions and transformation processes, and on the paradigms behind contemporary sustainability governance.This book gives the sustainability governance debate a new context. It transforms classical questions into new options for societal decision making and identifies starting points and strategies towards effective governance of transitions to sustainability.

Integrative Governance: Generating Sustainable Responses to Global Crises

Integrative Governance: Generating Sustainable Responses to Global Crises PDF Author: Margaret Stout
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315526271
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Dominant governance theories are drawn primarily from Euro-American sources, including emergent theories of network and collaborative governance. The authors contest this narrow view and seek a more globally inclusive and transdisciplinary perspective, arguing such an approach is more fruitful in addressing the wicked problems of sustainability—including social, economic, and environmental crises. This book thus offers and affirms an innovative governance approach that may hold more promise as a "universal" framework that is not colonizing in nature due to its grounding in relational process assumptions and practices. Using a comprehensive Governance Typology that encompasses ontological assumptions, psychosocial theory, epistemological concepts, belief systems, ethical concepts, political theory, economic theory, and administrative theory, the authors delve deeply into underlying philosophical commitments and carry them into practice through an approach they call Integrative Governance. The authors consider ways this approach to radical self-governance is already being implemented in the prefigurative politics of contemporary social movements, and they invite scholars and activists to: imagine governance in contexts of social, economic, and environmental interconnectedness; to use the ideal-type as an evaluative tool against which to measure practice; and to pursue paradigmatic change through collaborative praxis.

Ritual and Systems Thinking

Ritual and Systems Thinking PDF Author: José-Rodrigo Córdoba-Pachón
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003812171
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
To many individuals and organisations, situations generated by the world coronavirus pandemic have posed challenges and opportunities. We need to rethink how we interact with each other and with our natural environments. This book offers a way forward by proposing the use of rituals insight: semi-encoded patterns of thinking or actions to help us rebuild a sense of community, which, integrated with insights of applied systems thinking, and in contrast to a dominant pragmatist orientation of thinking and action, could help us further cope with work or education situations in which we still want to pursue our authenticity as human beings. This book offers ways to help make sense of how we could systemically and compassionately slow down and cope with work or education during and after the world coronavirus pandemic. It does so by integrating ideas about ritual with current research and practice on applied systems thinking. The author establishes a dialogue for co-existence between individuals and the knowledge disciplines of creativity and applied systems thinking, using the mediation of rituals to help us appreciate our world with others. This conversation is much needed given our sense of uncertainty during and after the world coronavirus pandemic and the challenges or opportunities offered by hybrid work and education. Throughout the book, the conversation explores new directions for research and practice beyond “futureaction” perspectives or orientations and the inclusion of electronically mediated spaces. The insights provided in this book offer a vital resource for management researchers and upper-level students, particularly those researching and studying applied systems thinking and creativity.

The Management Thought of Louis R. Pondy

The Management Thought of Louis R. Pondy PDF Author: David M. Boje
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000934152
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Louis R. Pondy was a leading management and organizational studies scholar whose work on open systems helped launch and define the future of the field. This book offers an assessment of Pondy’s contribution, through critical reflection on what happened to the relationship between conflict theory and “beyond open systems.” Exploring the ways in which Louis R. Pondy theorizes conflict and systems, and how he challenged the status quo paradigms, this book offers a historical analysis on Pondy’s work and the relation to contemporary management theory. The author develops a Triple Loop framework, building on Pondy’s theories as well as the work of Gregory Batesom, to demonstrate a beyond-open-systems approach and existing single- or double-loop systems. Demonstrating the value and legacy of Louis R. Pondy, this book will have international appeal to researchers, academics and students across management disciplines and organizational studies, including systems thinking and conflict resolution.

Coastal Governance

Coastal Governance PDF Author: Richard Burroughs
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610910168
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Coastal Governance provides a clear overview of how U.S. coasts are currently managed and explores new approaches that could make our shores healthier. Drawing on recent national assessments, Professor Richard Burroughs explains why traditional management techniques have ultimately proved inadequate, leading to polluted waters, declining fisheries, and damaged habitat. He then introduces students to governance frameworks that seek to address these shortcomings by considering natural and human systems holistically. The book considers the ability of sector-based management, spatial management, and ecosystem-based management to solve critical environmental problems. Evaluating governance successes and failures, Burroughs covers topics including sewage disposal, dredging, wetlands, watersheds, and fisheries. He shows that at times sector-based management, which focuses on separate, individual uses of the coasts, has been implemented effectively. But he also illustrates examples of conflict, such as the incompatibility of waste disposal and fishing in the same waters. Burroughs assesses spatial and ecosystem-based management’s potential to address these conflicts. The book familiarizes students not only with current management techniques but with the policy process. By focusing on policy development, Coastal Governance prepares readers with the knowledge to participate effectively in a governance system that is constantly evolving. This understanding will be critical as students become managers, policymakers, and citizens who shape the future of the coasts.