Integrating Embodied Practice And Transformational Wisdom For Sustainable Organization And Leadership

This volume explores how practical wisdom can be conceptualised and applied to practices that respond to the life-worldly realities of organisations. At the same time, it relates to praxis understood as situated conduct in an ethico-political configuration.

"A multi-facetted ecological and socio-cultural crisis confronts us, and the irresponsible and unsustainable operations and actions encouraging this predicament are bound up with contemporary societal, economic, organizational and managerial practices. The recent and on-going global economic crisis with its failures of responsibility and pervasive (or existential) threat posed to natural ecologies are among many more manifestations of a profound dis-integration, unwise forms of practices and non-integral way of living. The current crisis, scandals and tensions between corporations and civil society, and numerous examples of unethical practices that are partly validated by common practice, have helped to intensify demands to scrutinize corporate behaviour and practices. The increasingly instrumentalized contexts and impositions of neo-liberal regimes with their systemic constraint call for a rethinking of phrónêtic capacities and dispositions for wise practices in praxis and corresponding sustainable actions. This volume explores how practical wisdom can be conceptualised and applied to practices that respond to the life-worldly realities of organisations. At the same time, it relates to praxis understood as situated conduct in an ethico-political configuration. It is this nexus that is mediating between individual and social actions (micro) organisations (meso) and economy/society (macro). Leading Wisely in Organisations, Economies and Societies invites dialogue for thought-provoking reflection on how wisdom can help organisations and leaders deal with our age's most pressing challenges. It opens a path to considering how such an understanding can help us to more effectively and more critically understand and appropriately respond to complex, multi-faceted, emerging phenomena. It will be of value to researchers, academics, and students interested in leadership, organizational studies, wisdom, and business ethics"--

A multifaceted ecological and socio-cultural crisis confronts us, and the irresponsible and unsustainable operations and actions encouraging this predicament are bound up with contemporary societal, economic, organisational, and managerial practices. The recent and on-going global economic crisis with its failures of responsibility and pervasive (or existential) threat posed to natural ecologies are among many more manifestations of a profound disintegration, unwise forms of practices, and non-integral ways of living. The current crisis, scandals, and tensions between corporations and civil society, and numerous examples of unethical practices that are partly validated by common practice have helped to intensify demands to scrutinise corporate behaviour and practices. The increasingly instrumentalised contexts and impositions of neoliberal regimes with their systemic constraint call for a rethinking of phrónêtic capacities and dispositions for wise practices in prâxis and corresponding sustainable actions. This book explores how practical wisdom can be conceptualised and applied to practices that respond to the life-worldly realities of organisations. At the same time, it relates to prâxis, understood as situated conduct in an ethico-political configuration. It is this nexus that is mediating between individual and social actions (micro), organisations (meso), and economy/society (macro). This book invites dialogue for thought-provoking reflection on how wisdom can help organisations and leaders deal with our age’s most pressing challenges. It opens a path to considering how such an understanding can help us to more effectively and more critically understand and appropriately respond to complex, multifaceted, emerging phenomena. It will be of value to researchers, academics, and students interested in leadership, organisational studies, wisdom, and business ethics.

A multifaceted ecological and socio-cultural crisis confronts us, and the irresponsible and unsustainable operations and actions encouraging this predicament are bound up with contemporary societal, economic, organisational, and managerial practices. The recent and on-going global economic crisis with its failures of responsibility and pervasive (or existential) threat posed to natural ecologies are among many more manifestations of a profound disintegration, unwise forms of practices, and non-integral ways of living. The current crisis, scandals, and tensions between corporations and civil society, and numerous examples of unethical practices that are partly validated by common practice have helped to intensify demands to scrutinise corporate behaviour and practices. The increasingly instrumentalised contexts and impositions of neoliberal regimes with their systemic constraint call for a rethinking of phrónêtic capacities and dispositions for wise practices in prâxis and corresponding sustainable actions. This book explores how practical wisdom can be conceptualised and applied to practices that respond to the life-worldly realities of organisations. At the same time, it relates to prâxis, understood as situated conduct in an ethico-political configuration. It is this nexus that is mediating between individual and social actions (micro), organisations (meso), and economy/society (macro). This book invites dialogue for thought-provoking reflection on how wisdom can help organisations and leaders deal with our age’s most pressing challenges. It opens a path to considering how such an understanding can help us to more effectively and more critically understand and appropriately respond to complex, multifaceted, emerging phenomena. It will be of value to researchers, academics, and students interested in leadership, organisational studies, wisdom, and business ethics.

The current financial and on-going ecological crises have taught us that without practical wisdom, business, organisations and leadership cannot be sustainable. In response to this situation, the Handbook of Practical Wisdom presents a critically informed understanding of wise practices, contributing to more integrative organizational and leadership studies and practice. The focus on integration emphasises the interdependencies of practical wisdom in relation to members, groups and cultures of organisations in their socio-cultural spheres. Wisdom has long slipped from the scholarly map, and so this handbook provides revived and new mappings for today and the future. Seeking to actualize creative potentials of practical wisdom, this book and series aspires to contribute to the contemporary odysseys and quests for orientation in organisation and management research and practice. Wisdom research, as presented in this book, provides bridges to underestimated, neglected or forgotten knowledge and offers transformative passages between Scylla - the rocks of dogmatic modernity - and Charybdis - the whirlpool of dispersed post-modernity. Practical wisdom allows for a better equipped and more experiential and reflexive journey and fosters the art of mindful travelling, beyond a reactive, moralizing sentimentalism. Accordingly, this handbook serves as a medium for reassessing and rearticulating more responsible ways of ’praxis’ in the field of organization and management. In this spirit, each chapter opens a space for dialogue and debate, inviting further inquiries, conversations and explorations by and among its readers: students, academics and practitioners.

In traditional business circles, wisdom is viewed with a certain scepticism, which is in part due to its historical associations with wisdom traditions and spiritual cultures. However, in business today, wisdom is emerging not only as a viable but also a necessary organizational and management practice. In particular, practical wisdom is being updated and retranslated for today’s issues and concerns in organizations. In recent years, leadership and organizational studies have initiated important changes in the way in which business-as-usual is conducted. In response to the increasingly complex and uncertain conditions of our international business environment, a growing community of ‘scholar-practitioners’ are pushing the boundaries of traditional organizational and leadership thinking and acting, making inroads into processes and applications of practical wisdom and ways of wise leading and managing. Given the unprecedented levels of challenges, dynamics and uncertainties that today’s organizations are exposed to, there is a need for a more integrative and sustainable approach to managing. Following the need for a reconsideration and revival of the meaning of wisdom, the editors explore vitalizing possibilities for the learning of wise practices in organizing and leading. This expansive range of domains where wisdom is currently being explored suggests a promising number of perspectives and possibilities for future inquiries and explorations into the nexus of wisdom and organization, leadership/management education and learning that benefits from cross-disciplinary synergies. This book will be of interest to those seeking to understand the growing significance of wisdom in relation to learning and teaching, especially in business and management education.

In this book, experts discuss whether volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) represent a challenge or a business opportunity. More intense debates on global climate change, increased turbulence in financial quarters, increased job insecurity and high levels of stress at the workplace are attracting attention in the context of organization behavior and entrepreneurship. Fear and confusion have become part and parcel of business, often undermining trust, cooperation and inspiration. As a response, a new way of organizing self-management has emerged. The book combines practical wisdom from East and West, to develop integrative self-management theory and practice; provides direction to support an integrative mind-set, integrative organization and integrative leadership; and presents VUCA as an opportunity and necessity for development and growth, rather than a threat.

Sustainability means many things to many people. is certainly about the environment, ecological fragility, and balance, but it is also profoundly about economic and social diversity and equity. Indeed, from a systems perspective, sustainability resides at the very intersection of the environmental, economic, and social arenas. This volume, a collection of original research on sustainability from a range of new scholars, aims to uncover the ways that a concern for sustainability at the leading edge can bring forth new attitudes and modes of thought; innovative, sustainable business enterprises; and boundary-spanning leadership. What these scholars are trying to do is to create a conversation about how a clearer understanding of sustainability can help create a new, more just global society. The chapters that follow describe, from a variety of perspectives, the sustainability values, meaning, and action that have been revealed by the empirical research of the authors. All are recent graduates of Fielding Graduate University's PhD program in Human and Organizational Development (HOD), known throughout its 40-year history for innovative and progressive visions for humankind. This monograph builds on that tradition, while at the same time reaching to a future of increasingly disruptive technologies. Paul Stillman's chapter on Sustainability as Organizational Culture examines the experiences of people at all levels in organizations committed to exhibiting exemplary sustainable practices. Kevin Joseph LeGrand turns our attention to the question of the influence of values and norms for activism and conservation when it comes to environmental sustainability. Karen Smith Bogart reports on the influence of the boards of directors of large U.S. public companies on corporate social responsibility (CSR), considers their involvement and impact, and identifies implications for their role. Kerul Kassel discusses the value orientations and organizational sustainability practices of the CEOs of major corporations. Steve Schein inquired into the deep sustainability leadership of corporate sustainability leaders and how their motivations may influence their behavior and capacity to lead large-scale transformational change. Jo-Anne Clarke addresses the emergence of women who are sustainability entrepreneurs and are guided by a strong set of values that place environmental and social wellbeing before materialistic growth. John Fisher makes sense of sustainability for sustainability managers and how they make meaning and take action. The final chapter by Alice MacGillivray integrates two empirical research projects she has done that were driven by the need to better understand leadership in complex, unpredictable, horizontal, boundary-spanning systems. Finally, the Afterword by Katrina Rogers, President of Fielding Graduate University, is a thoughtful analysis of the way ahead, a direction that may be fraught in many ways but that also contains the seeds of hope, as she indicates to us. The collaborative efforts and research of our authors here indicate that this hope may indeed become a reality for a world that is sorely in need of new direction.