Wise Management In Organisational Complexity

Provides a resource of wise praxis and reflection in the context of organisational complexity for managers, researchers and teachers in management education. Offers various explications and applications of Aristotle's notion of phronèsis (practical wisdom) and reflects on the responsibilities of companies and education institutions towards society.

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.

Research in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) is of growing concern to meet the needs of the diverse student populations in various higher education institutions. People around the world recognize that current economic development trends are not sustainable and that public awareness, education, and training are key to moving society toward sustainability. Although ESD continues to grow both in content and pedagogy and its visibility and respect have grown in parallel, education officials, policymakers, educators, curriculum developers, and others are called upon to rethink education in order to contribute to the achievement of the goals of sustainable development in higher education. The Handbook of Research on Implications of Sustainable Development in Higher Education provides insight regarding the implications of ESD for teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education and demonstrates the value of adopting an ESD lens by broadening and strengthening the evidence base of the impact that this can make for students, educators, and society as a whole. Covering key topics such as assessment, globalization, and inclusion, this reference work is ideal for university leaders, administrators, policymakers, researchers, scholars, practitioners, academicians, instructors, and students.

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.

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