Alexandru Balasescu

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Simon Fraser University

To address the wicked issues perplexing the globe today that are ever more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), we need to be moving toward a truly collective leadership. We argue that a truly collective leadership is one that moves beyond the conceptualization of a singular leader to a collective that is highly engaged and relations...

As the world becomes more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), we require highly relationship focused, culturally sensitive, and contextually nuanced global leadership practices for our ever-changing new realities. Turbulent times have accelerated a need for leadership practice for our complex challenges and opportunities, including...

One of the conversations that emerged forcefully during the past year, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, is linked to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, and it touches both its effectiveness and its ethics. The chapter starts with three examples of using automated systems in healthcare and continues by proposing an unders...

The idea of material culture was present from the inception of social sciences as a way to somehow mark the distinction between what people do, what people believe, what they say they do and believe, and what people have. Various instances of this effort to circumscribe materiality are revived in a ritual way, either as a generator of new theoretic...

Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across countries and time? There are many answers from various schools of finance and economics, including Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis in which systemic stability endogenously results in instability. We explore the inclusion of observed human be...

Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across countries and time? There are many answers from various schools of finance and economics, including Minsky's financial instability hypothesis in which systemic stability endogenously results in instability. We explore the inclusion of observed human be...

Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across countries and time? There are many answers from various schools of finance and economics, including Minsky's financial instability hypothesis in which systemic stability endogenously results in instability. We explore the inclusion of observed human be...

The looming oil crisis, pollution, and climate change have pushed governments, corporations, and individuals to think of new policies, new objects/products and new manners to market them – usually under the label of “green economy” (or the shifting towards a sustainable economy). The changes that are on the way as a result of the envisaged “green...

Why do financial crises appear unprecedented in spite of being a rather regular occurrence across countries and time? There are many answers from various schools of finance and economics, including Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis in which systemic stability endogenously results in instability. We explore the inclusion of observed human be...

This material explores the multiple potentialities opened by the electric vehicle and the forms of resistance to it as, arguably, any new product is a cultural redefinition. It claims that the change in the form of combustion of the fetish object of mobility will most probably bring changes both in human subjectivities and in their relations with c...

While we are preparing for an urban age with a population that will exceed 60 percent of the world's total, sustainability is the buzzword now in urban studies. It has become the goal of urban planners, city designers, administrators, economists, and anthropologists involved in the process of urbanization. Alexandru Balasescu goes further to argue...

Alexandru Balasescu proposes ways to counter the current economic crisis in a small community in Bucharest, Romania. Drawing on the experience of various actors in ‘La Bomba’ he suggests that a collaboration of NGOs, Big Businesses, Government and Universities may transform the social fabric into a more economically prosperous one. He exposes the m...

This article sketches a map of the formation of taste in Iran and the circulation of desire across class and geographic borders. Focusing on haute couture production in Tehran, it focuses on the careers of two designers. Discussing their sources of inspiration and the expectations of their clients, it illustrates different understandings of fashion...

This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France), copying as a practice employed or condemned by fashion designers (sometimes both at the same time), and the meaning that 'authorship' has for the political economy of fashion production. The empirical substance is the result of 18 months of research i...

The veil as an item of dress is one of the most debated, most contested, and maybe least understood of body adornments, although indeed there is no final understanding of any “object.” These characteristics make it an ideal subject of anthropological inquiry. This article focuses on the intersection of women's veiling as a practice associated stere...