
Sandra WaddockBoston College | BC · Carroll School of Management
Sandra Waddock
DBA Boston University 1985
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282
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Introduction
Publications
Publications (282)
Flourishing‐for‐all as emerged as a concept to respond to the apparent lack of capacity to translate the sustainability discourse into actual practices conducive to more sustainable societies. In this special issue, we assert that flourishing‐for‐all addresses the gap identified in the sustainability discourse that still needs conversion into pract...
The central question that this special issue poses is ‘What will allow new systemic approaches to emerge that include all humans and all living beings in the benefits of life, rather than expecting some to suffer for the benefit of others?’ This paper argues that a key starting point for systems change, and the changed awareness or awakening that i...
This paper argues that for humanity to deal with the intersecting, existential threats of polycrisis, broad-based narrative changes are needed to make practical and relevant eco-social (or social ecological) imaginaries and related contracts. An imaginary is how people conceive or think about the world around them and their relationship to it. Soci...
This Agenda 2050 piece is a call to action for management scholars to follow the lead of business associations , foundations, and businesses in studying and understanding the transformative change needed to bring about a more equitable and flourishing world for all living beings-including humans and other-than-humans. These entities advocate for a...
Transformation of economic systems is widely regarded as an essential strategy to tackle interacting global crises. In response, there are diverse transformative approaches seeking holistic human and planetary wellbeing. However, mainstreaming these ‘new’ economic approaches is hampered by vested interests and intellectual lock-in. They are also di...
This conceptual paper argues that change makers, here called transformation stewards, attempting to catalyze transformational change need three core skillsets specific to stewarding transformative change, and further argues that mindfulness practices can potentially enhance these capacities. One skillset is reflexive systems-based awareness and und...
As a discipline, marketing will need to shift as businesses and other institutions respond to the numerous crises now facing the world—either proactively towards transformative sustainable marketing, as it has been termed, or reactively in an effort to sustain business as usual. This paper argues that proactive transformation towards fostering flou...
Many efforts are focused on transformation to wellbeing economies as economies oriented towards equity, social justice, and human wellbeing in a flourishing natural environment (wellbeing economics). Drawing from analysis of innovations associated with these efforts, we emerge a framework of wellbeing-oriented ‘economic operating infrastructure’ (E...
This chapter raises a highly relevant question: Is it possible to bounce beyond today’s crises to a flourishing world? The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a need for creating and an opportunity to create system transformation that was not evident to many people prior to the pandemic. In the context of the pandemic, numerous new entities—here called t...
Deliberate transformation for sustainable futures requires new social imaginaries that collectively envision futures beyond the dominance of neoliberal capitalism. We looked for these imaginaries by surveying change makers working on system transformation and ecological issues. Drawing on a conceptual framework that connects social imaginaries, sto...
Transformation (T-) systems are innovative collections of initiatives and efforts geared to bringing about a flourishing socio-ecological system in a given context. They comprise of the totality of initiatives, people and organizations who are collectively seeking to transform a particular issue or geography in a common direction, when they attempt...
This op ed argues that the pandemic has highlighted the emergence of a new type of entity called a transformation catalyst (TC). TCs help collections of initiatives with similar agendas see and understand their system, connect to like‐minded others to develop coherence for their efforts, and thereby amplify their impact by working in coherence and...
This chapter explores the paradox of corporate responsibility, that is, it explores the paradoxical dark underbelly created by strategic success in corporations and their efforts to implement voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives to demonstrate their good corporate responsibility/responsibility. This exploration addresses the tensio...
Art uses images, symbols, ideas, and other expressions to enable people to construct new social imaginaries that can inspire change toward a more desirable future. Artists serve as ‘seers’ of reality as it is, in ways that others do not see, and of what might be. Art can help frame and envision new cultural mythologies and social imaginaries. The ‘...
This article focuses on the concept of worldviews, arguing that a change in managerial worldviews is the key lever for addressing the social and global challenges facing humanity. We draw from a new synthesis of science and spirituality, with the addition of “other ways of knowing” that go beyond rational-empirical analysis, to suggest that what we...
The challenges that are associated with the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals are wickedly complex and interconnected in nature. Because they require transformational changes at the systems level, the pace of change has, so far, been nowhere near fast enough to meet the goals by 2030. In this paper, we analyze the catalytic actions of...
In the face of numerous crises, including a global pandemic, it is time to challenge economic orthodoxy—neoliberalism—and develop a new economic orthodoxy built around values and principles that give life and prominence to socioecological systems. In this essay, I link six values of life‐affirming economics to principles that give life to systems....
There is increasing attention to the idea of bringing about what is termed a wellbeing economy, and recognition that a coherent story or narrative is important in countering the strength of today’s dominant economic narrative--neoliberalism. Yet there has been relatively little consensus on what such an idea might mean in practice, despite the prol...
This article presents a review of the literature on the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) for the purpose of situating the UNGPs in the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) infrastructure. We identify four key themes that underlie the debate: (1) a critical assessment of the Principles, (2) their application to different sectors,...
Non-technical summary
Achieving sustainability requires that businesses transform; however, it is virtually impossible in today's competitive environment for individual businesses to do what is needed to bring about systemic transformation. Instead, it is the context around businesses, including the public policy environment and changes by major ac...
The dire condition of planetary systems, growing inequality, and other grand challenges seem to make system transformation, either purposeful or not, inevitable. This paper argues transformation agents using approaches that involve seeing the system and its patterns, sensemaking that constructs new narratives and stories about the system built on r...
It is becoming clear that many of today’s management theories are inadequate theoretically and practically to move understanding, scholarship, and practice to where it needs to be for scholars, business leaders, and policy makers to cope with an increasing fraught world. This Special Issue’s focus is on sustainability. Sustainability challenges nee...
“Our Future on Earth” aims to tell the story of where we are on our collective journey by connecting the dots between what society is currently experiencing – from fires to food shortages to a rise in populism – with recent developments in the research community.
Physical and social scientists have much to say about what is driving current events,...
The state of the world suggests we are at a crossroad-the next 15 to 20 years will have a decisive impact-more than in any period before-on the conditions of life on Earth. Rising awareness about the urgency of dealing with climate change is symptomatic of an increasing concern for the future of humanity and our life support system. Most approaches...
This conceptual paper reflects on the assumptions that underlie economics and business teaching and how they influence our teaching. We identify a tension between business educators' intention to nurture responsibility and social values and the increase in students' egoism values resulting from teaching theories that build on economic thinking. We...
This article argues that the capacity to create the large system change needed to deal with “grand challenges” like the Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability, or climate change can be enhanced by understanding and applying a core set of principles, drawn from multiple sources and levels of analysis that have explored the question of “what g...
The leader as shaman has three central roles: healer, connector, and sensemaker in the service of a better world. This paper argues that today’s leaders acting as shamans could become ‘shapeshifters,’ or more accurately ‘shape the shift,’ that is engage with organizational and systemic change needed to content with major problems like sustainabilit...
This symposium created a circle of trust between IABS Fellows in attendance and other attendees around the issue of co-creating a vision for IABS 2050. A circle of trust is exploratory, inclusive, respectful of difference, open to new insights and perspectives, while being bound together by a shared commitment to co-learning and co-creation via the...
Blue Marble or holistic systems thinking focuses on the big picture—the system as a whole. The ‘blue marble’ is Earth viewed from space, where it can be seen as an unboundaried whole. To understand the Blue Marble, we need to zoom out—and then zoom in to specific issues and systems—and then zoom back out again. Panelists outlined key issues facing...
This article explores the role of changing memes in large systems change toward marriage equality—popularly referred to as same-sex marriage—in the United States. Using an abbreviated case history of the transformation, the article particularly explores the shifting memes or core units of culture, in this case, word phrases associated with marriage...
Purpose
This paper aims to propose and test a modified interpretation of long-standing issues on the corporate responsibility (CR)–corporate financial performance (CFP) relationship: companies involved in CR are in general no better and no worse in their level of financial performance than companies without such engagement because of the trade-off...
While mankind in the 21st century faces several sustainability challenges, many business practices remain on a nonsustainable pathway. At the same time, many scholars as well as managers consider maximizing shareholder wealth as the only business imperative. We argue that this situation calls for revisioning—that is, reorienting and redefining—what...
We argue that rankings force business schools to increasingly follow similar curricula and strategic approaches, creating a “iron cage” that influences the nature, quality, and pedagogies of what is taught, particularly for striving business schools that wish to join the ranks of highly rated ones. Following rankings pressures measures is particula...
Efforts to reorient narratives about today’s socio-economic systems along humanistic or eco-friendly lines are built on core units of culture called memes. This paper explores the memes used by progressive socio-economic initiatives to assess whether they are consistently and powerfully deployed, using the aspirational statements of 126 different i...
We advance a framework of three types of “retreats” – reflective, relational, and inspirational – that social change agents can use to sustain themselves through challenges inherent in their work. Retreats are defined as intentionally crafted spaces that provide opportunities for reflective practices, relational presence, and inspirational resource...
A recent strand of the literature bridging across sustainability, complexity, environmental and governance science (developed under the umbrella of Transition Management, TM) has advanced a theory on how transitions towards sustainability gain scale from niche to mainstream. Though widely applied both in global food and agricultural systems and oth...
Law undergirds the capitalist system and is “at the interface” of business and social relationships but remains largely walled off from many traditional approaches to management education, scholarship, and practice. Although a simple definition of law is “enforceable rules between individuals and individuals and society,” law is also a medium by wh...
This issue of Business & Society contains the transcripts of 12 oral history interviews with founders of and early contributors to the business and society/social issues in management (SIM) field. The publication of these interviews is the culmination of a very long-term project, with the first interview having been conducted in 1993 with Lee Prest...
Business schools today are torn between two paradigms, with a resulting struggle about the nature and value of both teaching and research. Today’s dominant neoliberal paradigm pervades the vast majority of schools with its narrative of profit maximization, free markets, and limited government. Its proponents view competition, growth, and consumeris...
Our world is fraught with problems that demand attention: climate change, terrorism, poverty, and injustice to name only a few. Healing the World takes the fundamental teachings of shamans “the healer of communities” and applies them to the problems of today, using terms and concepts that anybody, from business leaders to activists, can relate to a...