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Creativity and Organizational Learning as Means to Foster Sustainability
Abstract
This article argues that creativity and organizational learning can help to challenge the traditional Newtonian and Cartesian mental models and foster more sustainable societies. The recognition and acceptance of creativity by individuals, groups, organizations, and finally society can create new knowledge and metanoia. Creativity helps to break through the knowledge barrier of current reductionist mental models, while learning helps to consolidate and institutionalize the new mental models. This is especially the case where learning questions underlying assumptions and develops new theories and methodologies that constantly challenge the status quo for the present and the future, instead of mere reaction to immediate problems. Eventually, these mental models would need to be questioned by future creative thinkers in a continuous process; hence, solving today's problems with tomorrow's ideas, and ensuring progress towards more sustainable societies. The paper takes the example of Gaia theory to illustrate how creativity can be institutionalized. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
... They are individuals, groups, and organizations as systems, the time dimension, and change. Another context component that supports stabilizing change until the system is prompted to engage in the next shift is the institutional framework (Lozano, 2007b(Lozano, , 2013a(Lozano, , 2014. According to Lozano, the element of the influential context affects the entire cultural transformation toward sustainability. ...
... Congruence between organizational and cultural layers is the third and fourth strategy. They are based on the work discussed earlier on barrier conditions (Lozano, 2008(Lozano, , 2013a(Lozano, , 2014(Lozano, , 2018a. Organizational learning, the fifth strategy, is the most important in breaking the status quo and shifting deeply rooted mental models and informational attitudes, which influence emotional and behavioral attitudes (Lozano, 2007a(Lozano, , 2007b(Lozano, , 2008(Lozano, , 2014. ...
... They are based on the work discussed earlier on barrier conditions (Lozano, 2008(Lozano, , 2013a(Lozano, , 2014(Lozano, , 2018a. Organizational learning, the fifth strategy, is the most important in breaking the status quo and shifting deeply rooted mental models and informational attitudes, which influence emotional and behavioral attitudes (Lozano, 2007a(Lozano, , 2007b(Lozano, , 2008(Lozano, , 2014. Collaboration is another emerging influential code that serves as "a pathway for sustainability." ...
The relationship between organizational culture and corporate sustainability initiatives and practices, such as cleaner production, is widely recognized, yet little is known about an organizational culture conducive to sustainability. Cleaner production entails managing the physical aspects of production and transforming the organization's culture. However, the existing research primarily investigates a corporate culture that focuses on enhancing productivity. While research on sustainability-productive culture is scanty, it concentrates on the cultural level of artifacts of sustainability practices, leaving much unknown about the deeper cultural levels of conscious and unconscious assumptions and beliefs that constitute the essence of organizational culture. The present study aims at discovering cutting-edge knowledge on sustainability-productive organizational culture. It adapts the Integrated Systematic Literature Review framework to identify scholars from the Scopus database who have played a significant role in creating the knowledge base and their documents during the past 27 years. As a result, relevant descriptive statistics of the collective body of knowledge, two schools of thought, influential scholars, and methodological issues are derived from the literature. Two frameworks on sustainable cultural transformation and sustainability organizational culture are derived from the cutting-edge knowledge, as informed by the work of the recognized key scholars. These frameworks highlight the hitherto unacknowledged importance of a normative grounding in cultural assumptions and values, delivering cutting-edge knowledge in the field of sustainability organizational culture. Research, theoretical and managerial implications from the review are also discussed.
... D. Jennings & Zandbergen, 1995;Lozano, 2018), for example by contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (see Onyango & Ondiek, 2021;Topple et al., 2017;van Zanten & van Tulder, 2021). However, sustainability must first be adopted by the organisation before it can be transferred to society (Lozano, 2014), where sustainability must be addressed in a holistic way considering the four dimensions and their interrelations (Escobar, 1999;Hjorth & Bagheri, 2006;Lozano & Huisingh, 2011). ...
... The findings show that football clubs have been undertaking several sustainability efforts (e.g. stakeholder collaboration, energy, health, gender and transportation) and have even been making connections between the sustainability dimensions, that is adopting sustainability in a holistic way (as proposed by Lozano, 2014); however, their awareness of the SDGs remains low. ...
... The findings showcase that football clubs need to be proactive in adopting sustainability to become opinion leaders and encourage the transfer of sustainability to society (as proposed by Lozano, 2014). The findings highlight that the clubs need the support from a variety of stakeholders in this process, as shown in the 'Adoption of sustainability in Civil Society Organisations and transfer to community' framework in Figure 6, which provides new insights into the 'Generation and transfer of new ideas and memes' framework (see Lozano, 2006). ...
Progress towards more sustainable societies requires moving from reactive responses to immediate problems, towards a more proactive focus on avoiding possible future problems and preparing for potential events. This requires that sustainability is endorsed by a group or opinion leader to be adopted by society. Organisations have been instrumental in fostering sustainability and can be such opinion leaders. During the last 10 years, there has been an increasing interest in organisational sustainability; however, research on civil society organisations (CSOs) has been scarce. Sports organisations (such as football clubs) are a particular type of CSO, and have been adopting sustainability, albeit slowly. Twelve interviews with representatives of Swedish football clubs (from which nine were male clubs and three were female clubs) were conducted between August and November 2021. The data were analysed using Grounded Theo-ry's constant comparative analysis method. The findings show that football clubs have been undertaking several sustainability efforts (e.g. stakeholder collaboration, energy, health, gender and transportation) and have been connecting the sustainability dimensions throughout such efforts. The findings provide insights into the stages of sustainability awareness in football clubs, starting from the social dimension, then the environmental, economic and time dimensions. An important finding from the interviews was the potential that football clubs have in engaging and influencing society through their fans. This research provides insights into the contributions of football clubs to sustainability. Football clubs, and other CSOs, have the potential to become societal change agents and make societies more sustainable through a shared identity.
... New ways of educating future generations are needed that engage in the intelligent use of natural resources and the improvement of societal well-being for this generation and future ones (Burke, 2000;Cortese, 2003;Rosner, 1995). This requires a paradigm revolution (Lozano, 2014), where beliefs, techniques, and values are shared by members of a giver community (Dogan, 2001). Kuhn (1970) provided a cornerstone on paradigm revolutions discussions. ...
... In creating a new sustainability education paradigm requires the 'unlearning' of the old, unsustainable, paradigm and overcoming challenges, such as silo mentality, reductionism, and individualism (Lozano, 2014). In this process, a paradox arises, where a powerful sustainability message and a powerless pedagogical approaches tend to be at odds (Seatter & Ceulemans, 2017). ...
... teaching (see , and a transformation to more holistic teaching (as postulated by Lozano, 2014). ...
Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been at the forefront in creating and breaking paradigms, and educating the future decision‐makers, entrepreneurs, and leaders. In the last decade, there have been many efforts to develop sustainability competences in HEIs to ensure that students are prepared for challenges in making societies more sustainable. Recent discourses have focussed on how educators use pedagogical approaches to develop such competences, which has begun to create a sustainability competences paradigm. This research focuses on the benefits and challenges of teaching sustainability, the use of pedagogical approaches, and the development of competences. A survey was sent to 4099 European HEI educators, with 319 full responses obtained for the open‐ended questions. The data was analysed using quantitative content analysis and network analysis. The results provide insights into the rankings of the benefits, and challenges in teaching, competences, and pedagogical approaches. The co‐occurrence maps show a high students' awareness and engagement when educators use pedagogical approaches other than lecturing, and they focus on providing a practice‐oriented perspective. The research discusses that in order to develop a sustainability competences paradigm the benefits of teaching sustainability, using pedagogical approaches, and development of competences need to be fostered, whereas the challenges need to be addressed to avoid creating a White Elephant. The development of sustainability competences in HEI can lead to more sustainability literate decision‐makers, leaders, scientists, and professionals, and thus, better address the pressing challenges that ail our societies and Earth.
... In the previous literature, the three sustainability performance dimensions has been analyzed empirically in manufacturing firms in relation to the impact of sustainable manufacturing practices -sustainable product design and development, sustainable manufacturing process, sustainable supply chain management, and sustainable end-of-life management-(Abdul-Rashid et al., 2017), a set of green supply chain management practices (Çankaya and Sezen, 2019), lean manufacturing practices -in SMEs- (Sajan et al., 2017), and green manufacturing practices, operational competitiveness, and firm reputation . (Matussek, 1984), the ability to think beyond accepted ideas and conventional thinking patterns, combining previously acquired knowledge in an unprecedented way (Kraft, 2005), new mental models (Lozano, 2014), an ability to abandon habitual ways of thinking and gather sections of previously unconnected knowledge and experience (Geschka, 1983), ability and power to develop new ideas (Weihrich and Koontz, 2005), the generation of novel and appropriate ideas -solutions-to open-ended problems in any domain of human activity (Amabile, 1997), linking the cognitive, affective, and social domains (Runco, et al, 1998), and about solving problems (Reiter-Palmon and Illies, 2004;Mitchell and Walinga, 2017) in an unconventional way. Kraft (2005) argued that it is about divergent thinking, questioning the understanding and thinking of others, amazing original connections, unconventional thought patterns, unconventional perspective and view, unorthodox ideas, and the search for unusual answers by new pathways. ...
... Sustainability requires creative problem solving, creative thinking, divergent thinking, new ideas, (Mitchell and Walinga, 2017;Awan et al., 2019) perspectives, views (Mitchell and Walinga, 2017), and new mental models (Lozano, 2014 ...
... Sustainability is a complicated goal, since sustainability challenges are complex and require creative solutions, creative problem-solving, creative way of thinking, and new ideas (Mitchell and Walinga, 2017). To a systemic challenge such as sustainability, it is essential to respond creatively to help improve social and economic resources (Lozano, 2014). Likewise, various studies suggest a possible relationship between creativity and sustainability (Przychodzen et al., 2016;Mitchell and Walinga, 2017;Awan et al., 2019;Lozano, 2014). ...
Purpose: Sustainable development is key to firms’ competitiveness, survival, growth, and profitability, although sustainability emerges as a great challenge. The aim of this study is to analyze the links between organizational creativity (which integrates sustainability orientation), sustainability-oriented innovation, and the multidimensionality of firms’ sustainability performance.
Design/methodology/approach: A total of 417 valid responses from manufacturing SMEs were collected through a questionnaire. PLS-SEM is the statistical technique used in the hypothesis testing.
Findings: Organizational creativity (which integrates sustainability orientation) and sustainability-oriented innovation are positively associated with economic sustainability performance, environmental sustainability performance, and social sustainability performance; sustainability-oriented innovation has a partial mediation effect on the relationship between organizational creativity and economic, environmental, and social sustainability performance; and organizational creativity (which integrates sustainability orientation) has a positive effect on sustainability-oriented innovation.
Originality: Sustainability orientation is integrated into organizational creativity without limiting it, sustainability-oriented innovation encompasses innovation and sustainability in all its breadth without forgetting the innovation process openness, and firm’s sustainability performance has a multi-dimensional approach. Such innovation and creativity contribute –in an interconnected way– to sustainable development, as well as overcoming sustainability challenges and firms’ barriers to sustainability. Likewise, the aforementioned creativity must be implemented throughout the company, even beyond its contribution to the innovation process. Thus, the implementation of new ideas, thoughts, perspectives, views, and mental models –fruit of the described creative process– will generate new models and paths in which firms’ profitability, growth and survival are related with overcoming environmental and social problems.
... Particularly, psychologically resilient individuals with their capacity to bounce back from deleterious incidents and revive from negative emotional experiences may lead to OS (Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004). In addition, individuals who are appealed by complex tasks, patient with uncertainty, self-assured and more creative (Barron and Harrington, 1981) can contribute to their OS (Lozano, 2014;Mr oz and Ocetkiewicz, 2021). Most importantly, the complex nature of sustainability demands exceptional leadership capabilities like servant leader (SL) (Kang and Zhang, 2020;Metcalf and Benn, 2013) that plays a paramount role in setting the organisation's vision and mission, ensuring sustainability and economic growth of both the organisation and its employees (Meraku, 2017). ...
... Creativity may be one of the most compelling and pragmatic means of overcoming ignorance and reattaining knowledge by producing and establishing novel mental archetypes for sustainability (Lozano, 2014). Moreover, creativity is at the core of attaining goals of reinventing business archetypes by generating novel products and services and utilising applied mechanisms that recognise societal and ecological sustainability (Mitchell and Walinga, 2017). ...
... Although there have been conceptual studies on the association between creativity and OS (e.g. Lozano, 2014), there is a dearth of empirical studies on this relationship, especially in the hotel industry. In addition, Mohamed et al. (2019) suggested the need for research on both the antecedents and the consequences of creativity. ...
Purpose
The main concern of this research is to examine the indirect effects servant leadership on organisational sustainability (OS) through creativity and psychological resilience in the hoteling sector in Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey method based on a questionnaire was employed to gather data from 441 employees working in the hotel industry in Malaysia. The partial least squares technique, SmartPLS3.3.7, was employed to examine the hypotheses.
Findings
The result of the study found support for effect of servant leadership on creativity and psychological resilience. In addition, the effect of creativity and psychological resilience on OS was supported. Moreover, the mediation role of creativity and psychological resilience between servant leadership and organisational suitability was also supported by data.
Originality/value
This is a pioneering study that has combined human capital elements (i.e. servant leadership, creativity and psychological resilience) to examine their impacts on OS. Besides, this work has established comparatively new relationships, i.e. the impact of servant leadership on OS through the mediating role of creativity and psychological resilience. In addition, this study has developed relatively new link between psychological resilience and OS. In addition, it has confirmed the validity and reliability of servant leadership and OS at first and second orders.
... Implementing SSCM and contributing to truly sustainable business management, in general, is a transformative task. Such a change in thinking is discussed in organizational learning [16,17]. Organizational learning has been defined as "the mutual learning of an organization and the individuals in it" [18] and "a dynamic process of creation, acquisition, and integration of knowledge aimed at developing the resources and capabilities that allow the organization to achieve better performance" [19]. ...
... All development involves learning [20] and, thus, learning is vital for any organization's sustainability performance [16,21,22]. From a societal perspective, where organizational learning and change are described as critical components for long-term success on the path toward sustainability [23], its continuity is claimed to be vital to achieving sustainable development [17]. Thus, it is logical that Oelze et al. [24] found that organizational learning is a crucial success factor for implementing SSCM. ...
... This study is iterative and inductive, combining results from a single-case study and applying an existing framework with a literature review to outline a process model. We used the following design criteria for this study: (1) the research study and its activities should be built on engagement between scholars and practitioners so that a double hurdle of research quality and business relevance can be overcome [33,34]; (2) a systems perspective should be used, to ensure a complete sustainability framing and facilitate strategic sustainable development [4,35]; (3) theories of organizational learning should be considered, to facilitate change [16,17,21,36]. ...
Despite increasing business interest in sustainability in general and in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), the ability to increase suppliers’ ecological and social performance is generally insufficient for many companies. In this study, we outline an implementation process model for sustainable supply chain management. We do so by synthesizing insights from a review of the sustainable supply chain management and organizational learning literature and a case study with a company aspiring to become a global leader in sustainable lighting. By combining these insights, we find that successful implementation of sustainable supply chain management requires sustainability to be anchored in a company’s vision and integrated into all functions. We also argue that organizational learning, especially learning with external stakeholders such as suppliers, an operational definition of socioecological sustainability among stakeholders, and procedural support for the cocreation of strategic plans for change are vital for achieving a truly sustainable supply chain. This definition and cocreation allow for attention to be directed toward strategic ecological and social practices, along with the joint handling of tradeoffs and economic considerations among stakeholders. As we build a foundation for an SSCM implementation process model, we use a science-based framework for strategic sustainable development. We call for more action-based research to uncover the complex nature of sustainable supply chain management, as there are unique challenges and dynamic relationships in every supply chain.
... Employee creativity also has a positive effect on SME Resilience. First, creativity becomes one of the most attractive resources to overcome ignorance and gain knowledge by developing a new mentality for sustainability (Lozano, 2014). In addition, employee creativity can be the main indicator in achieving goals by producing new products and services and leveraging applied mechanisms that promote social and ecological sustainability (Mitchell & Walinga, 2017). ...
... In addition, employee creativity can be the main indicator in achieving goals by producing new products and services and leveraging applied mechanisms that promote social and ecological sustainability (Mitchell & Walinga, 2017). Even though there have been theoretical studies (Lozano, 2014) about the link between creativity and resilience, there haven't been many empirical studies (Batool et al., 2021). Mohamed et al. (2019) also say that there needs to be more study on the causes and effects of creativity. ...
Survival of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is important in uncertainty and rapid advancement of digitalization nowadays, which leads to significant changes in the business environment. SMEs must be able to be resilient and face turbulence to survive and maintain business continuity. To support this resilience, digital leaders are required to help enterprises transform and lead them to a more promising future. Thus, SMEs have a digital mindset so that they can recognize and exploit opportunities, as well as overcome the challenges of surviving in an increasingly dynamic environment. Based on Social Exchange Theory and Resource Base Theory, this study examines the relationship between digital leadership and SMEs resilience through the mediation of employee creativity. Based on a sample of 179 SMEs from various sectors in Indonesia. The data were analyzed using AMOS-SEM by assessing construct validity and reliability, as well as measurement and structural models. The analysis confirms the effect of digital leadership on SMEs' resilience. The findings also provide support for the mediating role of employee creativity. The findings reveal the effect mechanism of digital leaders on SMEs resilience and enrich the literature on antecedents of SMEs resilience. Practical implications and future research are also discussed.
... The relationship between sustainability and creativity however is bidirectional. On one hand, creativity promotes new, revolutionary, and original solutions to multifaceted sustainability problems (Cucuzzella, 2016;Lozano, 2014) and supports in solving wicked and complex problems of sustainability (Awan et al., 2019;Brem and Puente-Díaz, 2020b;(Mitchell and Walinga, 2017). On the other hand, sustainability challenges incentivize creativity (Calic and Mosakowski, 2016). ...
... Researchers argued that for organizations to benefit from creativity they need to integrate creativity activities as organizational learnings (Lozano, 2014), align a responsible pro-environmental leadership, set external and internal sustainability strategies, and develop profitable business models (Przychodzen et al., 2016). These, however, should neither reduce the life quality of consumers (Cucuzzella, 2016) nor minimize corporate financial profits (Pislaru et al., 2019) while maintaining a competitive advantage. ...
How can creativity foster sustainability? This is a recently emerging question that sees current approaches to sustainability solutions as lacking the use of creativity. Creativity is thus seen as an aspiration to re-create and discover new paths to accelerate the transitions towards sustainability. We apply an integrative review of the creativity for sustainability literature with an in-depth analysis of 86 journal articles. In addition, we draw on insights from innovation and business studies and from the social sciences on sustainability transitions. The findings indicate four levels of creativity for sustainability including the individual, community, organizational, and institutional levels. On each of these levels, a set of indicators has been identified.
... There were two distinct ways that 'unlearning' was described in the literature. Firstly, as a positive process whereby "firms eliminate old logic and make room for new ones" (Sinkula, 2002as cited in Hasanudin et al., 2019, p. 1358Oelze et al., 2016;Lozano, 2014). Secondly, as a negative phenomenon that occurs when "organizations seem to forget lessons learned" (Sánchez & Mitchell, 2017, p. 200). ...
... Across all research disciplines, it was apparent that diverse perspectives were desirable in sustainability learning processes (Berthoin Antal & Sobczak, 2014;Stagl, 2007;Stubbs & Lemon, 2001;Totin et al., 2018). Despite the occasional focus on individual learning (Lankester, 2013;Moyer et al., 2014;Rietig & Perkins, 2018), it was much more prominent for studies across all disciplines to look at learning from team (Kiptot & Franzel, 2019;Lozano, 2014), organizational (Benn et al., 2013;Zhang et al., 2018) Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
This paper explores the role of learning in organizational responses to sustainability. Finding meaningful solutions to sustainability challenges requires companies and other actors to broaden their thinking, go beyond organizational boundaries and engage more with their stakeholders. However, broadening organizational perspective and collaborating with diverse stakeholders involves inherent political and process-related tensions. Learning has been identified as a key organizing process for overcoming the challenges that arise through collaborative action for sustainability. In order to understand the role of learning in organizational responses to sustainability, we conduct a cross-disciplinary systematic review of the literature on learning for sustainability and incorporate perspectives from diverse disciplines including business, management, environmental science, sociology, policy, urban planning, and development. The review explores how different disciplines conceptualize and operationalize learning for sustainability and identifies the common themes and challenges. Our findings highlight the different ways that power relations influence learning and decision-making processes, and how entrenched traditional value structures and ‘reflexive complicity’ limit practitioners and researchers alike in finding meaningful sustainability solutions. We conclude that shifting how we motivate business and management research on learning for sustainability, in a way that prioritizes sustainability outcomes over firm performance, could bring us a step closer to more meaningful responses to sustainability. Similarly, breaking patterns of ‘reflexive complicity’ by key actors in business could assist in shifting toward more radical and long-term responses to sustainability in practice.
... The study conducted by Domingues et al. (2017) employed a very small sample in which they also underline the importance of training to support suitability reporting in public sector organizations. Lozano (2011) underlines the importance of creativity and learning in achieving sustainability. His proposed model shows the instrumental role of creativity in shifting from unsustainable mental models to new sustainable mental models. ...
... Future empirical studies can draw upon the work of Arroyo (2012) and Limited work exists with regard to exploring the behavioral aspects of change for sustainability. In this regard, Lozano (2011) provides some insights about mental models and underlines how creativity and learning could facilitate the shift from unsustainable mental models to sustainable mental models. Georg and Füssel (2000) present the behavioral aspect of sustainability and underline how it can transform organizational members' actions. ...
Although a large number of researchers have explored the dynamics of organizational change for environmental, social, and financial sustainability, a systematic literature review highlighting the state of the knowledge so far is lacking. The current paper attempts to address this gap. A total of 62 peer-reviewed journal articles were selected by using a range of databases. The review of the available literature reveals that, overall, the field has moved toward conducting more theory-building research, given that the majority of the studies either employ a case study approach (30) or remain conceptual in nature (19). It appears that relatively more studies have examined the influence of organizational antecedents on the scale and stages of organizational change for sustainability. In this context, the impact of learning, organizational culture, and leadership on the process of change has attracted more attention. The literature also focuses on exploring the influence of scale and stages of change on sustainability outcomes. Moreover, the influence of organizational antecedents on the process of change in terms of management accounting systems has largely been ignored in the literature. Further, less is known about the impact of contextual factors on the process of organizational change for sustainability. The identified areas of future research will potentially guide in addressing the research gaps.
... Provided that the old knowledge is used to apply the new knowledge, because the knowledge accumulated by the firm can develop the appropriate viability of the firm, so the firm can benefit from the new knowledge and create value (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). Where OL is a long-term change in organisational behaviour (Fiol & Lyles, 1985), that is critical to fostering the change process (Lozano, 2011). ...
This study investigates the substantial influence of digital transformation (DT) on enhancing organisational resilience by examining the contributions of organisational learning and innovation—dimensions frequently overlooked in prior research. By addressing this gap, the study not only empirically validates these associations, but also conducts a rigorous examination using a sample of 376 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Andalusia region of Spain, selected through purposive sampling to include 259 respondents. The findings from regression analysis reveal how digital technologies facilitate organisational learning and innovation, thereby augmenting the resilience of SMEs. Empirical evidence indicates that these technologies enhance SMEs' learning capacity and stimulate innovation, ultimately improving their adaptability. This increased flexibility enables SMEs to respond adeptly to market fluctuations and capitalise on emerging opportunities.
... Innovation capability involves the ability to integrate diverse information and the willingness to take risks in creating new solutions (Wang & Netemeyer, 2004). Innovation capability is the ability to overhaul business paradigms, generate innovative products and services, and promote sustainability (Lozano, 2014). Elidemir et al. (2020) define innovation capability as the ability or process to generate new ideas or innovative solutions to a problem or challenge. ...
This research aims to analyze and explain the influence of Servant Leadership on Organizational Sustainability, mediated by Innovation Capabilities, within the Professional Association of Indonesian Health Information Management (PORMIKI). The study is designed based on a quantitative paradigm with a survey to test causality using a cross-sectional time horizon. The research population consists of 18,427 board members of the regional executive boards across Indonesia, with a sample of 413 selected using the quota sampling method. Data analysis employs Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for inferential analysis. The results indicate that most respondents are women with varied years of service. Servant leadership can enhance innovation capabilities and organizational sustainability. Servant leadership is a resource and a learning source for determining innovation capabilities and organizational sustainability. The findings extend the understanding of the importance and mechanisms of servant leadership for organizational sustainability. These results have practical implications for organizational leaders and open opportunities for further research.
... A systems approach is used for complex, non-linear and dynamic problems that we face in the real world (Richardson & Anderson, 1995;Sterman, 2010, Berkes & Ross, 2013. Humans tend to think through limited mindsets or mental models and these tend to have linear cause and effect structures (Lozano, 2014). These limited mental models can be expanded to include feedback loops, delays and unintended consequences through visual representations and simulation models based on systems thinking and system dynamics tools. ...
... Obrenovic et al. (2020) showed empirically that altruistic individuals by experiencing enjoyment in serving others, are inherently motivated by supply satisfaction, and manifest a more positive attitude toward collectivity which leads to more willingness to share the exchange of tacit and explicit knowledge that leads to innovative ideas (Obrenovic et al., 2020). Additionally, servant leadership is linked to performancerelated outcomes such as creative behavior (Yang et al., 2019) and, in turn, is positively related to organizational learning (Lozano, 2014). ...
This study aims to explore the effect of servant leadership on Greek public secondary schools operating as learning organizations. Over 192 public school principals completed both the servant leadership questionnaire (SLQ) and the dimensions of learning organization questionnaire (DLOG). A quantitative survey was conducted all over the country. From a practical standpoint, servant leadership seems not to be impractical as it is exercised to a moderate degree. Schools act as learning organizations to a moderate to strong degree. The results of the multilevel analysis emphasize the importance of empowerment, emotional healing and creating value for the community as major predictors of establishing a school-based organizational learning culture. Furthermore, employment status, teacher qualifications and school size have a significant impact on the perceived learning organization culture. Findings are expected to encourage managers to embrace and adopt the doctrine of servant leadership as a whole to improve long-term performance.
... The third section measures sustainable innovation. This construct comprises 14 items adapted from previous studies(Siebenhüner and Arnold, 2007;Van Kleef and Roome, 2007;Lozano, 2014;Maleti c et al., 2016). These items are categorized into two dimensions(Maleti c et al., 2016): ...
Purpose
This study aims to conceptualize and investigate the relationships between halal entrepreneurial success, innovation capability and sustainable innovation in the halal industry.
Design/methodology/approach
Both integrative and generative approaches are combined to move forward from the literature to a theoretical contribution. The paper presents a model that relates halal entrepreneurial success to innovation capability and sustainable innovation. A purposive sample of 340 Malaysian halal entrepreneurs is used to test the conceptualized model. The partial least square technique was then used to assess the structural model.
Findings
The results disclosed that halal entrepreneurial success is positively related to both innovation capability and sustainable innovation. Also, the innovation capability mediates the relationship between halal entrepreneurial success and sustainable innovation.
Originality/value
This research conceptualized and examined a novel model that assesses the relationships between halal entrepreneurial success, innovation capability and sustainable innovation in the halal industry.
... Many prior studies suggest that knowledge acquisition and information interpretation support creativities (Huber, 1998;Lozano, 2014) and inspire new knowledge and ideas (Argote et al., 2003;Damanpour, 1996;Dishman & Pearson, 2003;Lemon & Sahota, 2004;McKee, 1992;Wheelwright & Clark, 1992). Wheelwright and Clark (1992) suggest that organizational learning plays a critical role in developing a new innovative product. ...
This study develops a conceptual model to examine the effect of nonfinancial performance measures on absorptive capacity, organizational learning, and innovation performance. We collected online survey data from 148 senior-level managers from US manufacturing firms and used the component-based structural equation modeling-partial least squares (SEM-PLS) statistical technique to evaluate our conceptual model’s psychometric properties and hypothesis testings. Our results show that nonfinancial performance measures are positively associated with absorptive capacity and organizational learning, as well as both absorptive capacity and organizational learning, are positively associated with a firm’s innovation performance. In addition, the relationship between nonfinancial performance measures and innovation performance is serially mediated by absorptive capacity and organizational learning. Our study adds to prior research by advocating absorptive capacity and organizational learning as two critical factors that affect the relationship between nonfinancial performance measures and innovation performance.
... In addition to developing new collaborative concepts, there is a renewed interest in established collaborative concepts such as, e.g., cooperatives (Como et al., 2016). Regarding collaboration, strategic management literature addresses issues such as the nature of the collaboration (e.g., Lozano, 2008;Selsky & Parker, 2005), the relationship between participants (e.g., Lozano, 2014;Ostrom, 2009Ostrom, , 2010b motives (e.g., Wenger & Snyder, 2000), organizational structure (e.g., Camarinha-Matos & Boucher, 2012;Etzkowitz & Ranga, 2010;Jonker & Faber, 2012;Leydesdorff, 2010), governance (e.g., Agranoff, 2006;Ostrom, 2011b), and revenues (e.g., Kania & Kramer, 2013;Kramer & Pfitzer, 2016). However, strategic management literature hardly addresses factors that determine decision making, long-term goal setting, and planning in contemporary community-based organizational constructs. ...
Collective actions in support of sustainable development are gaining momentum. Rooted in place-bound contexts, constituents from various societal realms craft collaborative solutions for wicked problems associated with sustainable development. They invest multiple means and resources and share the revenues of their collective efforts. Learning by doing, they craft organizational constructs to create and capture multiple, shared, and collective values. By aiming for long-term impact, these collective actions become strategic. Integrating strategic management and collective action theories, this study explores the nature and scope of such stragegic endeavors. The study introduces the concept op Strategic Commoning: collaborative strategy development for collective actions that address wicked problems related to sustainable development. The study finds that various organizational constructs emerge for 'entrepreneuring' in collective actions. Taking their place-bound, multiple value creating, and collaborative foundations as a common denominator, this dissertation brings a strategic perspective to place-based collective actions.
... Learning has been looked at from various disciplines and angles, including cognitive science, education sciences, management studies, innovation studies, development studies, complex systems thinking and sustainability studies (Armitage et al. 2008;Beers, van Mierlo, and Hoes 2016;Dillenbourg 1999;Kolb 1984;Lozano 2014;Mezirow 1995;Wenger 2000;Westberg and Polk 2016). In their study on sustainability transitions, van Mierlo and Beers (2020) examined four so-called learning traditions, two of which include collaborative learning originating from education sciences and social learning in natural resource management stemming from complex systems thinking. ...
“The fact that we do have different backgrounds and different approaches to things is actually the big- gest strength of what we were doing because you are playing to the strengths of partners.” This quote from one of the practice partners in the EU-funded project ROBUST captures well what my PhD research is about. I argue that diversity is an asset, and that differences can be seen as an opportunity – differences in perspectives, experiences, competences, knowledge repertoires, available resources, and in socio-cultural contexts. The overarching question that I asked in my PhD is what the conditions are that allow us to “play to the strengths of partners”.
There is another major reason why we need to “play to the strengths of partners” and integrate differ- ent kinds of knowledge: the challenges societies are facing today, and potential solutions, have become multidimensional. Issues such as the climate crisis or biodiversity decline cannot be understood and addressed in isolation. Overly simplified and siloed solutions risk reproducing and intensifying existing problems. The same applies to the challenges faced by the agri-food sector and the question of its further development. Social and economic pressures resulting from the concentration in upstream and downstream sectors, environmental problems like soil degradation, the problem of ensuring food quality and food safety in global food chains, and global challenges related to food and nutrition insecurity are the reasons for increasing demands for more sustainable, equitable, fair and resilient agri-food sys- tems. A common conclusion, also for the agri-food sector, is that new forms of collaboration between academia, the private sector and civil society can help to foster transformational change.
Both, challenges and solutions, are transcending disciplinary boundaries, are multi-sector, multi-actor, connecting local and global, and they are intertwined with diverse and dynamic socio-cultural and political contexts. While rigorous disciplinary and interdisciplinary research approaches remain important, they tend to have limited impact if detached from decision-making processes. For many challenges, new transdisciplinary (TD) research approaches are necessary that allow science-society collaboration, including engagement of societal actors in generating innovative solutions, supporting decision-making and implementing the necessary changes. At the same time, it needs to be noted that TD approaches are not meant to replace disciplinary and interdisciplinary research – all three are essential and often they alternate throughout a project timeframe.
To date, the potential of TD research approaches in supporting sustainability transformations at different scales and in different contexts has more widely been recognised. At the same time there remains a range of epistemic, methodological, and practical challenges that limit their effectiveness.
Collaboration is an essential component, and at the same time one of the most challenging in TD sustainability research. Mutual learning is a fundamental principle of TD sustainability research and one of the key success factors in addressing the inherent collaborative challenges. Learning – more specifically learning to collaborate – can enhance the individual and collective capacity to deal with different per- spectives, priorities and approaches, and can thus foster the achievement of transformative objectives. Learning therefore needs to be seen as inseparable from TD collaboration. Unfortunately, learning does not naturally evolve from mere ‘co-existence’ of diverse practices and perspectives. Rather, it needs to be intentionally and continuously fostered.
The main aim of my PhD research was to better understand preconditions for and the obstacles to effective TD sustainability research. A particular interest is to understand how mutual learning between researchers and with practice partners occurs, and how learning can foster research-practice collaboration.
This overarching aim is operationalised into three research questions:
(1) How can the effectiveness of TD innovation-oriented research be assessed?
(2) What are the factors that limit and enable successful TD innovation-oriented research?
(3) How can the capacity to co-learn and collaborate be nurtured in TD innovation-oriented projects?
To answer the first research question, I developed a TD co-learning framework for assessing the effec- tiveness of TD sustainability research. The framework enables systematic monitoring, supports reflexive activities and facilitates co-learning. It is structured along four dimensions found to be the most essential when assessing the functioning of TD research processes: context, approach, process and out- comes. The framework includes 44 criteria with related references to the literature and guiding ques- tions for each criterion. The TD co-learning framework can be used to assess the progress made in joint work and it encourages continuous improvement. The framework can also be used to track change over time, for example over the course of a project.
The second and third research questions are addressed in the second scientific article which is central for this PhD (Chapter 5). Through three in-depth case studies, I have systematically examined how research and practice partners engage in complex collaborative processes and how learning to collaborate can help to navigate the challenges of collaborative work. The research I am presenting in my second article is one of the first analytical and empirical investigations of mutual learning processes taking place in TD research collaboration. In this article, I draw on social learning theory to frame transdisciplinary research as an approach that emphasises the processual nature of learning to collaborate and define Living Labs as collaborative epistemic living space. By doing so, I integrate two bodies of literature: TD sustainability research and practice, with a focus on theories of experiential learning and social learning; and literature on Living Labs with a focus on experimentation, co-creation, innovation and transformation. Two concepts guide the empirical analysis in this article:
(1) the concept of learning operationalised through knowledge, actions and relations to examine whether and how researchers and practice partners learn to collaborate; and,
(2) the concept of an epistemic collaborative living space operationalised into four dimensions – epistemic, social, symbolic and temporal – and a learning zone model to understand what shapes research and practice partners’ engagement and learning in collaborative processes.
A diverse range of research methods is used to analyse the data. They include semi-quantitative longitudinal data based on three sets of online surveys (baseline, progress and final), mid-term semi-structured interviews to check how likely the Living Lab teams will achieve their goals and to explore collaboration dynamics, and three in-depth case studies comprised of six interviews and three reflexive work- shops.
In the analysis of the three cases a ‘learning history’ is presented for each case. All three cases show that learning does not necessarily occur when partners with diverse perspectives and approaches are brought together and equipped with resources and a broad research frame. The position of each Living Lab in the learning zone where discomfort is ‘manageable’ was indicative of higher learning and more effective collaboration (e.g. in terms of outcomes, partners’ satisfaction). All three case studies illustrate too how much can be learned from challenging experiences and crisis situations. That the presence of crisis is sometimes perceived as failure is therefore not helpful. Through the detailed analysis of mutual learning processes in the three Living Labs I reaffirm the importance of “learning to collaborate” for the success of teams while I also show how it can be operationalised and further investigated in other projects and contexts.
In the same article, four groups of limiting and enabling factors for successful TD innovation-oriented research were distinguished (2nd research question of this PhD): project design, project management, professional facilitation and the capacity to co-learn and collaborate. The lessons learned also contribute to the further development of the research and practice of TD research and, more specifically, Living Labs. Key recommendations relate to the benefits of professional facilitation, the role of co-leadership and joint decision-making, the importance of reflexivity and ‘safe space’ for learning and teamwork, and the connections between learning, adaptive management and a well-functioning internal communication. One important conclusion is that the way research and practice partners worked together in the past, and the related expectations, including of a hierarchical relationship, still have a major influence. Thus, parties need to be prepared a priori for a different type of working relationships because when there is a lack of guidance, they tend to fall back into previous routines.
Outside of the ROBUST project, a separate case study was conducted as part of the Interreg project Food Pro·tec·ts in a Dutch-German cross-border region. The main aim of this case study was to scrutinise how innovation processes in the public sector differ from innovation processes in the private agri-food sector. I found that differences in the mindset of actors in relation to business practices and innovation played a major role. The hybridisation concept developed in this article for a cross-border setting embodies acknowledging mutual differences in economic, institutional and social structures, knowledge and technological capacity, political visions and cultural identities, and valorising them by applying a more strategic approach towards raising innovation capacity, and by factoring in contextual specificities (Chapter 6).
I would like to conclude on when and how precisely differences become an asset, and what it is needed to realise the potential of bringing different kinds of knowledge together. In my PhD research, I investigated this question in two very different contexts: in the context of a transdisciplinary research project, and in the regional context of cross-border innovation-oriented cooperation. In both cases, the capacity to learn from and with each other, and to collaborate was key to valorising differences. First of all, there is a need to recognise, and appreciate, partners’ strengths. Beyond that, there is a whole range of epistemic, methodological, and practical challenges that need to be overcome and some of those I have highlighted in my work.
... Organizational relearning describes organizations seek to explore new cognitive patterns, procedures, routines, beliefs, and knowledge structures ( Tabassum, 2008;Wang et al., 2017), which will help organizations generate novel solutions for organizational tasks and therefore enhance organizational creativity (Dodgson, 1993;Zhao et al., 2013). Organizational unlearning describes that organizations challenge old rules and break routines by identifying, altering, and abandoning useless and obsolete beliefs and knowledge (Akgü n et al., 2003;Yang et al., 2014), which is necessary to nurture organizational creativity (Lozano, 2014;Lyu et al., 2020). Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that if organizational unlearning and organizational relearning are both high, i.e., the inflow and outflow of knowledge enable organizations to form a coherent and smooth knowledge flow, organizations are more likely to generate novel solutions and develop high organizational c reativity than they are both low. ...
Organizational creativity is important to the survival and success of organizations. How to stimulate organizational creativity is thus a highly relevant issue. In the digital era, more and more organizations are engaging in digitalization, which has been considered to have great potential in nurturing organizational creativity. However, we still lack theory-driven empirical inquiries into "black box" between digitalization and organizational creativity. Drawing upon organizational learning theory, we introduce organizational learning to understand how organizations adapt to digitalization to improve organizational creativity. Using 194 responses from managers and senior IT employees, the results of polynomial regression analysis uncover the effects of the congruence types, the effects of incongruence, and the effects of the incongruence types between organizational unlearning and organizational relearning on organizational creativity. Digitalization is also found to affect organizational unlearning and organizational relearning positively. Key findings and implications are also discussed.
... Sustainability is aimed at meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED, 1987). This has to be achieved through holistic (see Hjorth & Bagheri, 2006;Hopwood et al., 2005;Mebratu, 1998) and transdisciplinary approaches (Lozano, 2008(Lozano, , 2014Shrivastava et al., 2013) that balance the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of this and future generations (WCED, 1987), as well as their interconnections (Lozano, 2008). ...
Sustainability is aimed at addressing the environmental and socio-economic issues of this generation and future ones. In this context, sustainable public procurement (SPP) has been proposed to link the consumption side (government) to the production side (companies), whilst addressing the four dimensions of sustainability (economic, environmental, social, and time). This paper undertakes an analysis, through hermeneutics, of four sets of system elements of SPP: (1) demand-offering, which includes products, services, and their combination; (2) procurement specifications (technical, non-technical, and socio-cultural); (3) stakeholder interactions; and, (4) research disciplinary approaches. The analysis shows that despite most SPP efforts focussing on demand-offerings or specifications, there have been some framework proposals aimed at explaining the complexities and interactions between the system elements. Additionally, most research on SPP has been carried out through single disciplinary approaches. The paper proposes the Harmonic SPP framework, which integrates the demand-offering, specifications, stakeholder interactions, disciplinary approaches, and the four sustainability dimensions, where the harmonisation of their interrelations is sine qua non. The Harmonic SPP framework is aimed at providing a more holistic perspective to SPP and thus fostering more effective and efficient SPP research and implementation.
... Supply chain learning nurtures a close relationship and forms integration for information sharing and shared market intelligence to promote faster and better innovation (Manuj, Omar, and Yazdanparast 2013). Lozano (2014) reported that constant acquisition and increase of knowledge enhances the creativity within an organization. Hahn, Lee, and Lee (2015) claimed that organizational learning improves individual employee creativity. ...
To date, scholars have given less attention to how inter-firm learning and human factors promote a circular supply chain for SMEs in emerging markets. Drawing upon the socio-technical system theory, this study explores how green supply chain learning, green organizational citizenship behavior, and green employee creativity contribute to circular supply chain performance. Findings from a survey of 153 firms in Ghana suggest that green supply chain learning does not have a significant impact on circular supply chain performance and green employee creativity, but it significantly relates to green organizational citizenship behavior. In addition, green organizational citizenship behavior and green employees’ creativity have a significant effect on circular supply chain performance. Finally, green organizational citizenship behavior and green employee creativity jointly mediate the relationship between green supply chain learning and circular supply chain performance. The study offers insight into the factors that drive circular supply chain performance of small and medium enterprises in an emerging economy.
... Furthermore, these skills may be nourished by engaging in creative or scientific practices that lead to an organizational culture of flexibility, adaptability, and innovation (Przychodzen et al., 2016). These skillsets build desirable characteristics to strengthen organizational and community resilience, but also individual resilience, where individuals with unique skills might introduce new forms of knowledge and information into the SME system (Lozano, 2014). These skills, which have origins in curiosity, creativity, imagination, and adaptiveness, can help expand sustainability literacy and help SMEs find value in actively participating in building community and addressing environmental problems. ...
Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can have significant resources, capacities, and influence in their communities, suggesting they have the potential to be agents for transformative sustainability. However, SMEs will need to move beyond firm‐centered sustainable business practices towards strategic approaches that encompass and contribute to resilience‐building processes. Amid the unfolding COVID‐19 pandemic, we explored what types of sustainable business practices of SMEs can contribute to individual, organizational, and community resilience. We identified six clusters of practice that are important in this regard. The clusters are not solely technical or “environmental” but rather illustrative of deeper sustainable values shaped by organizational structure, culture, and behavior. This paper suggests that SMEs can pursue transformative approaches to sustainability that are more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable and better able to withstand shocks like the COVID‐19 pandemic and can be significant contributors to community resilience. We conclude with a series of future research priorities critical to examine a largely unexplored nexus in the private sector, the linkages and dynamics between sustainability practice, resilience building, and broader community pathways.
... This sort of tension is continuous, so that the organisation is always becoming and evolving. It is where today's creative thinkers question yesterday's mental models, and their mental models will be questioned by future creative thinkers (Lozano, 2011) -where today's ways, which came from questioning yesterday's ways, become the tension for tomorrow's creative action. ...
Creativity is an important goal for higher education yet there is limited guidance on how to facilitate it at an organisational level. This arts-based exploration of the experiences of three award-winning academics who have been recognised for their creative work identifies that creativity can emerge from three interrelated factors — conversations and relationships, liminal space and leadership. These factors combined form a useful model that offers higher education institutions a means for enhancing creativity at a time when arguably it has never been needed more. The three factors are easily articulated, not resource-dependent or contingent on specialist knowledge or skill and will likely be well accepted by academics, academic leaders and others who participate in higher education.
... The unit has taken an approach to sustainability leadership education, which according to Sandri [22] is often missing-one that seeks to draw threads together and focuses on real-world learnings in a manner which is supported by the literature, particularly how creativity has been used. For example, Lozano [23] writes about the role creativity can play in fostering organizational learning, and Molderez and Ceulemans [24] describe the use of art to develop systems thinking, while Palsson et al. [25] describe the benefits of integrating the humanities and the arts within sustainability approaches. Sandri [22] (p. ...
This paper provides an overview of insights and lessons learned from nearly 20 years of running a Master’s unit called Leadership in Sustainability and how it has been used to foster change agents in small business enterprises, as well as other parts of our economy and community. The unit is based on five ‘C’ pillars, which are discussed in this paper to show how the teaching was able to assist potential leaders in their journey towards sustainability. Collective Wisdom is the theory of how leaders have used their imagination to solve collective ‘wicked problems’ and how sustainability requires such wisdom. The unit covers such theory from innovation, complexity, leadership, management and sustainability literatures, and the students are required to show they used this in solving a problem. Conversations are the main tool that is used because only through integrating diverse opinions have solutions been found to such problems as sustainability. The unit is based around case studies from leaders (including SMEs) who have approached sustainability from various perspectives, and conversations were created with the leaders to illustrate this. Creativity is introduced as a tool that draws upon different layers of perspectives on how to tackle wicked problems, as well as facilitating the breadth of conversations and actions required to solve them. The unit requires students to make a creativity contribution and the teachers provide assistance in how to make this work. Contemplation is designed to show how leadership requires reflection to enable the creativity and conversations to reach the depth and breadth required. The unit introduces students to the Theory-U tools to help instil the link between creativity and reflection or contemplation in addressing sustainability challenges and enabling leadership that creates change in personal, organizational and social systems. Finally, Courage is shown as a necessary part of the role of a leader in sustainability to make the magic of collective and creative solutions, based on conversations and contemplation, come to life through a demonstration-based transition.
... Creativity is a critical aspect of addressing sustainability [20][21][22][23][24]; it is the key skill to achieve sustainable development and foster more sustainable societies [25,26]. Creativity assists us in gaining clarity of vision and accessing the breakthrough thinking required for sustainable development [27]. ...
This study examines the effectiveness of different types of teacher–student conflict in promoting students’ creativity in universities. Previous studies mainly focused on the negative effects of conflict; few examined its positive effects. Teacher–student conflict in university classes can take many forms; however, there are no clear definitions of the various types of such conflict. This study classified teacher–student conflict as understanding conflict, process conflict, and relationship conflict, and we used this classification to extend prior research by revealing the beneficial impacts of teacher–student conflict on students’ creativity. We empirically examined the relationship between teacher–student conflict and students’ creativity. The hypotheses were supported by using data from questionnaires completed by 2009 students at 17 American universities. We then conducted a hierarchical regression analysis of the data using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that understanding conflict and process conflict had significant positive effects on students’ creativity, whereas relationship conflict had a significant negative effect on students’ creativity. This study thus revealed the positive effect of teacher–student conflict in university classes and suggests encouraging conflict (understanding conflict and process conflict) as a unique teaching method to stimulate students’ creativity.
... Original ideas and different ways of thinking are typically required in order to achieve the goals of sustainability in an organization (Kajzer Mitchell and Walinga, 2017). Creativity, combined with organizational learning and increased knowledge may assist in leaving behind old models which have led to environmental degradation and instead allow for a focus on the promotion of new models that foster sustainability (Lozano, 2014). ...
Creativity is a key influential factor contributing to organizations’ development. The contribution of creativity provides many crucial benefits to organizations and employees: high satisfaction, new ideas, strong teams, increasing innovation. To explore creativity as a hidden development factor, a random sample of 212 individuals in the private and public sectors were used to collect primary data. Logit regressions were specified to reveal the role of creativity in organizational development and job satisfaction for employees. We show that creativity is the only such driving factor able to decrease stress and lead to success and development together with high satisfaction levels. Specifically, job initiatives, workload pressure, creative change and overtime are shown to particularly affect stress levels. Job-creativity and use of skills have a higher impact on satisfaction followed by distance from work, freedom of actions and wages and other benefits. Further, job training and changes in management proved to be statistically insignificant.
... Critical Learnership (Hays & Reinders,2b17;, a new way of thinking about and structuring how we approach learning, might be thought of as a critical-analytical thought process and set of strategies for continually upsetting mental models (Helfat & Martin, 2015;Hurni & Gr6sser, 2017:' Lozano, 2014 and the levels of comfort that surround them. It is intentional, proactive, disruptive, and anticipative learning for the future We will sometimes use the abbreviation CL for Critical Learnership. ...
Critical Presencing is a synergistic merging of two, till now, distinct concepts and disciplines: presencing and Critical Learnership. This fusion permits us to obtain the greatest possible value from presence and presencing, criticality, and continuous and purposeful learning. Each of the concepts and disciplines are explained fully in the body of this chapter, and their individual components and their interrelationships identified and illustrated. The crux of our unfolding discussion hinges on the following understandings and propositions.
As used here, presencing implies two main purposes and states: (1) intentional action to be present, as in mindful awareness of one’s purposeful engagement in and interaction with the world (task, situation, other persons); and (2) intentional action to bring into presence desirable ends—to make material the immaterial, the intuitive, the possibilities sensed though not yet manifest.
... The contributions to quality education required by the SDG framework comprises efforts to integrate ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) as an approach to promote learner-centered and transformative teaching practices by emphasizing interdisciplinarity, as sustainable development concepts are embedded across several disciplines (Annan-Diab and Molinari, 2017). However, the variety of (social, cultural and institutional) contexts as well as the teachers' perspectives creates specific environments for performing good teaching, sometimes applying significantly different strategies and methods (Lozano, 2014). Therefore, the scientific contribution of universities in implementing SDGs and integrating ESD should comprise the development of the teachers' capacities, including their ability to "better contextualize their teaching and create more culturally inclusive learning environments" (Thaman, 2010, p.353). ...
There is a perceived need to develop approaches, methods and tools that may help higher education institutions to systematically introduce the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into research and teaching as an intrinsic part of their programs. However, at present, there is a gap in the literature on the suitable means to do so. This paper addresses this gap by examining the many foci and commitments for and about the SDGs that are currently included in university programs. An overview of the SDGs’ focus at universities was presented using a survey to gather qualitative and quantitative data. . Based on current trends and gaps, this paper identifies the need for a framework which may be of assistance in facilitating the inclusion of the SDGs as a whole, and individually targets in particular in the programs of institutions of higher education. The scientific contribution of this paper value lies in the fact that this is one of the first papers to tackle the need for a framework which caters to a more systematic introduction of the SDGs in university programs. The basis for the framework approach, here introduced, includes institutional, thematic, structural and personal/individual aspects which need to be considered for proper implementation of the SDGs at the university level.
... Figure 1 explores this correlation by contrasting circular and linear representations of the value proposition, value creation and delivery, and value capture element of a BM with its economic, environmental, and social performance. Each BM element (value proposition, creation and delivery system, and value capture) is affected by four core issues of corporate sustainability economic, environmental, and social dimensions, and a long-term orientation [99,100]. Naturally, all three elements of a business model (value proposition, value creation and delivery, and value capture) have to "go circular" to achieve optimal sustainability within the CE. ...
By referring to the European Green Deal, this paper analyzes the “intrinsic value” of cultural heritage by investigating the human-centered adaptive reuse of this heritage. This implies questions such as how to improve the effectiveness of reuse, restoration, and valorization interventions on cultural heritage/landscapes and how to transform a cultural asset into a place, interpreted as a living ecosystem, to be managed as a living organism. The autopoietic characteristic of the eco-bio-systems, specifically focusing on the intrinsic versus instrumental values of cultural heritage ecosystem is discussed in detail. Specifically, the notion of complex social value is introduced to express the above integration. In ecology, the notion of intrinsic value (or “primary value”) relates to the recognition of a value that “pre-exists” any exploitation by human beings. The effectiveness of transforming a heritage asset into a living ecosystem is seen to follow from an integration of these two values. In this context, the paper provides an overview of the different applications of the business model concept in the circular economy, for a better investment decision-making and management in heritage adaptive reuse. Matera case is presented as an example of a cultural heritage ecosystem. To conclude, recommendations toward an integrated approach in managing the adaptive reuse of heritage ecosystem as a living organism are proposed.
Creative destruction is an effective input in increasing the capabilities of organizations in a rapidly changing and competitive work environment, by supporting the capabilities of those organizations to achieve proactivity and exploit opportunities, as well as improve and develop their performance effectively in the work environment. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the adoption of tourism companies' category (A) and five-star hotels for the entrance of creative destruction on the entrepreneurial orientation and sustainable performance, as well as to assess whether creative destruction affects sustainable performance through the entrepreneurial orientation as an intermediate variable. The study relied on the survey form to collect data from the study sample, which was represented in workers at various administrative levels in tourism companies category (A) and five-star hotels in Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada. The use of SPSS V.28 and AMOS V.26 was used to analyze 652 valid forms. The results of the study highlighted the positive impact of creative destruction on entrepreneurial orientation and sustainable performance in tourism companies' category (A) and five hotels. The results of the study also showed that the entrepreneurial orientation enhances the sustainable performance of tourism companies' category (A)and five hotels positively. Finally, the results of the study showed that the entrepreneurial orientation plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between creative destruction and sustainable performance in tourism companies' category (A) and the five hotels. The study recommended the need to maximize the environmental performance of tourism and hotel companies by adopting some green practices at work such as green human resources management, green operations and activities or green products and services to preserve the environment and reduce the negative effects of their activities and operations on the environment.
Organisations are an integral part of modern societies. They are sub-systems of a larger environmental system. Organisations are, usually, divided into civil society, corporations, education, and public sector ones. Organisations are complex, semi-open, social systems with sets of inter-related units engaged in joint problem-solving to accomplish a goal or objective, and to create value and acceptable outcomes for stakeholders. An organisation is composed of system elements (differentiated functions or groups divided into operations and production, management and strategy, organisational systems, governance, supply chains, service provision, assessment and reporting, and research and development), that are, in turn, composed of individuals. The organisation, groups, and individuals are affected by informational, emotional, and behavioural attitudes. Organisations must also balance the needs and interactions of multiple stakeholders, including social and environmental, primary and secondary concerns, and internal and external needs. Stakeholder interactions can be inter-personal, inter-group, or inter-organisational, and range from competitive, to cooperative, to collaborative ones. The Multi-dimensional Sustainability Influence Change (MuSIC) memework is designed to address the entire organisation system, including the organisation, its groups, individual, their respective attitudes, as well as the systemic/connecting and external levels.
Organisational change aims to move from the current state to one that is more desirable. It is complex, continuous, iterative, and uncertain. The rate of change is dependent on the organisation’s context, nature, and external events. Addressing sustainability issues in organisations is a complex process, where creativity is a precondition for organisational change, and innovation is key in inside-out changes. Innovation is linked to creativity through invention, which is the creation of a new idea, an innovation is the process of developing and implementing the new idea. There have been proposals regarding the evolution of sustainability in organisations that range from three to six stages. In organisations, sustainability is generally driven equally by external stimuli and internal factors, followed by mainly by internal factors, but with some external stimuli, mainly by external stimuli, but with some internal factors. Change management for sustainability must encompass all the system elements in a process where the status quo is disrupted and a new, more sustainability-oriented state, is achieved. The process is iterative, multi-levelled, and highly dynamic. Change management is most relevant for organisational sustainability, since it addresses the time dimension by providing a dynamic perspective and goes beyond technocentric and management approaches.
There have been many efforts aimed at how organisations have been addressing sustainability; however, there have been few studies on how organisations have incorporated and how they have been institutionalised. Incorporation refers to the initiation of change and may be driven internally. When change is adopted and put into practice for long enough, and increasingly, by different members of the organisation, until widespread implementation and stabilisation is achieved, it is institutionalised. There are two main hierarchy approaches when dealing with sustainability change top-down and bottom-up. Top-down approaches can lead to faster incorporation of sustainability, whilst bottom-up approaches might take longer but would better facilitate its institutionalisation. Without bottom-up support, institutionalization might take longer, or not take place. Bottom-up without the support of the top levels slows down, or even blocks sustainability incorporation. Ultimately, both approaches need to be complementary. Empirical research in the contexts of Higher Education Institutions, football clubs, and the results from a survey are presented in this chapter.
Purpose: The main purpose of the article is to determine the strategic directions of Industry 4.0 organizations in the conditions of sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach: Many different strategy typologies have been presented in the literature. They allow for the identification of different strategic orientations of organizations operating in a changing market environment. Taking into account the concept of Industry 4.0, the essence of which is the extensive use of the Internet, networks, and data exchange for increasingly better functioning of the organization, an in-depth analysis and review of the literature on sustainable development was carried out, which provided the basis for developing a model of strategic directions recommended to organizations implementing the idea of Industry 4.0. Findings: Based on an in-depth analysis and literature review, a model of strategic orientations of Industry 4.0 organizations was developed, covering four basic activities: organizational expansion, organizational innovation, organizational entrepreneurship, and organizational creativity enabling sustainable development of the organization. Originality/value: The article presents an original approach to strategic orientation as a key competence of contemporary organizations implementing the Industry 4.0 concept in conditions of sustainable development. In the proposed model, the authors emphasize the special role of organizational creativity, which stimulates the creation of new values in the organization and its strategy aimed at implementing the Industry 4.0 concept in conditions of sustainable development. These new values have a decisive impact on the organization's growth and sustainability in a turbulent and dynamic environment, focusing on maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem. Keywords: Industry 4.0, sustainable development, organization, orientation, strategy, values. Category of the paper: Viewpoint, conceptual paper.
7) ، (العدد 1 / 2 يونية) 2222 ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ ــــــــــــــــ ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 94 الخمس والفنادق (أ) فئة السياحة شركات في المستدام األداء على الخالق الهدم أثر الريادي للتوجه الوسيط الدور نجوم: رية أبو جمال مروة 1 زيد أبو محمود رضا ، 2 حشاد عزت محمد ، 2 1 ، 3 الفندقية الدراسات قسم-والفنادق السياحة كلية-السادات مدينة جامعة 2 الدراسات قسم السياحية-والفنادق السياحة كلية-السادات مدينة جامعة الملخص من والتنافسية، التغيير سريعة العمل بيئة في المنظمات قدرات زيادة في ً فعاال ً مدخال الخالق الهدم يعد المنظمات تلك قدرات دعم خالل على بشكل أدائهم وتطوير تحسين وكذلك الفرص، واستغالل االستباقية تحقيق العمل. بيئة في فعال لذا الدراسة هذه هدفت إلى لمدخل نجوم الخمس والفنادق (أ) فئة السياحة شركات تبني أثر تقييم الخالق الهدم على إذا تقييم بجانب المستدام، واألداء الريادي التوجه ما يؤثر الخالق الهدم كان على المس األداء تدام وسيط. كمتغير الريادي التوجه خالل من استقصاء استمارات توزيع خالل من البيانات جمع تم على عينة م ن الشيخ شرم بمدينتي نجوم الخمس والفنادق (أ) فئة السياحة شركات في اإلدارية المستويات مختلف في العاملين برنامجي استخدام تم والغردقة. SPSS V.28 و AMOS V.26 لتحليل 256 صالحة استمارة للتحليل. وقد أبرزت نتا الخالق للهدم إيجابي تأثير وجود الدراسة ئج على (أ) فئة السياحة شركات في المستدام واألداء الريادي التوجه الخمس والفنادق نجوم السياحة لشركات المستدام األداء من يعزز الريادي التوجه أن الدراسة نتائج أوضحت كما. الخمس والفنادق (أ) فئة نتا بينت ً أخيرا إيجابي. بشكل في ً جزئيا ً وسيطا ً دورا يلعب الريادي التوجه أن الدراسة ئج الخمس والفنادق (أ) فئة السياحة شركات في المستدام واألداء الخالق الهدم بين العالقة نجوم الدراسة أوصت. العمل في الخضراء الممارسات بعض تبني خالل من والفنادق السياحة لشركات البيئي األداء تعظيم بضرورة كإد للحفاظ الخضراء والخدمات المنتجات أو الخضراء واألنشطة والعمليات الخضراء، البشرية الموارد ارة ع لى وعملياتهم ألنشطتهم السلبية اآلثار وتقليل البيئة على البيئة. الدالة: الكلمات ال الشيخ، شرم الفنادق، السياحة، شركات المستدام، األداء الريادي، التوجه الخالق، الهدم غرد قة. مقدمة الحكومات قبل من المنظمات على الضغط زيادة إلي األخيرة العقود في البيئي االهتمام زيادة أدى (البيئي أدائها لتحسين والعمالء والمجتمع YildizÇankaya & Sezen, 2019 البيئي الوعي سلط كما .) القطاعات جميع في باالهتمام حظيت التي االستدامة مفهوم على الضوء كاستجاب وذلك والضيافة، السياحة وخاصة ة استدامة ولتعزيز والتنظيمية، القضائية المخاطر ولتفادي ،ً واجتماعيا ً بيئيا الواعين المصلحة أصحاب لمطالب (السوق ونمو الربحية Alameeri et al., 2018; Legrand et al., 2022 المنظمات من العديد قامت .) بمراجعة والفندقية السياحية (مستدامة أنشطة إلى التقليدية األنشطة لتغيير وأنشطتها عملياتها Kalpande & Toke, 2021 تشجيع إلى الحاجة ظهرت االستدامة إلدارة الالزمة واإلجراءات السياسات وضع وبعد .) (المستدام السلوك في االنخراط على الموظفين Wolf, 2013 المنظم لتوجهات الموظفين تصورات ألن وذلك ،) ة
Faced with growing socio-environmental changes and tragedies, higher education institutions (HEIs) have been undergoing a process of organizational transformation. With the establishment of the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the need for sustainable business models becomes more evident. Therefore, this study aims to verify the feasibility of applying a sustainable business model structure to analyze HEI eco-innovative strategies. A case study was conducted based on the Biloslavo et al. (2018) model. The possibility of this application was observed, with the necessary adaptations, mainly with creating a communication segment. The eco-innovations carried out at the institution are also highlighted, which can support the practices of other universities.KeywordSustainable business modelsHigher educationSustainabilityUniversitiesEco-innovations
The COVID-19 pandemic is emerging as a window of opportunity, urging governments and organisations worldwide to accelerate the transition towards a green economy. Despite the attempts towards a green transition, transforming current practices and embedding sustainability within daily work routines still presents organisations with major challenges. These are partly due to a traditionally top-down, siloed and reactive approach to sustainability innovation, often emerging from new government regulations, market sanctions, or leadership changes. Such an approach often results in a symbolic adoption of sustainability which fails to create a sense of distributed problem-solving, wasting employees’ innovative potential in delivering substantial social and environmental value. To understand how organisations can prevent such symbolic adoption of sustainability, experts have studied organisational designs that ensure bottom-up innovation processes, continuous learning and resilience. This dissertation investigates how employee-driven innovation (EDI) can be harnessed for organisational sustainability transitions (ST). Through a combination of academic literature and practice-based knowledge gathered across three semi-structured interviews, this qualitative study will explain how EDI can contribute to organisational sustainability transitions and will unpack which factors, mechanisms or processes can initiate such an innovation process.
Consumers are showing a growing concern for the environment and sustainability, while they keep their interest in more creative products that ‘delight’ them and exceed their expectations. Consequently, designers must meet the circular economy (CE) requirements, but also provide creative solutions. The present research describes an experiment in which a group of designers were asked to solve design problems using two different methods: random stimuli and biomimicry. The results help to answer the question regarding whether methods focused on requirements (biological requirements in this case) are as effective for obtaining creative solutions as methods oriented toward creative ideas (specifically random stimuli). The paper also examines whether biomimicry stimuli promote circularity to a sufficiently greater extent than a random stimulus to compensate for the possible loss of creativity with respect to the random method. The results show that biomimicry stimuli promote circularity in the concepts without diminishing their creativity.
The chapter aims to present changes in financial markets towards sustainable business practices and assesses the decision criteria adopted by financial institutions in the process of transaction risk valuation in terms of the presence of ESG criteria and diagnose the impact of including these criteria in the risk assessment. The determinants of changes in financial markets towards sustainable business practices were discussed. At the end of the chapter, sustainable decision criteria adopted by institutions in the financial market have been discussed.
The scale and urgency of sustainability problems the world over has led to calls for sustainability transformations in cities, regions, and countries. Such calls for transformation are underlain by a persistent knowledge-to-action gap between scientific knowledge production, policy, and practice. To rise to the challenges of sustainability and resilience, municipal administrators need to set evidence-based and ambitious sustainability targets and develop strategies to achieve them. Simultaneously, transdisciplinary sustainability science researchers need to generate scientific knowledge to further enable cities along pathways of transformation. This paper details a collaborative backcasting game, AudaCITY, developed to build transformative capacity in city administrations while also generating deep contextual knowledge to inform a transformative sustainability science research agenda. We present AudaCITY's key features, potential applications and adaptations, and exemplary outputs and outcomes for cities and researchers. We conclude with recommendations for adopting and adapting AudaCITY for use in action-oriented and transformational sustainability science and capacity building.
This explorative research deals with the relationship between barriers to organizational learning (OL) and the adoption of sustainability-related strategies, focusing on the cooperative business model. A single case study involving a large Italian food retailing cooperative was conducted. Interviews with 12 managers and ten external stakeholders were recorded and analyzed with NVivo software. The results were coded based on the taxonomy of barriers proposed by Shilling and Kluge (2009). A total of 153 pieces of evidence emerged, subtending OL-related barriers to the integration of sustainability at business level. Most of these barriers prevented the sustainability-related initiatives from being fully integrated and/or institutionalized, operating at the level of groups or of the entire organization. To stimulate the effective integration and institutionalization of sustainability in the cooperative’s business strategy, the implementation of adequate organizational and managerial instruments emerges as strategic. Effective communication, measurement tools of sustainability performance, and improvement of staff skills represent opportunities to overcome the identified barriers. As links with customers and communities, cooperative members also play a key role in this perspective.
The rapid development of salmon aquaculture worldwide and the growing criticism of the activity in recent decades have raised doubts about the capacity of the sector to learn from its own crises. In this article, we assess the discursive, behavioral and outcome performance dimensions of the industry to identify actual learning and lessons to be learned. We focus on the case of Chiloé Island, Chile, a global center of salmon production since 1990 that has gone through two severe crises in the last 15 years (2007–2009 ISAV crisis and 2016 red tide crisis). On the basis of a multi-method approach combining qualitative analysis of interviews and statistical data analysis, we observe that the industry has discursively learned the relevance of both self-regulation and the well-being of communities. However, at the behavioral and outcome performance levels, the data show a highly heterogeneous conduct that questions the ability of the sector as a whole to learn from crises. We conclude that detrimental effects for ecosystems and society will increase if learning remains at the level of discourses. Without significant changes in operational practices and market performance there are no real perspectives for the sustainability of the industry. This intensifies when considering the uneven responses to governance mechanisms. The sector needs to adapt its factual performance to sustainable goals and reflexively monitor this process. The first step for achieving this is to produce reliable data to make evidence-based decisions that align the operational dynamics of the entire sector with a more sustainable trajectory in the near future, as well as advancing towards hybrid and more reflexive governance arrangements.
This chapter provides a discussion on the connections between sustainable development competences and the pedagogical approaches used to develop them. It first reviews the competences and pedagogical approaches. The chapter highlights that a combination of pedagogical approaches is needed to better develop sustainability competences. The combination of pedagogical approaches has to take into consideration as well as the context and nature of the discipline, programme, and course being taught. The combination should encourage teachers and their students to challenge traditional mono-disciplinary and silo approaches in order to provide solutions to complex, multi-level, and wicked problems affecting the economic, environmental, social, and time dimensions of sustainability.
Purpose
While concerns about the social and environmental impact that result from business activity continue to grow, a stream of research consolidates to understand the mechanisms that can favor more sustainable companies. The present study tries to expand the knowledge of the antecedents of radical innovation by analyzing the effects of alternative and understudied constructs. Grounded on stewardship and organizational learning theories, this paper analyzes how leaders that are concerned with sustainability and the social impact of their companies may boost this type of innovation by facilitating an organizational context that promotes experimentation, dialog, participative decision-making, risk-taking and interaction with the external environment.
Design/methodology/approach
Through structural equation modeling, the study provides empirical evidence of the positive effect of stewardship leader behavior on radical innovation, using organizational learning capability as an explanatory variable.
Findings
Results suggest that organizational learning capability fully mediates the relationship between stewardship leader behavior and radical innovation.
Research limitations/implications
This research focuses on a sample frame of Spanish companies with recognized excellence in human resources management.
Practical implications
In the context of a growing interest in sustainable development, and concern for the consequences of economic and business activities, this study highlights the role played by stewardship leader behavior to foster radical innovation and organizational learning capability which, in turn, represent essential tools to compete in a globalized and turbulent context.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that analyzes the mediating effect of organizational learning capability in the relationship between stewardship leader behavior and radical innovation. This paper contributes to the understanding of how stewardship leader behavior affects radical innovation and the key role played by organizational learning capability.
As the impact of sustainable development on the world’s future is better understood, each industry is encouraged to find a solution for sustainability in its own field. We want to show why the sustainability approach is important for building business models. We will seek answers that banks will gain by including a sustainability factor in their business models. We will not only analyze how to effectively build business models in banks, or we’ll analyze the approach to redefining them based on risk factors. We want to show how banks should approach the construction of their business models taking into account their internal specificity, creating original values, the factor of social responsibility, but also ESG risk factors. We also want to consider how to approach business model design so that they are effective both in the face of the economic crisis and the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The end result of this chapter will be to answer the question of the differences in designing business model canvases and how to approach sustainable business models.
Constructing roads in Madagascar; forestry along Canada's Pacific Coast; water and sanitation projects in South Africa; community banking in the United States; constructing a new global system for corporate reporting. These all have something in common. They provide great illustrations of the types of profound and wise changes needed in the way we run our affairs if we are to respond to the scale of environmental and social challenges and opportunities facing us. They are examples of "societal learning and change". Today, this phenomenon is occurring across industries as diverse as resources extraction, infrastructure development, agriculture and information technology at the local, national, regional and global levels. Its essence involves the ability to create rich relationships that bridge large differences. This book describes this phenomenon for practitioners to help them address issues and develop opportunities more effectively.
Building on the traditions of individual and organizational learning, this book suggests that our challenge is to create learning societies and processes. This involves both change in ourselves as individuals, but also change in the way the three key systems that make up our societies – the political system (government), economic system (business) and social system (civil society) – function by creating more robust interactions that respond to human and environmental imperatives rather than organizational ones.
Societal Learning and Change presents a meta-framework that covers diverse approaches, including corporate citizenship, social responsibility, community development, private-public partnerships, inter-sectoral collaboration and sustainability strategies. It makes sense of all of these by emphasising that they all share the need to change relationships at the societal level and explaining how to do this from a systems perspective. The book helps overcome the conundrum where individual organisations are unsuccessfully trying to achieve big change with their stakeholders. Rather than stakeholder management with an organization-centric viewpoint, this book describes the importance of taking a stakeholder engagement and issue/opportunity-centric strategy.
Wherever you are, you can make a contribution to shifting the paradigm through a societal learning and change strategy. The critical contribution is creating new relationships between people and organizations that traditionally would not interact but in fact have common interests. When these relationships become meaningful by addressing a problem or developing an opportunity, people begin to learn about each other and develop mutual appreciation and understanding. Often this process is complicated and confusing. People do not use words in the same way even if they speak the same formal language; they do not learn or perceive the world the same way although they may share a common culture; their organizations have diverse goals, resources and weaknesses that make working together problematic. However, it is these very differences that are the source of the value of working together. Societal Learning and Change aims to make it easier to solve differences in order to work together successfully; it does this by identifying some of the differences as sources of tension and opportunity and describing the development processes of building relationships that can produce mutually rewarding innovation that is unimaginable when the relationship begins.
This is an extremely optimistic book at a time of great pessimism about the huge forces of globalization and corporate power that seem to be overwhelming us. It will be essential reading for students and practitioners in the fields of organizational learning, sustainability, poverty, international development and stakeholder relations.
Over the last two million years, humans have colonized almost the entire biosphere on Earth, thereby creating socio-ecological systems in which fundamental patterns and processes are co-regulated by socio-economic and ecological processes. We postulate that the evolution of coupled socio-ecological systems can be characterized by a sequence of relatively stable configurations, here denoted as ‘socio-metabolic regimes’, and comparatively rapid transitions between such regimes. We discern three fundamentally different socio-metabolic regimes: hunter-gatherers, agrarian societies and industrial society. Transitions between these regimes fundamentally change socio-ecological interactions, whereas changes and variations within each regime are gradual. Two-thirds of the world population are currently within a rapid transition from the agrarian to the industrial regime. Many current global sustainability problems are a direct consequence of this transition. The central hypothesis discussed in this article is that industrial society is at least as different from a future sustainable society as it is from the agrarian regime. The challenge of sustainability is, therefore, a fundamental re-orientation of society and the economy, not the implementation of some technical fixes. Based on empirical data for global resource use (material and energy flows, land use), this essay questions the notion that the promotion of eco-efficiency is sufficient for achieving sustainability, and outlines the reasons why a transition to a new socio-metabolic regime is now required. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
A theoretical framework for understanding creativity in a complex social setting, such as an organization, is developed. Organizational creativity is defined as the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system. The starting point for the theoretical development is provided by the interactionist model of creative behavior developed by Woodman and Schoenfeldt (1989). This model and supporting literature on creative behavior and organizational innovation are used to develop an interactional framework for organizational creativity. The theoretical framework is summarized by 3 propositions that can effectively guide the development of testable hypotheses.
Tested the effects of training on attitudes of 112 manufacturing engineers toward divergent thinking in problem solving. 47 Ss trained 5 wks later served as the control for the 1st group of 65 Ss in the 1st part of the experiment, and vice versa in the 2nd part. Measurements of attitudes toward divergent thinking were taken 3 times (prior to training and following training of each group). A 14-item questionnaire was completed by each trainee and each trainee's immediate superior. Results show that the training positively affected engineers' attitudes toward divergent thinking in problem solving. Specifically, the training with intact work groups demonstrated consistent results, whereas training with those from diffuse locations produced mixed results. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Gaia theory proposes that a cybernetic system including the biota and the physicochemical environment regulates environmental
variables at a global scale, keeping them within a range that makes Earth inhabitable by living beings. One can argue that
this theory can play an important role in school science, since it bears upon current environmental problems, contributes
to cross-disciplinary learning, and may help students understand the nature of science. Nevertheless, discourses about Gaia
include both scientific and non-scientific ideas, and, consequently, this theory has been seen as pseudoscience, or even antiscience,
as an unwarranted view, entangled with mysticism. But an informed view about the contributions and risks associated with Gaia
as part of science education depends on a general analysis about the treatment of this theory in school knowledge. Here, we
offer the first analysis of this sort, critically evaluating how Gaia is addressed in a representative sample of Brazilian
textbooks (n=18). We present data about the presence or not of Gaia theory among the contents covered by the textbooks, the presence
of the claim that Earth is living, whether and how they use analogies to justify this claim, the discussion of evidence for
and against Gaia, and the treatment of its relevance to current issues. Gaia theory is explicitly addressed in ca. 39% of
the analyzed textbooks. There is a general script that the textbooks that explicitly name the theory follow when discussing
Gaia. First, they argue that life affects the environment, and support this argument by means of examples, then, explain what
the Gaia theory proposes, discuss evidence in favor either of the idea that Earth is living or Gaia theory in general, introduce
one or more analogies to justify the claim of a living Earth, and, finally, offer remarks on the current importance of Gaia.
Three analogies used by Lovelock himself were found in the analyzed textbooks, Gaia as a superorganism, the analogy between
Gaia and a redwood tree, and between Gaia and the Greek goddess of Earth. The most frequent was the superorganism analogy.
The idea of a control system including the biota and the physicochemical environment and any discussion about theoretical
and empirical advances resulting from Gaia theory were absent from most analyzed textbooks, which focused mainly on the claim
of a living Earth. Although Gaia can contribute to the understanding of environmental issues, the treatment found in most
of the analyzed schoolbooks puts so much emphasis on the idea that Earth is living and is so close to an animistic understanding
of the Earth system that it is likely that it will bring no true contribution to the development of adequate conceptions about
that system and the connections between human activities and the environmental crisis.
Since this classic book was first published in 2003, sustainability has increasingly become mainstream business for leading corporations, whilst the topic itself has also been a hotly debated political issue across the globe. The sustainability phase models originally discussed in the book have become more relevant with ever more examples of organizations at later stages in the development of corporate sustainability. Bringing together global issues of ecological sustainability, strategic human resource management, organizational change, corporate social responsibility, leadership and community renewal, this new edition of the book further develops its unified approach to corporate sustainability and its plan of action to bring about corporate change. It integrates new research and brings illustrative case studies up to date to reflect how new approaches affect change and leadership. For the first time, a new positive model of a future sustainable world is included -strengthened by references to the global financial crisis, burgeoning world population numbers and the rise of China. With new case studies including BP's Gulf oil spill and Tokyo Electric Company's nuclear reactor disaster, this new edition will again be core reading for students and researchers of sustainability and business, organizational change and corporate social responsibility.
In this article we develop a theoretical framework for understanding creativity in complex social settings. We define organizational creativity as the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system. The starting point for our theoretical development is provided by the interactionist model of creative behavior developed by Woodman and Schoenfeldt (1989). This model and supporting literature on creative behavior and organizational innovation are used to develop an interactional framework for organizational creativity. The theoretical framework is summarized by three propositions that can effectively guide the development of testable hypotheses.
The book consists of five parts. Part 1 looks at the main trends in the world over the next 50 yr and their likely environmental consequences. Chapter 2 looks at the nature of sustainable development: whether it is compatible with economic growth, the idea of carrying capacity and the limitations of market economics. Part 2 looks at patterns of thought and action deeply ingrained within the Western industrial model of development. Sources are examined to help us understand the relationship of individuals with industrial societies, and that of humankind with nature and its embodiment in our economic systems. This section also looks at the political assumptions of Westernisation and "market-friendly' policies, and their implications for the management of sustainable development. Part 3 turns to the present organisation of world business and finance, the emerging global culture of industrial consumption and consumerism, and the implications of these for sustainable development. In Chapter 6, these "top-down' economic arrangements are contrasted with growing need for "bottom-up' local participation, both to fulfil democratic aspirations and for effectiveness in developing and implementing policy in environmental management. Part 4 turns to the potential of innovative management approaches to contribute to sustainable development. Chapter 7 reviews the main institutional and organisational constraints on "integrated' environmental management. Chapter 8 considers management in conditions of endemic turbulence and uncertainty, and the potential role of networks in environmental management, including policy, issue, professional and producer networks. Chapter 9 describes the assumptions and methods of working in action-centred networks. Part 5 comprises four case studies in environmental management, which illustrate the action-centred network approach in the industrialised and developing worlds. -from Authors
Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to point out the necessity of implementing more appropriate approaches instead of the traditional single disciplinary approaches, in order to be able to cope with the ill‐defined, highly complex problem of sustainable development in systems such as organizations or regions.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on empirical data concerning expert and stakeholder preferences, it is argued that research and teaching on innovation for sustainability need to be both inter‐ and transdisciplinary.
Findings
Here, the approach of transdisciplinary case studies, developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, allows appropriate integration of research and teaching activities and thus leads to mutual learning between the case study actors.
Practical implications
In the second part of the paper, these conceptual considerations are illustrated with the so‐called Erzherzog Johann case study, an integrative research and teaching project at the University of Graz.
Originality/value
In the paper the very complex task to integrate research and teaching on sustainability‐related innovation is described and illustrated with the first transdisciplinary case‐study conducted in Austria according to the ETH approach.
This book discusses the development of a theory on the growth of the firm. It is shown that the resources with which a particular firm is accustomed to working will shape the productive services its management is capable of rendering. The experience of management will affect the productive services that all its other resources are capable of rendering. As management tries to make the best use of the resources available, a ‘dynamic’ interacting process occurs which encourages growth but limits the rate of growth.
The crisis of sustainability is seen as a crisis of mind and thus a challenge for management education. Traditional educational methods are seen as inadequate even when they include radically different content. Gregory Bateson's critique of rational conscious purpose is explored to suggest that an appropriate form of education for ecological understanding will draw on aesthetics, grace and ceremony. An account of such education is offered.
This paper develops the concept that sustainable development is a process that centres around a complex series of continuously negotiated business and social projects or experiments. This process involves different parts of the business and industrial system, including many of a firm’s stakeholders in continuous learning, action and change. Processes of this kind can be viewed as multi-party, learning – action networks that span business organizations and stakeholders in society. This paper presents a case study of a Canadian company, acknowledged as a leader in environmental management. It outlines how the company responded to demands for more sustainable practices. It describes how the company’s approach to strategic planning identified and responded to these issues, how its approach was progressively refined and redefined, and the way that the organization’s culture and strategic processes influenced its willingness to learn and act with a network of internal and external stakeholders. Based on case findings, the paper identifies the critical role for learning – action networks in the transition to more sustainable business organization and the need for these networks to be supported by appropriate organizational culture and processes. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
This article reports a comparative case study of four joint ventures between partners from the United States and the People's Republic of China. The bargaining power of potential partners affects the structure of management control in a joint venture, which affects venture performance. Several informal control mechanisms interacting with formal control structure and influencing performance are identified. We also investigated the joint ventures' evolution over time. An integrative model of management control in joint ventures is presented.
Despite an increasing focus by post-secondary institutions on incorporating sustainability concepts into research and operations there is little research that investigates the understanding, benefits, challenges, and driving forces for institutions that are integrating sustainability concepts into teaching. This paper is a summary of a qualitative cross-case analysis of two post-secondary American institutions that have demonstrated significant progress in integrating the concepts of sustainability into teaching.
This paper argues that, while change must be well managed, it also requires effective leadership to be successfully introduced and sustained. An integrative model of leadership for change is proposed, reflecting its cognitive, spiritual, emotional and behavioural dimensions and requirements. The model comprises vision, values, strategy, empowerment, and motivation and inspiration. The paper concludes with a brief account of the application of the model in varied strategic change situations.
Learning journals are used to help advanced-level undergraduate students construct a personal understanding of Gaia Theory. In this context, students like the journal technique and consider it appropriate to the course. They also agree that writing journals contributes to promoting subject learning, introspection and self-awareness of their own learning processes. For the instructor, the journals provide detailed insight into the development of student learning and students' interactions with the other components of the curriculum. The journals highlight which instructional devices work, which have problems, who is affected and what learning strategies they adopt. They provide a better perspective on the extent of students' reading and reflection than is obtainable from more formal scripts. The chief problem in the use of learning journals is their bulk and the time required for assessment and analysis. The journal technique has also helped demonstrate how the Gaia Theory may provide an appropriate curriculum for the practice of constructive learning. The unorthodox ideas and contradictions of Gaia Theory successfully challenge students to think deeply, critically and self-consciously about their prior understanding of the world.
There is little in the literature that focuses on both the thoughts and feelings of scientists and engineers when they are in the throes of scientific creation or invention. This investigation was performed to address the question: What is the experience of modeling natural phenomena? Special emphasis was placed on mathematical modeling. A formal heuristic procedure was used to gather data from 12 scientists and engineers. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for general themes and points of view. The data, represented primarily in the form of a structural flow diagram, emphasize both the cognitive and emotional features of the process. The major features that emerged include the existence of creative feedback loops, unipolar‐positive phases of both illumination and acceptance, and unipolar negative phases of blockages to the attainment of the positive poles. Implications and applications emerged in the areas of creativity, validation, education, and motivation. It was concluded that far too little emphasis has been placed on the role that feelings play in the creative process, and it was suggested that it is important to understand, teach, and recognize emotions in order to learn to trust our own natural abilities and intuition.
the aim of the present treatment is two-fold: we want to provide a representative state-of-the-art review of concepts, theories, and research in the field of human problem solving with particular emphasis on the creativity region
aspects of difficulty
information-processing system (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Prevailing approaches of planning and strategy making, which traditionally deal with the states of systems in terms of fixed goals, fail to acknowledge the process nature of sustainable development. Using a system dynamics approach and relying on the concept of viability loops, the paper aims to illustrate a practical implementation of sustainable development with an urban water system as an example. It argues that planning for sustainable development should be ‘process-based’ – rather than ‘fixed-goal’ – oriented. Unlike the traditional approaches of strategy making to set fixed goals related to either supply-side and/or demand-side management, it is argued that triggering a social learning process with full involvement of all stakeholders and planners in the process would be the most suitable strategy for sustainable development. To this end, backcasting is recommended as a suitable tool and the process of model building is regarded as a means of learning rather than forecasting. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Because research on team mental models is still in its formative stages, there is a need for continued conceptual development of the construct and direct empirical support linking team mental models to team outcomes. Researchers in other fields have developed concepts that are distinct from, but clearly related to team mental models, including information sharing, transactive memory, group learning, and cognitive consensus. Although these research streams currently exist in parallel with little cross-fertilization, there is much to be gained from integration across disciplinary boundaries. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to enrich the theoretical understanding of team mental models and to broaden the empirical research base by adopting a cross-disciplinary focus and incorporating related team knowledge domains from other literatures. Based on a synthesis of various literatures, we develop a framework that delineates the relationships among team knowledge constructs. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The purpose of this paper is to review some of the issues posed when designing a management programme that attempts to incorporate sustainable development as a core theme at a time of uncertainty and rapid change. The paper is written to help inform management educators and curriculum designers of the importance of such a programme, some of the dilemmas to be resolved, and the strategic choices to be made. This paper concludes by outlining the structure and process of a management programme that meets the needs of contemporary managers, yet also helps them become more aware of the centrality of sustainability to their work and the decisions they make. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
This paper evaluates the ongoing change from modern to post-modern paradigm and identifies a new paradigm. The modern paradigm (EEE) relies on neoclassical economics, egoistic interests and eco-|employee efficiency. The post-modern paradigm (SSS) has been established on the systems approach, stakeholder theory and sustainability. As modernism exploits and post-modernism observes humans and nature, another paradigm is needed to reach genuine corporate sustainability. The pre-Morphean paradigm (MMM) is developing on the triangle of morphic resonance, metamorphosis and Morphean mind. Pre-Morpheanism understands humans and nature. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
There are not many books that are genuine classics, and only a handful in business and management whose insights and ideas last for 50 years and more. This book is one of the very few 'must reads' for anybody seriously interested in the role of management within the firm. Originally published in 1959, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm has illuminated and inspired thinking in strategy, entrepreneurship, knowledge creation, and innovation. Edith Penrose's tightly-argued classic laid the foundations for the resource based view of the firm, now the dominant framework in business strategy. She analyses managerial activities and decisions, organizational routines, and also the factors that inevitably limit a firm's growth prospects. For this new anniversary edition, Christos Pitelis has written a new introduction which both tells the story of Penrose's extraordinary life, and provides a balanced assessment of her key ideas and their continuing relevance and freshness.
One of the defining characteristics of humankind is that we are, by nature, a social species. This makes the individualistic behaviours that increasingly characterise our society and culture both “unnatural” and it tends to create imbalances and conflicts between individuals, groups and organisations.This paper presents two approaches to build stronger and more Sustainability oriented organisations through collaboration. The first one is the Japanese concept of Kyosei, or “spirit of cooperation”, which invokes collaboration among labour, companies, customers, governments, and others.Kyosei is complemented with a Multi-dimensional Sustainability Influence Change (MuSIC) memework as a means of understanding and promoting integrated progress towards Sustainability. The MuSIC memework explores the complexity and interconnectedness of the three types of attitudes: (1) informational, (2) emotional, and (3) behavioural, within three organisational levels: (a) individuals, (b) groups, and (c) the organisation.
What is creativity and how can we foster it in our students? According to cognitive views of creativity, creative problem solving can be defined as producing a novel method of solving a new problem. Creative teaching occurs when a teacher teaches subject matter in ways that help students to transfer what they have learned to creative problem solving. Three examples involving science, mathematics, and computing problems are presented to show how teaching with analogical models can lead to improvements in students' creativity. Creative learning occurs when students use active learning strategies for mentally representing new material in ways that lead to problem solving transfer. Three examples involving science, mathematics, and computing problems are presented to demonstrate how learning strategies for forming mental representations can lead to improvements in students' creativity. New developments in cognitive theories of transfer, mental models, and learning strategies are likely to contribute to our understanding of how to foster creativity in our students.