Series:

Transformation and Innovation

12 total works

Cover of Community Activation for Integral Development
As mass global and social media communications spread across the globe, we are seeing a need for change in the way we approach issues of political and economic development. The effects of these growing communications are that on the one hand we see the significance of place rising, whilst on the other, marginalized people clamor to be heard and identities become increasingly threatened. We are quickly realising that a 'one-size fits all' approach is not going to work. Despite more than half a century of attempts to address issues of development, we have seen fairly bleak results. In fact, the rising of economic stars, such as Japan and the Pacific Tigers hitherto, and China and India of late, have little to do with such programs of development or cultural studies notwithstanding their accomplishment. Typically such successes have developed top-down, with theories born and bred in the 'west' affecting, or maligning, practices in the 'rest'. The approach taken in this book looks at these developments by turning them on their head: instead starting bottom-up with an emphasis on what the author terms Community Activation.
With a selection of case studies, this volume looks at where community activation can be found and explores how it could evolve and be of use in developing societies at large. In the process he addresses such topics as how to embed development in a particular society, how to generate social and economic solidarity, and how to generate wealth from pre-industrial and post-industrial networks. This book provides a guide for readers on how to build Community, within their organization-and-society from the ground up.

Cover of Integral Dynamics
The theory of integral dynamics is based on the view that the development of individual leaders or entrepreneurs requires the simultaneous development of institutions and societies. It seeks a specific way forward for each society, fundamentally different from, but drawing on, its past. Nearly every natural science has been transformed from an analytically-based approach to a dynamic one: now it is time for society and culture to follow suit locally and globally. Each culture, discipline and person is incomplete and is in need of others in order to develop and evolve. This book sets out a curriculum for a new integral, trans-cultural and trans-disciplinary area of study, inclusive of, but extending beyond, economics and enterprise. It embraces a trans-personal perspective, linking self with community, enterprise and society, and focusing on the vital relationship between local identity and global integrity. For the government policy maker, the enlightened business practitioner, and the student and researcher into economics and enterprise, the new discipline is set out here in complete detail by a multi-national team of Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series authors. Illuminated with examples relating the conceptual to the practical, this is a text, not for a pre-modern, modern, or even post-modern era, but for what has been called our trans-modern age.

Cover of Finance and Society in 21st Century China
In this revealing book Junie Tong reflects on the role of banking and finance in China. The author adopts a critical perspective that views the societal as well as economic functioning of banking and finance. Finance and Society in 21st Century China considers how far the modern economy is disconnected from Chinese culture and history and the problems this separation may cause. She questions the common assumption that China has outgrown its reliance on its Western counterparts. The author believes that the country is still very much dependent on exports and foreign investments and any radical or rapid reduction in either would have serious adverse consequences for China's sustainable economic growth. To provide a model for 'finance and society' that integrates culture and economy, Tong draws on the seminal work of Belgian economist, banker and social commentator, Bernard Lietaer, who has focused on cultural forces and the future of money in the world, generally. Using representative case studies for illustration, Tong applies Lietaer's work in a specifically Chinese context, highlighting the need to root finance and enterprise in the rhythms and forces within Chinese culture to avoid future chaos and achieve socio-economic stability in a country now so critical to global well-being.

Cover of Spiritual Capital

Spiritual Capital

by Samuel D. Rima

Published 12 September 2012
Presenting a thorough, comprehensive theory of spiritual capital based on solid academic research, 'Spiritual Capital' serves to reinforce and amplify the notion of a moral economic core that is beginning to feature in contemporary economic arguments. In this rare major work wholly dedicated to the subject of spiritual capital, Sam Rima explains the desperate need for revolutionary and transformational thinking in the area of economic policy and practice and makes the case for a new moral foundation to business and economics that directly addresses today's financial and business crisis. Writing in an accessible style, and drawing on examples from several continents, Rima explains spiritual capital theory in terms of the resources needed for its creation, how it is formed, how it can be invested and what the return on investment can be. The book provides practical tools for measuring a personal or organizational store of spiritual capital, along with clear guidelines on how to engage in spiritual capital formation. These will benefit business leaders interested in developing viable and sustainable enterprises capable of avoiding the disconnection between economic policy and social reality. There are also recommendations here for policy makers regarding the macro application of spiritual capital theory. This important contribution to Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series will appeal to business leaders and policy makers, academicians and students in the fields of sociology, theology, and economics, and anyone interested in social and economic justice issues, social innovation, and corporate social responsibility.

Cover of Embodying Integral Development

In this fourth and final volume of the CARE-ing for Integral Development series, Ronnie Lessem integrates all that has come before in terms of: Community activation; Awakening integral consciousness; and institutionalized Research. Here he focuses on individual and community development alongside that of the organization or society, and sets it in the context of an integral economy.

The four critical success factors identified in recognizing and releasing integral development aligned with CARE are:

  • GROUNDING - linking up with and building upon existing local and global movements for socio-economic development;

  • EMERGENCE - maintaining interconnected focus;

  • NAVIGATING - locating and developing GENE-ius in a particular community/society;

  • EFFECTING - committing to resolving an issue and identifying the most fertile development path.

Embodying Integral Development offers a comprehensive system of accreditation. Supported by examples and illustrations of CARE, this book makes a case for Integral Development as a whole. It argues that it is a qualitative means of self-assessment rather than a quantitative one, focused on engagement, immersion and interpretation, as well as evaluation, rather than empirical verification.

Cover of Integral Community
Integral Community moves the transformation journey for enterprises and society on from the stages covered in earlier books in Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series, which describe a new macro-economic framework and which have examined alternative development with different local communities, bringing wide cultural perspectives to practical implementation of authentic or integral development. Here, the authors argue that there are two major fields of force prevailing in today's world. The one reflects our common heritage, whereby East and West, North and South are coming ever closer together - the global commons. The other reflects local and national singularity, where the notion of feeding off ancient local heritage and talent is key. They also identify four different culturally laden worldviews as Southern - humanistic, Eastern - holistic, Northern - rational, and Western - pragmatic. The enterprise and social innovation in Africa with which Lessem's co-authors are involved provides an object lesson in the sort of differentiation and integration needed in order to operate, socio-economically, with local identity and global integrity. It provides in this case a 'Southern' worldview background against which to examine communally based self-sufficiency; culturally based developmental economy; knowledge based social economy; and finally, the move towards what the authors describe as a living economy. All illustrated through a rural case, Chinyika, with which they have been intimately involved, whereby 100,000 have become self sufficient over the past five years. Integral Community should be read by academics and students of business, economics, development studies and agriculture, and by policy makers, particularly those concerned with the developing world in general and Africa in particular.

Cover of Integral Economics

Why on earth is economics perceived to come in only one or at best two different a-cultural if not a-moral guises? There are real, and many, alternatives to the economic mainstream. The trouble is, of course, that they are hidden from us. In Integral Economics Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer pave the way for a sustainable approach to economics, building on the richness of diverse economic approaches from all over the globe. By introducing the most evolved economic perspectives and bringing them into creative dialogue they argue that neither individual enterprises nor wider society will be transformed for the better without a new economic perspective. Here, they introduce a comprehensive framework based on the same 'Four Worlds' model that is applied to enterprise and research in their earlier works.

Given the richness of even mainstream economic theory reviewed in this book, let alone the variety of alternative approaches introduced, it is frustrating that policymakers and business practitioners are impoverished by a lack of apparent economic choice – between a seemingly failing capitalism and an already failed communism. The 'villains of the piece' in relation to this lack of choice are not so much the financial community and governments, though they do have much to answer, but the schools of economics and the business schools, that have created the very social ethos, the philosophical principles, and the mathematical models, that influence events.

Integral Economics is partly addressed to academics and students in those very schools, who have either realized the error of their ways, or, less dramatically, are curious to explore whether our businesses and communities could be run in a different way. It will be welcomed by informed senior practitioners, eager to understand the current rethink of economic theory and practice and to discover how to position themselves, their organizations, and their society within a new framework.

Cover of Integral Development
Alexander Schieffer and Ronnie Lessem introduce a groundbreaking development framework and process to address the most burning issues that humanity faces. While conventional top-down, outside-in development has reached a cul-de-sac, a new, integral form of development is emerging around the world. Integral Development uniquely articulates this emergent approach, and invites us to fully participate in this process. The integral approach has been researched and framed over decades of in-depth experience in transformative development education and practice all over the world. It uniquely combines four mutually reinforcing perspectives: nature and community; culture and spirituality; science, systems and technology; and enterprise and economics. Conventional development theory and practice has prioritized the latter two perspectives, neglecting the former two. This has caused massive imbalances in today’s world. The four interconnected perspectives allow for a transformative and integrated engagement with core development issues in a way that is locally relevant and globally resonant. Throughout, the practical impact of Integral Development is brought to life through highly innovative cases from around the globe, drawing on the authors` first-hand experience. This makes the book a living demonstration of the power of this pioneering approach. Integral Development shows how individual, organizational and societal developments need to be interconnected to release a society’s full potential. It shifts the responsibility for large-scale development from often-distant experts and organizations to each individual, community, enterprise and institution within the society. It is essential reading - and a call to action - for everyone concerned with the current state of local and global development.

Cover of Integral Renewal
In 2010 Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer published their seminal work on Integral Research and Innovation, whereby they identified the four R’s; relational and renewal, reason and realization based research paths that altogether encompass the major qualitative research methods and methodologies. Within each path they identified a trajectory from origination to transformation via foundation and emancipation. However these paths, underlying the research process, conventionally termed 'method', were disconnected from the integral economic and enterprise content, conventionally termed 'literature', with which they were concerned. In this book, Integral Renewal they seek to remedy such, in two major respects. As transformative masters and PhD programs are focused on the 'Global South', where the vast majority of the world’s population is based, as well as those developmental agencies focused on such, the great majority of the people with whom the authors deal select the relational research path, and the path of renewal, over and above the paths of reason and realization. The focus of this book will be on these two paths of integral research, now interconnected with integral enterprise and economics. Uniquely, the authors pursue research and innovation in a systematic way. In that respect, while their prior Integral Research book still provides the research foundation for the four southern and eastern, northern and western paths, this book will focus on the former two relational (southern) and renewal (eastern) from the combined perspectives of research process and economic and enterprise content.

Cover of Transformation Management

The concept of transformation has long been known to the sciences and has been around in the popular vocabulary for several decades. Because it has never been fully developed as a managed process and applied to our organizations, the way in which we have been trying to deal with the complex issues we face today is looking increasingly inadequate.

Transformation management, argue the authors of this inspirational book, now provides the opportunity for the application of the first significant world-wide innovation in the way we manage since Drucker put management itself on the map in the 1950s. In a book that draws on seminal theses and practical examples from the four corners of the world, Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer provide leaders, students of leadership, managers and change agents with a trans-culturally tested, integrated approach to leadership and management.

Only through a redefinition of what leadership, management and entrepreneurship amount to, say the authors, can organizations be transformed into sustainable enterprises capable of dealing with the burning issues of our time. Leaders are coming to realise that it is no longer possible for organizations to operate in any sort of isolation from the society and the wider world in which they exist, but paying lip service to notions of either social responsibility or globality is not good enough. From this indispensable book, those whose enterprises are to have any hope of becoming authentically socially responsible or authentically global will learn to understand and activate the process that dynamically links any organization with the society in which it is embedded and that links the local with the global.

The practice of transformation management is about creating real value... for organizations, people, and society. This book, from the Transformation and Innovation Series, makes that practice possible.

Cover of Awakening Integral Consciousness

This is the second of four volumes in the CARE-ing for Integral Development series, focused on CARE: Community activation, Awakening consciousness, innovation driven institutionalized Research and transformative Education. In this book, the author focuses on ways and means of developing, in an explicitly integral way, a particular organization or society, one in relation to another, locally-globally, building on prior, local community activation. He draws on two decades of experience and illustrates how such an awakening of integral consciousness can run alongside innovation driven institutionalized research and transformative education, as well as community activation, at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. In the process he addresses such topics as how to embed development in a particular society locally, how in relation to the rest of the world globally, as well as how to consciously evolve as an individual, organization or society, as such, from one particular developmental perspective – southern (relational), eastern (renewal) or north/western (reasoned/realization) – or another.

The overall integral approach, or rhythm that the author draws upon, and has used in the field for the past decade, is that of recognizing and releasing what he terms GENE-ius, through local Grounding, local-global Emergence, newly global Navigation and ultimately global-local Effect, encompassing nature, culture, technology and enterprise. Moreover, he offers a body of integral theory that has been developed in twelve separate volumes, related to different aspects of integral development.

This book on awakening integral and developmental consciousness – from an African, Asian or Euro/American perspective – is unique. Moreover, and specifically as such, the author offers an alternately relational ("southern"), renewal ("eastern") and reasoned ("north-western") perspective on such development.

Cover of Integral Research and Innovation
The core question underlying Integral Research and Innovation is: 'How can social research be turned into social or indeed "integral" innovation?' Complementing their acclaimed Transformation Management, this second book in the Transformation and Innovation Series explains how the knowledge creation that underpins transformative processes occurs. The authors show how research has to be transformative, rather than just informative if it is to contribute usefully to building integrated and sustainable enterprises. At a time when business practitioners and others responsible for organizational development are desperate for usable knowledge the authors contend that social science research is failing to support business and management generally. Instead, academic researchers engage in esoteric arguments about research methodology which do not contribute usefully to the resolution of real world problems. Drawing on their experience of environments where researchers and practitioners do engage constructively, resulting in research that is active, participative, and genuinely innovative, Professor Lessem and Dr Schieffer are in territory that is far beyond that covered by standard works on research methodology. This is a book not just for academics and researchers wanting to make a meaningful contribution, but also for reflective practitioners from the corporate organizational, and consultancy based worlds who operate in the area of interface between business and management, education, learning, and society, and who need to know how research can be used to make a real difference.