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Together with Rick Delbridge (Cardiff University, Wales), Markus Helfen (University of Innsbruck, Austria), Andi Pekarek (Melbourne University, Australia) and Charlene Zietsma (Pennsylvania State University, USA), I am co-organizing the upcoming Organization Studies Summer Workshop on the topic “Organizing Sustainably: Actors, Institutions, and Practices”.
Our main aim is to go beyond the common mantra of contemporary management scholars and practitioners that there is a ‘business case’ for sustainability towards examining what alternative forms of organizing can contribute to the sustainable usage of environmental, social, and economic resources in ways that avoid their degradation and exhaustion. While such models already do exist, they often do not spread or scale up, remaining exploitative business practices untouched on a larger scale.
The submission system is now open, and the full call can be found here: https://osofficer.wixsite.com/osworkshop?fbclid=IwAR3bV80vSvxpbVMF-IWiOiPYmR5Vv022ganthYq2xj6MBACe6R_Uxf2xvdE
We will also use this workshop to reflect about sustainable forms of organizing in our own scholarly community. As a temporary team of organizers meeting a long-standing routine of highly productive summer workshops, we are ourselves directly faced with the challenge of being unable to meet the “triple bottom line” of environmental sustainability (these are typically bad, because academics fly to conferences), social and economic impacts on the local community and employees (these in our case are good, because the venue has strong sustainability policies), and economic/academic “performance” (the summer workshops are usually seen as a highly productive meeting format). We will use the direct experience of this contradiction to reflect about our own scholarly practices during our workshop to hopefully develop some ideas for more sustainable forms of scholarship.
You want to win a prize in a writing contest in social science in which contributions written like an academic paper will not be accepted? Pay attention to the following call for articles: The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) invites young scholars to submit texts on Sustainable Development Goals and their human dimension, be it political, technological, economic, or social.
Prizes are US$ 500, US$ 200, and US$ 100 and the three winning pieces will be published in the in-house magazine Dimensions.
The deadline for submissions has been extended to May 15, 2013.
Yesterday was the first International Day of Happiness as proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in July 2012. The idea to introduce such a day derived from a meeting titled “Happiness and Well-being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm”. The meeting had been convened by the Government of Bhutan and is one of many initiatives questioning economic growth and the GDP as leading indicator for political success (e.g. summarized in a MPIfG working paper, in German). During the debates on alternatives, Bhutan gained a lot of prominence for its decade-old practice of focusing on citizens’ happiness instead.
The resolution which introduces the Day of Happiness also tells us that “the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal”. Furthermore, the UN General Assembly recognizes
“the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of human beings around the world and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives”
And
the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and the well-being of all peoples
The new economic paradigm which the world was supposed to reflect on yesterday is still one of economic growth, one might say – but in addition, there is an International Day of Happiness.
(jiska)
governancexborders.com 