Transformative Action for Sustainable Outcomes by Sandberg, Maria; Tienari, Janne;

Short description:

This book critically examines sustainability challenges that humankind faces and offers responsible organising as a solution in responding to these challenges.

Long description:

This book critically examines sustainability challenges that humankind faces and offers responsible organising as a solution in responding to these challenges.

The text explores how different actors can responsibly organise for transformative action towards sustainable outcomes, as expressed in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Responsible refers to a reflexive understanding of how to organise in times of sustainability challenges. Organising refers to activities and practices where different actors take transformative action together. This comprehensive edited collection of short, clear, concise, and compelling chapters brings together scholars in a range of disciplines and blends theoretical perspectives to study humans and social interactions, organisations, nonhumans, and living environments. It offers topical examples from across the world and from organising of companies and other organisations, supply chains, networks, ecosystems, and markets.

The book is written for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities as well as for practitioners working with the SDGs. It discusses complex issues in an informative and engaging way. It is critical and collaborative. The book serves as an introduction to key themes and perspectives of responsible organising and offers new insights on connections between themes and perspectives.

"Transformative Action for Sustainable Outcomes: Responsible Organising arrives at a time when despite warnings about the urgency of addressing sustainability challenges, progress is hampered by powerful market-based logics that value profits over people and the planet, missteps, reluctant political leadership and even denial. It provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary understanding of the central role of organising in accelerating action towards a sustainable world free of inequalities, rampant economic pursuit, and the degradation of the quality of life, work and the environment. The chapters in the book push us to think knowledgeably, responsibly, radically and broadly about the complex meaning of sustainability and how responsible organising can make a difference towards sustainable outcomes. The book is a must read for scholars, students and all those seeking critical, transformative ways of organising for sustainability."

Stella M. Nkomo, University of Pretoria, South Africa

"Creating transformational change is difficult because the sustainability challenges we are facing are global, intersectional and long-term. Individual action is a good starting point but we need change at scale. This requires organising and working across communities, institutions, and national borders. This book provides a fantastic collection of interdisciplinary, innovative, and critical approaches to sustainability transformations, challenging business-as-usual thinking and practice. I recommend this book to anyone interested in sustainable development and the future of the planet."

Steffen Boehm, University of Exeter Business School, UK

"This book delivers an amazing series of thought-provoking analyses of the concept of responsible organising and provides a compelling collection of reflections on why we need to focus more on process and why we need to view　sustainable development as a relational concept, including the nonhuman perspectives. It is a must read for anyone interested in being wiser on the complexity and possible solutions in our responses to responsible organising."　

Mette Morsing, PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education), United Nations Global Compact, New York

"This book investigates how corporate responsibility and responsible organising can assist meeting the core sustainability challenges of human inequalities and engagement with nature. From a breadth of disciplinary and national perspectives it offers a rich variety of practical suggestions with a compelling overall case for the re-discovery of politics in the organisation of markets."

Jeremy Moon, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Table of Contents:

Part I: A road map to responsible organising

1. Responsible organising: An introduction

2. Corporate social responsibility is useful only when it is made useful

3. Diversity must be refocused to enable responsible organising

4. Responsibility is not only about humans

5. Global risks: Fundamentals are (not) changing

6. Re-emergence of geopolitics and façades of responsibility

7. Cross-sector collaborations for responsibility

8. The ecosystem approach to responsibility

9. The (ir)responsibility of organisational innovation

10. (Re)organising supply chains for responsibility

11. Responsible markets and marketing

12. The logistification of humanitarian relief

13. "Corporate saviourism" and poverty in the Global South

14. Social media and bias 2.0

15. Intersectional inequalities and how to fight them

16. Work, care, and gendered (in)equalities

17: The nature-human dichotomy within disaster governance

18. Humans and water: The problem(s) with affordability

19. Human and nonhuman animals in a posthuman reality: Accreditation schemes as voice?

20. Ontological multiplicity: Responsible organising in defence of life

21. Responsible organising: Ways forward