Towards Flourishing Life and Creating Collective Value
Developing flourishing, life-oriented socioeconomic systems means understanding what it is that allows systems to flourish and moving towards outcomes that enhance what scholars Tom Donaldson and Jim Walsh have called collective value (without any dignity violations). This chapter develops these ideas in more depth, starting with a discussion of flourishing built on understanding Indigenous wisdom and exploring what gives life to systems. Then the chapter moves towards an examination of collective value based on important work by Thomas Donaldson and James Walsh.
Flourishing
Flourishing encompasses and goes beyond the idea of sustainability, which really means to maintain in a steady state. In other words, there is a sense in which despite the best intentions of users of the word sustainability, it really has connotations of continuing business as usual. As has been discussed already, business as usual is highly problematic—and even unlikely in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Flourishing, in going beyond sustainability, means to thrive or to have vigorous and healthy growth (which, in contrast to neoliberalism, does not mean endless economic growth but rather growth in diversity or abundance, that is, in complexity of a system). Flourishing comes from the idea of abundance found in healthy natural settings. Indeed, the root of the word flourish comes from the Old French word floriss, meaning to flower. Indigenous wisdom integrally understands the need for flourishing human and natural ecosystems.1 Flourishing is what German biologist Andreas Weber calls “enlivenment”2 and my collaborator Petra Kuenkel and I defined as “what gives life to systems.”3
Indigenous Worldviews: Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity, Redistribution
Many Indigenous peoples lived in harmony with their place—the natural environment—for long periods of time, which is not to say there were not some destructive practices. On the whole, however, as archeologist Penny Spikins points out in a book on Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom, “A record of strength through interdependence on each other in our distant past is far more extensive and compelling than that for aggression or competition.”4 Indigenous worldviews are articulated in numerous books by Native American scholar Four Arrows (aka Donald Trent Jacobs).5
Building on this perspective, in a paper Edwina Pio and I6 draw from work by Harris and Wasilewski who argue that across many Indigenous cultures, four key values of relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution are core values that contribute to flourishing or thriving communities. The a key thing to note here is that these values are ancient and found in many, many cultures, including many Eastern and Southern cultures as well as Indigenous ones. (They are also present in Western/Northern cultures, but are not necessarily as dominant.) What is also notable is how different these values are from the values of individual (and company) freedom, a clear orientation towards the primacy of markets, (financial) wealth building, and continual growth, among others, that are core values in the neoliberal model that frames today’s Northern, industrialized economies (and societies), discussed earlier.
The idea of relationship, which resonates with the Buddhist philosophy of being in “right relationship,” is expressed in U.S. Native American tradition by the Lakota phrase Mitakuye Oyasin, which translates as “We are all related” (or “All are related”). The meaning of relationship in this tradition is profound, in that the phrase really signifies that the “we” means all of the beings on the Earth—not just humans. This “we” includes marine species, animals, winged beings including insects and birds, trees, and other plants, and even the lakes, rivers, streams, rocks, and mountains of which the world is made. Contrast that perspective to the dominant perspective in the Western world that nature and her beings are there for exploitation—domination—by humans. This value sets up a very different relationship with nature—one of interconnectedness, and recognition of interdependence. While it does not mean that humans cannot use nature’s bounty at all, it does suggest a very different attitude towards its use—one away from dominance and exploitation and towards respect for the sacredness, worth, and, indeed, dignity of all beings.
The idea of a relational—interconnected—way of being in the world is part of a holistic, integral worldview, according to Four Arrows.7 From this perspective or worldview, humans cannot (and should not) consider themselves separate from nature. As thought leader and author David Korten frequently writes, “We are living beings born of a living planet and we forget that at our peril.”8 If we think about an economy that supports life and flourishing for all, the idea of relationship (connectedness) needs to be a central component of that thinking.
Another important value across many Indigenous cultures is that of responsibility, which unlike the individual sense of responsibility in neoliberalism, is defined as responsibility to the community and particularly to the land or place where people reside.9 Responsibility so defined is another form of connection—a spiritual and collective connection that hold responsibility for ancestral lands and the natural environment, and the communities supported by them, as sacred. Such thinking is frequently expressed in the Native American Iroquois Nation’s idea of thinking through the implications of any decision for seven generations out.10
A third value frequently found in Indigenous cultures is that of reciprocity or the recognition of mutual benefit that comes from granting privileges or exchanges from person to person or group to group. Reciprocity implies mutual dependence—interdependence—and helping others while knowing that they will also help in return when there is need. The pan-African notion of Ubuntu, “I am because we are” embeds this notion of reciprocity and illustrates how important it is to shaping the identity of community members—because they see themselves as part of a broader collective rather than individuals. Similar collective understandings of identity are found in many Eastern and Southern cultures as well. A dominant idea in Western thought, expressed as a core aspect of neoliberalism, has tended to be that of individual identity and in some cases rather extreme individualism,11 as if one person could exist separately from others. The idea of reciprocity in Indigenous cultures highlights the relationships among humans and also between humans and nature, as a reflection of the understanding of natural processes as cyclical or circular, rather than linear. Reciprocity embeds the idea of balance, too, since there is an understanding that, in a sense, what goes around comes around.
Reciprocity, which reflects holistic thinking, emphasizes caring and, as the fourth value, redistribution, indicates, also sharing as mutual obligations that exist among living beings as part of a bigger whole.12
The fourth value mentioned by Harris and Wasilewski is that of redistribution. Redistribution is the “sharing obligation” whose purpose is to “balance and rebalance relationships.”13 Indeed, the whole idea of wealth, which is part of the idea of redistribution—sharing one’s wealth—is different in most Indigenous cultures from the emphasis on financial wealth that is pervasive in today’s economic thinking. Native American scholar Stephanie Gutierrez discusses the Lakota understanding of wealth as not based in financial wealth but rather in living by community virtues with the objective of living a happy, well-balanced life. She points out that the important goal is that of caretaking and ensuring the well-being of future generations.14
Interestingly, the idea of relationship is central to all four of these concepts. Relationship is the core—and the other values of responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution all serve to enhance the quality of the connections in the context of the community. Since physicists now tell us that the universe is highly connected at the quantum level and ecologists let us know that ecologies are connected wholes, it seems more than reasonable that a flourishing, life-centric socioeconomy would also emphasize the importance of relationships and connectedness.
Understanding how systems flourish means understanding what it is that gives “life” to systems, or what architect Christopher Alexander called the “quality without a name,”15 which might be called aliveness, vitality, or vibrancy. Building from work that Petra Kuenkel and I did, this section outlines the principles that we believe give life to systems and, in particular, socioeconomic systems.16 Six key aspects of systems that, combined and integrated, offer the potential for flourishing, slightly reframed, are: purpose or intentionality, interconnectedness, diversity, boundedness or containment, novelty, and wholeness based on reciprocity. A seventh characteristic specific to human systems is consciousness or awareness, which can be used to design better or flourishing systems into the future.
Living systems have a purpose or what we labeled intentional generativity. Sometimes that purpose is as simple as an instinct to survive17 and sometimes in socioeconomic systems, including organizations and even whole societies, purpose is more intentionally framed and generated. In human systems, purpose can give meaning to participants in systems, and provide a framework around which their work, ideas, and play can revolve. The idea of generativity is important, too, because it implies a need for flourishing or going beyond what already exists to some new, hopefully better state. The idea of regenerative systems embraces this characteristic of aliveness in flourishing systems, because it follows important ecological principles that McDonough and Braungart articulated in their book Cradle to Cradle, that is, the idea that “waste equals food.” In other words, in naturally alive systems, nothing goes to waste because what is waste for one part (holon) in the system becomes food for other parts (holons) in the system.18 For human or socioeconomic systems, the idea of purposes can be powerfully fraught with emotional content that helps cohere people in the system around their shared purposes, ideals, or values, allowing them to exert their collective strength in ways that enhance flourishing in the system.
Another principle identified (in no set order, by the way) is that of connectedness (what we called contextual interconnectedness), which resonates well with the Indigenous values around relationship discussed above. Physicists like Fritjof Capra now know that life is a highly connected “web” in which different parts are “entangled” with others (both at the quantum level and in ecological settings).19 From the perspectives of complexity and theories in which this thinking is embedded, life exhibits qualities of emergence, patterns, fundamental unpredictability, and entanglement in which networks of different entities are in constant interaction. That entanglement or connectedness is why systems need to be considered as wholes, rather than fragmented into their parts—because such fragmentation fundamentally damages the integrity that constitutes the system.
The principle of boundedness or what we called permeable containment is also important in determining what gives life to systems.20 For something to be considered a system, it needs to have boundaries that “contain” and give it some sort of identity and shape. But alive systems also need a degree of permeability, so that new resources, for example, food in biological systems, and ideas, energy, new participants, or other resources in socioeconomic systems can enter sometimes. Permeable boundaries also permit systems to get rid of elements that are no longer useful or needed, that is, waste or excess. Sometimes it is at the boundaries where what John Fullerton calls “edge effect abundance” takes place,21 for it is at the edges where the new energy and ideas come from, while still maintaining the identity of the system.
Another principle that is important in living systems, related in some ways to the idea of boundedness, is that living systems need novelty (we called it emerging novelty). Novelty means that because of new inputs, exchanges, and waste, along with activity within them, systems are constantly changing. Flourishing systems have a tendency to grow more complex (seemingly thwarting the second law of thermodynamics, although some energy is in fact dissipated), even when they do not grow in size, because of the novelty that gets generated within them.22 The idea of novelty in systems means that they are “enlivened” to use Andreas Weber’s term, in an emergent and self-constructive process sometimes called autopoiesis.23
Diversity24 or what we called requisite diversity (enough diversity) is an important principle at the core of what gives abundance and the sense of vitality to systems, that in our papers Petra Kuenkel and I linked to connectedness.25 Requisite diversity allows for system resilience in the face of crises or stress, while insufficient diversity makes the system more vulnerable to collapsing or undergoing what complexity theorists call sudden state change.26 Not only are healthy living systems highly interconnected, they also have many different elements—diverse species in ecological systems or, in urban designer Jane Jacobs’ thinking, in successful cities diverse types of activities and enterprises that provide both variety and interest to engage people in different ways.27
The principle of wholeness, that is, that systems must be considered as wholes rather than broken apart (which kills a living system), was discussed above in the context of the Indigenous concept of reciprocity and is also related to the idea of connectedness. In whole living systems, the parts constitute a living whole that has integrity in and of itself28—as itself, even when it made up of holons (parts within wholes),29 as discussed earlier. The physicist David Bohm called this sense of wholeness the “implicate order” and argued that the very idea of aliveness comes directly from this sense of wholeness. In some ways, it might be said that the idea of transcendence and achieving “oneness” with the universe (by whatever name a higher power goes by in your tradition) builds on this very concept of wholeness.
If we are thinking about how to design socioeconomic systems so that they flourish, we could do worse than to draw on these principles that give life to systems: purpose, boundedness, novelty, connectedness, diversity, and wholeness. When life-giving characteristics are linked with Indigenous ideas that allow particularly human societies to thrive over long periods of time—ideas of relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution, they constitute a set of characteristics and attributes that provide a sound basis for developing systems in which people—and all other living beings on the planet—can potentially flourish.
Systemic Flourishing: Creating Collective Value
The perspectives and the principles outlined above drive towards system flourishing. They do set out a big task, however, and it is one that requires decision makers in any capacity to take stewardship of the whole system (or set of systems) in which they are involved. Such a perspective is necessary in a future that deals much more effectively than our current system has done with crises like pandemics—and actually helps humankind cope with even more threatening existential crisis posed by climate change and the potential for ecosystem collapse.
Building these ideas into enterprises and socioeconomic systems could ensure that leaders take responsibility not just for their own enterprise (whether it is a business, governmental agency, legislative body, civil society organization, or some other organization), but also for the welfare of future beings.30 This idea of stewardship or responsibility for the whole and for the future is a very different concept than many decision makers are used to. It is far more encompassing and demands wisdom, or as scholar Russell Ackoff once defined wisdom, the ability to think through the future and systemic consequences of decisions.31 The problem that many companies and other institutions have with taking stewardship for the flourishing of the whole and moving towards the expanded set of values discussed above is that today’s corporate and institutional purposes tend to be narrowly defined, and do not really take into account the systemic consequences of decisions.
Companies, in particular, are subject to this narrowness of focus, although it also afflicts many governmental leaders. For companies, too many people believe that their purpose can be subsumed by the phrases “make profits” or “maximize shareholder wealth,” as the neoliberal framing would have it. While legal scholar Lynn Stout argued that there is actually no law, even in the United States, that mandates such a narrow definition,32 the powerful neoliberal narrative has embedded that type of thinking deeply in many people’s psyches and in many legal interpretations as well. That understanding is particularly prominent in the U.S. state of Delaware, where many corporations are officially headquartered. Counter to Stout’s view, some legal interpretations suggest that Delaware law, which influences corporate law throughout the United States and elsewhere, does in fact mandate shareholder primacy, despite reality that that norm “is responsible for substantial suffering and political dysfunction in our society,” and that “The justifications that its supporters offer on its behalf are implausible.”33
In the context of neoliberalism, in fact, even many public institutions seem to have lost their “public good” orientation, implicitly adopting Margaret Thatcher’s view that, “There is no such thing as society.”34 If there is no such thing as society, there is no shared, common, or public good, and therefore companies and other institutions have no responsibility for the well-being of the whole, this line of thinking goes. With such thinking, businesses in particular are then free to do whatever it takes to make profits while avoiding any responsibility for what economists call “externalities” or side-effects of doing so.
Combine this thinking with the size and impacts of today’s multinational corporations, which control immense wealth and command over many markets. One study comparing revenues between the world’s countries (taxes) and companies (income) found that of the 100 largest “economies” in the world only 29 were nations, while 71 were corporations.35 Similar findings have been relatively consistent for many years, despite differences in methodologies (and some contestation of the concept of comparing these different types of entities).
Dangerously to the idea of common good, at least in the United States, corporations are accorded the privilege of personhood, with attendant free speech rights. That combination of rights gives corporations vast privileges and powers that can mean that their negative impacts are not easily checked. Further, in the United States, the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, the Supreme Court (controversially) granted corporations the right to free speech, with the implications that they could not be restricted from making political campaign contributions or making independent expenditures for related communications.
In the context of these enormous powers combined with the transparency provided by the Internet, businesses have turned towards corporate (social) responsibility in large numbers. The advent of the Internet with its immediate ability to connect people globally and the transparency it provides wittingly or not to corporate actions. Still, it is increasingly clear that the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is on the margins at best and that more fundamental actions that deal with corporate purpose are needed to begin the process of transformation. To move the system to systemic flourishing—that is, whole system health and well-being with dignity for all, core humanistic management values—requires major shifts businesses and their purposes. Businesses are today’s dominant institutions, with many controlling more resources than many countries,36 and so they have huge ecological and social impacts. Even in the wake of the pandemic, despite all of the losses, it is likely that unless significant reframing begins to happen, businesses will retain their predominance as world actors.
Still, the idea of flourishing is increasingly being applied at the organizational level as well as to individuals and entire ecosystems like economies and natural contexts. In a book titled Flourishing Enterprise, Chris Laszlo and Judy Sorum Brown with a number of others focus on flourishing at the organizational level. It is this notion of flourishing that needs to be built into enterprises of all kinds, if humanity is to thrive in the long term.37 Similarly with Andreas Rasche, I argued in Building the Responsible Enterprise: Where Vision and Values Add Value that responsibilities of companies need to be deeply embedded in their strategies, goals, business models, and practices.38
The idea of flourishing as applied to businesses goes well beyond today’s notion of corporate social responsibility or corporate responsibility (CSR/CR). Despite many years of work by companies and scholars alike, CSR still tends to be an “add on” to corporate strategies, goals, and practices, rather than integrally related to how business is done. The idea of flourishing and responsible enterprises really means integrating and embedding true sustainability and responsibility considerations into all company activities and impacts on stakeholders and the natural environment alike. Then it means going beyond those activities to take into account the flourishing of the natural environment in which all else sits. Getting there requires transformation both of the companies, and as will be explored a bit later, the ecosystem that surrounds them.
In other words, the idea of flourishing, as we use it here, means that the whole system is flourishing—not just individual companies within it. The flourishing of companies is significantly related to and dependent on the flourishing of the communities of stakeholders that support and enable that company to exist in the first place, a linkage commonly unrecognized. The core of applying relational values to enterprises of all sorts means establishing the reality of the connectedness among different types of institutions. From the perspective of systems theory and the principles that give life discussed earlier, we cannot tease one element of the whole system apart from others without damaging both the entity itself and the rest of the system. At some level, we need to consider the health, well-being, and flourishing of the whole system in order to gain the necessary perspective.
Shifting companies towards a more balanced perspective fundamentally means rethinking their core purposes and reorienting them towards different ways of dealing with people. Companies need to be seen and recognized as products of their stakeholders and communities—and subordinate to them, rather than (as today) the dominant institution in society. Then stakeholders can retain their dignity and well-being, and the natural environment can retain its capacity to restore, replenish, regenerate, and renew itself, providing natural resilience that helps support the human enterprise. The risk of not doing so is not that the planet or the natural environment will not survive. Rather the risk is that human beings and their civilizations may not be able to thrive into the future—or if they do, that it will be in much diminished ways.
What, then, creates the systemic integrity and flourishing needed to ensure a better future for humanity, for its business and other enterprises, and ultimately for all living beings? Thinking through the values from Indigenous wisdom and principles that give life, discussed earlier in this chapter, provides many clues. It is important to recognize that while vitally important to meeting human needs and desires, businesses are only one aspect of the whole system. Businesses are integrally tied to natural resources, as they cannot survive without somehow drawing from those natural resources. They are equally tied to the efforts of employees and the families who support and nurture those employees, and the communities in which they live. Governments set up the conditions under which businesses operate—the rules of the game, in a sense—ensuring that (at least when things are working well) there is a level-playing field.
Businesses, governments, civil society, and the natural environment, along with other important aspects of the system, for example institutions that support and enhance spirituality, civic and activist organizations, educational institutions at all levels, health care institutions, and other human institutions are all bound together into a whole. They are connected, and those connections can either support flourishing or, when they are fragmented and broken, destroy it. The idea of transformation built on values that support flourishing is to create a healthy set of connections, supported by clear recognition that the well-being of the whole is dependent on the well-being of all of the parts.
Accomplishing these goals requires major shifts. First of all, it requires reframing how the purposes of businesses are understood and addressing the core purposes of businesses as they operate in societies—thereby influencing and changing perspectives or mindsets. It means shifting the metrics by which businesses and whole economies, are evaluated, which requires massive system transformation. It means restructuring firms so that they are no longer have incentives to act as psychopaths, as lawyer Joel Bakan called them in his important book The Corporation.39 Instead, they need to be designed for social and ecological resilience following a set of principles outlined by Tellus Institute’s Allen White in an initiative called Corporation2020.40 These principles orient companies towards harnessing private interests to serve the public interest, balancing all stakeholders’ interests (not prioritizing shareholders), operating sustainable, distributing wealth equitably, and not infringing on natural persons’ human rights or the right to govern themselves. Then it means applying the same principles of humanism and what gives life to all of society’s institutions.
Beyond individual and organizational flourishing and well-being, as noted in discussing well-being earlier, there is another, more collective and systemic use of the term. At the system level, flourishing refers to overall sustainability and systemic health, prosperity, and well-being. In that usage, it relates to ecological and systemic sustainability, as discussed by John Ehrenfeld and Andrew Hoffman in their book titled Flourishing.41 These authors argue that human systems need to be radically shifted towards more ecological sustainability if humans are to thrive into the future. There needs to be a shift away from today’s materialism, consumerism, and growth spirals towards more satisfying and meaningful ways of interacting with other humans and with the planet itself.
Accomplishing this task inherently means shaping new metrics at both the national level, as discussed earlier, and at the individual company or the institutional level, with an emphasis on generating not simply individual company value or wealth maximization but towards a broadened definition of collective value.42 Major policy shifts in how the purposes of businesses and other institutions are defined will be needed—hence the need for mindset shift discussed in the last chapter. One idea that has potential is to think about enterprises of all sorts, whether for-profit, not-for-profit, NGOs, or governmental, creating what has been called collective value.
Performance Metrics: Collective Value(s)
Thomas Donaldson and James Walsh introduced the idea of collective value as the fundamental purpose of business in pathbreaking research,43 in which they developed a theory of business. Donaldson and Walsh define business as “a form of cooperation involving the Production, Exchange and Distribution of goods and services for the purpose of achieving Collective Value.”44 It is important to note that this definition of purpose is radically different from the neoliberal notion of maximizing shareholder wealth or profitability as the central purpose of the firm. Many observers have disagreed with that narrow purpose over the years, recognizing that businesses necessarily exist in a web of stakeholder relationships, are embedded in societies, and are deeply connected to the natural environment, which serves as the foundation of where they necessarily get their resources from. Yet the neoliberal narrative still posits this narrow vision.
Indeed, in 2000 I argued that profitability and wealth maximization are simply by-products of doing good work for some group of stakeholders, treating others, for example, employees and communities, well, and creating useful products and services.45 Later, in a book titled Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, authors Sisodia, Wolfe, and Sheth argue much the same point based on their empirical work, which demonstrates how companies who treat their stakeholders well significantly outperform companies that do not so “love” their stakeholders.46 Sisodia and Mackey argue similarly in Conscious Capitalism.47 Sisodia with Gelb took the idea even further in The Healing Organization, arguing that companies that have positive impacts on people will achieve extraordinary performance.48
Stakeholder theorist R. Edward Freeman has stated many times in public and in writing that the idea of wealth maximization as the purpose of the firm is, fundamentally, foolish. Freeman makes the analogy that while we humans need blood to survive as companies need profits to survive, our purpose in life is not to make blood.49 Similarly, companies’ purpose is not to make money (or maximize financial wealth for shareholders) but to produce goods and services that meet needs of their stakeholders (customers), while treating other stakeholders well.
Donaldson and Walsh argue, thinking along similar lines, explicitly state that the purpose of business is the generation of collective value, defining it as “the agglomeration of the business participants’ benefits, net of any aversive business outcomes.”50 While they avoid the use of the word stakeholder, these authors note that business involves a “system of production, exchange, and distribution relationships, among and between the entities that constitute firms’ value chains: firms themselves, civil society, institutions of government, and the communities that both sustain and benefit from business activity.”51 They then define business participants as “anyone who affects or affected by business,” distinctly echoing Freeman’s classic definition of stakeholders, albeit broadening it somewhat to emphasize its cooperative nature, not just competition.52
The definition of collective value is considerably broader than traditional notions of maximizing shareholder wealth or profitability. It does include different values and benefits in what Donaldson and Walsh term an “agglomeration” of benefits, that is, a group of benefits that are clustered together but not necessarily coherently.53 Further, these authors put limits on how businesses can operate by designating that there is what they term a dignity threshold, below which it is problematic to go. Like conflict resolution expert Donna Hicks,54 who has written extensively on dignity and violations thereof, Donaldson and Walsh believe that all people are worthy and should be treated with dignity.55
In defining collective value, Donaldson and Walsh limit their understanding of collective value to business outcomes. The idea of flourishing is, however, broader. It encompasses businesses, and the collective well-being of people and their communities and institutions, as well as that of nature and all of her manifestations in the notion of responsibility for the whole—where “whole” here means the world. Collective well-being, that is, really encompasses the whole planetary system, with human systems and institutions as part of that larger system, not just how business entities make their money. Like government, business is a serious responsibility—and the systemic impacts of activity in any of these institutions need to be considered when making any business, public policy, or other decision.
The very definition of what we mean by flourishing for all includes the idea of dignity, because it is impossible for people who are experiencing what Hicks calls dignity violations to experience flourishing. Dignity violations hit at the core of peoples’ feelings of self-worth and affect their sense of being safe, secure, and able to function effectively in the world.56 In other words, to experience their full functionings and capabilities, as Amartya Sen called them,57 people need to experience dignity.
In effect, creating a flourishing world for all means adopting a new worldview, first an economic worldview, and eventually a broader one that encompasses the values articulated earlier in this chapter and deals explicitly with what it means to be human today and how we humans, as well as nonhuman beings, can lead flourishing, dignified lives. Whatever worldview eventually emerges, whether from the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic or through some other mechanism, it needs to be one that balances human activities with available resources and distributes them more equitably, creating the potential for all to thrive. The goal needs to be more than merely surviving, despite all the troubles facing the world. For businesses in particular, this shift will mean moving priorities away from material gain, constant growth, and financial wealth towards much more holistic conceptions of wealth and well-being, ideas that need to inform just about all decision making.
1 Ideas about Indigenous wisdom are drawn from Pio, E., and S. Waddock. 2020. Invoking Indigenous Wisdom for Management Learning. Management Learning, in press 2020.
2 Weber, Enlivenment.
3 Ideas about “what gives life to systems” are drawn from two papers: Wad-dock, S., and P. Kuenkel. May 2019. “What Gives Life to Large System Change?” Organization and the Natural Environment, DOI: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1086026619842482, and Kuenkel, P., and S. Waddock. 2019. “Stewarding Aliveness in a Troubled Earth System.” Cadmus 4, no. 1, pp. 14–38.
4 Spikins, P. 2019. “What Can Ancient Hunter-Gatherers Tell us About Sustainable Wisdom?” In Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First-Nation Know-how for Global Flourishing, Narvaez, D., Four Arrows (Trent Jacobs, D.), Halton, E., Collier B., and Enderle, G, eds. 27–46, p. 31. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
5 See, for example, Four Arrows (aka Donald Trent Jacobs), Point of Departure.
6 Pio and Waddock, Invoking Indigenous.
7 Four Arrows (aka Donald Trent Jacobs), Point of Departure.
8 Korten, D. Fall 2017. “Ecological Civilization and the New Enlightenment.” Tikkun 70, pp. 16–23.
9 Harris, L.D., and J. Wasilewski. 2004. “Indigeneity, an Alternative Worldview: Four R’s (Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity, Redistribution) vs. two P’s (Power and Profit). Sharing the Journey Towards Conscious Evolution.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science: The Official Journal of the International Federation for Systems Research 21, no. 5, pp. 489–503.
10 Kawamoto, W.T., and T.C. Cheshire. 2004. “A ‘Seven-Generation’ Approach.” Handbook of Contemporary Families: Considering the Past, Contemplating the Future, pp. 385–93. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
11 For interesting background, see the work of Lodge and Vogel, Ideology and National Competitiveness.
12 Narvaez, D., Four Arrows, E. Halton, B. Collier and G. Enderle, eds. 2019. “People and Planet in Need of Sustainable Wisdom.” In Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First-Nation Know-How for Global Flourishing, 1–24. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
13 Harris, L.D., and J. Wasilewski. 2004. “Indigeneity, An Alternative Worldview: Four R’s (Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity, Redistribution) vs. Two P’s (Power and Profit). Sharing the Journey Towards Conscious Evolution.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science: The Official Journal of the International Federation for Systems Research 21, no. 5, pp. 489–503, p. 493.
14 Gutierrez, S. 2018. “An Indigenous Approach to Community Wealth Building: A Lakota Translation.” Washington. DC: Democracy Collaborative. https://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.communitywealth.org/files/downloads/CommunityWealthBuildingALakotaTranslation-final-web.pdf (accessed April 13, 2019).
15 Alexander, C. 1979. The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Press.
16 Ideas in this section come from: Waddock and Kuenkel, “What Gives Life to Large System Change?” and Kuenkel and Waddock. “Stewarding Aliveness in a Troubled Earth System.”
17 Weber, Enlivenment.
18 McDonough, W., and M. Braungart. 2010. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things. New York, NY: MacMillan.
19 Fritjof Capra has laid out many related ideas in several works: Capra, F. 1995. The Web of Life. New York, NY: Doubleday, A. 1995; Capra, F. “Complexity and Life.” Theory, Culture and Society 22, no. 5, pp. 33-44; Capra, F. 1983. The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture. New York: Bantam. Capra, F., and P. Luisi. 2014. The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
20 For example, see Swanson, G.A., and J.G. Miller. 2009. “Living Systems Theory.” Systems Science and Cybernetics: Synergetics 1, 136–48. Also Capra and Luisi, The Systems View of Life.
21 Fullerton, J. 2015. “Regenerative Capitalism: How Universal Principles and Patterns Will Shape Our New Economy.” Capital Institute http://capitalinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-Regenerative-Capitalism-4-20-15-final.pdf (accessed May 27, 2020).
22 See, for example, Weber, A. 2016. Aliveness. Biopoetics, in Biosemiotics Series, Ch. 11, pp. 117–24, Dordrecht: Springer, and Weber, Enlivenment, along with Capra and Luisi. 2014. The Systems View of Life.
23 Maturana, H.R., and F. Varela. 1987. The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Boulder, CO: New Science Library/Shambhala Publications.
24 Holling, C.C. 1973. “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Ecological Systems, 4, pp. 1–23; also, Folke, C., S.R. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Chapin, and J. Rockström. 2010. “Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability.” Ecology and society 15, no. 4.
25 In our papers, Petra Kuenkel and I linked diversity with connectedness, but here I separate it out because it is an important aspect of thinking about what makes systems “come alive.”
26 Maturana and Varela, The Tree of Knowledge.
27 Jacobs, J. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage.
28 Swanson, G.A., and J.G. Miller. 2009. “Living Systems Theory.” Systems Science and Cybernetics: Synergetics, 1, pp. 136–48.
29 See also Fullerton. 2016. “Regenerative Capitalism; Andreas Weber, Aliveness.” Biopoetics, in Biosemiotics Series, Ch. 11 Dordrecht: Springer, 117–24.
30 I have articulated these ideas in two papers: “Leadership Ethics for a Troubled World: Responsibility for the Whole.” In Ethical Business Leadership in Troubling Times, Joanne Ciulla, and Tobey K. Schading, eds. pp. 205–21. Northampton, MA and Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, and “Stewardship of the Future: Large System Change and Company Stewardship.” In Corporate Stewardship, E. Lawler, S. Mohrman, and J. O’Toole, eds. pp. 36–54. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf.
31 Ackoff, R. 1996. “On Learning and the Systems that Facilitate It.” Reflections 1, no. 1, pp. 14–24, reprinted from The Center for Quality of Management, Cambridge, MA.
32 The late Lynn Stout, a legal expert, argued this point in “Why We Should Stop Teaching Dodge v. Ford.” Virginia Law and Business Review, 2008, 3, pp. 163–427; and The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
33 Yosifon, D.G. 2013. “The Law of Corporate Purpose.” Berkeley Business Law Journal 10, no. 2, pp. 181–230, p. 226.
34 Cited in Wikiquotes, Margaret Thatcher, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher (accessed April 30, 2019).
35 Babic, M., E. Heemskerk and J. Fichtner. 2018. “Who is More Powerful—States or Corporations?” The Conversation, URL: https://theconversation.com/who-is-more-powerful-states-or-corporations-99616 (accessed April 24, 2020).
36 Khanna, P. 2016. “Rise of the Titans.” Foreign Policy 217, pp. 50–55.
37 Laszlo, C., J. Brown, J. Ehrenfeld, M. Gorham, I. Barros-Pose, L. Robson, R. Saillant, D. Sherman and P. Werder. 2014. Flourishing Enterprise: The New Spirit of Business. Stanford: Stanford Business Books.
38 A similar approach is taken by Waddock, S., and A. Rasche. 2012. Building the Responsible Enterprise: Where Vision and Values Add Value. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
39 Bakan, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. New York: Simon and Schuster.
40 Corporation2020. Corporation2020: Designing for Social Purpose. 2020. https://corporation2020.org/ (accessed June 18, 2020).
41 See, for example, Ehrenfeld, J. and A. Hoffman. 2013. Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
42 Donaldson, T., and J.P. Walsh. 2015. “Toward a Theory of Business.” Research in Organizational Behavior 35, pp. 181–207.
43 Donaldson, and Walsh, Toward a Theory of Business.
44 Donaldson, and Walsh, Toward a Theory of Business, 188. Caps in original.
45 Waddock, S. 2000. Leading Corporate Citizens: Vision, Values, Value Added. McGraw-Hill. See also Waddock, S., and A. Rasche. Building the Responsible Enterprise.
46 Sisodia, R., D. Wolfe, and J.N. Sheth. 2003. Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose. New York, NY: Pearson Prentice Hall.
47 Mackey, J., and R. Sisodia. 2014. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
48 Sisodia, R., and M. Gelb. 2019. The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World. New York: HarperCollins.
49 Freeman, R.E. 2017. “ The New Story of Business: Towards a More Responsible Capitalism.” Business and Society Review 122, no. 3, pp. 449–65.
50 Donaldson, and Walsh, Toward a Theory of Business, p. 191.
51 Donaldson, and Walsh, Toward a Theory of Business, p. 188.
52 Donaldson, and Walsh, Toward a Theory of Business, p. 188; Freeman, R.E. 1984. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman.
53 Donaldson, and Walsh, Toward a Theory of Business, p. 191.
54 Hicks, Dignity.
55 Donaldson, and Walsh, Toward a Theory of Business, pp. 191–192.
56 Hicks, Dignity.
57 Sen, A. 1993. “Capability and Well-Being.” In The Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology, Daniel M. Hausman, ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 30–53. Also, “Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984.” The Journal of Philosophy, pp. 169–221.