太阳城官网日期:2021年12月14日
Management professor’s rereading of Camus’s 瘟疫 helps inspire new book on dealing with global crises
During the bleakest days of the pandemic, 卡罗尔管理学院 琼Bartunek教授 turned back to her favorite book from college days, 瘟疫, in which Albert Camus tells the story of a mysterious and deadly plague that ravaged a city in Algeria, before disappearing as mysteriously as it arrived. 最后, 小说的叙述者, 一名医生, resolves that he must bear witness to what he ultimately learned during this time of pestilence—that “there is more to admire in men than to despise.”
琼Bartunek教授
Bartunek’s rereading of the 1948 novel served as one inspiration for a new book she has edited, against the backdrop of dire emergencies on the world stage (including an all-too-real plague). 特别是, she and a raft of contributors unpack the social dynamics and complex human interactions that can heal or heighten such large-scale traumas. 这本书是 Social Scientists Confronting 全球 Crises, released by Routledge on December 10.
巴尔图内克拿着 罗伯特一个. 和Evelyn J. Ferris Chair of Management and Organization 在卡罗尔学校. One premise of her book (which includes chapters authored by 20 prominent scholars and practitioners) is that experts in the natural sciences aren’t the only ones who have vital perspectives on crises such as climate and COVID.
“It is not just geologists who understand what is involved in climate change, 它的原因和影响, and not just virologists and epidemiologists who understand pandemics and how to deal with them,” Bartunek writes in the opening chapter. “Social scientists understand how such crises are intertwined with us as individual human beings, 在我们的关系中, 我们的团体, 我们的组织, 我们的社区, 我们的机构, how we collaborate with each other, 我们如何相互竞争, 以及随之而来的动态变化.”
Professor Bartunek's personal copy of "瘟疫" from her college days
Bartunek, a past president of the Academy of Management, points out that the book is not about these and other crises as such. It’s about what social scientists who are involved in both research and practice “can do to address and mitigate (if not prevent) global crises confronting us now and predictably . . . 在未来.一路走来, 本书的撰稿人, 比如加缪的叙述者, find much to admire in humans and their collective efforts.
例如, 在她的章节中, social scientist Sandra Janoff recounts how IKEA found a way to do its part in addressing the ecological crisis, by ushering a wide assortment of players into the same room and casting sustainability as a strategic goal in all of its business operations. Janoff had co-developed a methodology called 未来的搜索, which aims at getting “the whole system” to focus on the future, 她开始与宜家合作, the world’s largest home-furnishing company, in 2008.
在这种情况下, the whole system included not only leaders and specialists from all functions within IKEA, 还有顾客, suppliers and external partners—namely, environmental activists from the World Wildlife Fund and similar groups. Janoff notes that companies are often wary of directly involving environmentalists in strategic initiatives of this kind, fearing that these advocates might push for sustainability to the exclusion of profitability. But after three days of discussions, one environmental leader made it clear, “We 需要 you to be profitable, and we can figure out how we can do both.”
The result was a shared commitment by all stakeholders to a so-called “cradle to cradle” concept, 其中的材料, 设计, and production are geared to sustaining the environment and improving life from one generation to another. “Every function and process throughout the company went on to implement their own sustainability goals in line with the common ground agenda,Janoff写道. “人类与地球积极”, IKEA’s name for its sustainability strategy, continues to transform their business, all of the industries in the IKEA value chain and life at home for people around the world.”
The collaboration at the heart of this initiative is one illustration of what Bartunek means when she says “developing and sustaining complex relationships are crucial” as part of the response to global crises.
“Everyone writing in this book is doing so based on their care for the wellbeing of our world as well as their skilled and creative thinking and practice; they are all engaged scholars,她写道。, adding that the stories and cases “give us hope for our collective future, at least if we are brave enough to respond to the invitations they present us.”
The book—also inspired by MIT emeritus professor Ed Schein’s 号召行动 for social scientists to address global crises—is dedicated in memory of all those who lost their lives as a result of the coronavirus.
William Bole is Director of Content Development at the 卡罗尔管理学院.