Feature Articles / April- June 2014
The Election and the Indian Psyche
Ashok Malhotra & Raghu Ananthanarayanan
India is at an inflexion point. An old civilization is coming to terms with modernity. At Sumedhas Academy for Human Context (www.sumedhas.org) we have been examining the nature and processes of the Indian Psyche with deep interest. As India takes steps towards development, it draws energy from its psyche and impacts it in many significant ways. We have used the frame work developed by Ashok Malhotra (one of the …
Learner Papers / April- June 2014
Christine Haskell
Abstract
Corporate leaders focus primarily on growing their businesses. They should also focus on mitigating potential setbacks (crises). Innovation (in its many forms) is a guided exploration of purposeful uncertainty. A company knows they want to grow but are generally unsure how. Customer-centric approaches such as participatory innovation are a recent focus for leaders looking to negotiate this tension. In contrast, crises are problems. They are part of an intricate system of related problems, and all crises are …
Fresh Perspective / April- June 2014
Lera Boroditsky, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at UCSD and Editor in Chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology. She studies language and cognition, specifically focusing on interactions between language, cognition, and perception. She received her B.A. from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her research combines insights and methods from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology. She has received several awards for her research, including an NSF CAREER award, the Marr Prize from the Cognitive …
Leadership Emerging / April- June 2014
Alexander Schieffer and Ronnie Lessem. Integral Development. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing, 2014.
Schieffer and Lessem introduce a ground-breaking 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. Integral Development combines four mutually reinforcing perspectives: nature and community; culture and spirituality; …
Book Reviews / April- June 2014
Mark Gilbert, Our Spiritual Evolution: Transcending the Third Dimension. Conscious Bridge Publishing, 2014.
Robert Brzezinski
Mark Gilbert creates an easy to follow and comprehend experience of understanding our personal worldview and how that fulfills our mission on the planet. He states his premise quite clearly when he writes, “You and I are on a journey. Everyone is. We are on a spiritual, evolutionary journey. This book is about understanding that journey, how it plays a role in your life, …
Book Reviews / April- June 2014
Jeremy Rifkin. The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014.
Bruce Gibb
My intention in this review is to show relevance of the book to Spiral Dynamics Integral. In summary, Rifkin uses a similar conceptual framework and his analysis proceeds from a Yellow, Stage 7 (S:7) stance. This is revealed in his creation of a vision of the future, his use of an historical and prospected future …
Leadership Emerging / April- June 2014
Trompenaars, Fons and Ed Voerman. Servant Leadership Across Cultures – Harnessing the Strength of the World’s Most Powerful Management Philosophy. Infinite Ideas Ltd, Oxford, UK:2009. 190 pp.
David C. Wigglesworth
A quotation on the back cover of this book from Herman Whijffels of the World Bank, Washington,DC and Director of the Board for the Greenleaf Foundation states: This book is especially recommended for leaders who make decisions using their minds, but also want to speak from the heart. They dare …
Leadership Emerging / April- June 2014
Giannantonion, Christina M. and Aky E. Hurley-Hanson (Eds). Extreme Leadership – Leaders, Teams and Situations Outside the Norm. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK-Northampton, MA, USA. 2013.
David C. Wigglesworth
This is a collection of articles, as the title implies, that focus on “extreme leadership” – extreme from obviously very different definitions since the leaders runs the gamut from Ernest Shakleton, Scott and Amundsen to Glenn Miller and Francis Ford Coppola. The bulk of the pieces relate to extreme leadership in geographical …
Leadership Emerging / April- June 2014
Georg Vielmetter
and Yvonne Sell. Leadership 2030: The Six Megatrends You Need to Understand to Lead Your Company into the Future. AMACOM: New York, 244 pp.
David C. Wigglesworth
This is a two part book. The first part addresses the six megatrends that they see the world is facing and the place of leadership in this future. This comprises the bulk of the book. The final shorter section is about leadership and contrasts altrocentric leadership with egocentric leadership as it …
Feature Articles / April- June 2014
Paul Hess
The modern corporation has many demands placed upon it by various stakeholders: investors, customers, employees, communities, government, representatives of the natural environment, etc. How should corporations respond to these stakeholders? There are three major possibilities: to prioritize one stakeholder, to address all stakeholders separately, or to serve all stakeholders as part of a common good.
Prioritizing one stakeholder is done by the most common model of the firm, the shareholder firm, whose proponents insist that it is …