Sustainability Calling Underpinning Technologies [Hardcover]

This book discusses the key concepts of the technologies that underpin the drive towards sustainability in today’s complex world.  The authors propose an integrated view of the frontiers facing any organization nowadays – whether an enterprise, an administration or any human collective construction – that operates with a goal, a mission or an objective.

While a unified approach still seems unachievable, the authors have nevertheless tackled the amalgamation of the underpinning elements (theories, domains of expertise and practice) and propose a model for assimilating the new concepts with a global view to design the sustainable organizations of the future. The book paves a way towards a general convergence theory, which will manifest, as a by-product, genuine sustainability.   Furthermore, and due to the fact that the same main principles apply, the book redesigns the notion of “competitiveness”, which today is too often simply reduced to profitability.

 

PREFACE xix

INTRODUCTION xxiii

PART 1. MODELS THAT CAN ASPIRE TO BE BETTER SUITED TO FUTURE NEEDS 1

CHAPTER 1. DISASSEMBLING SOME TRADITIONAL VIEWS 3

1.1. Time and space: past, present and future 3

1.2. The (big) law of correspondence 5

1.3. Intricate imbrications and their uncertainties 10

1.4. Many levels: subatomic, micro, meso, macro, chrono, etc. 11

CHAPTER 2. IS GLOBALIZATION, OR HOLISM, REALLY A NEW PHENOMENON? 13

2.1. Some characteristics of the present globalization 13

2.2. A brief history of a very old concept: globalization 13

2.3. The nature of today’s l�!