Deadline for Submission of manuscripts for the Edward Elgar volume
"Organizations and the Sustainability Mosaic: Crafting Long-Term
Ecological and Societal Solutions" is November 30th 2005.
If you are interested in submitting a manuscript but would like a short
extension please contact Sanjay Sharma (
ssharma@wlu.ca). The call for
papers is reproduced below:
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"Organizations and the Sustainability Mosaic: Crafting Long-Term
Ecological and Societal Solutions" Volume 3 in the Edward Elgar Series
"New Perspectives in Research on Corporate Sustainability"
Series Editors: Sanjay Sharma (
ssharma@wlu.ca) and Mark Starik
(
starik@gwu.edu)
Guest Editor: Bryan Husted (
bhusted@itesm.mx)
The annual Edward Elgar series "New Perspectives in Research on
Corporate Sustainability" publishes cutting edge research and fresh
ideas in the domain of organizations and sustainability. The theme of
the first volume (edited by Sanjay Sharma and Mark Starik) published in
2004 was "Stakeholders, Environment and Society." The theme of the
second volume (edited by Sanjay Sharma and J. Alberto Aragon-Correa)
available in June 2005 is "Corporate Environmental Strategy and
Competitive Advantage." We now invite manuscripts for inclusion in the
third volume of the series on the theme "Organizations and the
Sustainability Mosaic: Crafting Long-Term Ecological and Societal
Solutions."
In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED)
published a report titled "Our common future." The document known
popularly as the "Brundtland Report" after the Commission's chair, Gro
Harlem Brundtland, developed guiding principles for sustainable
development that are the most often cited by governments, businesses,
and organizations today. The report stated that critical global
environmental problems were primarily the result of the enormous poverty
in the South and the non-sustainable patterns of consumption and
production in the North. It called for a strategy of sustainable
development by uniting social and economic development and the
environment: "Sustainable development is development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs." This idea is not new. Many
cultures over the course of human history have recognized the need for
harmony among the environment, society and the economy. Indeed, there
are aboriginal people and indigenous tribes across the world that still
adhere to principles of environmental stewardship and harmony between
human development and nature. However, recent human history is defined
in a major way by the industrial revolution and its systems of mass
organization and production that have been constantly at odds with the
concept of sustainability. Therefore, the articulation of sustainable
principles in context of such global and capital-intensive systems of
mass production is a recent phenomenon.
To date, research streams in this domain have adopted a limited and
specialized focus, such as examining the interface of organizations and
the natural environment, social issues in management, rural development,
ecological economics, among others. The concept of sustainable
development in an organizational context adds complexity by adding a
third dimension to the economic-natural environment interface: the need
to improve social and human welfare while reducing the ecological
footprint and ensuring the effective achievement of organizational
objectives. The aim of this volume is to publish research that
recognizes the complex interactions among social, environmental, and
development impacts of organizations at the community, regional,
national, and global levels. Accordingly, we invite original manuscripts
that focus on, but are not restricted to, the following themes:
* What does sustainable development mean in an organizational
context? Can we construct unique theories of sustainable organizations
or does sustainable development provide a context for gaining new
insights into existing theories?
* Can organizations generate positive environmental and social
impacts at a community or regional level or is it possible to visualize
sustainable development in an organizational context at national and
global levels? What does this mean in terms of ever increasing
geographic dispersion of organizational value chains?
* In the developing world, social, ecological and economic issues
are intertwined and difficult to separate. Can organizations play a role
in the alleviation of global ecological and social problems such as
hunger, poverty, human rights, illiteracy at the same time as preserving
ecological integrity and achieving their core objectives?
* Is sustainable development possible among groupings or networks
of organizations? Should such networks be bounded geographically -
locally, regionally, or can they be globally connected and still be able
to assimilate wastes and ensure social justice? How should such
sustainable networks be governed and what role should public policy and
regulations play in facilitating such networks? How will the performance
of such networks be determined, measured and monitored? How will the
inter-organizational interfaces be managed and how will the designs and
structures of individual organizations change to facilitate network
objectives? Will such networks emerge as planned entities such as
eco-parks or industrial ecology networks or will they be fluid, flexible
and constantly evolving?
* The concept of local or community self-sufficiency may
facilitate the monitoring of the impacts of organizations on the
carrying capacity of an eco-system, on the stock of natural capital, the
welfare of human capital, and the health of natural systems in a bounded
geographic region. What will sustainable communities look like? How will
they interact with, and exchange resources with, other sustainable
communities globally? How will such communities achieve their objectives
of smart growth involving better quality of life and the accrual of
natural capital?
* Do the organizational challenges of improving the welfare of
marginalized societies and future generations as well as accruing
natural capital for them have the potential to create new insights into
organizational architectures?
* How can government policy, at the multiple levels and in the
multiple functions of the public sector, support or encourage private
sector organizations to more effectively plan, implement, and evaluate
sustainability efforts?
* What are the roles that social and environmental entrepreneurs
and nonprofit organizations, including their respective innovations,
values, and systems, have played and can play in the advancement of
sustainable development?
* How can new technologies be used to create socially and
ecologically sustainable business models in emerging economies? What
skills and capacities need to be developed among potential entrepreneurs
in order to incorporate such technologies in sustainable enterprises?
* How can socially and environmentally sustainable enterprises
attract venture capital and other forms of finance? Can markets provide
such funding? What role should governments and international development
banks play in generating capital to finance sustainable business?
* What types of organizational capabilities and change processes
will enable the integration of social justice and ecological
preservation objectives with competitive advantage?
* What can organizations in modern post-industrial society learn
both from indigenous peoples and from nature itself that could promote
both social and environmental sustainability?
Manuscripts should be innovative, theoretically provocative, and
empirically rigorous. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches that are
holistic and integrative and welcome multiple research perspectives
involving theory development and testing to advance extant knowledge on
organizational sustainability/ sustainable development. Manuscripts
should follow the AMJ's "Style Guide for Authors" and should be
submitted both as a hard copy and as an electronic email attachment
(after checking for computer viruses) to Sanjay Sharma, School of
Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue
W , Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada; Phone: 1-519-884-0710(2089);
email:
ssharma@wlu.ca by November 30th 2005. If the authors would like
an editorial opinion on the appropriateness of submissions for the
special volume, please do not send the entire manuscript but send an
abstract of around 200 words via email to any of the three editors
(Sharma, Husted, and Starik).
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