This book places tipping points in their scientific, economic, governmental, creative, and spiritual contexts. It seeks to offer a comprehensive set of interpretations on the meaning and application of tipping points. Its contribution focuses on the various characterisations and metaphors of tipping points, on the scope for anticipating their onset, the capacity for societal resilience in the face of their impending arrival, and for better ways of communicating and preparing societies, economies, and governments for accommodating them, and hence to turn them into responses which buffer and better human well-being. Above all, the possibility of preparing society for creative and benign ‘tips’ is a unifying theme. 

The conclusion is sombre but not without hope. Thresholds of profound change can combine earth system-based relatively abrupt shifts with human-caused alterations of these disturbed patterns which, coupled together, produce more rapid onsets and greater tensions and stresses for governments and economies, as well as socially unequal societies. There is still time to predict and address these thresholds but too much delay will make the task of accommodation very difficult to achieve with relevant-scale community support. There are many examples of adaptive resilience throughout the world. These should be identified, supported, and emulated according to cultural acceptance and emerging economic realities. 

Contents page:

Front Matter

• Foreword 

• Preface 

• Acknowledgements 

• Contributors 

Part 1: Tipping Points and Critical Thresholds

• 1.1 Metaphors and Systemic Change 

Part 2: Earth System Tipping Points

• 2.1 Tipping Elements from a Global Perspective 

Part 3: The Culture Dimensions

• 3.1 Skittles: The Story of the Tipping Point Metaphor and its Relation to new Realities 

• Commentary 3.2: Aligning Contrasting Perspectives of Tipping Points 

Part 4: Food Security, Biodiversity, and Ecosystems Degradation

• 4.1 Food Security Twists and Turns: Why Food Systems need Complex Governance 

• 4.2 Human Resilience in the Face of Biodiversity Tipping Points at Local and Regional Scales 

• 4.3 The Amazon in Transition: The Challenge of Transforming the World’s Largest Tropical Forest Biome into a Sustainable Social-Ecological System 

Part 5: The Spiritual Dimension

• 5.1 Contemplative Consciousness 

• Commentary 5.2: Faith and Tipping Points 

Part 6: Politics, The Markets, and Business

• 6.1 Sustaining Markets, Establishing Well-Being, and Promoting Social Virtue for Transformational Tipping Points 

• 6.2 Some Socio-Economic Thoughts 

• 6.3 Leadership for Sustainability: The Search for Tipping Points 

• Commentary 6.4: Leadership by Business for Coping with Transformational Tipping Thresholds 

• Commentary 6.5: Private Sector Failure and Risk Management for Tipping Points 

• Commentary 6.6: Creating a Roadmap for Sustainable, Transformational Change 

• Commentary 6.7: Tipping Points and ‘Too Difficult Boxes’ 

• Commentary 6.8: It Tips Both Ways 

• Commentary 6.9: Perspective of a Global Retailer 

Part 7: Communicating Tipping Points and Resilience

• 7.1 Media Coverage of Tipping Points: Searching for a Balanced Story 

• 7.2 Exploring Adaptive Governance for Managing Tipping Points 

• Commentary 7.3: Reflections of a Journalist 

• Commentary 7.4: Making Sense of the World 

• Commentary 7.5: Endgame 

• Commentary 7.6: Beyond the LinearThe Role of Visual Thinking and Visualization 

Part 8: A Precarious Future

• 8.1 Into a Precarious Future 

• 8.2 Improving Our Chances of Transition to Sustainability: The Role of Values and the Ethics of Solidarity and Sympathy 

• Commentary 8.3: Turning the Tides? Parallel Infrastructures and the Revolt of the Corporate Elites 

End Matter

• Index

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With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment.

Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another period of great transformation equal in significance to the agricultural revolution some 13,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. This book helps readers make sense of our global crisis and the dynamics of transition that could result in a shift from the industrial epoch that we live in now to a more sustainable and equitable age. The global renewable energy transition that is already underway holds the key to the wider just transition. However, the evolutionary potential of the present also manifests in the mushrooming of ecocultures, new urban visions, sustainability-oriented developmental states and new ways of learning and researching.

Shedding light on the highly complex challenge of a sustainable and just transition, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with establishing a more sustainable and equitable world. Ultimately, this is a book about hope but without easy answers. 

Table of contents:

PART I Points of Departure

1. Introduction – Change in the Age of Sustainability

2. Ukama: emerging metatheories for the twenty-first century

PART II Rethinking Global Transitions

3. Understanding our finite world

4. Global crisis and transition: a long wave perspective

5. Futuring, experimentation and radical incrementalism

6. Evolutionary Potential of the Present: Why Ecocultures Matter

PART III Making and Resisting Sustainability Transitions

7. Developmental states and sustainability transitions

8. Global energy transition, energy democracy and the commons

9. Resisting Transition: ElectroMasculinity and the rise of Authoritarianism

PART IV Transdisciplinary Knowing

10. Towards an evolutionary pedagogy of the present

11. Concluding reflections of an enraged incrementalist

Reviews:

"This is a brave and ambitious book from a pioneering activist scholar. Mark Swilling offers a persuasive account of our contradictory times—dangerous and hopeful—while pointing to clear steps to become part of a just transition to a more sustainable civilisation. This masterstroke deserves the widest possible audience within the academy and far beyond. This is what praxis-driven, decolonial and free thought sounds like in its purest expression." - Edgar Pieterse, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa

“This book provides a sound basis for understanding the dynamic complexity of the challenges we are facing through a transdisciplinary lens." - Desta Mebratu, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and former Deputy-Director of the Africa Regional Office of the United Nations Environment Programme

"New thinking beyond all variation of modernity is needed to govern the Anthropocene meeting the challenges of the 21st century. Mark Swilling taps into contemporary theories like system thinking, integral theory and theories of resonance to reflect the African experience, pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial, to contribute to, if not to lead, the relevant global discourses of sustainability and resilience looking for the more than needed new narrative." - Louis Klein, European School of Governance, Germany

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We are living in a time of multiple global crises—perhaps the most significant the world has faced in decades. These simultaneous challenges will require attention, effort, and transformative solutions. This report is part of a series exploring how to limit suffering, promote flourishing, and minimize risk today and in the future through systemic change. This year, Ashoka and McKinsey joined forces with Echoing Green, Generation Pledge, and Catalyst 2030, an organization cofounded by Ashoka, to explore how highly resourced individuals (HRIs) can work toward systemic change.

This report is most relevant to individuals with considerable influence through wealth, networks, reputation, or a general ability to influence social, business, and political circles. Still, the findings can also apply to individuals with a lower net worth.

Solving society’s most complex challenges will not be easy and will likely benefit from collaborative effort across sectors. HRIs could contribute toward systematic change in several ways: by supporting those who already do the work, such as the many social entrepreneurs represented by some of our report partners, or by doing the work themselves, informed by the expertise, evidence, and rationale provided by subject- matter leaders and those with experience of the issues.

The ideas outlined in this report are the first steps on a journey to learn about effective collaboration between stakeholders.  

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This open access book provides methodological devices and analytical frameworks for the study of societies in transformation. It explores a central paradox in the study of change: making sense of change requires long-term perspectives on societal transformations and on the different ways people experience social change, whereas the research carried out to study change is necessarily limited to a relatively short space of time. This volume offers a range of methodological responses to this challenge by paying attention to the complex entanglement of qualitative research and the metanarratives generally used to account for change. Each chapter is based on a concrete case study from different parts of the world and tackles a diversity of topics, analytical approaches, and data collection methods. The contributors’ innovative solutions provide valuable tools and techniques for all those interested in the study of change.

Contents page:

Front matter

• Making Sense of Change: Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation—An Introduction

Scales of Change

Front matter

• Scales of Change and Diagnostic Contradictions: Shifting Relations Between an Emigrant Community and Its Diaspora

• Seeing Social Change Through the Institutional Lens: Universities in Egypt, 2011–2018

• Conceptualizing Change in the Cuban Revolution

Biographies of Change

Front matter

• Social Change and Generational Disparity: Education, Violence, and Precariousness in the Life Story of a Young Moroccan Activist

• Rescuing Biography from the Nation: Discrete Perspectives on Political Change in Morocco

•  “A Proper House, Not a Barn”: House Biographies and Societal Change in Urban Kyrgyzstan

• When a Coterie Becomes a Generation: Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt

Change in the Making

Front matter

• Spatializing Social Change: Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Upper Guinea

• The Affects of Change: An Ethnography of the Affective Experiences of the 2013 Military Intervention in Egypt

• Funeral Reforms in Taiwan: Insights on Change from a Discourse Analytic Perspective

Back Matter

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The purpose of the document is to help the reader become an informed decision maker, commissioner and/ or consumer of actions relating to organisational change. 

This publication does not talk about one particular type of organisation.  Neither does it promote any particular change model or practice as being ‘the best’. Instead, the publication provides information, insights and advice that may be useful for organisational leaders working in any public organisation and thinking about leading any type of change.  Inevitably, however, certain content will be more (or less) applicable to certain situations.

It is important to note that the publication is presented as an ‘ideas sourcebook’ rather than a step-by-step ‘how to’ guide. It is a collection of ideas designed to stimulate and inform leadership thinking, judgement and decision making in the face of the specific situations, opportunities and dilemmas.

[Note: This publication has been written for organisational leaders in the Victorian Public Sector [in Australia] — specifically, people working in executive and senior management roles.]

Table of contents:

• This publication 4 

• The key ideas of organisational change 5 

• Is major organisational change always necessary? 11 

• Do you have what it takes for a major change project? 15 

• Eight leadership errors during organisational change 19 

• Making it easy for people to change 27 

• Dealing with emotions during organisational change 33 

• Dealing with resistance to organisational change 37 

• Dealing with the ‘old’ ways 41 

• What does ‘good communication’ mean during organisational change? 45 

• Creating a flexible organisation 49 

• Appendices 53 

organisational change: a history of ideas 54 

influential concepts in organisational change 56 

organisational change management capabilities 61 

organisational change and industrial relations 62 

machinery of government changes 63 

references 64 

acknowledgements 67 

contact us 67

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This timely book expertly examines ongoing pressing issues in the modern world namely, an unstable economic climate, political turmoil and the environmental crisis. It takes a unique look at how science, technology and innovation could contribute towards the creation of a smarter and more resilient society by allowing more inclusive approaches into how science is integrated.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline thanks to generous funding support from The Swedish Governmental Agency For Innovation Systems, Vinnova.

With an insightful global interdisciplinary approach, Smart Policies for Societies in Transition combines in-depth theoretical analysis whilst also providing a reflective look at broadening the scope of science and innovation policy in order to understand the critical issues and challenges. Chapters illustrate historical practices and events, and discuss how the move to smart politics and the linking of boundaries from a social, ecological and global viewpoint leads to fewer but more creative policies.

With its retrospective and forward-thinking perspectives, this book will be an excellent resource for academics wanting to rethink their approach to science and innovation governance, whilst scholars will find the collaborative method for combining policy analysis with theory of policymaking and governance informative and illuminating.

Table of contents:

Front Matter

Copyright

Contents

Contributors

Acknowledgements

• Ch.1: Towards a smart society? Innovation policy and the challenges of social inclusion, environmental resilience and sustainable growth

• Ch.2: A smart green direction for innovation: the answer to unemployment and inequality?

• Ch.3: The importance of post-modern science policy

• Ch.4: What past changes in Swedish policy tell us about developing third-generation research and innovation governance

• Ch.5: Masculinity and nationhood: cultural roots for the head in the clouds and feet on the ground research in China

• Ch.6: Funding transformative research - rationale and impacts

• Ch.7: Towards transformative policy in Finland and Sweden: some viewpoints from practice

• Ch.8: The integrative humanities - and the third research policy regime

• Ch.9: Foundations and the new renewal of research

• Ch.10: Decision-making in a time of spin and unspoken values

Back Matter

Open access

Index

Reviews:

‘This is a fascinating book about innovation policy that goes beyond the narrow focus on economic growth or international competition. It offers fresh new insight and ideas about the transformative role that smart policies can play in addressing a broader set of social, economic, and ecological challenges we face. It is a must read for not only scholars but also policy practitioners who care about innovation and its broad impact on society.’ -- Xue Lan, Tsinghua University, China

 ‘This book explores key requirements for smart politics, focussing on the domain of innovation policy. The editors adopt a broadened understanding of innovation – beyond technological change or product innovation –, requiring integrated, transformative policy responses to pressing societal, environmental and economic problems. The book further suggests three elements of smart innovation policies: first, acknowledging the importance of inclusion and justice; second, accepting that global flows of knowledge and goods will remain crucial; and third, unleashing a creative, experimental reconstruction of public policies.’ -- Stefan Kuhlmann, University of Twente, the Netherlands

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This open access book helps actors who are committed to change unlock true innovative potential for the common good in their organizations. Innovation and change processes are not linear. Hence, this book presents a novel way to manage complexity. The author introduces readers to a comprehensive change management framework, the Eoh-for-Good blueprint methodology. It presents the method and discusses how it can be used to support collaboration, overcome challenges and achieve lasting changes in organizations with a 360-degree approach combining top-down, middle-round and bottom-up collaborative perspectives.

Table of contents:

• Introduction

• A Call for Action—Tackling the Profound Transitions Ahead

• Tailoring Transformative Governance for the Common Good

• Establishing a Culture of Innovation and Risk-Taking

• Driving Systemic and Multi-level Transformative Governance

• Designing Ad Hoc Impact Monitoring Systems

• Conclusion: Organisations and Ecosystems in Transition—Nurturing Transformative Governance

About the author:

Antonia Caro-Gonzalez is based in Spain and has a broad and extensive experience in designing and implementing internationalization strategies and academic research and innovation policies. She is the author of several peer-reviewed publications on a diverse range of social issues related to internationalization, higher education, societal impact and stakeholder engagement. She has managed internationalization projects and pioneered a full R&I impact strategy that conveyed a concrete innovative range of sustainable development goals that have differentiated a middle-size non-research intensive institution from other universities in Spain. She has also worked with a fully digital university to experiment on the future of higher education in a hyper-digitalized world. 

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