Global leadership for social design: theoretical and educational perspectives

Abstract

The rapid change of technological, social, and cultural structures is challenging universities to offer new educational programs. The Global Leader Program for Social Design and Management (GSDM) of the University of Tokyo can be seen as a forerunner in this field. The paper provides definitions of social design as well as of global leadership and provides a proposal for the definition of the objective of the GSDM program, i.e., multi-level resilient human-environment system. These subjects are embedded in the framework of human-environment systems (HES). We identified the different types of knowledge integration that 'global leaders for social design' should master. The core of a sustainable social design is to (1) properly conceptualize and manage ''resilient coupled human-environment systems'' and to (2) integrate or relate different systems, epistemics, interests, cultures, and knowledge systems. The specific challenge in this context is to cope with conflicting cultural-religious systems or to understand how the vulnerability of different human systems with respect to digital environments. Social design is conceived as all rules, mechanisms, and preferences that govern the interaction of humans with material, biophysical, technological, and socio-cultural epistemic environments. The goal of education for global leadership for social design may have to progress from the T-shaped skills profile (i.e., being specialized in one discipline and having the capability to collaborate with other disciplines) to the p-profile. Students for leadership in global designs must be qualified in a social and an engineering/natural science and literate and capable to know, relate, and govern different disciplines, cultures, or systems which have to be included in the sustainable transitioning of cultural and socio-technological systems. The paper elaborates in what way transdisciplinarity is needed and why resilience management should be seen as a proper objective of GSDM. The challenges of the new educational program for the science system and institutions as well as for students and professors are discussed.

Leading by listening, learning by doing: modeling democratic approaches to conservation leadership in graduate education

“…Our case contributes to the emerging novel pedagogical approaches in the environmental and sustainability fields that incorporate more critical teaching methods (Gosselin et al 2016, Scholz et al 2018. The direct and active involvement of students in the construction and analysis of pedagogic platforms, however, constitutes a relatively unique experience (Lips-Wiersma and Allan, 2018), especially for students of diverse origins, backgrounds, and experiences such as ours.…”

The intellectual structure of the literature on sustainability leadership in higher education: an author co-citation analysis

“…, 2020), strategic leadership (Robèrt et al. , 2004), change management (Shriberg and Harris, 2012), global leadership (Scholz et al. , 2018) and higher education leadership (Taşçi and Titrek, 2020).…”

“…Burns, G. Dyer, M. Dyer and Thomas). These scholars have also drawn upon a variety of existing models when seeking to conceptualize sustainability leadership in higher education settings: transformational leadership (Barth et al, 2020;Bass and Riggio, 2006;Shriberg and Harris, 2012), authentic leadership (Srivastava et al, 2020), strategic leadership (Rob ert et al, 2004), change management (Shriberg and Harris, 2012), global leadership (Scholz et al, 2018) and higher education leadership (Tas ¸çi and Titrek, 2020). This wide variety of theoretical perspectives on "sustainability leadership", also reflected in the wide dispersion of authors in this school, suggests an absence of consensus on the nature of sustainability leadership that is best suited to the higher education context.…”

From probabilistic functionalism to a mental simulation of innovation: by collaboration from vulnerabilities to resilient societal systems

“…Consequently, although the creation of innovation is not necessarily related to a thorough understanding of the system's mechanisms described above, innovation and innovative thinking is a prerequisite for the development of resilient societal structures and processes (e.g., Linkov et al 2014, p 408;Scholz et al 2017). For example, the development and application of technology such as the atomic bomb showed a high degree of innovativeness and creativity, but it lacked the 'wisdom' to prevent destruction by preventing its application.…”