Transdisciplinary Study of Sustainable Enterprise

Abstract

International audienceOur research explores more holistic ways of understanding and creating sustainable enterprises. Enterprises and business school scholars are two primary actors in this research endeavor. Enterprises are moving towards sustainability but with a partial and selective understanding of global sustainability. Business school scholars generally study sustainability in their respective functional areas, such as management, accounting, finance and marketing, with some notable exceptions. We suggest that transdisciplinarity offers a unique real-world problem-solving framework that crosses disciplinary boundaries and the academic–practitioner divide. We explore the nature of transdisciplinarity and its application to corporate sustainability. We argue that enterprise sustainability requires trans-functional, trans-disciplinary, trans-stakeholder, trans-aesthetic and trans-human knowledge that is possible through transdisciplinarity. We provide an example of transdisciplinary work in art and sustainable enterprise. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environmen

The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability

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A Social Machine for Transdisciplinary Research

“…What sets transdisciplinarity apart from unidisciplinarity and other forms of integrative research (e.g., multiand inter-disciplinarity) is its holistic perspective on the nature of knowledge and knowing. At its core, transdisciplinarity is about the creative synthesis of knowledge to address real-world problems through transcending ideological, scientific, religious, economic, political and philosophical boundaries (Shrivastava & Ivanaj, 2011). Ultimately, successful implementation requires teams to establish conditions that diminish disciplinary chauvinism and cognitive biases and favor transparency, selfreflection and willingness to question personal assumptions and beliefs (Stock & Burton, 2011).…”

Embodying Tao in the ‘Restorative University’

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