Organizations in Service of Sustainable Development

To transform the economy into one that supports the critical ecological and social processes that sustain human life and wellbeing, we must fundamentally rethink the way human activities are structured. From this perspective, the role of organizations must take center stage as organizations, particularly economic organizations, constitute one of the most pervasive forms of institutionalized human activity on the planet, ordering both people’s lives and natural resource flows on a grand scale.

The famed economist and psychologist Herbert Simon noted that organizations rather than markets are the dominant social artifacts of modern society’s economic system, to the extent that it would be more appropriate to call it an ‘organization-&-market economy’. So if organizations are so central to the ways in which we act and interact with other people and the natural environment, they must also be a central arena for changes in knowledge and practice for a sustainable economy. The posts in this section are dedicated toward a critical and constructive examination of organizations in service of sustainability.