Suchergebnisse

There is not a great deal to be said about economics which is truly universal. One can say that economics is the study of economic systems. Economic systems can be defined as systems of human actions concerned with the production and the distribution of goods and services which are scarce relative to the wants of the community. But statements of this kind, which attempt to define the economic aspect of human society in universally valid terms, are far too general to serve as premises from which an economic theory, useful for understanding actual economic problems, can be logically deduced. To have theory, one must start with premises and assumptions about some particular economic system, historically given, or some particular kind of economic system. The great bodies of economic thought of the Western world—mercantilism, classical and neo-classical economic liberalism, and the various schools of Marxist economic—have been theories relevant to particular economic systems: those, let us say, of the Western world in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Does human population growth threaten the environment, or does it guarantee we will safeguard it? Is economic growth the key ecological problem, or is it in fact the solution? What will be the leading force to save the planet: civil society, government, or private enterprise? This book shows that these polemical debates are governed not so much by access to "facts" as they are by the political ideology of the expert advancing a particular argument. Moreover, the thoughts of these experts tend to be based largely in just one of three competing streams of political thought: the left, the center, or the right. Drawing on social theory, the author explains the philosophical origins of this tendency to rely on just one of three traditions, and why this poses a serious obstacle to conceptualizing the cause, nature, and resolution of environmental problems. Sunderlin argues that laying the foundation for a livable world involves giving conscious and dedicated attention to the core tenets of all three political traditions: action against class inequality and advocacy of social justice within and among countries; reformation of laws and policies emanating from the halls of power and technological innovation in centers of research; and wholesale cultural change and promotion of individual initiative, responsibility, and creativity.

Organizations often learn vicariously by observing what other organizations do. Our study examines vicarious learning–related communication through which individuals share their observations with other organizational members. Most students and members of present-day organizations would expect that this communication is driven by a prodevelopment logic—that communication serves the purpose of organizational improvement and competitiveness. Our unique historical evidence on learning-related communication over multiple decades shows that the subjective and collective attitude toward prodevelopment communication may be ideologically conditioned. Prodevelopment communication is the norm in capitalist organizations, but competing ideologies may emphasize other goals higher than organizational development. Consequently, increasing challenges to capitalism as the ideological basis of economic organization can have deep impacts on how organizations learn and produce innovations in the future.