ABSTRACT
Never before has there been such a need for organisations to behave responsibly. While we see the emergence of green, participative and healthy initiatives, we are also painfully aware of the challenges posed by unravelling social cohesion and the degraded condition of the planet. What organisations do will significantly impact future generations. The effectiveness of their response, whether they are for-profit, not-for-profit or community organisations, is an expression of the way in which each one comes together and organises.
The logic is simple: There is not one item on the global agenda for change that can be understood (much less responded to) without a better understanding of organisations. More than anywhere else, the world’s direction and future are being created in the context of human organisations and institutions. Today … new spaces have opened for transboundary corporations, networks, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), regimes, associations, grassroots groups and many others to proliferate. The significance, in many respects, of the relatively small number of decisions made by our nation-state leaders pales in comparison to the billions of decisions made every day by members and leaders of such organisations.
Cooperrider and Dutton 1999: xvi