Ecological Imaginaries Reframing Organisation

Humanity faces an ecological crisis of its own creation. The many facets of
this crisis include: human induced climate change, reduction in biodiversity
in a broad range of ecosystems, increasing rate of species extinctions, and
the impacts on social systems that span equity of access to food and water,
human rights, and the well-being of individuals and societies. This ecological
crisis is widely acknowledged and there have been many attempts at
organisational and societal levels to redress its negative impacts – yet despite
the widespread effort little progress seems to be made.
The research focus for this book was organisational enactment of sustainability.
The findings highlight barriers concerned with meaning construction
that view nature as an excluded other. The proposition of this book is that
successful adoption of sustainability, at all scales, needs new narratives to
facilitate the emergence of meanings of sustainability conducive to the inclusion
of nature and argues for the need to create a new social imaginary
to support ecological sustainability.
This book provides the frame of metabolic organisation – a different conceptual
foundation to the three dimensions of sustainable development:
economic, environmental and social – to stimulate the creation of new ecological
imaginaries.
Metabolic organisation is defined as a multi-scalar systemic framework
comprising of three interdependent concepts – metabolism, values and enmeshment – and brings together three distinct strands of theory – social
and biological metabolism, value theory and ecological theories.
This book will interest scholars and students of Sustainability, Management
and Organisational Studies, Human Geography, Sociology, Ecology,
Ecological Economics and Cultural Studies, and will also provide policy
makers and practitioners with a new lens to view enactment of sustainability differently.