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	<title>Dr Geoff Wells</title>
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	<link>http://www.geoffwells.com</link>
	<description>Sustainability &#38; Sustainable Business Advisor/Mentor, Certified Management Consultant (CMC)</description>
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		<title>ElgarBlog: my piece on sustainable business</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/04/elgarblog-my-piece-on-sustainable-business/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/04/elgarblog-my-piece-on-sustainable-business/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:33:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1146</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here is a piece I wrote for ElgarBlog, which is run by the UK publishers Edward Elgar.  The piece goes along with the publication of my book, Sustainable Business: Theory and Practice of Business Under Sustainability Principles which I edited.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://elgarblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/exploring-the-concept-of-sustainable-business-by-geoffrey-wells/">Here </a>is a piece I wrote for ElgarBlog, which is run by the UK publishers Edward Elgar.  The piece goes along with the publication of my book, <em>Sustainable Business: Theory and Practice of Business Under Sustainability Principles</em> which I edited.</p>
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		<title>&#8216;Fractured Workplace&#8217; Chapter 8: The sustainable organisation as a working community</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/fractured-workplace-chapter-8-the-sustainable-organisation-as-a-working-community/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/fractured-workplace-chapter-8-the-sustainable-organisation-as-a-working-community/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Mar 2013 02:08:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Fractured Workplace and Its Remedies]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1132</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Chapter 8  The sustainable organisation as a working community Throughout this book I’ve been arguing that the organisation, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, is as much about its people as it is about its work or (in the case of firms) &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/fractured-workplace-chapter-8-the-sustainable-organisation-as-a-working-community/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p align="center"><i>Chapter 8</i></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"> <strong>The sustainable organisation as a working community</strong></p>
<p>Throughout this book I’ve been arguing that the organisation, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, is as much about its people as it is about its work or (in the case of firms) about its financial outcomes.  There have been two main themes:<span id="more-1132"></span></p>
<p>First, I’ve proposed that the simple fact of people being part of the enterprise brings to the organisation a range of crucial obligations, which have to do not with the business itself but with purely human matters.  In formal terms this means ethical behaviour and the upholding of human rights.  But it also means the consistent practice of the respect, trust, consideration and courtesy that upholds relationships between people everywhere.</p>
<p>Second, I’ve argued that treating people this way allows for the relationship between people and their work to incorporate naturally the commitment and motivation that brings organisational outcomes, as a by-product of the increasing fulfillment people experience in their work and in the workplace.</p>
<p>In this chapter I want to take the argument one step further. What happens if we take the organisation first as a group of people, working together?  What implications does that perspective have for the workplace, for work, and for organisational outcomes?</p>
<p><strong>Organisations as communities</strong></p>
<p>Here I am following a path laid out by an eminent writer on business ethics, Robert C. Solomon<a title="" href="#ref1">[i]</a>.  Solomon draws on long-established principles of ethics, notably those of Aristotle’s virtue ethics.  Broadly speaking virtue ethics is the view that right action is associated with the attitudes we commonly value in practical life, things like honesty and generosity, not just because they are useful, but because they are intrinsically right<a title="" href="#ref2">[ii]</a></p>
<p>When these principles are applied to organisations, they emerge in a new concept: the organisation as a community, held together by the values that bind every successful human community.</p>
<p>Solomon begins with a simple, powerful proposal:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Corporations are neither legal fictions nor financial juggernauts but communities, people working together for common goals.</p>
<p>By the term ‘legal fiction’ he is referring to the idea embedded in modern corporate law that the corporation is a legal person in its own right, separate from directors or membership.  The implication of this legal fiction is that a firm can act in its own right, in certain business-related areas, much as persons do: for example, to hold property and to enter into contracts.<a title="" href="#ref3">[iii]</a> The problem with this idea is that it is easily extended to notions of moral obligation: the idea, for instance, that managing the firm in such a way as to maximise profitability or to return as much as possible to shareholders are moral requirements, just as one might have moral obligations to a person&#8211;which override other moral obligations (to employees, to people in the supply chain, to customers, to the broader community, and so on); hence the idea of a ‘financial juggernaut’.</p>
<p>Instead Solomon is proposing that we start with the idea of the people in the firm as a <i>community</i>, which he defines as ‘people working together for common goals.’ In this Solomon is adopting a familiar idea:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Community ties may be structured around links between people with common residence, common interests, common attachments or some other shared experience generating a sense of belonging.<a title="" href="#ref4">[iv]</a></p>
<p>“A sense of belonging”&#8211;just the concept of ownership we have been supporting in this book.  The values that hold people together in communities are well known to everyone.  In the context of the workplace, these values are derived from how people relate to each other and to the work they are doing together. Solomon puts it in these simple terms, which would, I think, be agreed by most people in most workplaces:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">What is worth defending in business is the sense of virtue that stresses cooperative joint effort and concern for consumers and colleagues alike.</p>
<p>On this view corporate culture, which is based in the shared knowledge, experience, values, beliefs and attitudes of the community, moves to the centre.  These values come into the organisation with its people and are embedded and developed in the normal exchanges and interactions of everyday work.  The informal directions of corporate culture and known to be very powerful in determining the outcomes of the workplace: here is the discretionary work which acts as the generator of new ideas, the resilience of the organisation in times of crisis, and the motivator of the collective intention to succeed in delivering the organisation’s purposes.</p>
<p><strong>Sustainable organisations</strong></p>
<p>With community and integrity at the centre of the business organisation, human well-being secured by ethical business practice thus becomes as important an outcome of the firm’s activities as its profitability.  The purposes of the firm expand well beyond the demands of delivering ‘shareholder value’ to delivering broader kinds of values to all the stakeholders of the firm, including employees and the community at large:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">. . .not only the fulfillment of obligations to stockholders (not all of them ‘fiduciary’) but the production of quality and the earning of pride in one’s products, providing good jobs and well-deserved rewards for employees and the enrichment of the whole community and not just a select group of (possibly short-term) contracted ‘owners’.</p>
<p>In this sense the firm is seen as an organisation that has public as well as private purposes: it has responsibilities not only to its own people, but to the people it interacts with, such as suppliers and customers, and to the wider society.  The idea of community thus expands to include the broader goals of the local and even international society, such as the elimination of poverty and the achievement of social justice.</p>
<p>This, in modern terms, defines what has come to be called the <i>sustainable </i>organisation.  All the principles which are taken as characterising modern sustainable organisations and  firms—health, safety and welfare, flexibility in working hours, participation, equity, transparency, diversity, personal development, human rights and so on &#8211; have ethical foundations based on the shared norms of the firm, conceived of as a community.</p>
<p><strong>The humane workplace</strong></p>
<p>This then brings us to a view of the workplace which is much more recognizable, as well as being more humane and more effective.</p>
<p>It is more recognizable in that the principles governing such a workplace&#8211;things like respect, trust, cooperation, community&#8211;are very familiar to us from our everyday lives, over decades.  We have argued that there doesn’t seem to be any reason why principles of human interaction, at any level, on any scale, should be any different in the workplace to those that have proven themselves in our general lives.  People are people, wherever they are: they don’t become something else when they cross the threshold of a business, as if walking into an alternate universe&#8211;one where people can be used as resources, can be abused and coerced, or diminished as individuals.  Those kinds of assumptions, that kind of behaviour, wouldn’t be tolerated in the wider society.  We wouldn’t run our families or our friendships or our communities with them, because we know that not only would they fail but that quickly the fabric of our social lives would collapse.  Why then do we think that the workplace is any different?  Courtesy, transparency and consideration&#8211;all of which which are regarded with suspicion in modern management practice&#8211;are the basic elements of well-being in human relationships.  We know this as well as we know anything, and it makes simple sense to apply this knowledge in the workplace.</p>
<p>It is more humane because it recognises that there are important obligations which must be accepted by any organisation, for-profit or non-profit, which chooses to employ people.  We have noted that it is simply the case that there are unequivocal rights that people have, as human beings, which go beyond the legal OHS&amp;W requirements (although as we’ve noted these are being strengthened all the time).  These are articulated in the human rights international conventions to which Australia is a party.  As importantly they are articulated in the ethical beliefs we hold in common as a society&#8211;what has been called ‘common morality’, which we will discuss in some detail below.</p>
<p>Finally, it is obvious that such a workplace, with people who are treated with respect and are allowed to use their creativity and talents to the full, the results of the work will be greatly enhanced.  This is the business case for human workplaces.  But the business case is not enough: human action is required because they are ethically right first, and only second because they help the business.  As Norman Bowie remarks:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">. . .we should view profits as a consequence, or by-product, of ethical business practices, rather than as the sole goal of business, an end to which all means are subjugated.<a title="" href="#ref5">[v]</a></p>
<p><strong>Commonsense morality</strong></p>
<p>Commonsense morality (or common morality) has been described as the common moral outlook we all share.  Shelly Kagan<a title="" href="#ref6">[vi]</a> notes: “People may differ about the details, but at least the broad features are familiar and widely accepted.”  For example, we all know respect and trust when we see it; and on the other side, unfairness or bullying.</p>
<p>In making decisions, Kagan argues&#8211;including decisions in the workplace, whether as managers or as employees&#8211;we work from this platform of commonsense morality to try to promote what we understand to be “the goodness of outcomes.”  It may not be the only factor we consider; but in a truly human workplace it is, I would argue, non-negotiable.  It may not always be simple, either, in that it may be that none of the possible choices lead to particularly good outcomes; but we are committed to making the choice which promises the least bad, or the most good, overall.</p>
<p>Most importantly, Kagan points out, this principle implies that we should include all the results of an action: immediate, short term and long term; side effects and indirect consequences as well as direct; and as wide a range of the people affected by the decision as we can encompass.  In a firm that means all the stakeholders, both internal and external, as we have described above.  In a truly sustainable firm it also means people who are far away in space (the employees of international suppliers, for example) and in time: future generations.  Everyone’s well-being counts.</p>
<p>Ronald Francis<a title="" href="#ref7">[vii]</a> proposes a simple set of four ethical principles to govern corporate behaviour:</p>
<ol>
<li>Preserve from harm.</li>
<li>Respect the dignity of all persons.</li>
<li>Be open and honest except in the exceptional cases where privacy and silence are clearly ethically preferable.</li>
<li>Act so as to preserve the equitability of relationships.</li>
</ol>
<p>How recognisable these are to us as ordinary people!  These are principles most children are taught, because they have proven their worth over centuries in guiding human behaviour and are therefore transmitted generation to generation.  Yet simple as these principles appear to be&#8211;and simple principles are often, as we’ve seen, the most powerful&#8211;no one claims they are easy to put into practice. Real-life challenges in workplaces are inherently complex; often a number of these principles will be relevant to a problem and trade-offs will have to be made; often it is not a black-and-white matter but one of shades of grey, of reasonable claims on different sides.  Nevertheless, if a workplace were to adopt these four principles and work conscientiously to put them into practice, it couldn’t go far wrong: the humane quality of the workplace, and the well-being of its workers, would be largely secured.</p>
<p><strong>A positive vision of work and workplaces</strong></p>
<p>You’ll remember that in the Taylorist model of work (outlined in chapter 2) the distinction is made between the craft tradition of work and the modern, industrial approach.  In a sense the Taylorist model was developed to eliminate the craft tradition and to replace it with the modern model&#8211;in which task the Taylorist agenda has been remarkably successful.  Yet the craft model stubbornly holds on in the background, representing some kind of aspiration in the workplace that is not being currently met.  What does this aspiration consist of and how is it to be met?</p>
<p>In chapter 5 I quoted Hugh Stretton’s attractive list of requirements for the workplace, which I will repeat here:</p>
<ul>
<li>Interesting, challenging or otherwise pleasing tasks.</li>
<li>Tasks with some wholeness or independence, so that workers can enjoy some pride of craft.</li>
<li>Sociable roles in small working groups or teams; or in congenial relations with customers.</li>
<li>A real concern to develop latent talent.</li>
<li>A shared concern for excellence, both as a means . . .and as an end; as one of the joys of life.</li>
</ul>
<p>The second, fourth and fifth of these have specifically to do with the craft tradition.  In that tradition the development of specialist knowledge was embedded in the craft organisations, so that anyone (any man) coming into that area as an apprentice would advance their knowledge in a systematic way through the ranks of journeyman to the expertise of a master.  The acquisition of this knowledge, the exercise of it in practice the products created by it were in themselves matters for pride.</p>
<p>It seems clear that most people would like to see the workplace organised in such a way as to allow for this development.  But few workplaces provide for it today; mainly because the education of workers has been divorced from the workplace.  Training institutions have taken over the role of education, and the workplace has become only a place of work, not of growth or development.  Reversing this&#8211;allowing for the systematic development of people in their work, in the workplace, supported by educational institutions but not appropriated by them&#8211;seems to be the first element that needs to be put in place in a humane and productive workplace.  People need to be able to rediscover personal fulfillment in their everyday work, to enjoy the process of carrying it out, to take personal pride in its products and services, to be supported in creating new ways of doing things and new ways of accomplishing goals.</p>
<p>Interestingly, it may be in the most contemporary of the professions&#8211;computing and information technology&#8211;that the early signs of this re-emergence of a craft tradition are presenting itself.  Many of its professionals bypass academic institutions altogether, learning from their peers and from online sources, taking charge of their own training and development, and working in online communities&#8211;the early stages, perhaps, of a new craft tradition.</p>
<p>The second, linked characteristic of a humane workplace derives from Stretton’s third requirement, which concerns how people relate to each other in their work.  Here is the domain we have been exploring in this book: the domain of people at work.  We have argued for a comprehensive restructuring of the principles which govern this domain.  We have articulated new (or old, depending on how you look at it) principles which generate a truly humane workplace; and, just because it is humane, a workplace of sustained productivity and excellence.  These are principles which relate to the inherent worth and dignity of individuals, with all their rights to well-being and development; to the way in which people interact within the workplace, on the ground of respect, trust and consideration; to the nature of the workplace as a whole, as a community, with a commitment to commonsense moral and ethical principles; in an environment which encourages and supports collaboration and cooperation, and collective achievement.  This kind of achievement is something really worth celebrating: in achieving the goals and purposes of the organisation; in providing fulfillment to people in both process and product; all on the ground of community ownership:</p>
<p style="text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;">But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done/ The people all remark, &#8220;We have done it ourselves.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
<p>There will be those, I know, who will disparage the approach taken in this book as unreasonably idealistic and as disconnected from the demands of the modern competitive environment of global business.  Any firm which attempted to operate this way, it will be claimed, would go out of business:  securing maximum productivity from one’s workforce, within legal limits, at least cost is seen as a prerequisite for survival, as a simple matter of economics&#8211;whatever that may mean for the well-being of one’s own people.  This view is, I would argue, entirely misconceived, even naive: the everyday costs of treating people like disposable resources, as in the standard model&#8211;the multiplying costs in passive resistance, in working to rule, in the lost opportunities of creativity not applied to solutions, and so on&#8211;vastly exceed any direct costs generated by treating people well and humanely.  And that doesn’t include the wider costs picked up by the public purse: for example, in health and welfare costs.</p>
<p>The standard model of people management, I have argued, is undocumented, unthinking, unethical propaganda which somehow has become the common wisdom of modern management.  The historical record of societies stands against it.  It lacks any substantial support in the body of management research and even less in the body of management practice.  Yet it has been adopted as the standard model of management and applied by lazy managers the world over with enormously damaging results.  It is shameful that it has continued for so long, and still continues.</p>
<p>In fact I argue the reverse.  Any firm which thinks it can effectively ignore its ethical and humane obligations to its own people will fail, and fail quickly.  As it happens, people, as is so often trumpeted, are in fact, in reality, the biggest resource of a company; by far, by many orders of magnitude.  People can work miracles, if they are allowed to; and in the modern business environment of rapidly accelerating change miracles are an everyday requirement.  But attention to their well-being is a requirement, if you want that kind of business contribution from them.</p>
<p>In the end, however, the business case for looking after your people is not enough, and in many ways even taking such a position is an unethical approach.  You look after your people first and always because it’s right to do so, just in the same way that it’s right to treat your family and your friends, and strangers, well; not because you want them to do things for you and need to manipulate them into it.  You create a healthy, humane workplace because that is how mature, intelligent, adult people behave with each other, with consideration and respect, in building a healthy and humane society.</p>
<p>These principles are non-negotiable, even in the interests of business success: if the only way you can succeed in your business is to damage people, you are in the wrong business and should get out.  The entire apparatus of Taylorist assumptions, which so infect modern management theory and practice, is unacceptable, in terms of human rights and in terms of common morality, let alone in terms of the waste of human potential it represents to our society.</p>
<p>We are better than this.  We have a society of real worth to build, firm by firm, organisation by organisation.  We know how to do it, each one of us, if we give ourselves a chance to put into practice what we have known as ordinary people, interacting with other people every day of our lives, to be right.</p>
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<div>
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<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div>
<p><a name="ref1"></a>[i] Solomon, R. (2004), ‘Aristotle, ethics and business organizations.’ <i>Organization Studies</i>, 25 (6), 1021-43.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref2"></a>[ii] Aristotle (1925), <i>The Nicomachaen ethics</i>. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/">entry </a>on virtue ethics in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref3"></a>[iii] Cassidy, J. 2003, <i>Concise corporations law</i>, 4th edition, The Federation Press, Leichardt, NSW, p.42.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref4"></a>[iv]Crow, G. &amp; Allan, G. 1994, <i>Community life: an introduction to local social relations</i>, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, UK, p.1.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref5"></a>[v] Bowie, N. (2002), ‘A Kantian approach to business ethics.’ In T. Donaldson, P. Werhane &amp; M. Cording (eds.) <i>Ethical issues in business: a philosophical approach</i>, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, pp.70-71</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref6"></a>[vii] Kagan, S. 1998, <i>Normative Ethics</i>, Westview Press, Boulder CO.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref7"></a>[vii]Francis, R. (2000), <i>Ethics and corporate governance: an Australian handbook. </i>Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.</p>
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		<title>Publication: &#8220;Sustainable Business: Theory and Practice of Business Under Sustainability Principles&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/publication-sustainable-business-theory-and-practice-of-business-under-sustainability-principles/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/publication-sustainable-business-theory-and-practice-of-business-under-sustainability-principles/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2013 22:48:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Papers & presentations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1124</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have edited a book in sustainable business, entitled &#8220;Sustainable Business: Theory and Practice of Business Under Sustainability Principles&#8221;, which has recently been published by Edward Elgar, the well-credentialled UK publishers in business, law and associated disciplines. There are 16 &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/publication-sustainable-business-theory-and-practice-of-business-under-sustainability-principles/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have edited a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Business-Practice-Sustainability-Principles/dp/1781001855/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1362176831&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=geoffrey+wells+sustainable+business">book </a>in sustainable business, entitled &#8220;Sustainable Business: Theory and Practice of Business Under Sustainability Principles&#8221;, which has recently been published by Edward Elgar, the well-credentialled UK publishers in business, law and associated disciplines. <span id="more-1124"></span>There are 16 chapters in all, contributed by researchers at the University of South Australia.  In addition to editing the book I contributed the Introduction and a chapter.</p>
<p>The book is a contribution to the theme now emerging in the international academic environment to articulate the principles and practice of business as it comes to terms with the accelerating requirements of the sustainability age.</p>
<p>The contributions are in five parts:</p>
<p><em>Introduction</em>:  This places the idea of sustainable business in the historical context, tracing its roots over the past half century, and summarising the contributions of the book from that perspective.</p>
<p><em>Part 1:  The Sustainable Firm. </em>Three chapters on the idea of the sustainable firm&#8211;developing an integrated framework for corporate social and environmental responsibility; the practice of developing social capital in sustainable organisations; and an ethical approach to the sustainable firm as primarily an ethical idea.</p>
<p><em>Part 2</em>: <em>Sustainable Business Management</em>:  Six chapters on different aspects of management theory and practice viewed from the sustainability perspective&#8211;sustainability accounting and reporting; carbon accounting and auditing; sustainable marketing; sustainable HRM; virtue-based leadership; and sustainable risk assessment.</p>
<p>Part 3: <em>Sustainable Business in Practice</em>:  Four chapters on sustainability in different industry sectors&#8211;two studies of family business, one general, one a case-study; a close look at small rural retail and services businesses in their approach to sustainability; and a framework for corporate sustainability in the construction industry.</p>
<p>Part 4: <em>International Environment of Sustainable Business: </em>Two chapters on key international topics: the changing face of international law with respect to climate change and associated matters; and an analysis of the Stern (UK) and Garnaut (Australia) reports on the economics of climate change.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>The Australian Consultant Journal Autumn 2013: my open book publishing piece</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/the-australian-consultant-journal-autumn-2013-my-open-book-publishing-piece/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:40:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Here is a piece I wrote for the The Australian Consultant Journal, Autumn 2013, on &#8220;Open Book Publishing.&#8221;  It is based on the experience of writing my open book, &#8220;The Fractured Workplace And Its Remedies&#8221; on this website.  The piece &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/the-australian-consultant-journal-autumn-2013-my-open-book-publishing-piece/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Here is a piece I wrote for the <em>The Australian Consultant Journal</em>, Autumn 2013, on &#8220;Open Book Publishing.&#8221;  It is based on the experience of writing my open book, &#8220;The Fractured Workplace And Its Remedies&#8221; on this website.  The piece has attracted considerable interest&#8211;as is to be expected in an environment of rapidly expanding online publishing.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/03/the-australian-consultant-journal-autumn-2013-my-open-book-publishing-piece/consulting-news-open-book-publishing/" rel="attachment wp-att-1122">CONSULTING NEWS OPEN BOOK PUBLISHING</a></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Fractured Workplace&#8217; Chapter 7: Leading In Healthy Organizations</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/02/fractured-workplace-chapter-7-leading-in-healthy-organizations/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/02/fractured-workplace-chapter-7-leading-in-healthy-organizations/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:25:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1099</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Chapter 7  Leading in healthy organizations  Leadership, as a sub-discipline, is probably beset by more fads and fashions than any other academic arena of management.  Over decades it has thrown up numerous schools, each with their own theory and research.  &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/02/fractured-workplace-chapter-7-leading-in-healthy-organizations/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p align="center"><i>Chapter 7</i></p>
<p align="center"><i> </i><strong>Leading in healthy organizations</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center"><b> </b>Leadership, as a sub-discipline, is probably beset by more fads and fashions than any other academic arena of management.  Over decades it has thrown up numerous schools, each with their own theory and research.  Little of it is convincing.<span id="more-1099"></span>  As a result it is literally true that in my decades of consulting in businesses and organisations I have <i>never</i>&#8211;not even once&#8211;heard any of it referred to or seen it actively used.  Aspiring managers are sent on leadership courses, which purvey this kind of material, and then come back to manage on instinct.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">If we are to believe the financial markets this lack of robust insight into leadership must be a disaster, for companies and for the economy as a whole.  For nothing is more deeply etched in the common wisdom of the markets than the myth of CEO omnipotence.  If a company thrives the CEO is lionised and excessively rewarded.  If the company declines, for long enough, he (usually he) is sacked and a new CEO installed.  The market loves new CEO’s: they bring with them all the promise of irresistible prosperity, particularly to shareholders.  This time, the market insists, they have got it right.  This CEO will remake the company and its business, do everything that is needed to turn it around.  This CEO knows everything that is needed for that happen; he is possessed of extraordinary talents; he is tough (the markets love ‘tough’).  Above all, he has the market’s interests at heart and will deliver value to them.  That all leaders at some point are replaced, that these grossly unreasonable expectations are almost never met, doesn’t seem to dampen the market’s ardour for CEO’s.  It is an irrational, and apparently unchanging, bewitchment.</p>
<p>The simple fact is that this model of the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful CEO who directs all aspects of the company with precision and flair is a mirage, a caricature.  All good leaders know they are only as good as their people; that their success or failure depends on their people, not on themselves.  Leaders who forget this, who buy into the notion of their own exceptionalism and infallibility do so at their own risk; and their risk the well-being of not only their own people but of all their stakeholders.</p>
<p>At the root of the problem is the deeply ingrained idea that somehow leaders are a type of person; that leaders are born, not made.  That is, there are ‘L-type’ people moving around with that character, as if the letter had spontaneously emerged on their foreheads.  It is assumed that they have innate qualities which predispose them to leadership; that wherever they go, whatever they do, they will display these qualities. Thus in organisations people are often identified as having ‘leadership potential’: they are L-type people.</p>
<p>As it happens the somewhat chaotic landscape of leadership research agrees at least on this: that there is no set of personality characteristics which predicts leadership capability.  This is the longest-running research program in the discipline, directed by this old, tenacious model of leadership.  It set out to prove that there was indeed such a set; because if there is a set then you can select people for these attributes and culture them for high office.  It conspicuously failed.</p>
<p>This is in any case a highly offensive direction, from a human rights perspective.  Because if there are L-type people then by definition there are non-L-type people (who must, of course, be the followers, otherwise the L-type people would have no-one to lead). Not a pleasant fate to be a non-L-type person, condemned always to the lower echelons, to the most boring work (as we have seen under Taylorist assumptions the planners, the brain-workers are the leaders, the L-type people).  One only needs to make the link from personality to genetics and we are into dangerous territory.  This has indeed been the claim of a recent study <a title="" href="#ref1">[i]</a> which looked at 4000 individuals to correlate leadership with genetic constitution.  Their finding claimed to ‘explain’ 25% of leadership behaviour on genetic grounds.  However the definition of leadership behaviour in this study was trivially defined by a position in workplace supervision&#8211;as much, in my experience, a measure of organisational conformity as of leadership behaviour.  Largely because of its naive treatment of leadership behaviour, the study does nothing to buttress the discredited L-type model.</p>
<p>Here is a completely different&#8211;effectively opposite&#8211;view of leadership, from the classical Chinese teacher of the 6th Century, Lao Tse (this is one of many translations, I’m told among the more authentic of them<a title="" href="#ref2">[ii]</a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Of the best rulers, the people only know that they exist; the next they fear; and the next they revile, when they do not command the people&#8217;s faith. Some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, &#8220;We have done it ourselves.&#8221;</p>
<p>In my experience this facilitative model of the leadership resonates much more strongly with ordinary people in the workplace than the L-type, charismatic model.  Let us see why.</p>
<p>Our approach will be to think through the idea of leadership&#8211;by deconstructing it and then rebuilding it. Self-evidently, despite the attempt to identify and define L-type people, leaders can’t exist on their own, as isolated individuals.  If you are to called a leader there must be people whom you lead.  Otherwise what are you, exactly&#8211;a leader temporarily between engagements? A leader in waiting?  This is patently absurd.  A leader becomes a leader when he or she has followers (a term we will discuss later).</p>
<p>It follows that it is to the relationship between leader and follower that we need to look.  What is the nature of the relationship?  What elements comprise it, how is it constituted?  What is a strong relationship as against a weak one, a healthy one as against an unhealthy one, a durable one as against a temporary one? How do dimensions such as these affect organisational outcomes?  These are the central questions of leadership.</p>
<p>To begin with let’s remind ourselves that we all know something about relationships, and about what strengthens or weakens them.  Certainly the leader-follower relationship is a relationship of a particular kind, built around work.  But the human elements of the relationship can’t be separated from the professional elements, so we all have something useful to say about the leader-follower relationship.  If you ask people to write down the characteristics of the person they would most like to be led by they will list such things as: ability to listen; empathy; trust; respect; support; taking responsibility; collaboration; and so on.  In my experience there is  little dispute about these.  When you look at the list you see that they seem to be fairly ordinary human qualities.  We expect our leaders to be decent human beings first and foremost, people who treat us well and with respect, and we respond to them best when they are.</p>
<p>Unremarkable as this conclusion is, it is also, strangely, quite controversial.  In academic management leadership is arcane, complex and difficult.  Here we are asserting the opposite.  Leaders and followers work best together if they follow the guidelines of normal human experience; and in this case that is the antithesis of the coercive behaviour we have discussed in earlier chapters.  It works in both directions: followers, or subordinates, are equally responsible for the strength and quality of the relationship and for the decency of their own behaviour.  Relationships are always two-way affairs, in business as in life.</p>
<p>Of course there are areas of the leader-follower relationship which have a legitimate focus on the work.  Leaders and followers work together to achieve the objectives of the organisation.  In that work they each take different part, which can best be described as roles.  Leadership and followership are different roles in the workplan taken on for the purpose of the work.  They are not personality sets: no one is a leader or a follower for life, and every one is a leader and a follower at some time in their lives. The primacy of the underlying human level remains, upheld by human rights, ethical principles, and the best social norms.  On that basis leaders and followers play their particular roles in the interests both of themselves and of the work outcome. And these roles are not set in stone: they are flexible and likely to change as circumstances change.  Good teams know that in one particular task one person may be best qualified to take a leadership role, and in another task someone else may be.  In my experience Australian workers often spontaneously self-organise in this way.  Roles change with tasks, as seems eminently sensible.</p>
<p>This view is supported by evidence.  In remarkable book, <i>Leading Quietly</i>, Joseph Badaracco, a Harvard researcher, reports a detailed study conduct on some 400 businesses and organisations in the US<a title="" href="#ref3">[iii]</a>.  Badaracco asked a simple question: where is leadership found in the organisation?  The natural answer is ‘at the top’; but intriguingly Badaracco left it open to the evidence: he and his co-workers spent many months observing, interviewing and documenting the day-to-day life of these organisations, looking for the answer to that research question.</p>
<p>What emerged from the study was striking and strongly counter-intuitive.  Firstly, it became clear that leadership was occurring as a matter of course, every day, at every level of the organisation.  That is, people everywhere in the business were generating and guiding initiatives, gathering the resources needed, garnering the support of peers, managing upwards, and so on, until a successful conclusion was reached.  Just we predicted above, it wasn’t always the same people who acted as leaders: leadership activity moved around the organisation and people could be at different times both leaders and followers, depending on the issue or the task. Badaracco pointed out that people seemed to be acting as leaders not because they were predisposed to it but out of a desire to accomplish within the organisation something they cared about.  Whether they had a title or designated responsibility or power was largely irrelevant: they took charge and, with luck, got it done.</p>
<p>Secondly, and even more dramatically, Badaracco concluded that the cumulative impact of these leadership micro-initiatives far outweighed the impact of programs initiated by senior management, the nominal leaders of the organisations.  This is difficult to credit, but the evidence was clear.  The direct challenge it presents to the model of the archetypal American CEO-king is easy to see.</p>
<p>How could this possibly be true?  Isn’t it the case that, in accord with good Taylorist principles, it is senior management that is largely responsible for strategic and tactical planning, which is then cascaded through the organisation directed by supervisors and implemented by employees?  Isn’t that what they are being paid (often excessively) to do? What then does it mean to say that leadership is occurring, and occurring on such a scale, throughout the organisation?</p>
<p>Here the processual approach we introduced earlier in the book provides some valuable insights.  A fundamental principle of the processual view (not so much a principle as a basic fact of human life) is that people are always centres of creativity, decisions, initiatives and actions.  That is true in life generally and no less in organisations.  Even if presented with a strategic plan, operation plan, work plan and the like, all carefully engineered at the top, people will take charge of them wherever they are in the organisational hierarchy.  They will alter the plan, introduce new elements into it, change priorities, even oppose or replace it, according to their views of what is needed, from where they are.  Often this can be done without attracting notice, under the radar, as it were; but often, if the issue is big enough, a coordinated approach is needed within the organisation and visible to it.  That requires real leadership, of a sophisticated kind, but it is common, not rare: you only have to reflect on your own work experience to recognise it.  That is, it would seem that, what Badaracco’s researchers came across as they drilled down into their hundreds of organisations.  It is a striking result.</p>
<p>In support, then, of our project of restructuring leadership ideas, here are four guiding principles of leadership, drawn from my experience and from the wider organisational and leadership literature:</p>
<p><strong>1. Vision and strategy</strong><b>.  </b>Leadership is often associated with the big picture, with a whole of business view, with the ability to see patterns in complex environments and develop trajectories for the organisation to achieve success.  Traditionally this is associated with the CEO, who autocratically stamps her vision on the company and drives it from there.  As we have noted, there is real reason, however, to doubt the efficacy of this model.  In the modern environment it is almost impossible for any one person to have detailed knowledge of all the areas of the external environment that is needed for a successful outcome: that environment is simply too large, too complex, too volatile, too interactive.  The development of an organisational vision and the strategic directions that derive from it is necessarily collaborative, and all the best leaders in my experience work that way.  There is also the principle of ownership: an organisational vision that is imparted from on high will be resisted, or at best received with detachment; it is only by participating in the creation of a vision that people take on a real commitment to it.  The leadership role in the creation of an organisational vision is thus to facilitate the process of vision and strategy development, including all its stakeholders, and being open to the outcome of this collective, collaborative process.  Opening up vision and strategy creation in this way can lead to surprising and innovative outcomes.</p>
<p><strong>2. Partnership</strong><b>. </b>The development of an organisation is always a collaborative exercise.  In essence an organisation is a community of people working for a common end.  A wise leader understands this deeply and acts accordingly.  I have argued that the entry point for a leader is that her subordinates are responsible, mature, forward-looking associates who deserve trust and respect.  Leadership, as we have said, is a role, just as the other positions in the organisations are roles: the value of people in those roles is equally maintained across the organisation.  The organisational task is to develop ways of working together, in different configurations and under different processes, to achieve the outcomes of the organisation.  This requires leaders, in particular, to facilitate and support an environment of openness and transparency, of straightforward and honest communication, which includes the ability to listen as much as to speak or propose.  It requires the abandonment of positions of power: if a leader has to resort to power than her role has been irreparably compromised.  It requires an ability to let go of ego and of entrenched personal commitments, to recognise that expertise of various kinds is not concentrated at the top but distributed throughout the organisation, to move with the majority view where the case has been made.  An organisation is made by the people in it, together, and the leader’s role is to make the collaborative enterprise work.</p>
<p><strong>3. Integrity</strong><b>. </b>Integrity should be so built into the everyday behaviour of a leader that it hardly needs to be mentioned.  However, the evidence is that it still needs to be emphasized.  Integrity means in the first place personal integrity: in addition to transparency and honesty, it rests on behaviour which is characterised by consistency (trust is difficult to develop in the face of inconsistency); equity and fairness, especially where the choices are personally challenging; and honesty and directness (that is, lack of prevarication). Exemplifying integrity in one’s personal conduct is critical for a leader: she can’t ask her people to act with integrity if she herself doesn’t.  Ethical behaviour is critical, especially where it’s personally difficult: it must be unfaltering.  The leader must be seen to value values: most organizational value statements are given only lip service at best; an effective leader must be seen to draw explicitly on values and act on them&#8211;they act as an anchor which people can rely on.  And when you make promises you deliver on them: or you come back and say why it didn’t work and what you’re going to do about it.</p>
<p>An important part of integrity is being real: that is, not pretending, not trying to cover things over.  If something is not working, or didn’t go well, you talk about it with your people; you develop with them the habit of learning from these experiences, together, not of concealing them.  Only when you know where you are is it possible to work out how to get to where you want to go.  That kind of realism is mutually empowering.</p>
<p>On this platform of personal integrity it’s possible then to build institutional integrity.  That is, the organisation itself can act, and be seen to act, with integrity.  That is something of enormous value, to both commercial and non-profit organisations alike, in building its reputation and conducting its business in the market.  Internally it attracts and retains good people and externally it builds the collaborative external relationships on which lasting success is built.</p>
<p><strong>4.  Community.</strong> In the end the role of a leader is to build community: a place of productive and positive relationships that organically functions for the benefit of both the organization and its people.  To that end the first law of leadership is: look after your people.  As we have noted, the leader recognises that she is not going to do the work: her people are.  Her role, as leader, is to support them: to facilitate their work, help them break through barriers, where necessary protect them from outside interference, and secure their personal welfare, as much as she can; and help the group learn, adapt, manage its processes, share across divisions of the organisation, and remain connected to the collectively-derived organisational goals and values.  People are supported as whole people, not just as workers; they bring their lives with them to work, and from time to time the leader will need to support them in different aspects; the traditional requirement to ‘leave your problems at home’ is ridiculous: of course you can’t, and to a degree all organizations will at times need to recognize private needs and support them.  As a leader you respect in confidence communications and maintain privacy where it is asked for: you don’t breach that, ever.  This approach has been called <i>servant leadership</i><a title="" href="#ref4">[iv]</a>, which sounds like a contradiction in terms but which plainly isn’t; on the contrary, it’s how effective, human leadership is done.</p>
<p>Above all you appreciate your people and their achievements.  Most people don’t need much in the way of appreciation, but they do need something.  It’s simply not enjoyable to work day after day and not know whether what you’re doing is valued, or even noticed.  Even a words, sometimes, will do.  Group achievements should be celebrated, with vigour: we did this, and we did it together.</p>
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<p><a name="ref1"></a>[i] http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/leadership-is-in-the-gene-say-scientists-20130116-2cs7c.html</p>
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<p><a name="ref2"></a>[ii] http://www.theleadershiphub.com/blogs/wisdom-lao-tzu</p>
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<p><a name="ref3"></a>[iii]Badaracco, J 2002, <i>Leading Quietly</i>, Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge MA</p>
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<p><a name="ref4"></a>[iv] Greenleaf, R K 2002 (1977, 1991) <i>Servant leadership: a journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness</i>, Paulist Press, New Jersey.</p>
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		<title>Sustainability and sustainable business news January 2013</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/02/sustainability-news-january-2013/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/02/sustainability-news-january-2013/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Feb 2013 05:46:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles and news stories]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[World&#8217;s oldest fossil microbes in the Pilbara: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/planets-oldest-fossils-found-in-pilbara-experts-say-20130101-2c3qs.html Serious uncertainties on rate of ice melt: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fear-of-catastrophic-sealevel-rise-as-ice-sheets-melt-faster-than-predicted-8440277.html Pacific bluefin tuna in trouble: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/pacific-tuna-stocks-have-plummeted-scientists-warn/ Ian Lowe on the planetary future: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/its-happening&#8211;just-like-climate-scientists-said-it-would-20130113-2cnej.html?rand=1358081216526 Social choices in Texas drought: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/texas-drought-pushes-lawmakers-to-focus-on-water-in-new-session.html?hpw Research on the costs of &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/02/sustainability-news-january-2013/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>World&#8217;s oldest fossil microbes in the Pilbara:<br />
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/planets-oldest-fossils-found-in-pilbara-experts-say-20130101-2c3qs.html">http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/planets-oldest-fossils-found-in-pilbara-experts-say-20130101-2c3qs.html</a></p>
<p>Serious uncertainties on rate of ice melt:<br />
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fear-of-catastrophic-sealevel-rise-as-ice-sheets-melt-faster-than-predicted-8440277.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fear-of-catastrophic-sealevel-rise-as-ice-sheets-melt-faster-than-predicted-8440277.html</a></p>
<p><span id="more-1091"></span></p>
<p>Pacific bluefin tuna in trouble:<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/pacific-tuna-stocks-have-plummeted-scientists-warn/">http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/pacific-tuna-stocks-have-plummeted-scientists-warn/</a></p>
<p>Ian Lowe on the planetary future:<br />
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/its-happening--just-like-climate-scientists-said-it-would-20130113-2cnej.html?rand=1358081216526">http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/its-happening&#8211;just-like-climate-scientists-said-it-would-20130113-2cnej.html?rand=1358081216526</a></p>
<p>Social choices in Texas drought:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/texas-drought-pushes-lawmakers-to-focus-on-water-in-new-session.html?hpw">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/texas-drought-pushes-lawmakers-to-focus-on-water-in-new-session.html?hpw</a></p>
<p>Research on the costs of climate delay:<br />
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fiddling-while-rome-burns--the-3trn-cost-of-climate-delay-8449863.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fiddling-while-rome-burns&#8211;the-3trn-cost-of-climate-delay-8449863.html</a></p>
<p>Bill McKibben&#8217;s comment:<br />
<a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/beyond-baby-steps-analyzing-the-cap-and-trade-flop/#.UPRraSfyLvc.twitter">http://grist.org/climate-energy/beyond-baby-steps-analyzing-the-cap-and-trade-flop/#.UPRraSfyLvc.twitter</a></p>
<p>The rise of Andes quinoa farming and its consequences:<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/14/quinoa-andes-bolivia-peru-crop">http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/14/quinoa-andes-bolivia-peru-crop</a></p>
<p>The decline of public housing in Australia:<br />
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/too-many-lack-a-place-to-call-their-own-20130114-2cpo1.html?rand=1358157577332">http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/too-many-lack-a-place-to-call-their-own-20130114-2cpo1.html?rand=1358157577332</a></p>
<p>A leadership gene?<br />
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/world/leadership-is-in-the-gene-say-scientists-20130116-2cs7c.html">http://www.theage.com.au/world/leadership-is-in-the-gene-say-scientists-20130116-2cs7c.html</a></p>
<p>Organic food worldwide: research and potential<br />
<a href="http://www.worldwatch.org/achieving-sustainable-food-system-organic-farming">http://www.worldwatch.org/achieving-sustainable-food-system-organic-farming</a></p>
<p>Problems with the design and siting of Australia&#8217;s marine parks:<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/australias-new-marine-protected-areas-why-they-wont-work-11469">http://theconversation.edu.au/australias-new-marine-protected-areas-why-they-wont-work-11469</a></p>
<p>China&#8217;s ETS on track for 2015:<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/carbon-trading-in-the-asian-century-chinas-ets-on-track-11438">http://theconversation.edu.au/carbon-trading-in-the-asian-century-chinas-ets-on-track-11438</a></p>
<p>Stiglitz on US inequality: a good analysis of the bigger economic picture:<br />
<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/inequality-is-holding-back-the-recovery/?hp">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/inequality-is-holding-back-the-recovery/?hp</a></p>
<p>Perception and land use change in SE Australia:<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/do-you-see-what-i-see-rural-reactions-to-changing-land-use-11445">http://theconversation.edu.au/do-you-see-what-i-see-rural-reactions-to-changing-land-use-11445</a></p>
<p>New versions of greenwash:<br />
<a href="http://www.eco-business.com/press-releases/sustainability-goes-positive-but-whats-new/">http://www.eco-business.com/press-releases/sustainability-goes-positive-but-whats-new/</a></p>
<p>Continuing child labour issues in Apple&#8217;s supply chain:<br />
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/child-labour-uncovered-in-apples-suppliers-20130126-2ddio.html">http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/child-labour-uncovered-in-apples-suppliers-20130126-2ddio.html</a></p>
<p>Nicholas Stern updates his evaluation of climate change&#8211;more urgently:<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/27/nicholas-stern-climate-change-davos">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/27/nicholas-stern-climate-change-davos</a></p>
<p>Nano-particles and medical research:<br />
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-tiniest-particles-that-may-be-a-threat-as-bad-as-asbestos-8468367.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-tiniest-particles-that-may-be-a-threat-as-bad-as-asbestos-8468367.html</a></p>
<p>Effects of Yangtze dams: biodiversity and people<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/birds-dams-and-people-biodiversity-in-china-11768">http://theconversation.edu.au/birds-dams-and-people-biodiversity-in-china-11768</a></p>
<p>Trading the environment for growth:<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/25/david-cameron-eu-speech-environment">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/25/david-cameron-eu-speech-environment</a></p>
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		<title>Sustainable business and sustainability news December 2012</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/01/sustainable-business-and-sustainability-news-december-2012/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/01/sustainable-business-and-sustainability-news-december-2012/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jan 2013 22:38:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles and news stories]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1067</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Majority of world&#8217;s large companies using renewable energy: http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/34979-Majority-Of-World-s-Largest-Companies-Shifting-To-Clean-Energy Peak farmland: an optimistic view: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/scientists-see-promise-for-people-and-nature-in-peak-farmland/ Complexities of listing endangered species: http://theconversation.edu.au/endangered-species-what-makes-the-list-11073 Indigenous outcomes at James Price Point: http://theconversation.edu.au/marcia-langtons-quiet-revolution-and-what-you-dont-hear-about-james-price-point-11256 An interesting, if flawed, view of invasive species: http://theconversation.edu.au/in-defence-of-invasive-alien-species-10977 Die-back of old &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2013/01/sustainable-business-and-sustainability-news-december-2012/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Majority of world&#8217;s large companies using renewable energy:<br />
<a href="http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/34979-Majority-Of-World-s-Largest-Companies-Shifting-To-Clean-Energy">http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/34979-Majority-Of-World-s-Largest-Companies-Shifting-To-Clean-Energy</a></p>
<p>Peak farmland: an optimistic view:<br />
<a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/scientists-see-promise-for-people-and-nature-in-peak-farmland/">http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/scientists-see-promise-for-people-and-nature-in-peak-farmland/</a></p>
<p><span id="more-1067"></span></p>
<p>Complexities of listing endangered species:<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/endangered-species-what-makes-the-list-11073">http://theconversation.edu.au/endangered-species-what-makes-the-list-11073</a></p>
<p>Indigenous outcomes at James Price Point:<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/marcia-langtons-quiet-revolution-and-what-you-dont-hear-about-james-price-point-11256">http://theconversation.edu.au/marcia-langtons-quiet-revolution-and-what-you-dont-hear-about-james-price-point-11256</a></p>
<p>An interesting, if flawed, view of invasive species:<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/in-defence-of-invasive-alien-species-10977">http://theconversation.edu.au/in-defence-of-invasive-alien-species-10977</a></p>
<p>Die-back of old trees world-wide:<br />
<a style="font-style: normal;" href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/mighty-old-trees-are-perishing-fast-study-warns/">http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/mighty-old-trees-are-perishing-fast-study-warns/</a></p>
<p>A new global biodiversity map:<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/a-biodiversity-map-version-2-0/">http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/a-biodiversity-map-version-2-0/</a></p>
<p>The Alaska Petroleum reserve:<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/caribou-and-oil-companies-to-share-alaska-petroleum-reserve/?src=rechp">http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/caribou-and-oil-companies-to-share-alaska-petroleum-reserve/?src=rechp</a></p>
<p>California&#8217;s evolving carbon regulation:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/business/energy-environment/california-manufacturers-weigh-costs-of-new-greenhouse-gas-rules.html?_r=0&amp;hp=&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;adxnnlx=1356383794-cqcomfeswPB/i5Ejm0cyqA">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/business/energy-environment/california-manufacturers-weigh-costs-of-new-greenhouse-gas-rules.html?_r=0&amp;hp=&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;adxnnlx=1356383794-cqcomfeswPB/i5Ejm0cyqA</a></p>
<p>Labour reforms in China:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/business/signs-of-changes-taking-hold-in-electronics-factories-in-china.html?hp&amp;_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/business/signs-of-changes-taking-hold-in-electronics-factories-in-china.html?hp&amp;_r=0</a></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Fractured Workplace&#8217; Chapter 6: Performing Seals</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/12/fractured-workplace-chapter-6-performing-seals/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/12/fractured-workplace-chapter-6-performing-seals/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Dec 2012 00:25:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Fractured Workplace and Its Remedies]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1049</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Chapter 6  Performing seals &#160; Working up against the wall Nothing is more emblematic of modern management theory and practice than the term &#8216;performance&#8217;. It has a ring about it: it seems to promise that there exists a methodical approach &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/12/fractured-workplace-chapter-6-performing-seals/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p align="center"><em>Chapter 6</em></p>
<p align="center"><strong> </strong><strong>Performing seals</strong></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Working up against the wall</strong></p>
<p>Nothing is more emblematic of modern management theory and practice than the term &#8216;performance&#8217;. It has a ring about it: it seems to promise that there exists a methodical approach to managing work which carries a guarantee of success.  Furthermore, it tightens the focus of management of people to a small, well-defined arena: if we can only get people to perform what they are obligated to perform the business will achieve all its goals at the highest level: shareholders will receive a good level of return on their investments, managers will be well-compensated, society will benefit appropriately and all will be well.</p>
<p>We have, of course, seen this kind of thing before: this is Taylorism, pure and simple.  Because what is to be performed is simply your job: the segment of work that has been defined by the job description and which you have been hired to do. “Do” is the operative term: the segmentation of work that Taylorism effects is a segmentation by actions.  Ultimately what is of concern to the notional Taylorist planner, this mythical figure or function defining the work segments and their sequence, is the conclusion of each segment, the output; because this is the input to the next segment, and if there is a breakdown in the chain, if even one output of one segment falls short of its designed requirements, the assembly of the work (which doesn&#8217;t have to be linear) is broken and the outcome of all the segments is impaired.  You only have to think of a breakdown in a production line: the principle is much the same.</p>
<p>Of course we have not claimed in our analysis of work (chapter 2) that modern work is literally a production line, but we are claiming that the idea and the organisation of modern work runs parallel to Taylorism, and draws many of its implicit assumptions about work and about people at work from Taylorism; and that these assumptions are at best unthinking, and at worst highly damaging both to organisations and to their people.  Let&#8217;s see now where performance and performance management fit into all this.</p>
<p><strong>Performance myths and illusions</strong></p>
<p>Performance management has been defined as a polyglot concept which includes “programme structures, performance measurement, target-setting, competency frameworks, 360 degree appraisal, personal development plans, performance-related pay” and so on <a title="" href="#ref1">[i]</a>. These authors remark acerbically, “These activities wax and wane in popularity.”  Common to these elements are the tasks of defining the work segment, of measuring its actual output against the expected output, and of incentivizing or penalizing the worker so as to close any gap; collectively, we would say, managing for performance, or managing in order to secure performance.</p>
<p>Performance management is thus not so much a part of a discipline as “a body of lore and recipes, some based on good research and theory, some based on symbolic resonance and workplace myths.” This is an interesting description as it challenges the aura that performance management has built about itself of rigour, discipline and objectivity.  Not so, it is asserted here: like most management fashions it is an eclectic mixture.  There sits around a legitimate core a cornucopia of popular and subjective conceptions and misconceptions.  Far from bringing the management of human beings into the quantitative sphere of operations management it produces the reverse: operations have to contend with all the vagaries of the things that influence human beings.  Welcome to people.</p>
<p><strong>Performing under threat</strong></p>
<p>There is a clear demonstration in performance management of one of the key elements of Taylorism: the subordination of the worker to the work.  In this model the worker is simply a unit of labour: her only significance to the organisation is whether or not she carries out the segment of work assigned to her, according to the standards that are laid out in the master plan.  Of the significance of the work to her, as an individual, nothing is said.  Performance is a one-way affair: workers perform the work that is required of them; work doesn’t have to meet the demands workers might require of it.</p>
<p>Performance has an unmistakable air of menace about it.  It carries an implicit threat: “Perform or else.”  That is, carry out the actions that are required of you, and for which we have hired you, or you will be sacked, or otherwise penalised.  That is the real meaning that is implicit in the now standard notion of ‘accountability’.  In order to make this crystal clear the requirements are embedded in measures: the famous (which should be infamous) Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).  Measurement emerged from the dominant management paradigms of the 1990’s: Total Quality Management, and Continuous Improvement.  These are the modern versions of Taylorism, in which all work is reduced to measured elements, held to specific standards.  This is justified in the well-sounding aphorism, “What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done”&#8211;an admission of management failure if ever there was one.  KPI’s in fact become coercive mechanisms.  They are set by higher levels of management and imposed on lower levels.  Moreover, management is able to thrown all the weight of implementation on subordinates: the simple message is, “Here is what you have to achieve; we don’t mind how you achieve them; just get them done or there will be consequences.”</p>
<p>Now clearly there is a place in the organisation of work for planning, orderly implementation, measures, and standards.  Peter Drucker&#8211;who I believe is the foremost, and perhaps the only, writer to have identified the central principles that drive business success&#8211;states with admirable brevity: “Work, to yield results, has to be thought through and done with direction, method, and purpose.”<a title="" href="#ref2">[ii]</a> Drucker speaks of performance, but only in the context of ‘economic performance’. He is certainly in favour of ‘a unified, company-wide plan for the work to be done’, as he is for goals and targets, and work assignment and responsibilities.  There can be no arguing with these principles: this is how work gets done.</p>
<p>But the issue is <em>who </em>decides the work plan, and <em>how </em>it is developed and implemented.  As we’ve seen, ownership is critical to healthy workplaces.  There is no reason why a company-wide plan for the work to be done can’t be collectively developed by everyone working in the business.  Indeed, wise management will want to gather all the intelligence and creativity of everyone, and involved them in the process (as we have argued in previous chapters).  Setting goals and targets can be done collaboratively.  Work assignments and responsibilities can be jointly accepted rather than imposed.  It’s not the existence of a work plan or the KPI’s associated with it that is the problem: it is rather who sets them up, and how they are used.  If they are set predominantly by the people who do the work, and used by them in completing the work they have accepted as theirs, all the benefits of healthy workplaces discussed in previous chapters will be there.  If they are imposed and used as implicit threats, toxic workplaces develop and organisational achievement shuts down.</p>
<p>Yet performance management has become very widely adopted by both profit and for-profit organisations as the primary means of managing work and managing people.  Let me give you two examples which show the absurd lengths to which this has gone.</p>
<p><strong>Case 1: The Orchestra</strong></p>
<p>Recently I was asked to look at developing a strategic plan for a city orchestra.  They had done some work already and I asked to see it.  Among the documents was a strategic plan that had been developed by a major US consulting company for a neighbouring city orchestra.  It was, to say the least of it, an unimpressive piece of work.  It showed little understanding on the music world within which a city orchestra sits and on which it depends.  This deepened to absurdity when the performers themselves&#8211;the musicians in the orchestra&#8211;were considered.  The main recommendation was: the musicians should be performance managed.  A more ludicrous proposal it would be difficult to imagine.  What counts as performance for a musician?  How are you going to measure it: by the number of bow strokes per second?  The result of such an ill-advised initiative would be the prompt resignation of the members of the orchestra: what musician, working with all the delicacy and creativity of their highly professional craft, would submit to such crude oversight?  And how is it supposed to improve performance (real performance in this case): what is supposed to be getting better?  It’s almost amusing to contemplate (almost, but for the impact on people’s lives).  Yet it shows two things very clearly: one, that performance management is almost entirely negative in its effect on work and workers; and two, that modern managers seem to be prepared to resort to such idiocies, they must be bankrupt of the knowledge of how to work with their people.</p>
<p><strong>Case 2: The University</strong></p>
<p>Here is a second example.  Universities depend for their very existence and legitimacy on their researchers.  Research is a demanding and complex kind of work: it requires very high levels of analytic skill combined with insight and creativity.  It is often non-linear: it moves in unpredictable ways, backtracks, hits blocks, finds serendipitous ways to advance.  It depends crucially on the fostering of new ideas, which may not fit established paradigms.  Yet as universities, like performing arts organisations, are seduced into adopting what they understand to be modern management techniques, researchers too have become performance managed.  They are required to publish a certain number of articles in rated journals, to accumulate a number of points in rated research activities.  This works strongly against innovative research&#8211;it is, in fact, intensely conservative&#8211;and frustrates the most creative researchers.</p>
<p>A recent study of university researchers in the UK uncovered the interesting fact that among the most influential researchers across the disciplines few had published much in their first 10 years; their significant publications came later&#8211;presumably because they were engaged upon big, difficult research projects.  It’s worth observing that those researchers would not have survived more than a few years of their early careers under modern regimes of academic performance management.</p>
<p>Proponents of performance management may want to respond that these two examples deal with rather specialised work, in music and research, and that for the average run of work and workers PM is appropriate.  All I can give you is the anecdotal view that many others have voiced similar concerns.  Senior front-line police officers have expressed to me their frustration in having to divert resources to meet KPI’s that have been given them away from what they know, from their immediate, local experience, are more urgent needs&#8211;needs that in the long run are far more important to the quality of community life.  Farmers have told me of their anger at being held to KPI’s in agricultural grant projects which they know, from their local knowledge, aren’t appropriate.  You can hear the same stories on manufacturing plant floors and in service organisations.</p>
<p>The simple fact is that performance management doesn’t deliver even in its own goals.  It is ironic that an approach which is so closely tied to measurement is not supported by the research on it.  A well-designed, substantial study compared 500 leading private companies consistently profitable over five years with 750 private companies selected at random and 538 public sector organisations on their commitment to performance management.  They reported: “The most important conclusion is that organisational performance is not associated with the pursuit of formal performance management programmes.”<a title="" href="#ref3">[iii]</a></p>
<p><strong>Assumptions and insults</strong></p>
<p>An even more universal finding of the research on performance management is that people intensely dislike being formally appraised under performance management schemes.  And their reaction is not because they are not doing the job well.  Rather it is because performance management is aggressive and, in the end, insulting.  It carries the assumption that unless you are held to these measures you will work below the level needed for the work and will not achieve the requisite standards; that unless we define precisely what we want of you and hold you to it, you will not do it.</p>
<p>That is a <em>default </em>position.  It’s not based on evidence or experience of a particular individual in the job, but is built into the structure of management. It amounts to saying: ‘We know that, if we don’t keep an eye on you, you will rip the company off; it’s our job to stop you, and performance management is our mechanism of choice to keep you honest’. The negative impact of this kind of thinking on the trust and respect that underpin healthy workplaces is obvious.  Ironically a likely outcome of employing it is that people will work to rule or work slow: ‘If that’s what you think of me, that’s what you’ll get’.  This is the precise definition of a dysfunctional, fractured workplace.</p>
<p><strong>Fear and control</strong></p>
<p>We’ve seen in earlier chapters that the principle of control is central to the Taylorist assumptions that underpin modern workplace practice.  Performance management is all about control.  All it methodologies are directed towards one end: that the work should be done to specification.  Measurement is a reverse methodology: rather than measure what the outcome of work is, measurement is used to coerce work into the shape it’s supposed to be.  People are simply presented with the required standards, and that, from a management point of view, is deemed enough.  It’s then up to the employee to meet the requirements; to be, as the language has it, ‘accountable’.  This is lazy management and it is bad management.  Good management practice, as we have been arguing, puts the manager and the subordinate into the work task together; with different roles, but unmistakably together.  If there are goals or targets or standards to be met, they are met by working together, with mutual support; not by the manager dropping KPI’s on the subordinate, putting a tacit threat in place should they not be met, and walking away.</p>
<p>Performance management keeps the employee in her assigned place within the work programmes.  A researcher has noted:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Programme structures are often at the core of performance management structures. . The hierarchical nature of programme structures. . .gives them a mythical value to organisational management.  It locates employees to a particular place and status in a great chain of organisational being and so reduces the threat that any individuality might pose to to organisational good order.<a title="" href="#ref4">[iv]</a></p>
<p>Managers always retreat from the spectre of losing control.  As we’ve noted in previous chapters, this is driven by fear and distrust, in equal measure.  Performance management is a central tool for keeping control. It attempts to make people’s work predictable, to the limits of measurability. In the process it loses the creative, lateral contributions that drive organisational success and dismantles the trust that underpins it. Good managers trust their people: they don’t seek to control them, or put them in their place.  Only on trust and respect is continuous and lasting achievement built.</p>
<p>The term ‘accountable’ captures many of these attitudes and assumptions.  It’s a term you hear every day, in all kinds of contexts.  It’s intimately linked to the idea of ‘performance’.  Your work is held to be your own affair; it’s outcomes, for better or worse, rest with you alone; if you fall short or fail you have no-one to blame but yourself.  Indeed, if there is a failure of work there is by definition a failure of accountability: it’s not my fault, it’s yours, you were the one who created the failure, you have not been accountable. Accountability has even take on a shade of personal morality: if you don’t meet the performance specifications this is not only a failure of competency but in some way a failure of moral integrity; the implication being that you could have achieved the required level had you worked hard enough, or cleverly enough, as you can do, but clearly decided not to.  It is not difficult to see in this attitude, so contemptuous of people and of their rights in the workplace, an attempt to justify on moral grounds a set of unethical and dishonest assumptions and behaviours.</p>
<p><strong>Appraisal and communication failure</strong></p>
<p>Finally, let me deal with the view put forward even by critics of performance management that there is something fundamentally positive about aspects of it, by virtue of the exchange it promotes, notably in performance appraisals:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">There is no objective evidence that performance management improves an organisation’s performance but there is evidence that people can find it helpful in interpreting and evaluating their organisational roles.<a title="" href="#ref5">[v]</a></p>
<p>This emerges from the ‘processual’ view of human resources management: the idea that the best outcomes are negotiated through mutual exchange.  We can grant that such an exchange could occur during performance appraisals.  Why, however, is a personal appraisal event required in order for such an exchange to take place?  Isn’t this just one of the exchanges that happen routinely and often of healthy workplaces?  To justify personal appraisals by this logic is like endorsing boxing as a method of interpersonal communication because it involves intimate touch.  And if it is necessary to construct an event of this kind in order to provide for communication of this kind, then the basic fabric of communication which supports healthy and productive work is by definition not in place.</p>
<p>Performance management doesn’t improve the performance of organisations.  It is a major contributor to the negativity of toxic workplaces.  It licenses lazy leadership, and damages trust.  It has no place in a healthy workplace.  Period.</p>
<p><strong>Healthy, productive workplaces</strong></p>
<p>Healthy workplaces are productive workplaces.  They start with healthy people, acting towards and with each other in ways that we all know are healthy.  There is no mystery about this.  Since birth we have been interacting with each other, through all the types and shades of relationship, in family, and extended family, and circles of friends; even with people we don’t get on with.  We know more about the construction of healthy places than all the management theorists put together.  Recognizing what we know and applying it fearlessly is the key to healthy workplaces.</p>
<div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div>
<p><a name="ref1"></a>[i] Fisher, C &amp; Sempik, A 2009, ‘Performance management and performing management’ in J Leopold &amp; L Harris (eds) <em>The strategic managing of human resources</em>, 2nd edn., Prentice Hall, Pearson Education Ltd., Harlow Essex, UK.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref2"></a>[ii] Drucker, P 1986 (1964) <em>Managing for results: economic tasks and risk-taking decisions</em>, HarperCollins, New York.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref3"></a>[iii] Institute of Personnel Management 1992, <em>Performance management in the UK: an analysis of the issues</em>, IPM, London.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref4"></a>[iv]Legge, K 1995, <em>Human resource management: rhetorics and realities</em>, 2nd edition, Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, cited in Leopold &amp; Harris, p.196.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a name="ref5"></a>[v] Fisher &amp; Sempik, p. 222</p>
</div>
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		<title>Sustainable business news November 2012</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/12/sustainable-business-new-november-2012/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/12/sustainable-business-new-november-2012/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Dec 2012 21:41:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles and news stories]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1036</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Pre-settlement Aboriginal burning patterns: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/history-under-fire-20121103-28rbw.html Volunteer non-profit parks: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/giving/benefactors-create-and-maintain-a-private-park-in-california.html?ref=science Effect of climate change on aquifer recharge&#8211;not all bad news: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/water-supply-in-a-warming-world/ China moving on social unrest in industrial projects: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/world/asia/china-mandates-social-risk-reviews-for-big-projects.html?hp California&#8217;s ETS begins: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/business/energy-environment/california-to-hold-auction-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html?src=rechp&#38;_r=0 Mapping methane: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/methane-is-popping-up-all-over-boston/?src=recg Vulnerability of forests to &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/12/sustainable-business-new-november-2012/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Pre-settlement Aboriginal burning patterns:<br />
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/history-under-fire-20121103-28rbw.html">http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/history-under-fire-20121103-28rbw.html</a></p>
<p>Volunteer non-profit parks:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/giving/benefactors-create-and-maintain-a-private-park-in-california.html?ref=science">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/giving/benefactors-create-and-maintain-a-private-park-in-california.html?ref=science</a></p>
<p><span id="more-1036"></span></p>
<p>Effect of climate change on aquifer recharge&#8211;not all bad news:<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/water-supply-in-a-warming-world/">http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/water-supply-in-a-warming-world/</a></p>
<p>China moving on social unrest in industrial projects:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/world/asia/china-mandates-social-risk-reviews-for-big-projects.html?hp">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/world/asia/china-mandates-social-risk-reviews-for-big-projects.html?hp</a></p>
<p>California&#8217;s ETS begins:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/business/energy-environment/california-to-hold-auction-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html?src=rechp&amp;_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/business/energy-environment/california-to-hold-auction-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html?src=rechp&amp;_r=0</a></p>
<p>Mapping methane:<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/methane-is-popping-up-all-over-boston/?src=recg">http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/methane-is-popping-up-all-over-boston/?src=recg</a></p>
<p>Vulnerability of forests to hydraulic failure with climate change:<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/the-worldwide-vulnerability-of-forests/">http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/the-worldwide-vulnerability-of-forests/</a></p>
<p>China&#8217;s largest off-shore wind-farm:</p>
<p>http://www.windpowermonthly.com/news/1161294/</p>
<p>Solar powered greenhouse agriculture:<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/24/growing-food-in-the-desert-crisis">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/24/growing-food-in-the-desert-crisis</a></p>
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		<title>Sustainable business news October 2012</title>
		<link>http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/11/sustainable-business-news-october-2012/</link>
		<comments>http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/11/sustainable-business-news-october-2012/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:18:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Geoff Wells</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles and news stories]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sustainable business & policy comment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.geoffwells.com/?p=1026</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Study confirms threats to Barrier Reef: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/great-reef-catastrophe-20121002-26vzq.html The end of the growth assumption: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/78e883fa-0bef-11e2-8032-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28HDSP0St  Experiential learning in environmental science: http://theconversation.edu.au/experiencing-the-landscape-essential-training-for-environmental-scientists-9282 New MDBA modelling: http://download.mdba.gov.au/altered-PBP/Hydrologic-modelling-relaxed-constraints-October-2012.pdf Indigenous action against coal terminal plans in the Pacific Northwest: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/us/tribes-add-powerful-voice-against-northwest-coal-plan.html?src=recg California&#8217;s emissions strategy&#8211;the mechanics: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/science/earth/in-california-a-grand-experiment-to-rein-in-climate-change.html?_r=1&#38;hpw &#8230; <a href="http://www.geoffwells.com/2012/11/sustainable-business-news-october-2012/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Study confirms threats to Barrier Reef:<br />
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/great-reef-catastrophe-20121002-26vzq.html" target="_blank">http://www.theage.com.au/<wbr>environment/conservation/<wbr>great-reef-catastrophe-<wbr>20121002-26vzq.html</wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>The end of the growth assumption:<br />
<a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/78e883fa-0bef-11e2-8032-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28HDSP0St" target="_blank">http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/<wbr>0/78e883fa-0bef-11e2-8032-<wbr>00144feabdc0.html#<wbr>axzz28HDSP0St  </wbr></wbr></wbr></a><span id="more-1026"></span></p>
<p>Experiential learning in environmental science:<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/experiencing-the-landscape-essential-training-for-environmental-scientists-9282" target="_blank">http://theconversation.edu.au/<wbr>experiencing-the-landscape-<wbr>essential-training-for-<wbr>environmental-scientists-9282</wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>New MDBA modelling:<br />
<a href="http://download.mdba.gov.au/altered-PBP/Hydrologic-modelling-relaxed-constraints-October-2012.pdf" target="_blank">http://download.mdba.gov.au/<wbr>altered-PBP/Hydrologic-<wbr>modelling-relaxed-constraints-<wbr>October-2012.pdf</wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>Indigenous action against coal terminal plans in the Pacific Northwest:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/us/tribes-add-powerful-voice-against-northwest-coal-plan.html?src=recg" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/<wbr>10/12/us/tribes-add-powerful-<wbr>voice-against-northwest-coal-<wbr>plan.html?src=recg</wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>California&#8217;s emissions strategy&#8211;the mechanics:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/science/earth/in-california-a-grand-experiment-to-rein-in-climate-change.html?_r=1&amp;hpw" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/<wbr>10/14/science/earth/in-<wbr>california-a-grand-experiment-<wbr>to-rein-in-climate-change.<wbr>html?_r=1&amp;hpw</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>The psychology of boredom at work:<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/oct/14/boredom-is-bad-for-health" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/<wbr>lifeandstyle/2012/oct/14/<wbr>boredom-is-bad-for-health</wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>A sober and authoritative account of the global economy:<br />
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/satyajit-das-world-economy-is-addicted-to-credit-and-the-markets-seem-oblivious-8213993.html" target="_blank">http://www.independent.co.uk/<wbr>news/business/comment/<wbr>satyajit-das-world-economy-is-<wbr>addicted-to-credit-and-the-<wbr>markets-seem-oblivious-<wbr>8213993.html</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>A hard-headed look at the economics of the solar industry:<br />
<a href="http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/solars-elephant-room" target="_blank">http://www.climatespectator.<wbr>com.au/commentary/solars-<wbr>elephant-room</wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>Zero based carbon in building construction:<br />
<a href="http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/zero-carbon-housing-arrives-australia" target="_blank">http://www.climatespectator.<wbr>com.au/commentary/zero-carbon-<wbr>housing-arrives-australia</wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>A interesting analysis of the financial system by a world-famous ecologist:<br />
<a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a6ee48b4-0d63-11e2-99a1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz29nngKeXj" target="_blank">www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/<wbr>a6ee48b4-0d63-11e2-99a1-<wbr>00144feabdc0.html#<wbr>axzz29nngKeXj</wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>Impacts of rice production on climate change:<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/food-and-climate-a-new-warning/?src=rechp" target="_blank">http://green.blogs.nytimes.<wbr>com/2012/10/23/food-and-<wbr>climate-a-new-warning/?src=<wbr>rechp</wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
<p>The North American re-wilding project and biodiversity conservations:<br />
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-397939.html" target="_blank">http://www.independent.co.uk/<wbr>environment/animal-extinction-<wbr>-the-greatest-threat-to-<wbr>mankind-397939.html</wbr></wbr></wbr></a></p>
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