Societal Learning and Change

Constructing roads in Madagascar; forestry along Canada's Pacific Coast; water and sanitation projects in South Africa; community banking in the United States; constructing a new global system for corporate reporting. These all have something in common. They provide great illustrations of the types of profound and wise changes needed in the way we run in our affairs if we are to respond to the scale of environmental and social challenges and opportunities facing us. They are examples of 'societal learning and change' Today, this phenomenon is occuring across industries as diverse as resources extraction, infrastructure development, agriculture and information technology at the local, national, regional and global levels. Its essence involved the ability to create rich relationships that bridge large differences. This book describes this phenomenon for practitioners to help them address issues and develop opportunities more effectively. Building on the traditions of individual and organizational learning, this book suggests that our challenge is to create learning societies and processes. This involves both change in ourselves as individuals, but also change in the way the three key systems that make up our societies - the political system (government), economic system (business) and social system (civil society) - function by creating more robust interactions that respond to human and environmental imperatives rather than organizational ones. Societal Learning and Change presents a meta-framework that covers diverse approaches, including corporate citizenship, social responsibility, community development, private-public partnerships, inter-sectoral collaboration and sustainability strategies. It makes sense of all of these by emphasizing that they all share the need to change relationships at the societal level and explaining how to do this from a systems perspective. The book helps overcome the conundrum where indi