Partner Event
Necessary Conversation with Sandra Waddock: Reframing Economics Around Life
International Humanistic Management Association
December 18, 2020
12:00-1:00 p.m. ET
Web conferencing, details will be sent before the event once your RSVP is received
Please join IHMA with Sandra Waddock (Boston College) to discuss reframing economics around life for sustainability and flourishing for all.
About this Event
Topic for this Conversation: Reframing Economics around Life: What Will It Take to Shift the Metanarrative?
This Necessary Conversation is sponsored by the Donahue Center for Business Ethics & Social Responsibility in the Manning School of Business at UMass-Lowell.
The world is infused with a metanarrative around economics that is highly problematic and is in no small measure responsible for the many social, health, and ecological crises humanity is facing. Years ago former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told us that “There is no alternative” (TINA) to the neoliberal economic framing that still powers much economic and business thinking today—and which is deeply infused in business school curricula.
In a new paper “Reframing and Transforming Economics around Life” and a new book called Transforming towards Life-Centered Economics, Sandra Waddock argues that alternative ways of thinking about economics—alternative core memes or ideas—are not only possible but desperately needed. And they are needed sooner rather than later to stop the destructive profits and growth at all costs practices that are potentially fueling humanity’s own collapse. Sandra will talk about alternative ways of framing economics that build on principles that can give life to our human systems and support the natural ecologies on which we depend, and offer a set of six core ideas—what she terms memes—that can frame a new way of thinking about economics going forward.
About Sandra Waddock
Sandra Waddock is the Galligan Chair of Strategy, Carroll School Scholar of Corporate Responsibility, and Professor of Management at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Author of more than 170 articles and chapters, Waddock has published 15 books and received numerous lifetime achievement awards.
Her latest books (both 2020) are Transforming towards Life-Centered Economics (Business Expert Press) and Management and the Sustainability Paradox by David Wasieleski, Sandra Waddock, and Paul Shrivastava (Routledge). She is also the author of Intellectual Shamans: Management Academics Making a Difference (Cambridge), The Difference Makers (Routledge), and (with Larry Lad and Judy Clair) (Teaching) Managing Mindfully. Her work today revolves around system transformation, memes and narrative, transformation catalysts, and wisdom, and she has leadership roles in the SDG Transformations Forum and the Bounce Beyond project.
This event is an Initiative of the United Nations PRME Working Group on Humanistic Management.