A more natural way: Leadership for sustainable organizations. Part 1: The primary research written in book form. Part 2: The contextual essay. [electronic resource]
|aA more natural way: Leadership for sustainable organizations. Part 1: The primary research written in book form. Part 2: The contextual essay.|h[electronic resource]
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|aAnn Arbor, Mich.|bUMI|c1997
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|a332 p.
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|aSource: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 58-06, Section: A, page: 2289.
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|aAdviser: Michael Q. Patton.
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|aThesis (Ph.D.)--The Union Institute, 1997.
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|aThis book is in two parts. Part one is the primary research written in book form. Part two is the contextual essay containing the purpose, audience, theoretical context, research design, limitations, findings and interpretations, and recommendations for further research. This book is about transformational leadership and transformational organizational change viewed through the lenses of quantum physics, and the learnings from the study of living systems, including chaos/complexity sciences. The qualitative research for this book consisted of four in-depth interviews with transformational leaders who are intentionally leading from these learning. A leader who "appeared" to lead from these learnings but had no prior knowledge of the science was interviewed. A sculptor, jazz musician, and Native American author were interviewed for their views on creativity, artistry, and the Native American worldview. Eight organizational consultants were interviewed for background information. The book describes the mechanistic worldview, and the ecological worldview that is evolving from quantum physics and from the study of living systems. The ecological worldview is consistent with the organic worldview of indigenous peoples, including Native Americans. This work defines and explains concepts and metaphors from quantum physics and from the study of living system. How people might think when perceiving life through an organic worldview is discussed. This discussion is entitled Ecological Thinking and includes: mindfulness, seeing networks, pattern recognition, awareness of process, seeing relationships, intuition, sustainability, both/and thinking, long-term thinking, and intuition. Obstacles to ecological thinking are identified and discussed. They are: the human evolutionary experience, defensive behavior, addictive behavior, and the system of thought. This book introduces leadership metaphors that flow from the ecological worldview. The metaphors identified and defined are: the ecological thinker, the adventurer, the warrior, the servant, the artist, the teacher, the facilitator, and the philosopher. This book discusses transformational change viewed through the lenses of quantum physics and the learnings from the study of living systems. This discussion includes organic change, vision, current reality, management of the transition process, and self-organization. The sustainability of organizations and organizational transformation is discussed.