Sandra Waddock
Biographic Data
| ID | 4413826 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sandra Waddock |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sandra |
| FAMILY NAME | Waddock |
| SIGNATURE | WADDOCK S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston College |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1089-7686 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 128 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 26 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The human right to a safe climate
Ten principles for transforming economics in a time of global crises
Transformation of economic systems is widely regarded as essential for tackling interacting global crises. Unconventional economic approaches seeking holistic human and planetary well-being have transformative potential, but mainstreaming them is hampered by vested interests and intellectual lock-ins. They are also diffuse and struggle to develop sufficient discursive power to gain more widespread traction in policy. To bring coherence, we undert…
Advancing eco-social strategic management
This conceptual paper builds on understandings of social–ecological systems to advance a systems-based, holistic eco-social (ecological and social or social–ecological, SES) lens for the field of strategic management by taking a whole systems perspective that adds to the field’s currently dominant corporate centric orientation. It particularly focuses on how core strategic management frameworks need to shift to accommodate such a whole systems pe…
Reform or transform? A spectrum of stances towards the economic status quo within ‘new economics’ discourses
‘New economics’ discourses – comprising diverse approaches advocated as more just and sustainable replacements of dominant neoclassical and neoliberal economic perspectives – have been criticised as insufficiently coherent to form the ‘discourse coalitions’ necessary to enter the mainstream. To date there has been little systematic exploration of the agreement or divergence in new economics discourses. Here, we conduct a qualitative systematised …
Holistic eco-social imaginaries for a life-centered future
This paper argues that for humanity to deal with the intersecting, existential threats of polycrisis, broad-based narrative changes are needed to make practical and relevant eco-social (or social ecological) imaginaries and related contracts. An imaginary is how people conceive or think about the world around them and their relationship to it. Social contracts are explicit and implicit agreements about how humans structure their social institutio…
Art, Transformation and the Social Imaginary
Art uses images, symbols, ideas, and other expressions to enable people to construct new social imaginaries that can inspire change toward a more desirable future. Artists serve as ‘seers’ of reality as it is, in ways that others do not see, and of what might be. Art can help frame and envision new cultural mythologies and social imaginaries. The ‘soft’ power of art can change perspectives, raise awareness, and foster socio-cultural change. Art’s…
Transforming economics values toward life
In the face of numerous crises, including a global pandemic, it is time to challenge economic orthodoxy—neoliberalism—and develop a new economic orthodoxy built around values and principles that give life and prominence to socioecological systems. In this essay, I link six values of life‐affirming economics to principles that give life to systems. The life‐affirming economic values are stewardship of the whole; cocreating collective value; cosmop…
Imagining transformation
How Transformation Catalysts Take Catalytic Action
The challenges that are associated with the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals are wickedly complex and interconnected in nature. Because they require transformational changes at the systems level, the pace of change has, so far, been nowhere near fast enough to meet the goals by 2030. In this paper, we analyze the catalytic actions of a novel form of organizing that could potentially facilitate the timely achievement of transformati…
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
This article presents a review of the literature on the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) for the purpose of situating the UNGPs in the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) infrastructure. We identify four key themes that underlie the debate: (1) a critical assessment of the UNGPs, (2) their application to different sectors, (3) a discussion of how to embed key aspects of the UNGPs into national and regional contexts, and (4) r…
What Gives Life to Large System Change
This article argues that the capacity to create the large system change needed to deal with “grand challenges” like the Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability, or climate change can be enhanced by understanding and applying a core set of principles, drawn from multiple sources and levels of analysis that have explored the question of “what gives life.” These sources all—albeit in different ways—apply the question, what “gives life” to diff…
Value(s) for Whom? Creating Value(s) for Stakeholders
While mankind in the 21st century faces several sustainability challenges, many business practices remain on a nonsustainable pathway. At the same time, many scholars as well as managers consider maximizing shareholder wealth as the only business imperative. We argue that this situation calls for revisioning—that is, reorienting and redefining—what is meant by value creation. This revisioning requires a considerable broadening of our understandin…
Avoiding the Iron Cage of Business School Rankings
SEE Change
"The return to business-as-usual after the economic earthquake that rocked financial markets, wrecked banks and brought to light the grotesque distortions of casino capitalism on people and planet must be resisted. A new form of capitalism is both necessary and possible as some forward-thinking political, business and civil society leaders have now recognised. This book is about the myriad problems that we face and the systemic changes that are n…
Rethinking capitalism
In this chapter, the authors explore some elements of the emergence of what they call SEE Change—the change to a sustainable enterprise economy—and begin thinking through some of the implications for capitalism itself. In a context of need for change, the very word &s;capitalism&s; requires rethinking. Enterprise, risk taking, innovation and creativity, like conversation, caring and sharing, are fundamentally a part of what it means to be human: …
Pathways of transformation in global food and agricultural systems
Large scale change action research
We Are All Stakeholders of Gaia
This essay takes the normative perspective that we, including humans, institutions and enterprises, other living beings, and ecological systems, are all stakeholders of a core focal entity—the Earth conceived as the living system Gaia. The argument is that for the purposes of considering the long-term health and well-being of humanity, Gaia rightly should be conceived as the ultimate focal entity with a huge variety of other living beings, system…
Corporate responsibility and financial performance
This paper examines the effects of a firm's intangible resources in mediating the relationship between corporate responsibility and financial performance. We hypothesize that previous empirical findings of a positive relationship between social and financial performance may be spurious because the researchers failed to account for the mediating effects of intangible resources. Our results indicate that there is no direct relationship between corp…
Myths and Realities of Social Investing
En reponse aux critiques methodologiques formulees par Jon Entine a l'encontre de la recherche sur l'investissement socialement responsable, l'A. rappelle l'etendue du champ de cette recherche et defend la fiabilite des indices developpes par Kinder, Lydenberg et Domini (KLD) comme reference en la matiere. Elle repond ensuite aux critiques d'ordre conceptuel (performance, ideologie) et, rappelant la complexite des parametres en jeu, elle souligne…
Educating Holistic Professionals in a World of Wicked Problems
(1998). Educating Holistic Professionals in a World of Wicked Problems. Applied Developmental Science: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 40-47
Catalytic Alliances for Social Problem Solving
Catalytic alliances (CA) are temporary network organizations created to effect long-term social change through media-based "campaign" efforts to increase public awareness and commitment to action on social problems. Two CA organizations - Hands Across America and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America - are profiled in this paper. Each illustrates the catalytic alliance phenomenon and delineates a number of critical management dimensions. The pa…
Lessons from the National Alliance of Business Compact Project
This paper reports on some of the key outcomes of the National Alliance of Business's Compact Project, a 12-city demonstration project intended to establish collaborations among businesses, public schools, and government. Factors related to problem recognition, definition and crystallization, the macroenvironmental context, and the emergence of a systemic orientation toward school improvement are associated with more and less successful outcomes.…
A Typology of Social Partnership Organizations
This article develops a typology of social partnership organizations to enhance understanding of the ways these organizations operate in the social arena, as well as their potential for social problem solving. First, social partnerships are carefully defined. Based on the degree of problem "divisibility, " two key determinants of partnership type are derived: the degree of interdependence among organizations involved in problem solving and the or…
Social Entrepreneurs and Catalytic Change
In the past few years, U.S. society has witnessed the proliferation of an increasing number of initiatives that have extensively used the media to capture public attention about an issue of social concern in the hope that social action and changes in public policy would ensue. Examples include Hands Across America's efforts to raise money for and awareness about the problem of hunger and homelessness in the United States, the Partnership for a Dr…
Social Entrepreneurs and Catalytic Change
In the past few years, U.S. society has witnessed the proliferation of an increasing number of initiatives that have extensively used the media to capture public attention about an issue of social concern in the hope that social action and changes in public policy would ensue. Examples include Hands Across America's efforts to raise money for and awareness about the problem of hunger and homelessness in the United States, the Partnership for a Dr…
Understanding Social Partnerships
A model of the evolutionary process of developing social partnerships is presented. The model focuses on the interorganizational context out of which partnerships originate and proposes that six types of forces in the environment foster interaction. Next, processes of issue crystallization, coalition building, and purpose formulation, which originate in an "initiation" stage and focus the content of the partnership, are described. The evolutionar…
Imagining transformation
A Typology of Social Partnership Organizations
This article develops a typology of social partnership organizations to enhance understanding of the ways these organizations operate in the social arena, as well as their potential for social problem solving. First, social partnerships are carefully defined. Based on the degree of problem "divisibility, " two key determinants of partnership type are derived: the degree of interdependence among organizations involved in problem solving and the or…
Catalytic Alliances for Social Problem Solving
Catalytic alliances (CA) are temporary network organizations created to effect long-term social change through media-based "campaign" efforts to increase public awareness and commitment to action on social problems. Two CA organizations - Hands Across America and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America - are profiled in this paper. Each illustrates the catalytic alliance phenomenon and delineates a number of critical management dimensions. The pa…
Lessons from the National Alliance of Business Compact Project
This paper reports on some of the key outcomes of the National Alliance of Business's Compact Project, a 12-city demonstration project intended to establish collaborations among businesses, public schools, and government. Factors related to problem recognition, definition and crystallization, the macroenvironmental context, and the emergence of a systemic orientation toward school improvement are associated with more and less successful outcomes.…
Pathways of transformation in global food and agricultural systems
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
This article presents a review of the literature on the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) for the purpose of situating the UNGPs in the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) infrastructure. We identify four key themes that underlie the debate: (1) a critical assessment of the UNGPs, (2) their application to different sectors, (3) a discussion of how to embed key aspects of the UNGPs into national and regional contexts, and (4) r…
Holistic eco-social imaginaries for a life-centered future
This paper argues that for humanity to deal with the intersecting, existential threats of polycrisis, broad-based narrative changes are needed to make practical and relevant eco-social (or social ecological) imaginaries and related contracts. An imaginary is how people conceive or think about the world around them and their relationship to it. Social contracts are explicit and implicit agreements about how humans structure their social institutio…
Ten principles for transforming economics in a time of global crises
Transformation of economic systems is widely regarded as essential for tackling interacting global crises. Unconventional economic approaches seeking holistic human and planetary well-being have transformative potential, but mainstreaming them is hampered by vested interests and intellectual lock-ins. They are also diffuse and struggle to develop sufficient discursive power to gain more widespread traction in policy. To bring coherence, we undert…
Advancing eco-social strategic management
This conceptual paper builds on understandings of social–ecological systems to advance a systems-based, holistic eco-social (ecological and social or social–ecological, SES) lens for the field of strategic management by taking a whole systems perspective that adds to the field’s currently dominant corporate centric orientation. It particularly focuses on how core strategic management frameworks need to shift to accommodate such a whole systems pe…
Understanding Social Partnerships
A model of the evolutionary process of developing social partnerships is presented. The model focuses on the interorganizational context out of which partnerships originate and proposes that six types of forces in the environment foster interaction. Next, processes of issue crystallization, coalition building, and purpose formulation, which originate in an "initiation" stage and focus the content of the partnership, are described. The evolutionar…
A Typology of Social Partnership Organizations
This article develops a typology of social partnership organizations to enhance understanding of the ways these organizations operate in the social arena, as well as their potential for social problem solving. First, social partnerships are carefully defined. Based on the degree of problem "divisibility, " two key determinants of partnership type are derived: the degree of interdependence among organizations involved in problem solving and the or…
Social Entrepreneurs and Catalytic Change
In the past few years, U.S. society has witnessed the proliferation of an increasing number of initiatives that have extensively used the media to capture public attention about an issue of social concern in the hope that social action and changes in public policy would ensue. Examples include Hands Across America's efforts to raise money for and awareness about the problem of hunger and homelessness in the United States, the Partnership for a Dr…
Lessons from the National Alliance of Business Compact Project
This paper reports on some of the key outcomes of the National Alliance of Business's Compact Project, a 12-city demonstration project intended to establish collaborations among businesses, public schools, and government. Factors related to problem recognition, definition and crystallization, the macroenvironmental context, and the emergence of a systemic orientation toward school improvement are associated with more and less successful outcomes.…
Catalytic Alliances for Social Problem Solving
Catalytic alliances (CA) are temporary network organizations created to effect long-term social change through media-based "campaign" efforts to increase public awareness and commitment to action on social problems. Two CA organizations - Hands Across America and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America - are profiled in this paper. Each illustrates the catalytic alliance phenomenon and delineates a number of critical management dimensions. The pa…
Educating Holistic Professionals in a World of Wicked Problems
(1998). Educating Holistic Professionals in a World of Wicked Problems. Applied Developmental Science: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 40-47
Myths and Realities of Social Investing
En reponse aux critiques methodologiques formulees par Jon Entine a l'encontre de la recherche sur l'investissement socialement responsable, l'A. rappelle l'etendue du champ de cette recherche et defend la fiabilite des indices developpes par Kinder, Lydenberg et Domini (KLD) comme reference en la matiere. Elle repond ensuite aux critiques d'ordre conceptuel (performance, ideologie) et, rappelant la complexite des parametres en jeu, elle souligne…
Corporate responsibility and financial performance
This paper examines the effects of a firm's intangible resources in mediating the relationship between corporate responsibility and financial performance. We hypothesize that previous empirical findings of a positive relationship between social and financial performance may be spurious because the researchers failed to account for the mediating effects of intangible resources. Our results indicate that there is no direct relationship between corp…
We Are All Stakeholders of Gaia
This essay takes the normative perspective that we, including humans, institutions and enterprises, other living beings, and ecological systems, are all stakeholders of a core focal entity—the Earth conceived as the living system Gaia. The argument is that for the purposes of considering the long-term health and well-being of humanity, Gaia rightly should be conceived as the ultimate focal entity with a huge variety of other living beings, system…
Large scale change action research
SEE Change
"The return to business-as-usual after the economic earthquake that rocked financial markets, wrecked banks and brought to light the grotesque distortions of casino capitalism on people and planet must be resisted. A new form of capitalism is both necessary and possible as some forward-thinking political, business and civil society leaders have now recognised. This book is about the myriad problems that we face and the systemic changes that are n…
Rethinking capitalism
In this chapter, the authors explore some elements of the emergence of what they call SEE Change—the change to a sustainable enterprise economy—and begin thinking through some of the implications for capitalism itself. In a context of need for change, the very word &s;capitalism&s; requires rethinking. Enterprise, risk taking, innovation and creativity, like conversation, caring and sharing, are fundamentally a part of what it means to be human: …
Pathways of transformation in global food and agricultural systems
Value(s) for Whom? Creating Value(s) for Stakeholders
While mankind in the 21st century faces several sustainability challenges, many business practices remain on a nonsustainable pathway. At the same time, many scholars as well as managers consider maximizing shareholder wealth as the only business imperative. We argue that this situation calls for revisioning—that is, reorienting and redefining—what is meant by value creation. This revisioning requires a considerable broadening of our understandin…
Avoiding the Iron Cage of Business School Rankings
What Gives Life to Large System Change
This article argues that the capacity to create the large system change needed to deal with “grand challenges” like the Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability, or climate change can be enhanced by understanding and applying a core set of principles, drawn from multiple sources and levels of analysis that have explored the question of “what gives life.” These sources all—albeit in different ways—apply the question, what “gives life” to diff…
How Transformation Catalysts Take Catalytic Action
The challenges that are associated with the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals are wickedly complex and interconnected in nature. Because they require transformational changes at the systems level, the pace of change has, so far, been nowhere near fast enough to meet the goals by 2030. In this paper, we analyze the catalytic actions of a novel form of organizing that could potentially facilitate the timely achievement of transformati…
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
This article presents a review of the literature on the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) for the purpose of situating the UNGPs in the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) infrastructure. We identify four key themes that underlie the debate: (1) a critical assessment of the UNGPs, (2) their application to different sectors, (3) a discussion of how to embed key aspects of the UNGPs into national and regional contexts, and (4) r…
Art, Transformation and the Social Imaginary
Art uses images, symbols, ideas, and other expressions to enable people to construct new social imaginaries that can inspire change toward a more desirable future. Artists serve as ‘seers’ of reality as it is, in ways that others do not see, and of what might be. Art can help frame and envision new cultural mythologies and social imaginaries. The ‘soft’ power of art can change perspectives, raise awareness, and foster socio-cultural change. Art’s…
Transforming economics values toward life
In the face of numerous crises, including a global pandemic, it is time to challenge economic orthodoxy—neoliberalism—and develop a new economic orthodoxy built around values and principles that give life and prominence to socioecological systems. In this essay, I link six values of life‐affirming economics to principles that give life to systems. The life‐affirming economic values are stewardship of the whole; cocreating collective value; cosmop…
Imagining transformation
Reform or transform? A spectrum of stances towards the economic status quo within ‘new economics’ discourses
‘New economics’ discourses – comprising diverse approaches advocated as more just and sustainable replacements of dominant neoclassical and neoliberal economic perspectives – have been criticised as insufficiently coherent to form the ‘discourse coalitions’ necessary to enter the mainstream. To date there has been little systematic exploration of the agreement or divergence in new economics discourses. Here, we conduct a qualitative systematised …
Holistic eco-social imaginaries for a life-centered future
This paper argues that for humanity to deal with the intersecting, existential threats of polycrisis, broad-based narrative changes are needed to make practical and relevant eco-social (or social ecological) imaginaries and related contracts. An imaginary is how people conceive or think about the world around them and their relationship to it. Social contracts are explicit and implicit agreements about how humans structure their social institutio…
The human right to a safe climate
Ten principles for transforming economics in a time of global crises
Transformation of economic systems is widely regarded as essential for tackling interacting global crises. Unconventional economic approaches seeking holistic human and planetary well-being have transformative potential, but mainstreaming them is hampered by vested interests and intellectual lock-ins. They are also diffuse and struggle to develop sufficient discursive power to gain more widespread traction in policy. To bring coherence, we undert…
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Economics (12 works) · Business (10 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Complex Systems and Decision Making (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Engineering (6 works)