The Routledge Companion to Alternative Organization

Teaching Leadership Critically: New Directions for Leadership Pedagogy

“…Rapid changes in political, economic, social and technological landscapes are transforming the modus operandi of organisations around the world. Research also demonstrates that many global business ventures fail because of the mismanagement of intercultural differences (Wibbeke and McArthur, 2014 This critical appreciation of the importance of contexts may also be explored with students through a focus on alternative organizations (Parker et al, 2014). Beyond the not-forprofit and voluntary sectors, these include worker co-operatives, communes and indigenous communities, social change movements and families.…”

Challenging the Degeneration Thesis: the Role of Democracy in Worker Cooperatives?

“…This heightened risk resonates with Parker et al's (2014: 35) discussion on means-end interdependence that concludes "we can't simply disentangle the question of how something is done from the broader issue of why it is done". Parker et al (2014) argue that by ignoring mean-ends interrelations and the values embedded in and expressed through organisational form we risk supporting the inevitability of hierarchical economic relations and restricting opportunities to challenge "political assumptions that are solidified in organisational configurations" (Parker et al, 2014: 634).…”

Diversifying and de-growing the circular economy: Radical social transformation in a resource-scarce world

“…Thus, a number of alternative or diverse economic practices which often lie outside of the accepted capitalist purview and thus largely hidden in plain sight, represent a critical space with which to re-envision a modern political-economy. This may take the form of Local Exchange Trading System (LETS), which is a not-for-profit, place-based mutual aid network, where for example, one hour of baby-sitting is exchanged directly for one hour of lawn mowing, with no money changing hands (for other examples, see Parker et al, 2014). Or a community currency scheme, which signals a range of community-led localized exchange systems, such as the Brixton pound see Community Currencies in Action, 2015; also Seyfang & Longhurst, 2013).…”