what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Thursday, December 3, 2020

a taster for "Dispatches to the Next Generation"

 As I was born DURING the second-world war, I strictly don’t qualify as a “baby-boomer” since those were born in the more optimistic period just after the war but, in all respects, I belong to that generation - with all the sense of disrespect if not entitlement we brought with us….

In trying, in the past few years, to write something I call “Dispatches to the Next Generation” from a selection of my blogposts over the past decade, I have found it developing into

·         a critique of the degeneration of the initially successful post-war economic and political systems; as well as

·         an attempt to understand the mistakes my generation made; and

·         an exploration of what we have to do to avoid the fate that seems in store for us all     

 I don’t pretend to be an economist – although I lectured in that capacity in the early 1970s before I saw the error of my ways

Nor is it easy to pin a political label on me – although I did spend 22 years of his life as a senior Labour councillor with responsibilities for devising and managing unique strategies for opening up the policy process and for developing social enterprise in what was then Europe’s largest local authority. The subsequent 22 years I spent as an adviser on institutional development to ministries in central Europe and Central Asia

In its present form, the book has both a short and long version and I realised today that it has a combination of formats and elements which make it fairly unique

·         The booklet I have just uploaded is actually a taster to the longer book (300 pp) which is not yet satsifactory enough for uploading

·         The taster version now has a narrative and is long enough (150 pages) to be read as a stand-alone version  

·         It is available in the top-right corner of the blog and is called Dispatches Taster and contains hyperlinks to more than 70 short essays - each of which you can access by a simple click

·         A few of these are contained as samplers in the relevant chapter

·         The annexes contain a guide to some 200 books published in the last 60 years which have been specially annotated to give the reader a sense of their significance 

Indeed that book guide is of one the highlights – and should probably not be relegated to the final section of the book!

What you will find in each of the booklet chapters

 

Chapter Title

Thrust of chapter arguments

Supporting theories

1. Critical junctures identified

History is written by the victors. Events were often finely balanced. There’s too much fatalism around

Covid 19 as a Critical Juncture

2.Trespassing encouraged

Most leaders of organisations are in the grip of groupthink and need countervailing mechanisms of accountability to help them see new realities

Janis, t’Hart, Syad

 

3. Economics relegated

Basic model is badly flawed and needs urgent reinvention

Steve Keen,

4. The Blind men probe the Elephant

Talk of capitalism and post-capitalism is too loose. Are we really clear what the core and marginal aspects of the system are – and can the beast be reformed?

Brian Davey’s ”Credo”

 

 

5. A new social goal is sought for the commercial company

Shareholder value ignores other dimensions

Cooperative and social enterprises employ more people than we think – but have to struggle for legitimacy

Paul Hirst

Colin Mayer

Ed Mayo

6. Lessons of change explored

 

So much protest fails and few social enterprises have a multiplier effect.

How do we ensure that there is real learning?

Robert Quinn

7. Change agents and coalitions sought

Progressives are good at sounding off – and bad at seeking common ground

??

8. Bringing it all together

countervailing power

social enterprise

 

 

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