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We live in, and make sense of, dynamic systems. Things like our health, food, and subjective well-being depend on real-world systems that are not static, but constituted by flows of matter, energy, or information. The ancient Greek expression panta rhei (everything flows) can convey to us today that much of what we rely on to fulfill our needs is based on delicate equilibria that need to be constantly renewed. Various interlinked resources relevant to our needs are controlled (or just influenced) by separate actors. This implies that the sustainable provision of desired things needs sustained collective thought on its social organization. In such multi-actor systems, people need common orientations about collective activities in order to be able to be working in the same direction. Eventually, this should also lead to alignments of individual interests around the common good. Moreover, directions may also shift over time when undesired and unsustainable side effects of activities are discovered. Stakeholders need to be able to recognize and react to this. When actors engage in joint activities, accompanying deliberation needs to be designed in such a way that it is possible to modify the direction by listening to their experiences. The interests of actors are also shaped by values, which can be bound together by overall objects or narratives of collaboration, which are vessels of social meaning. Meanings of Sustainability are also a value compass. It guides how we act in the world. Sometimes we adjust the direction of this value compass (or even invent completely new ‘cardinal directions’), which we can call meaning making. In light of pressing sustainability challenges, we need sustained meaning making for sustainable activity models, including in the business and non-profit sectors. It is the function of meaning making to continuously shape and delineate present and future collective activities.
For the fulfillment of our human needs, social meaning of activities and physical realities co-exist in socio-physical systems. The world leaves a print in our cognition as the way we think and what we think about is shaped by our physical reality. At the same time, cognition shapes the world as we turn our ideas into physical reality. In the social realm, the interplay of those two dimensions of cognitive functions (perception and action) mainly manifests in shifting problem definitions. In an increasingly complex world, this is especially true for so-called wicked problems: problems that are so multifaceted in nature and subjected to different framings by various stakeholders that it is impossible to define a state wherein the problem is deemed ‘completely solved’. Any action to address such public problems could ideally just lead to a reformulation of the problem, i.e. a shift. This also means that effective meaning making has to be of a somewhat ‘flowing’ nature. Put differently, when applying and implementing activity models in a specific context, we need to continuously recalibrate our collective value compass and re-negotiate our focus. Consequently, both the physical realities addressed by meaning making and meaning making itself should be seen as flows.
This blog aims to bring together contributions from the fields of Management Studies, Sociology, Cognitive Science, Philosophy, and Public Policy. We want to create an outlet for communicating ideas, frameworks, and findings in a way that is (hopefully) more understandable than in academic journals. Topics could cover things like sustainable business models, the evolution of (local) Governance Networks, community engagement, individual motivations for Sustainability, Reflexive Governance, the semiotic building blocks of the meaning of Sustainability, and much more.