Learning Strategies for Sustainable Organisations explores sustainability in the context of organisational practice and its implications for learning.
Based on a systems thinking approach, it provides a thorough grounding in the principles of systems thinking and tools that can be used to help implement sustainability-focused learning strategies. Increasingly, organisations are recognising the importance of adapting their practices to become more sustainable. Drawing on the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, new knowledge, skills and attitudes are required to help provide products and services that align with changing social and ecological environments and better serve the communities of which they are a part. This book is a practical guide showing how to facilitate sustainability learning and development within organisations, explaining how to identify gaps in current practice, take into account different contexts and perspectives about what sustainability means, and evaluate results following implementation. Learning resources include chapter summaries, illustrations, reflection points, mind maps and further reading.
Written by an independent performance and learning consultant with extensive experience working with international organisations, this book provides a necessary toolkit for human resource development directors, training managers, chief sustainability officers and management consultants specialising in sustainable development.
Introduction 1. Sustainability: development of a concept 2. Systems thinking, complexity and sustainability 3. The political economy of sustainability 4. The sustainable organisation 5. Developing a learning strategy 1: what to learn 6. Developing a learning strategy 2: how people learn 7. Developing a learning strategy 3: designing formal learning 8. Developing a learning strategy 4: informal learning and the learning environment 9. Preparing the final strategy 10. Evaluating learning about sustainability 11. Reflecting on learning about learning
Biography
Bryan Hopkins is a learning and development consultant with over 30 years of work experience with private and public sector organisations within the United Kingdom and internationally to design, deliver and evaluate learning and development programmes. The bulk of his work is with United Nations agencies on humanitarian and development projects, and he has collaborated on a number of projects related to climate change and sustainability.
'Learning Strategies for Sustainable Organisations could not be more relevant or timely. Bryan Hopkins provides professionals in business, education, learning and development, and sustainability with a comprehensive and authoritative account of learning as the source of resilience and sustainability in the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world of the 21st century.'
Eugene Sadler-Smith, Professor, Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, UK
'In a world where many organisations pay lip service to sustainability, Learning Strategies for Sustainable Organisations is a must read for businesses serious about sustainability. Full of thought provoking questions, strategies and knowledge, this book accelerates our understanding of the sustainability agenda and how to create critical and transformative initiatives.'
Helen Routledge, CEO, Totem Learning, UK
'There are many books on sustainability or organisations or learning and some which combine two out of the three, but Learning Strategies for Sustainable Organisations is the first to bring all three together in a coherent manner. The sustainability challenge is mightily complex and where it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. But Bryan Hopkins examines many trees and shows how they can work together as a wood through systems thinking. And in particular he charts a path through the wood that is recommended reading for all concerned with devising learning strategies for organisations that can help them face up to the sustainability challenge.'
Andy Lane, Professor of Environmental Systems, The Open University, UK
'Bryan Hopkins has what it takes to have written a book with profound insights into what to do in developing Learning Strategies for Sustainable Organisations. He is a critically reflexive systems thinker and practitioner with well-developed systems literacy and a high level of systemic sensibility, all garnered from life-experience, including self-motivated formal study underpinned by professional, experiential learning.'
Ray Ison, Professor of Systems, The Open University, UK
