The world is facing global upheaval, including the disruptive impact of climate change, ever-rising inequalities, and political and economic crises (Bal, 2017; Bal et al., 2023). Nonetheless, the transformation towards sustainable economies and organizations is not accelerating yet. Given the profound impact of climate change on our daily lives presently and over the next decades, a more radical and fundamental shift is needed in terms of how we work and organize. The transformation process to realize this fundamental shift in how business operates is yet undertheorized and poorly understood. The current talk will present an integrative framework for organizational change to become truly sustainable based on both psychological and organizational principles. The framework is based on a dignity lens, in which organizations within the economy function to protect, respect and promote dignity of people and the planet, through which organizing may become sustainable. The presentation will also discuss the (un-)likelihood of radical change in current society, and the ways academia may contribute to more sustainable and dignified economies and workplaces.
Matthijs Bal is a professor of Responsible Management at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research interests focus on integrating societal challenges with organizing, using a psychological and ideologico-psychoanalytic lens. He has written on workplace dignity, absurdity, hypernormalization, fictional science, neoliberalism and sustainability. He is a cofounder with Edina Dóci of the Future of Work and Organizational Psychology network (FoWOP).