CSR, Corporate Heritage Identity and Social Learning
- Authors: Ijabadeniyi, Abosede , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436841 , vital:73309 , ISBN 978-981-15-6370-6 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6370-6_8
- Description: Prevailing approaches to the structural challenges of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tend to be monolithic and skewed towards CSR at the organisational level. Albeit, mirroring CSR at the organisational level with activities of practitioners at the social level can offer new reflexive approaches for identifying capabilities for and understanding thresholds of social learning. This chapter maps out how identity perspectives to CSR can offer new approaches for surfacing emergent properties inherent in the uptake of CSR institutionally and in practice. The chapter also presents an overview of the interplay be-tween structure and agency (prescribed and actual CSR practices) and its underlying in-strumental role for illuminating systemic factors which perpetuate such capabilities and thresholds. Using a morphogenetic theo-ry of change, the chapter offers a framework for approaching CSR-based corporate identity. Empirical evidence from the applied framework is thereafter presented, in the context of the agro-processing industry based on a content analysis of an-nual reports, in-depth-interview data generated from four sus-tainability managers and corporate communication officers and the practices of extension and Local Economic Development (LED) officers. The framework demonstrates that companies with a disintegrated CSR identity inherently have more capaci-ty to be change agents. Similarly, a strong corporate heritage identity is not indicative of a reciprocal link between espoused values and activity. Conversely, an enduring corporate herit-age identity may not necessarily be improvisatory for social learning. In conclusion, the chapter gives an overview of a tax-onomy of agential capabilities and associated cognitive re-sources inherent in the interaction between structural-cultural and personal emergent properties, which can initiate the posi-tioning of social learning at the forefront of organisational de-liberations.
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Introduction “New” theory,“post” North-South representations, praxis
- Authors: Rodrigues, Cae , Payne, Phillip G , Grange, Lesley L , Carvalho, Isabel C , Steil, Carlos A , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Linde-Loubser, Henriette
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182736 , vital:43858 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1726265"
- Description: At a recent academic conference in the South, nine of us grappled for four days with these “old” questions and their presence within the “new” discourse of “post” environmental education research. We struggled for an additional six-month period of email exchange to see and feel these questions in our own research. That slow, rich, and deeper academic exchange between us culminated in a research agenda, partially (re)presented in a collectively constructed Mindmap (Figure 1), for critiquing the post/new whose framing is described in the remainder of this Introduction to the politics of knowledge production. That politic of slowly and judiciously engaging a collective form of criticism culminates in identifying the research problem, and questions, of this Special Issue (SI) about the role and place of allegedly new theory in the global discourse of allegedly post environmental education research. This specially assembled issue of The Journal of Environmental Education (JEE) is our best effort to (partially) represent a considerable amount of thought about the challenge presented by “post” and “new” Western thought. In translating our collective thought processes to a SI, we anticipate the reflexivity of the field will be critically advanced through engaging a number of emerging debates (Robottom and Hart, 1993) identified in the following pages of this Introduction, and in three “sample” articles specially written by Isabel Carvalho, Carlos Steil and Francisco Abraão Gonzaga, Louise Sund and Karen Pashby, and Phillip Payne, and an “in process” Conclusion written by Cae Rodrigues. There remains much work to do. This SI is only a start of reengaging overdue debates about the post (Hart, 2005).
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Think Piece: Learning, Living and Leading into Transgression–A reflection on decolonial praxis in a neoliberal world
- Authors: Kulundu-Bolus, Injairu M , McGarry, Dylan K , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182406 , vital:43827 , xlink:href="10.4314/sajee.v36i1.14"
- Description: Three scholar activists from South Africa reflect on what it means to transgress the limits of a neoliberal world and its crisis times, particularly considering transgressions in the service of a decolonial future. The authors explore three questions: i) What kind of learning can help us transgress the status quo? ii) How do we extend this learning into a commitment to actively living in transgressive ways? iii) What does it mean to lead in ways that re-generate a transgressive ethic in a neoliberal world? In a dialogical conversation format, the authors outline nine different but interconnected perspectives on learning, living and leading into transgression, with the aim of concurrently revealing the multiple layers of work that a decolonial future depends on, while demonstrating the ambitions of a pluriversal decolonial future through their writing. The intertwined narrative is not conclusive, as the processes marked out in brief are experiences that still need to be fully practised in new relations in times to come within academia-in-society-and-the-world with human and more-than-human actors. However, they do offer a generative set of questions, concepts and metaphors to give courage to boundary-dwelling scholar activists attempting transgressive research. These reflections seek to regenerate the transgressive ‘decolonial gestures’ (decolonialfutures.net) that we can undertake in a neo-liberal world, as an important part of environment and sustainability education practices. It draws out what an embodied practice of transgressive learning can entail when we become discerning of hegemonic discourses that reproduce the status quo. We pay homage to those decolonial scholars in the field of environment and sustainability education as we traverse this terrain, recognising their imagination and the transgressive movement that has come before us, but importantly we seek to also open pathways for those yet to come.
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Vocational education and training for African development: A literature review
- Authors: McGrath, Simon , Ramsarup, Presha , Zeelen, Jacques , Wedekind, Volker , Allais, Stephanie , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Monk, David , Openjuru, George , Russon, Jo-Anna
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182418 , vital:43828 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2019.1679969"
- Description: The SDGs mark the clearest global acceptance yet that the previous approach to development was unsustainable. In VET, UNESCO has responded by developing a clear account of how a transformed VET must be part of a transformative approach to development. It argues that credible, comprehensive skills systems can be built that can support individuals, communities, and organisations to generate and maintain enhanced and just livelihood opportunities. However, the major current theoretical approaches to VET are not up to this challenge. In the context of Africa, we seek to address this problem through a presentation of literatures that contribute to the theorisation of this new vision. They agree that the world is not made up of atomised individuals guided by a “hidden hand”. Rather, reality is heavily structured within political economies that have emerged out of contestations and compromises in specific historical and geographical spaces. Thus, labour markets and education and training systems have arisen, characterised by inequalities and exclusions. These specific forms profoundly influence individuals’ and communities’ views about the value of different forms of learning and working. However, they do not fully define what individuals dream, think and do. Rather, a transformed and transformative VET for Africa is possible.
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