Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
"Action inquiry" is the process of transformational learning that individuals (and even whole organizations) can undertake to better assess current dangers and opportunities, act in a timely manner, and make future visions come true. Through short stories of leadership and organizational changes in the areas of business, politics, health care, and education, this book illustrates how this process can increase personal integrity, improve relationships, and lead to company profitability and long-term success.
About the Author
Now Professor of Management at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, Bill Torbert has earlier served as the school's Graduate Dean and Director of the PhD Program in Organizational Transformation. He currently teaches the MBA Leadership Workshop, an elective in Consulting, and a doctoral seminar in Action Research Methods. He is one of the founding faculty of the Executive Program Leadership for Change at Boston College, and is a founding Research Member of the international Society for Organizational Learning, as well as a founding associate of Ken Wilber's Integral Institute. Within the academy, he has served as Chair for the Organization Development & Change Division of the Academy of Management and on the Board of the Organization Behavior Teaching Society.
Torbert has consulted widely (e.g. Odebrecht Construction [Brazil], Volvo and UBS Warburg [England], Lego [Denmark]) and served on the Boards of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Trillium Asset Management (the first and largest independent social investing advisor).
With regard to scholarship, Torbert is best known for his theories, cases, surveys, and lab and field experiments in regard to developmental transformation at both the personal and organizational levels, as well as within science itself, undergirded by an action research process exercised in real-time, everyday life, called "developmental action inquiry." Unlike most purely third-person, analytic social science research, action inquiry integrates first-person, second-person, and third-person research/practice in real-time. His most recent books include: 1) his national Alpha Sigma Nu award winning Managing the Corporate Dream (Dow Jones-Irwin, 1987); 2) his Terry Award Finalist book The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry (Sage, 1991); 3) Personal and Organizational Transformations: Through Action Inquiry (co-authored with D. Fisher & D. Rooke, Edge\Work Press, 2000, available through torbert@bc.edu); and 4) Transforming Social Inquiry, Transforming Social Action, coedited with Francine Sherman (Kluwer, 2000).
Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership,William R. Torbert,Susanne Cook-Greuter,Dalmar Fisher,Erica Foldy,Alain Gauthier,Jackie Keeley,David Rooke,Sara Ross,Catherine Royce,Jenny Rudolph,Steve Taylor,Mariana Tran,Berrett-Koehler Publishers,157675264X,Active learning,Business & Economics,Business / Economics / Finance,Business/Economics,Communication in organizations,Experiential learning,Leadership,Leadership In Business,Management - General,Organization Theory,Organizational learning,Management & management techniques
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