The book develops a practical approach to public policy issues that have continued to be intractable because of a lack of emphasis on transcultural understanding. Sustained examples help to increase the readability and the accessibility of theory and methodology.
The key themes address the issue that:
-Management needs to be more systemic. Critical Systemic Praxis is the process whereby we find ways to work across discipline areas and sectoral areas, in order to address complex social, political, economic and environmental problems.
-The way we define and address problems depends on an ability to work with, rather than within knowledge areas.
-By introducing the notion of governance we can extend traditional management from an organisational context to an inter-organisational context and locate governance as the goal for sustainable social and environmental justice.
The core aspects of praxis are:
-Respectful listening and dialogue to set up appropriate contexts for participatory design.
-Participatory designs based on participatory action research to map tacit and explicit knowledge of participants (professional and ordinary citizens).
-Strategic decision making across discipline areas, cultural contexts and knowledge areas.
-Action learning to transfer the policy and practice learnings.
-Mainstreaming the approach to governance in the social, political, economic and environmental sectors.
The book develops a systemic approach to public policy issues. Examples are used throughout to exemplify theory. The integrated approach to policy and practice is ideally suited to addressing the socio-economic and environmental issues.