Advancing Sustainability Through Change and Innovation: A Co- evolutionary Perspective

This article addresses the problem of how change and innovation can create a fuller voice for ecological interests in organizations and public policy, raising issues about change mechanisms at the institutional versus organizational level. First, it suggests that the newer, systems-based and inclusive approaches to organizational development practice and theory may overcome shortcomings of earlier approaches to planned change. Second, it argues that coevolutionary approaches that use complex adaptive systems thinking will more effectively structure such third-generation interventions by focusing on issues at the institutional level. Third, the article examines a dialectical model of institutional change which incorporates activist input and channels conflict into innovative outcomes. Finally, it presents a case example of how a dialectical model combined with a co-evolutionary perspective could foster the institutional change required to facilitate the integration of ecological priorities into the human systems of organizations.