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This chapter deals with global sustainability, in its old and modern concepts, typologies, and theories. Most concepts of sustainability, we contend, are anthropocentric, a self-serving attitude that believes in the utmost superiority of man over the rest of the nonhuman universe, which seemingly privileges humans to use, extract, and exploit planetary resources for industrialization and infrastructure development and presumably lead to human growth and prosperity (the Anthropocene). The cost of this however is terrestrial depletion, deterioration, degradation, and decadence that manifest in the current global phenomena of global warming, global climate change, Arctic meltdowns, ocean acidity, massive deforestation, and global carbon footprints, which have collectively rendered human habitability on this earth drastically reduced and jeopardized. In this context, we review the timeline (1992–2022) of the United Nations' sustainability negotiations and accords, several nonanthropocentric and nonanthropomorphic conceptualizations of global sustainability such as Leopold Aldo's land ethic, deep ecology of Naess and associates, Thomas Berry's ecozoic ecology (updated by Spethmann). Combining the best nonanthropocentric developments, we propose a holistic concept of “natural sustainability,” more consonant with critical thinking, which mandates reduced or disciplined use of planetary resources such that Nature can regenerate and renew herself.

Natural sustainability advocates a more fruitful integrative ecozoic paradigm of “sustainability centrism,” which seeks cosmic sustainability of Mother Nature for herself as an end in herself, and we spell out its implications for organizational science and corporate responsibility as an extended global community.

This chapter runs into three parts. Part I: Major Sustainability Types versus Ecozoic Worldview of Cosmic Sustainability; Part II: Conceptualization of Natural Sustainability and Its Justification based on Environmental Ethics, Ecozoic Sustainability, and Deep Ecology; and Part III: Capturing Nature as Nature and Her Moral Imperatives for Understanding Natural Sustainability. Toward the end of this chapter, we also discuss managerial implications and directions for future research.

The paper explores the implementation and process of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project in Jacksonville, Florida. Using PAR principles, we sought to disrupt traditional dynamics in research, co-generating knowledge with the community. We aimed to elevate disenfranchised voices and foster effective solutions for neighborhood revitalization and resilience, which are designed and led by the community. In this paper we explore researcher positionality, examining how engagement with the community context profoundly influences researchers' perspectives and roles, thereby shaping the study trajectory.

We use reflexive and thematic approaches to analyze researcher positionalities and dynamics with the community. Researchers' reflections were scrutinized with a focus on their backgrounds, adaptability to community pace of work, lessons learned and evolving perspectives on community-centered research. We present a comprehensive discussion of emerging themes and emphasize the transformative nature of PAR and the significance of the researcher pursuing a relationship of belonging within the community.

The study uncovered key themes clarifying the transformations experienced by researchers engaged in PAR. We underwent a significant shift from a predetermined, structured PAR model to a more organic, community-driven model. This shift is illustrated under key themes in the paper: being vulnerable, valuing relationships, transforming the sense of self and solidarity, focusing on the process and recognizing and valuing community-derived knowledge. We write about the metamorphosis of researchers' roles from passive observers to active and empathic participants and about the implications for our methodological approach. As a result of this adaptation, the research process was enhanced and a symbiotic learning environment was created between the researchers and the community.

This paper distinguishes itself through its community-centric approach, diverging from traditional research paradigms. It explores how PAR-based community engagement can have a positive impact on those who are involved in PAR themselves, contributing to a better understanding of reciprocal dynamics in community-based research. We hope that our process of reflection can help other disaster researchers to ask better questions of themselves when engaging with communities and be open to following the lead and the pace of the community.

Our understanding of what we call “normal” in organizations has been shaken multiple times in recent years. As change is perceived as an inherent feature of routine dynamics, it is relevant to understand how change becomes established as a new normal. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how change in routines takes hold as normality forms. To answer this question, the author studies the change in routines in an in-depth process case study of a higher education organization during the COVID-19 pandemic transforming its teaching model. The author’s findings show that normality formation is a dynamic process. While normality can be described as a snapshot of the current state of what is considered normal at one point in time, normality transforms in sequential waves making the overall process of normality formation pulsate. In drawing out six patterning mechanisms, the author introduces a pulsating normality as the transformative evolution of what is considered normal. This study speaks to routine dynamics literature, contributing to a better understanding of how a variation in performance becomes patterned as a sustained part of a routine.

A recent United Nations (2021) report stated that education needs to be concerned with enhancing human relationships with the natural world if we are to work toward building a sustainable future. This paper proposes that educational practices underpinned by an ecological orientation in mid-century Aotearoa offer insights for educators looking to enhance human connection with nature. It also argues that ecological thinking has implications for how research in the history of education might be carried out.

The article responds to recent calls in history of education for researchers to attend to the intertwined ecologies of living and material worlds in research approaches by Maria Tamboukou (2020) and Karin Priem (2022). It conducts a close analysis of a 1952 nature diary, encountered in the national archive, written by a 9-year-old pupil on the West Coast of the South Island. The analysis attends to the human–nature interactions the diary records, and to the resonance of the text in the context of post-war curriculum changes.

Post-war nature study in Aotearoa New Zealand built on an aim to nurture children’s connections with nature and to place. Analysis of an entry from the 1952 nature diary highlights these connections and demonstrates the possibilities for a reframing of human–nature relationships that emerge with an ecological orientation in education. These findings speak to urgent contemporary concerns with environmental sustainability and human–nature relationships.

The paper draws on educational philosophy and theory (Fesmire, 2012; Nicol, 2014) alongside recent conversations in the history of education (Priem, 2022; Grosvenor and Priem, 2022; Tamboukou, 2020) to consider human–nature relationality at the heart of ecological thought. It outlines an approach to archival research that is ecologically oriented, generating openness and receptivity to the material world.

A central tension in routine dynamics is the paradox of the [n]ever-changing world: how can we consider each routine performance as unique, when it is simultaneously a recognizable variant of the behavior from the past? Emergent from this paradox is the question of how we can consider routines to be the “same” over time, even as they change. Organizational traditions, which often persist over decades, present a potentially informative case of this paradox as their core rituals are simultaneously recognizable and recognizably in significant flux over the long-term. In this paper, the author draws on a case history of “the Unicorn,” a tradition at a US summer camp that began as a quiet activity for a few children in 1985 and by 2017 had become a weekly spectacle witnessed by hundreds of campers. By drawing on routine dynamics and tradition literatures, the author shows how action visibility and influence by different organizational constituencies over time slowly enabled these changes. This longer-term lens helps illuminate the under-researched, mutually constitutive relationship between routines and traditions, and their long-term dynamics.

This paper investigates the intricate process of integrating historically excluded social groups into long-established routines. Drawing on a dialectical perspective, the research explores how persistence and change emerge through the interplay of opposing forces, shedding light on the dynamics of integrating new participants while ensuring stability in established routines. The empirical focus is on an Armed Forces’ ground combat training (GCT) course, examining the integration of the first female officers after the formal ban on their participation in close-combat roles was lifted. The findings reveal a nuanced evolution of routine adaptation and truce reformation, characterized by three dialectical cycles: tentative truces, experimental truces, and enactment truces. These cycles involve negotiations between continuity and reformation, accommodation and resistance, and modification and preservation, uncovering a dialectical dance where organizational actors invest intense effort in maintaining the status quo while accommodating ambiguity and settling tensions. The findings extend our understanding of routine dynamics by illuminating the performative aspect of truce-making, highlighting the effortful processes involved in accommodating new participants. This paper establishes a connection between routines and dialectics, providing novel avenues for exploring complex organizational challenges and emphasizing micro-strategies employed by routine participants to address differences in practice. It also contributes to the field of organizational inclusion by offering a dialectical understanding of integration, showcasing the intricate dynamics involved in integrating historically excluded groups into established routines.

Comparative analyses in education science have traditionally focused on the category of geographic location as the comparative unit. However, comparison may involve many other units of analysis, such as culture, politics, curricula, education systems, social phenomena, and other categories of the lives of societies. Still, categories are inseparably linked to one or several geographic locations. Comparative approaches are often also dictated by the availability heuristic. Studying geographic units as the foci of comparative research is a necessary step for comparative presentation of the topic. According to Bray and Thomas, a researcher must always seek preliminary insight in the geographic unit to be analyzed before making the comparison. In social science research, a unit of analysis relates to the main object of the research, as it answers the question of “who” or “what” is going to be analyzed. The most common units of analysis are people, groups, organizations, artifacts or phenomena, and social interactions. Ragin and Amoroso have noted that comparative methods can be used to explain the commonness or diversity of results. This paper shows how comparative research can be approached in ways that have not been discussed, grounded in the historically variable understanding of the very term “comparison.” They are, for example, The Ogden-Richards triangle, The Porphyrian Tree, Classification strategies – Mill’s Canons, The chaos of the world – the order of science, Weber’s ideal types, Raymond Boudon’s formula, and the Möbius strip in comparativism.