Transforming institutions and leaders in support of caring economics policies and practices: Caring institutions and leaders

How do we, as management scholars and practitioners, transform institutions and leaders in support of Caring Economics? How do we put humans back into the business equation? As we become a global knowledge/service society, people are well proclaimed as our most important resource. People - with their hearts and minds, knowledge and experience base - create the organization as well as its strategies, innovations, successes and values. People, however, have lost their faith in institutions and leaders, blaming them for todays' turbulent economic environment and their own sufferings. They want change but have lost hope in the tenets of society that are empowered to create wealth and to even influence meaning in our lives. We believe that to move forward, we who are focused on the valuing and empowerment of human resources must collaboratively work for transformative change in institutional policy, organizational practices, leadership skills, and people's commitment to values. We need to care, and to bring care into our work. The goal for this PDW is to create an exciting conversation between academics and practitioners gathered from many disciplines and Academy divisions/interest groups who want to design real-world projects that move Caring Economics from concept to reality. The co-creation process utilizes Action Research methods to bridge research with experience in hands-on, practice-oriented, practice-grounded roundtables, where ideas will be organically nurtured, collaboratively developed, and/or critiqued. Participants are invited to propose their own project (in embryo or development stage) or join one of those being sponsored by others.