- Email: [email protected]
Edited by Bruce Lloyd
Long Range Planning 45 (2012) 306e307
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/lrp
Book Review Edited by Bruce Lloyd
Global Action Networks: Creating Our Future Together Steve Waddell, Palgrave Macmillan (2011), 244pp., $40.00 (hard)
Efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation e the gold standards of organizational outcomes. Much has been written over the decades in these pages about how to achieve these outcomes, and much has been added in the past decade. In addition to the traditional internal and industry perspectives, strategists must now add multiple stakeholders, multiple sectors, multiple cultures on multiple continents, along with global policy and local action. In the strategy, the firm must not only be able to be proactive in response, they also need to be able to choose when to fight, engage, and dialog. Additionally, firms have moved from straightforward financial and operational scorecards to network scorecards with ambiguous outcomes. How to navigate this complexity is the bread and butter of Long Range Planning these days. Among the multitude of responses comes Steve Waddell and his colleagues. Waddell and community have uncovered an emerging phenomenon that addresses the complexity of all of these strategic concerns with an extraordinary simplicity and elegance e they have named this phenomenon the “global action network (GAN).” Waddell has identified over eighty of these GANs, which have emerged over the past twenty years, addressing critical global issues, such as climate change, poverty, health, education, and human security. It is this “naming” of the phenomenon that has allowed the GANs to understand what differentiates them, support their evolution, and allow practitioners to learn from their innovations. These GANs include well respected networks, such as Transparency International, the Forest Stewardship Council, Social Accountability International, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Microcredit Summit Campaign, the Global Water Partnership, and the Sustainable Food Lab. In Global Action Networks, Waddell synthesizes over twenty years of action research with these eighty GANs, showing the reader what a GAN is, describing what the GANs are learning, and differentiating why this emerging model is being so successful at addressing such thorny global issues in very practical, measurable ways. Specifically, Waddell identifies seven characteristics that are present in different degrees in the dozens of GANs studied, including: (1) global and multilevel.local, regional, global; (2) entrepreneurial action innovators.developing new tools, processes and relationships; (3) public goods producers.producing for public benefit; (4) diversity-embracing.collaborating across sectoral (business-government-civil society), linguistic, ethnic, north-south and other boundaries; (5) interorganizational networks.individuals have a role, but organizations are the key participants; neither hierarchy nor markets provide the principles, values or capacity; (6) systemic change agents.working on trans0024-6301/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lrp.2011.10.001
formation, reform, and scaling up; and (7) voluntary leaders.participants make commitments to push the boundaries of enhancing environmental, social and economic outcomes. These GANs are discovering lessons that would useful to any large organization e how to be sustainably much more efficient, effective, innovative. In efficiency, these GANs are learning how to work globally with very little resource. With a small global headquarters staff (usually less than 20 people, and often less than 5), they are able to engage a global network in dozens of countries, changing global policy and local action, in an orchestrated fashion. For example, with a headquarters staff of 138 (including interns) and revenues of 18,027,000 Euros in 2010, Transparency International (TI) is a global network with 90 locally established national chapters, fighting corruption in the national arena in a number of ways. They bring together relevant players from government, civil society, business and the media to promote transparency in elections, in public administration, in procurement and in business. TI’s global network of chapters and contacts also use advocacy campaigns to lobby governments to implement anticorruption reforms. These efforts have provided a common language for corruption and how to measure it, raised corruption to a national-level conversation, and enabled global and national anti-corruption reforms. As a global action network, TI is able to make global changes one nation at a time, with very limited resources e very high and very strategic efficiency. In effectiveness, the GANs are learning how to change the direction of critical global issues through simultaneous work at the global and local levels. This “glocal” focus has allowed the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), founded in 1992, to achieve 120 million hectares of forests harvested in a sustainable fashion, organizing 16,000 businesses in the forest-to-retail production chain in almost 100 countries, and now over 50% of all timber and panel products produced in and imported to the UK are FSC-certified. The Microcredit Summit Campaign focused thousands of microcredit institutions to give credit to 100 million of the world’s poorest women in just over a decade e a huge shift and achievement for the industry and the campaign. These are huge impacts on how the world harvests its forests e very high and strategic effectiveness. In innovation, the GANs are figuring out how to learn glocally in highly turbulent, global environments. They simultaneously learn at the level of one globe and 100 nations e what is working best, why, and how can it be transferred to other settings and cultures. For example, in International Bridges to Justice, they are learning how to develop justice systems in countries as difficult as China and Rwanda. Likewise, Youth Enterprise and Sustainability (YES) has developed new approaches to job creation through youth leadership. Through practices of single, double, and triple-loop learning, the GANs are engaging in a process of societal learning and change. Waddell identifies eight core competencies he has uncovered in the over eighty GANs he has studied that strengthen their ability to sustainably create such high levels of efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation: leadership, network development, measuring impact, change & conflict, communications, learning systems, policy and advocacy, and resource mobilization. Chapters in the book describe what has been learned in communities of practice of dozens of GANs that Waddell and colleagues have organized for years around each of these competencies. Global Action Networks directly addresses the deepest concerns of strategists today e how to develop strategy in an environment that requires: internal and industry perspectives, multiple stakeholders, multiple sectors, multiple cultures on multiple continents, along with global policy and local action. With practical examples, lessons learned, organizing principles, measureable impacts, and clear processes, Waddell presents a clear and straightforward framework for creating our future together. James L. Ritchie-Dunham E-mail: [email protected] Long Range Planning, vol 45
2012
307
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/lrp
Book Review Edited by Bruce Lloyd
Global Action Networks: Creating Our Future Together Steve Waddell, Palgrave Macmillan (2011), 244pp., $40.00 (hard)
Efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation e the gold standards of organizational outcomes. Much has been written over the decades in these pages about how to achieve these outcomes, and much has been added in the past decade. In addition to the traditional internal and industry perspectives, strategists must now add multiple stakeholders, multiple sectors, multiple cultures on multiple continents, along with global policy and local action. In the strategy, the firm must not only be able to be proactive in response, they also need to be able to choose when to fight, engage, and dialog. Additionally, firms have moved from straightforward financial and operational scorecards to network scorecards with ambiguous outcomes. How to navigate this complexity is the bread and butter of Long Range Planning these days. Among the multitude of responses comes Steve Waddell and his colleagues. Waddell and community have uncovered an emerging phenomenon that addresses the complexity of all of these strategic concerns with an extraordinary simplicity and elegance e they have named this phenomenon the “global action network (GAN).” Waddell has identified over eighty of these GANs, which have emerged over the past twenty years, addressing critical global issues, such as climate change, poverty, health, education, and human security. It is this “naming” of the phenomenon that has allowed the GANs to understand what differentiates them, support their evolution, and allow practitioners to learn from their innovations. These GANs include well respected networks, such as Transparency International, the Forest Stewardship Council, Social Accountability International, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Microcredit Summit Campaign, the Global Water Partnership, and the Sustainable Food Lab. In Global Action Networks, Waddell synthesizes over twenty years of action research with these eighty GANs, showing the reader what a GAN is, describing what the GANs are learning, and differentiating why this emerging model is being so successful at addressing such thorny global issues in very practical, measurable ways. Specifically, Waddell identifies seven characteristics that are present in different degrees in the dozens of GANs studied, including: (1) global and multilevel.local, regional, global; (2) entrepreneurial action innovators.developing new tools, processes and relationships; (3) public goods producers.producing for public benefit; (4) diversity-embracing.collaborating across sectoral (business-government-civil society), linguistic, ethnic, north-south and other boundaries; (5) interorganizational networks.individuals have a role, but organizations are the key participants; neither hierarchy nor markets provide the principles, values or capacity; (6) systemic change agents.working on trans0024-6301/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lrp.2011.10.001
formation, reform, and scaling up; and (7) voluntary leaders.participants make commitments to push the boundaries of enhancing environmental, social and economic outcomes. These GANs are discovering lessons that would useful to any large organization e how to be sustainably much more efficient, effective, innovative. In efficiency, these GANs are learning how to work globally with very little resource. With a small global headquarters staff (usually less than 20 people, and often less than 5), they are able to engage a global network in dozens of countries, changing global policy and local action, in an orchestrated fashion. For example, with a headquarters staff of 138 (including interns) and revenues of 18,027,000 Euros in 2010, Transparency International (TI) is a global network with 90 locally established national chapters, fighting corruption in the national arena in a number of ways. They bring together relevant players from government, civil society, business and the media to promote transparency in elections, in public administration, in procurement and in business. TI’s global network of chapters and contacts also use advocacy campaigns to lobby governments to implement anticorruption reforms. These efforts have provided a common language for corruption and how to measure it, raised corruption to a national-level conversation, and enabled global and national anti-corruption reforms. As a global action network, TI is able to make global changes one nation at a time, with very limited resources e very high and very strategic efficiency. In effectiveness, the GANs are learning how to change the direction of critical global issues through simultaneous work at the global and local levels. This “glocal” focus has allowed the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), founded in 1992, to achieve 120 million hectares of forests harvested in a sustainable fashion, organizing 16,000 businesses in the forest-to-retail production chain in almost 100 countries, and now over 50% of all timber and panel products produced in and imported to the UK are FSC-certified. The Microcredit Summit Campaign focused thousands of microcredit institutions to give credit to 100 million of the world’s poorest women in just over a decade e a huge shift and achievement for the industry and the campaign. These are huge impacts on how the world harvests its forests e very high and strategic effectiveness. In innovation, the GANs are figuring out how to learn glocally in highly turbulent, global environments. They simultaneously learn at the level of one globe and 100 nations e what is working best, why, and how can it be transferred to other settings and cultures. For example, in International Bridges to Justice, they are learning how to develop justice systems in countries as difficult as China and Rwanda. Likewise, Youth Enterprise and Sustainability (YES) has developed new approaches to job creation through youth leadership. Through practices of single, double, and triple-loop learning, the GANs are engaging in a process of societal learning and change. Waddell identifies eight core competencies he has uncovered in the over eighty GANs he has studied that strengthen their ability to sustainably create such high levels of efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation: leadership, network development, measuring impact, change & conflict, communications, learning systems, policy and advocacy, and resource mobilization. Chapters in the book describe what has been learned in communities of practice of dozens of GANs that Waddell and colleagues have organized for years around each of these competencies. Global Action Networks directly addresses the deepest concerns of strategists today e how to develop strategy in an environment that requires: internal and industry perspectives, multiple stakeholders, multiple sectors, multiple cultures on multiple continents, along with global policy and local action. With practical examples, lessons learned, organizing principles, measureable impacts, and clear processes, Waddell presents a clear and straightforward framework for creating our future together. James L. Ritchie-Dunham E-mail: [email protected] Long Range Planning, vol 45
2012
307