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Contextualizing Sustainable Development Metric Standards: Imagining New Entrepreneurial Possibilities

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  • William P. Fisher

    (BEAR Center, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA)

Abstract

Imagination is more important than knowledge, but if intellect does not provide the needed logical structures, capacities for envisioning new possibilities are overly constrained. The sustainability problems we face today cannot be solved with the same kind of thinking that created them, but clarity on what counts as a new kind of thinking is sorely lacking. This article proposes methodical, model-based ways of heeding Bateson’s warning about the negative consequences for the ecology of mind that follow from ignoring the contexts of relationships. Informed by S. L. Star’s sense of boundary objects, a sequence of increasingly complex logical types distinguishes and interconnects qualitatively different kinds of thinking in ways that liberate imaginative new possibilities for life. The economy of thought instantiated at each level of complexity is only as meaningful, useful, beautiful, ethical, and efficient as the standards informing local adaptive improvisations. Standards mediating the general and specific, global and local, universally transcendent and embodied particulars enable meaningful negotiations, agreements, and communications. Attending to the differences between levels of discourse sets up new possibilities for creative and imaginative entrepreneurial approaches to viable, feasible, and desirable goals for measuring and managing sustainable development.

Suggested Citation

  • William P. Fisher, 2020. "Contextualizing Sustainable Development Metric Standards: Imagining New Entrepreneurial Possibilities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-22, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:22:p:9661-:d:447806
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Georg Franck, 2002. "The scientific economy of attention: A novel approach to the collective rationality of science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 55(1), pages 3-26, September.
    2. Miller, Peter & O'Leary, Ted, 2007. "Mediating instruments and making markets: Capital budgeting, science and the economy," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(7-8), pages 701-734.
    3. Swee Hoon Chuah & Robert Hoffmann, 2004. "The Evolution of Measurement Standards," Occasional Papers 5, Nottingham University Business School.
    4. William P. Fisher, 2012. "Measure and Manage: Intangible Assets Metric Standards for Sustainability," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Joan Marques & Satinder Dhiman & Svetlana Holt (ed.), Business Administration Education, chapter 3, pages 43-63, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Susan Leigh Star & Karen Ruhleder, 1996. "Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 7(1), pages 111-134, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Asta Meškuotienė & Paulius Kaškonas & Edita Raudienė & Justina Dobilienė & Benas Gabrielis Urbonavičius, 2022. "Calibration Periodicity of Fuel Tanks Assigned to Legal–Industrial Metrology: A Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-11, August.
    2. William P. Fisher Jr., 2023. "Separation Theorems in Econometrics and Psychometrics: Rasch, Frisch, Two Fishers and Implications for Measurement," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 35(1), pages 29-60, January.

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