A new forthcoming book, Human Chain: The Sustainability Paradox, argues that individuals have progressively become cognitively and emotionally detached from their ecological environment through the course of human history.  Using Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s poetry on human connection as a metaphor for the broken chain between humans and the ecosystem, the book identifies points in the cultural and sociological history of humans where the cognitive “links” with nature may have been severed.

Appealing to a broad audience of scholars and business managers, this book will offer “business-driven” solutions for reconnecting the human chain with nature.  The authors argue that business organizations are critical drivers of change toward sustainability.  Indeed, they propose that firms can be instrumental in reconnecting society with the ecological environment through strategies that appeal to individuals’ natural cognitive and emotional tendencies.

Co-authors of the book:

• David Wasieleski, Chair of the Management and Marketing Department and Associate Professor of Management at the Palumbo-Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University.
• Paul Shrivastava, Executive Director of Future Earth and a faculty member at Concordia University in Montreal.