Design Guidelines to Address Global Challenges: Lessons from Global Action Networks

Abstract

Traditional organizations appear to be incapable of adequately addressing critical global issues such as war, climate change, and economic inequality. Addressing these issues suggests the need for organizational innovation to develop global social contracts. Successful innovation must address four integration imperatives: (1) integrate effort and resources across organizational sectors (business, government, civil society) and sense-making, (2) create successful individual to global aggregations, (3) integrate the short and long term, and (4) integrate major issue areas. A new type of organization, Global Action Networks, aims for this integration. Based upon analysis of this new type of organization, five design principles for global social contract organizations are proposed.