Leadership Integrity in aFractured Knowledge WorldSANDRA WADDOCKBoston CollegeWe hear much talk today of the knowledge economy. The reality is more stark—and farmore complex—a world divided into haves and have-nots, a world that is not sustainableecologically and perhaps not politically. Management education can be an importantsource of new ideas about shifting toward an integrated rather than fractured knowledgeeconomy. In the following I present background arguments about the nature of theknowledge economy, highlight some current fractures in the world, and suggest possiblecontent in environmental, societal, and business arenas for management education,which can be used to develop leaders and managers capable of taking the types ofactions needed to create both ecological sustainability and an integrated knowledgeworld.........................................................................................................................................................................“Historically, no individual, tribe, or even na-tion could alter the global climate, destroythousands of species, or shift the chemicalbalance of the atmosphere. Yet this is exactlywhat is happening today, as our individualactions are mediated and magnified throughthe growing network of global institutions.That network determines what technologiesare developed and how they are applied. Itshapes political agendas as national govern-ments respond to the priorities of global busi-ness, international trade, and economic de-velopment. It is reshaping social realities as itdivides the world between those who benefitfrom the new global economy and those whodo not. And it is propagating a global cultureof instant communication, individualism, andmaterial acquisition that threatens traditionalfamily, religious, and social structures. Inshort, the emergence of global institutionsrepresents a dramatic shift in the conditionsfor life on this planet.”—Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, & Flowers(2004).Today’s world presents many opportunities for to-morrow’s business leaders—but also many en-tirely new types of problems that need to be envi-sioned and acted upon in new ways. The world isfractured in a way that has not really existed be-fore. The advent of the knowledge economy placesmany—the haves—in a privileged, information-and knowledge-rich world that cannot even beimagined by the billions of people who still live inabject poverty. Management education as de-signed today makes an effort to prepare futureleaders to cope with the knowledge world, but whoare ill-suited to thinking their way through thedivided or fractured world that actually exists.Fostering leadership integrity in the fracturedknowledge economy that actually exists requires asignificant shift of mind—and a recognition of thelinks between the apparent plenty available tothose in the knowledge economy and the destitu-tion of much of the rest of the world, along with theecological havoc that industrialization haswrought on the natural world. Integrity in thisworld means individual integrity, of course, withits ethical and values-laden basis, but it alsomeans understanding the world as an integratedsystem—ecologically, socially, and from a busi-ness ecosystem perspective. I argue that a shift ofmind—a metanoia—(Senge, 2006) is needed thatmoves management thinking away from theflawed or at least too narrowly construed modelscurrently taught in most business schools almostas gospel—toward more holistic, integrated waysof viewing the world—so that those who will leadthe world will create a world worth living in (Mintz-berg, 2004; Gosling & Mintzberg, 2004; Bennis &O’Toole, 2005; Ghoshal, 2005).Currently, the neoclassical economics modelpervades thinking about management, competi-姝 Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2007, Vol. 6, No. 4, 543–557.........................................................................................................................................................................543Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’sexpress written permission. Users may print, download or email articles for individual use only.tion, and the way businesses ought to be run—anddominates management education. Indeed,Ghoshal (2005) argued in his posthumous articlethat flawed ideas based on this model are destroy-ing many good management practices. Many ob-servers today believe that the current global sys-tem is seriously broken (e.g., Cavanagh et al., 2002;Derber, 1998, 2002, 2004; Korten, 1995) and that atransformation is needed so that we can beginmoving our uses of economic and other materialresources, our communities and societies, and thenatural environment toward a healthier and moresustainable world.Business educators have an opportunity to takethe lead, to transform thinking about what itmeans to prepare leaders for a future where busi-nesses recognize their central roles in the societieswhere they operate, as integral and importantparts of those societies, but not as the only impor-tant institution. To accomplish these tasks we needto step outside the current system and gain newperspectives, even develop wholly new ways ofapproaching what future leaders and managersare expected to do and know. The fundamentalpoint is this one: Businesses are part of society,creatures of society, and need to be subject to theinterests of society not function as the dominantagents of creating society.Businesses are part of society, creaturesof society, and need to be subject to theinterests of society not function as thedominant agents of creating society.In arguing for change, I suggest that too many ofour leaders and managers are operating todaywith thinking better suited to the world of the 1960sand 1970s than the emerging world of the 21stcen-tury, which is integrally knowledge-based despitethe fractures that exist, and which we know to be aglobal whole. A worldview based on mechanisticrather than organic thinking, which is at the heartof Western views of economics, suggests linearlythat competition in a dog-eat-dog fight over re-sources is the best way to build businesses andsocieties. But in the knowledge economy, recogni-tion of interconnectedness and limitations of re-sources have dramatically changed the rules of thegame.In the following I attempt to do three