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- Title
CONSTRUCTING POLICY TO CONFRONT COLLAPSE: ANCIENT EXPERIENCE AND MODERN RISK.
- Authors
DEMAREST, ARTHUR A.; VICTOR, BART
- Abstract
All societies collapse. The question is not if our current order will end, but what policies might delay the inevitable. To ask this question we have taken a longue durée and institutional theory perspective to investigate how another complex society, the Classic Maya, both succeeded to avoid collapse and yet centuries later failed to prevent their own doomsday. Integrating new highly detailed archaeological and palaeoecological data with institutional theory paradigms we develop case studies of managerial and policy responses just prior to the final Classic Maya collapse and one some 600 years earlier in which institutional entrepreneurship was used to avoid a collapse. We draw four policy directives from our case studies regarding (i) acceptance of potential imminent collapse, (ii) vulnerabilities now confronting our institutions and logics, (iii) the razor's edge of transformative institutional entrepreneurship, and (iv) the threats of "status-rivalry" spirals.We finally take the risky step of examining our contemporary situation. Here, we observe that two of our central institutions, democracy and capitalism have become our greatest weaknesses driving cycles of short-term decision making, hypercoherence, and inequality. We suggest that without significant yet very careful modification of institutions and logics this will lead our apogee into our collapse, as those central institutionsmay become destabilized and delegitimatized.
- Subjects
DECISION making; PALEOECOLOGY; RAZORS; SWOT analysis; CAPITALISM; ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- Publication
Academy of Management Perspectives, 2022, Vol 36, Issue 2, p768
- ISSN
1558-9080
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5465/amp.2019.0039