Alexander Schieffer and Ronnie Lessem. Integral Development. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing, 2014.
Schieffer and Lessem introduce a ground-breaking development framework and process to address the most burning issues that humanity faces. While conventional top-down, outside-in development has reached a cul-de-sac, a new, integral form of development is emerging around the world. Integral Development uniquely articulates this emergent approach, and invites us to fully participate in this process. Integral Development combines four mutually reinforcing perspectives: nature and community; culture and spirituality; science, systems and technology; and enterprise and economics. Conventional development theory and practice has prioritized the latter two perspectives, neglecting the former two. This has caused massive imbalances in today’s world. Integral Development shows how individual, organizational and societal developments need to be interconnected to overcome these imbalances and to release a society’s full potential. It shifts the responsibility for large-scale development from often-distant development experts and organizations to each individual, community, enterprise and institution within the society.