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In this world of complexity, disruption, multi-layered crises and insecurity, people seek orientation, stability and meaning. This desire exists in everyday life, in working environments and even more in vacation time. Therefore, the way we see the world and how we interact with each other and with nature should also be reflected by tourist destinations. ‘Destination Conscience’ seems to be a promising conception that offers the desired contemporary design of destination realities and travel experiences. Accordingly, destinations and their products should be characterised by authenticity, meaning, sensitivity and humaneness on all levels. In this chapter, the concept of ‘integral ecology’ as a holistic worldview and new paradigm is presented. Integral ecology can be a source of perception and wisdom that enriches the ‘conscience’ of a destination and all its actors. Hence, this chapter addresses the question of how integral ecology can contribute to Destination Conscience. The essay uses the methods of literature review, application, transfer and case study.

Firstly, the concept of integral ecology will be presented. In the second part, this worldview will be applied to destinations. The enrichment of Destination Conscience by the principles of integral ecology can manifest in the destination's self-image and in the interaction in business relations and business actions. It can find expression in the operational management, organisation and development of a destination and in the design of the touristic services and products. In the third part, the case study of a Catholic monastery in the Altmühltal will be presented for further illustration.

This conceptual paper focusses on climate change as a social issue and therefore as a social scientific problem. According to young climate activists, Greta Thunberg being the most widely known, climate change is specifically a problem of generations. Typically, the discourse on responsibility focusses on the technical and philosophical questions posed by the study into “intra-” and “inter-generational justice”. It is the purpose of this paper to present sociological conceptual tools with which to both analyze and propose solutions to specific social problems caused by current generations that will affect future generations.

Figurational process sociology develops and tests models of long-term, unplanned developments, which produce the conditions in which short-term practices of informing and planning social interventions are bound up.

The paper reveals the significance of sociological models that can describe and explain social processes and long-term developments in human habitus that have important explanatory value for understanding contemporary social problems such as human-caused climate change.

The concepts and analytical frames of reference provided by figurational process sociology provide crucial insights into the problem of generations and can help reveal how this social dynamic contributes to challenges facing young climate activists calling for rapid “ecologization” processes and increased human restraint with regard to the natural environment.

The paper aims to investigate the approach and tools adopted by an Italian city, included amongst the UNESCO World Heritage sites (WHS), to involve different stakeholders in the protection and valorisation of its historical centre to achieve the goals of sustainable development. The paper focusses on the role of local authorities as the key actors that should engage different city users to jointly achieve heritage conservation and socio-economic development.

Data were collected, thanks to the researchers' direct participation in a project launched by the municipality of Urbino, which involved several local stakeholders and lasted about a year. Participant observation allowed the authors to collect informal interviews, join collective discussions and reflect on the direct observation of the activities undertaken.

The case study analysed suggests how participatory governance may be effective in fostering responsible principles in “asset usage” by any type of city users and how citizens actively co-design and co-implement initiatives of heritage revitalisation when engaged in cultural heritage (CH) policies.

The paper addresses a long-standing problem that has never been solved: how to enhance the consciousness of the CH amongst stakeholders and reconcile their different and conflicting needs in the historical urban environment in the process of revitalisation.

This chapter addresses the question of what normatively binding claims can be associated with the principle of sustainability. It proposes a theoretical reading of justice that requires a new level of morality, namely a global (spatial), intergenerational (temporal) and ecological (material) extension of the scope of responsibility. This makes it plausible that responsibility for those who are distant in space and time, as well as for nature, becomes a matter of conscience. At the same time, it is shown how the binding claims resulting from the principle of sustainability can be internalised in the course of a conscience formation and how the gap between knowledge and action in questions of sustainable development can be closed by means of an emotional underpinning. Finally, it is proposed to transfer the question of conscience to spatial units and tourism through the model of ‘Destination Conscience’ and to institutionalise the idea of ‘inner commitment’ or self-commitment. One suggestion is the creation of committees that could be a collective ethical conscience for the future issues.

This chapter examines the role of heritage as a means of empowering destination communities and providing deeper and more meaningful encounters between tourists and their destination, which contributes to the notion of Destination Conscience by highlighting more sustainable and humane ways of ‘doing’ tourism and opening places up to greater community involvement and access by visitors. This includes heritage concepts such as Indigenous communities, local spirituality and religious traditions, public archaeology and ordinary heritage, and how these translate into deeper engagement between residents and tourists, community empowerment and a more creative and holistic tourist experiences. Conceptually, this chapter highlights notions of empowerment, tourists' experiences and Destination Conscience.

Academic work on responsible leadership has emphasised two aspects: the value orientation of leaders, and the scope of interests they consider in their leadership – the range of stakeholders, current and future, human and non-human. I address these via two questions that are equally important but different in scale: one is about the motives for individual action and the other about the coordination of multiple organisations. Possible answers are considered in the context of leadership development: the developmental pathways, and the structure of leader and leadership development programmes, that are most likely to promote responsible leadership.

On the question of moral motivation (drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur) I suggest four influential factors: witnessing the suffering of others, admonitions of “masters of justice”, welfare of loved ones, and networks within which to discuss these matters. These I summarise as “the echo of conscience”.

On the question of coordinated change at a systemic level, I review several approaches commonly found in leadership development programmes, interpret these as emerging from four “logics” and consider the implications for responsible leader development. The four logics are: systems are so complex that entrepreneurial innovation is a primary mode of responsible leadership; specific issues might be resolved by bringing “the system in the room”; sector-specific organising to change the rules of the game towards greater social responsibility; identifying “positive tipping points” and seeking triggers for change.

I conclude with a meditation on idealism in responsible leadership.

This chapter addresses one of the most crucial areas for critical thinking: the morality of turbulent markets around the world. All of us are overwhelmed by such turbulent markets. Following Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2004, 2010), we distinguish between nonscalable industries (ordinary professions where income grows linearly, piecemeal or by marginal jumps) and scalable industries (extraordinary risk-prone professions where income grows in a nonlinear fashion, and by exponential jumps and fractures). Nonscalable industries generate tame and predictable markets of goods and services, while scalable industries regularly explode into behemoth virulent markets where rewards are disproportionately large compared to effort, and they are the major causes of turbulent financial markets that rock our world causing ever-widening inequities and inequalities. Part I describes both scalable and nonscalable markets in sufficient detail, including propensity of scalable industries to randomness, and the turbulent markets they create. Part II seeks understanding of moral responsibility of turbulent markets and discusses who should appropriate moral responsibility for turbulent markets and under what conditions. Part III synthesizes various theories of necessary and sufficient conditions for accepting or assigning moral responsibility. We also analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for attribution of moral responsibility such as rationality, intentionality, autonomy or freedom, causality, accountability, and avoidability of various actors as moral agents or as moral persons. By grouping these conditions, we then derive some useful models for assigning moral responsibility to various entities such as individual executives, corporations, or joint bodies. We discuss the challenges and limitations of such models.