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The very nature of organizational life is transforming as collaborative technologies erase the prerequisite of co-location for collaboration. Using three example cases of which we have been a part, World Vision, the American Society for Association Executives, and Healthy Kids Healthy Schools, we illustrate how such technology is also augmenting the generative capacity of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Summit methodology. We then use the five principles of wikinomics that Tapscott and Williams (2010) identify as keys for organizational thrival into today’s digitally connected world: collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity, and interdependence, as a lens for examining how the virtually connected AI Summit is a whole-system change methodology that helps to promote these principles. The chapter concludes with lessons on integrating collaborative technology into summit designs and opportunities for future experiments in this domain.

Managers’ willingness to proceed with right action can be diminished by the need for approval and feeling the negative emotions that often accompany ethical challenges. This paper seeks to describe Balanced Experiential Inquiry (BEI), a learning activity designed to help managers develop sustained moral performance.

Using their past experiences for reflective learning, managers engage in BEI to understand what promotes and curtails their ability to respond to ethical issues.

A field study showed that managers engaging in BEI perceived less need for praise from others and experienced a reduction in negative emotions.

Future research evaluating BEI should use a control group, diverse sample, and a longitudinal design that tracks outcomes over time.

Application of BEI is a promising mechanism to help organizations bolster managers’ internal desires to stay on an ethical decision‐making path.

The paper shows that shared reflection and dialogue are needed to help foster responsibility and build ethical strength in organizational settings.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on an inward drive and commitment toward ethical discovery, which the authors refer to as the competency of moral curiosity. When directed toward moral decision making, the authors believe this ability can help managers effectively respond to their ethical challenges and contribute to an organizational environment that supports ethical performance.

After presenting insights from the literature on curiosity and establishing its relevance, the authors describe a specific experiential learning tool designed to cultivate moral curiosity in organizational settings. The authors conduct a field study using this process to explore how moral curiosity can be strengthened through experiential practice.

Results from the field study suggest that engagement in balanced experiential inquiry, a process that asks managers to reflect on their salient ethical dilemmas and then engage in both individual and collective meaning making, positively influenced participants’ curiosity toward moral decision making.

Limitations include challenges inherent to the field-study design, including lack of a control group and limited ability to predict long-term impacts of the intervention. Despite these concerns, the study has useful implications for managerial training and development. In particular, providing safe spaces where managers can discuss their ethical dilemmas is an important element of supporting their development into morally curious leaders who are interested in pursuing business ethics.

Findings suggest that providing safe spaces where managers can discuss their ethical dilemmas is an important element of supporting their development into morally curious leaders who are interested in pursuing business ethics.

The paper contributes to the research literature on ethics training and education for managers. The authors introduce the construct of moral curiosity as a competency that can be developed through experiential practice in organizational settings.

Although special education was built upon the foundation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the discrimination that many racialized students receiving special education services experience cannot be denied. Many culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students receiving special education services encounter labels that perpetuate racism and ableism and lead to inequitable access to services and resources necessary for more positive postsecondary outcomes. By honoring intersectionality and dismantling the singular identity, educators can become change agents and shift the historic oppressive narrative to create a system of empowerment as these individuals transition from transitional kindergarten to age 21 special education programs (TK-21) schools into adulthood.

Private equity and venture capital (VC) firms in the capital markets sector invest capital with the primary goal of delivering economic value. However, some firms in the capital markets sector have started to shift this focus to create (i.e. invest in) social value. More specifically, traditional VC firms are starting socially oriented funds, while other firms have emerged to focus solely on investments in social enterprises. These VC firms are contributing to an interesting paradox – performance metrics are not measured by profit alone but also by social innovation. From an architectural perspective, the authors examine the implications of internal design, i.e. how specific strategic and structural factors influence the financial performance of VC firms with a social orientation to determine if these firms really can “do well and do good.”

Social orientation was determined by content analysis of mission statements of the VC firms. Firm strategies, structures and performance were sourced from secondary data. A moderated mediation model was used to test relationships.

Results suggest that (1) socially responsible VC firms adopt distinct foci of social investing that directs their strategic orientation and (2) these various foci have vastly differing effects on the firm's overall performance, strategic decisions made and the architecture of their structural design.

This study is among the first to explore socially responsible VC architectural dimensions, with implications for firm design based on blended measures of success.