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Urbanization is a mode of social progress in history. However, it repeats headway and fallback. In the lifetime of a person, he/she may watch only a certain phase of recovery from fallback as if it were a phase of progress. Such a social activity as evocation of sense of togetherness may seem to be so primitive that it might be practicable even in past communities. It is true of water quality issue of river and sea around us. Do you find the more innovative way that has never been seen? Otherwise, do you chant simply a slogan like “Clean the river more!”? Although water quality transition is merely a physical phenomenon, the community nearby may either worsen or improve the quality. The interaction between the quality transition and the action of community continues in a dynamic process. Community should progress, if possible, by managing the process appropriately. This chapter first illustrates a case of social remediation process for water quality issue of Horikawa river in Nagoya City, Japan. Then it considers the issues, concerns, activities, and moreover the relation of them over the water community. It finally refers to more strategic direction through simple mathematical formulation of social remediation process.

Academic libraries have endured rapid change in the past two decades that has had repercussions on how they manage their organization and deliver library services. Skyrocketing costs, especially for journals, explosive growth in new technologies, fiscal exigencies caused by a tightening of public financing of most academic institutions, demands for greater accountability, and the onslaught of electronic delivery of networked information, are just some of the major obstacles libraries are encountering (Lubans, 1996; Riggs, 1993; Shaughnessy, 1987). Customers of academic libraries are increasingly less satisfied because of limited resources and the difficulties they encounter in accessing printed material in a traditional library facility (Doughtery, 1992). The emergence of textual materials in electronic form has added a new dimension to this discontent. While such resources have the potential for meeting the information needs more dynamically, the costs for information have been exorbitant, particularly since full electronic texts have not been sufficient in coverage to supplant printed resources (Tenopir, 1993). These phenomena require academic libraries to use a more integrated and flexible approach to problem solving (Gapen, Hampton & Schmitt, 1993).

In this chapter, the author explores and discusses the transformation of management from the perspective of complex systems, systems change and the Taoist yin-yang theory. Modern complex organizations require innovative management practices that move beyond traditional approaches. Consequently, many organizations are experiencing a management shift towards more holistic and sustainable methods. This shift encompasses changes in organizational structures and modes of inquiry. Organizations are transitioning from rigid hierarchies to more collaborative and agile configurations while adopting a systemic approach to management that acknowledges the interconnectedness and interdependence of all organizational aspects. Simultaneously, there is a paradigm shift in management thinking, replacing the conventional focus on ego-action with eco-action, which emphasizes the integration of diverse perspectives and the cultivation of self-awareness and introspection. This shift in mindset is embodied in the yin-yang paradigm, highlighting the importance of balance and harmony between contrasting forces.

In this chapter, I re-frame leading in organizing as teaching and identify physical movement as a core mechanism through which leaders are sensitive and responsive to the progress of their group’s learning. To demonstrate this, I analyze interview data with choral and orchestral conductors in terms of Sheets-Johnstone’s (1999/2011) four qualities of movement: tension, linearity, amplitude, and projection. These four qualities serve as a grammar or set of basic categories to better understand how and why leaders move in certain ways in relation to their followers, for the sake of the latter’s learning and the collective ability to accomplish organizational goals. The ability to categorize conductors’ physical movements and the movement of the ensemble’s learning can help practitioners and scholars to assess the congruence between the two. With this grammar in hand, leaders can better assess and articulate what kinds of movements can be performed when, in order to guide the progress of their group’s collective learning.

The success enjoyed by some of the alternative agrifood movements has led to a dual process: on the one hand, their mainstreaming and cooptation; while on the other hand, their institutionalization into public regulation and law. This dual process is the result of the influence these movements have had on consumers and politicians and serves to demonstrate the constant exchange between the spheres of public and private regulation, a feature that characterizes the neoliberal model of governance. In turn, this has led to the appearance of new alternative initiatives which may converge with or diverge from founding initiatives when these are the result of divisions within a movement. The question that arises here is obvious: despite these evident achievements, by working within the market and using the tools of neoliberal regulation, have these movements managed to generate the social change they intended from the outset? This chapter will attempt to answer the question by offering a reflection on two of the most widely discussed aspects of this strategy: first, the private and/or public space where these movements develop and the citizen-consumer duality of the actors to whom they appeal; and second, their ability to generate standards, norms, and certification systems, that is, their ability to establish the rules of the game.

The urban environment is perceived through multiple senses in parallel, which means that visual understanding of space is aided and complemented by auditory, basic-orienting, and haptic stimuli – although mainly unconsciously. Sensory conditions are inherent attributes of urban places, but are often overlooked in research. To include these aspects in any way in analysis of the urban landscape, they need to be understood as properties of urban space, to be translated from attributes of the perceiver to attributes of the perceived. Using the relation between a designed garden and its suburban context in Bad Oeynhausen (DE) as an example, I will explore an alternative analytical methodology that takes the first-hand perspective view of the subject moving through the city as the starting point. The human body explores space by moving through it; walking is the most direct way to access, study, and research the physical qualities of the (urban) landscape, involving not only visual experience but also sound, rhythm, kinaesthesia, balance, and so forth. A notation technique that discloses the interrelation between visual qualities and their perception over time is the technique of ‘scoring’. Scores are symbolisations of processes, which extend over time. They can objectively represent non-visual qualities of space, communicating the relation between such processes and their spatial context to others in other places and other moments. These representations of movement expose the qualities of the surroundings that change as one moves through them, thus communicating the experiential aspects of urban landscape.