Title: Sustainability development: part 2 - exploring the dimensions of sustainability development

Authors: Maurice Yolles

Addresses: Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University, England

Abstract: This is the second part of the paper on sustainability development. Part 1 developed theory that explains how complex adaptive human activity systems can be seen as autonomous and self-organising third order cybernetic systems. In this part 2 of the paper a review of the concepts related to sustainability is undertaken and discussed. The paper falls into three parts. The first part relates to the early concepts of the sustainability due to three pillars or disciplinary dimensions of the human activity. The second elaborates on this through the consideration of additional dimensions, which are then referred to as systems. The third extends this argument and considers the rational for these dimensions, in due course reducing them to as five relevant interactive systems. These together compose an interactive supersystem. Sustainability development refers to this supersystem, not to the individual systems. In part 3 of the paper, these systems are considered to be complex human adaptive systems and each is explored in more detail.

Keywords: sustainability development; complex adaptive systems; cultural agency theory.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMABS.2018.093310

International Journal of Markets and Business Systems, 2018 Vol.3 No.3, pp.257 - 275

Received: 14 Feb 2018
Accepted: 23 Mar 2018
Published online: 24 Jul 2018 *

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