A Serendipitous Road Map to Educate Cosmopolitan and Sustainable Development-Oriented Managers

Abstract

This chapter offers some reflections promoting cosmopolitanism and sustainable development through systematic reflexivity in research and education. This modest proposal tries to question and break myopic and superficial inertias that perpetuate unsustainability. It provides a view of contemporary contexts, which lead us to defend the need to adopt a humble but ambitious quest for reflexivity through intercultural sensitivity that would favor cosmopolitanism and serendipitous discoveries. This call to expand intellectual and empathic horizons seeks examples of ethical praxis and ideas that could inspire sustainable oriented actions. It is also argued that reflexivity can help to uncover vices and misconceptions that have hampered societies, broken economic systems, and destroyed environments. The call for this pragmatic and contemplative approach is also a plea for a review of the basic meanings of technology, interrogating its senses, forms, and purposes. A final section argues in favor of reflexivity as a strategy to activate agents and deflect passive inertias.