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David C. Korten

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gender

male

website

http://www.davidkorten.org/

genre

Politics

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Dr. David C. Korten worked for more than thirty-five years in preeminent business, academic, and international development institutions before he turned away from the establishment to work exclusively with public interest citizen-action groups. He is the cofounder and board chair of YES! Magazine, the founder and president of The People-Centered Development Forum, a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, an associate of the International Forum on Globalization, and a member of the Club of Rome. He is co-chair of the New Economy Working Group formed in 2008 to formulate and advance a new economy agenda.

Korten earned his MBA and PhD degrees at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Trained in organizat...more Dr. David C. Korten worked for more than thirty-five years in preeminent business, academic, and international development institutions before he turned away from the establishment to work exclusively with public interest citizen-action groups. He is the cofounder and board chair of YES! Magazine, the founder and president of The People-Centered Development Forum, a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, an associate of the International Forum on Globalization, and a member of the Club of Rome. He is co-chair of the New Economy Working Group formed in 2008 to formulate and advance a new economy agenda.

Korten earned his MBA and PhD degrees at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Trained in organization theory, business strategy, and economics, he devoted his early career to setting up business schools in low-income countries—starting with Ethiopia—in the hope that creating a new class of professional business entrepreneurs who would be the key to ending global poverty. He completed his military service during the Vietnam War as a captain in the U.S. Air Force, with duty at the Special Air Warfare School, Air Force headquarters command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Korten then served for five and a half years as a faculty member of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business, where he taught in Harvard’s middle management, MBA, and doctoral programs and served as Harvard’s adviser to the Central American Management Institute in Nicaragua. He subsequently joined the staff of the Harvard Institute for International Development, where he headed a Ford Foundation–funded project to strengthen the organization and management of national family planning programs.

In the late 1970s, Korten left U.S. academia and moved to Southeast Asia, where he lived for nearly fifteen years, serving first as a Ford Foundation project specialist and later as Asia regional adviser on development management to the U.S. Agency for International Development. His work there won him international recognition for his contributions to the development of strategies for transforming public bureaucracies into responsive support systems dedicated to strengthening the community control and management of land, water, and forestry resources.

Increasingly concerned that the economic models embraced by official aid agencies were increasing poverty and environmental destruction and that these agencies were impervious to change from within, Korten broke with the official aid system. His last five years in Asia were devoted to working with leaders of Asian nongovernmental organizations on identifying the root causes of development failure in the region and building the capacity of civil society organizations to function as strategic catalysts of positive national- and global-level change.

Korten came to realize that the crisis of deepening poverty, inequality, environmental devastation, and social disintegration he observed in Asia was playing out in nearly every country in the world—including the United States and other “developed” countries. Furthermore, he concluded that the United States was actively promoting—both at home and abroad—the very policies that were deepening the crisis. If there were to be a positive human future, the United States must change. He returned to the United States in 1992 to share with his fellow Americans the lessons he had learned abroad.

Korten’s publications are required reading in university courses around the world. He has written numerous books, including Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. He contributes regularly to edited books and professional journals, and to a wide variety of periodical publicatio(less)

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David C. Korten's Books

Average rating: 3.96 · 798 ratings · 131 reviews · 13 distinct works · Similar authors

	When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten, Danny Glover (Foreword) 4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 365 ratings — 5 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community 3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 avg rating — 167 ratings — published 2001 — 5 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth 3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 avg rating — 113 ratings — published 2009 — 9 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism 3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 avg rating — 54 ratings — published 1999 — 8 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Globalizing Civil Society: Reclaiming Our Right to Power 3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1998 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary action and the global agenda 3.0 of 5 stars 3.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1990 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	People Centered Development: Contributions Toward Theory And Planning Frameworks 4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1984 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Casebook for Family Planning Management by David C. Korten, Frances F. Korten 0.0 of 5 stars 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	El Mundo Post Empresarial 0.0 of 5 stars 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2000	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Community Management: Asian experience and perspectives 0.0 of 5 stars 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1986 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars