In this marvel of a book, Eggert takes us through a dynamic series of applied historical perspectives on paradigms as they relate to humankind from the 14th to 21st Centuries!
While we never really end the book with a new paradigm, she is quick to point out from the beginning that was never her intention. Instead, this book provides a deep understanding of paradigms from both an applied and historical perspective. We are also walked through, carefully, the reasons why these various paradigms change. We learn how one paradigm is only as good as the awaiting challenge by some enlightened thinker offering a new set of perspectives and assumptions forming a yet a new model to be approached by the organizations of the day.
An applied sense of the contemplative tradition requires a departure from the norm of hierachial business management styles and assumptions. We must step back from our own self and allow for an openness to accompany the greater good as directed to the whole! To allow your organization to be operated under this new paradigm in formation would allow for a community in which blame is not heard of, and a more relaxed atmosphere and openness exists to allow for a breakthrough in direction and control issues that often plague the typical organization, especially one developed by a person of entrepreneurial aspects and talents.
This paradigm conversely may bring an increase in clarity and definition, opposed to what one may immediately deduce when they think of the "contemplative experience". Neither does one need to define this aspect as either religious or secular in tradition. The detail of the four paths of the contemplative experience paradigm outlined by Eggert can lead to God or to a contemplative secular experience based on the uniqueness of each individual's views, strengths, weakness, experiences and assumptions at the human level.
Either way, the business organization may benefit from using this unique version of the world viewpoint. This paradigm actually focuses on the "ordinary time", that is, in the moment, perspective rather than the urgency to "move" "to act" "to fashion" in a certain and predetermined manner in order to achieve a certain predicted outcome.
While it is not possible to identify by any quantitative means the validity of the contemplative paradigm as compared to others, the author does predict with a certain "Je ne sais quoi" what a contemplative style grounded in aspects of contemplative tradition might exert on the forces of an entrepreneurial organization and life in general by gaining an increasing awareness of what "just is".