California Institute of Integral Studies

Faculty Member, Transformative Inquiry

Professor

About

Alfonso Montuori is Professor in the Transformative Inquiry Department at California Institute of Integral Studies. A graduate of the University of London, he is the author of several books and numerous articles on creativity and improvisation, complexity, social change, management, and education. Alfonso also consults with organizations and individuals on creativity, innovation and leadership development.

Alfonso  was born in Holland, and lived in Lebanon, Greece, and England before coming to the United States in 1983. His father was Italian and his mother Dutch, and Alfonso spoke several languages from an early age. He picked up English, his 4th language, at age 12 when his family moved to London.  In London Alfonso worked as an interpreter for Scotland Yard and as a professional musician on saxophone and flute, making numerous recordings with his own band and as a session-man, and gigging extensively throughout England for several years. Today, Alfonso continues his passion for music through his collaboration with his wife, the jazz singer Kitty Margolis, playing the saxophone and as producer of her award-winning recordings. He is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (The Grammys).

Alfonso has taught at the College of Notre Dame, the Saybrook Institute, and South-Central University in Changsha, Hunan Province, in the People's Republic of China, where he developed and taught the first course in management and organization theory.

In 2003-2004 he was Wiepking Distinguished Professor in the Fine Arts department at Miami University in Oxford Ohio.

Alfonso's books include Evolutionary Competence (Gieben, 1989); From Power to Partnership (co-authored with Isabella Conti, Harper San Francisco, 1993);  Creators on Creating (co-edited with Barron & Barron, Putnam, 1997); and Social Creativity, vols. 1-2 (co-edited with Ronald E. Purser, Hampton Press, 1999). In 2006 Alfonso became a San Francisco Library Laureate.

Alfonso has written articles in publications such as Academy of Management Review, Futures, Human Relations, Journal of Management Education, Pluriverso, and Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Alfonso has contributed major entries to the International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, The Encyclopedia of Creativity, The Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, the Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance, The Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, and the Handbook of Humanistic Psychology.

His translations include  Constraints and Possibilities (Gordon & Breach, 1996) by Mauro Ceruti; Solidarity or Barbarism: A Europe of Diversity against Ethnic Cleansing (Peter Lang, 1997); and The Narrative Universe (Hampton Press, 2002), both by Gianluca Bocchi and Mauro Ceruti.

Alfonso has consulted on executive and management development as well as creativity and innovation with numerous international corporations, including NetApp, Procter & Gamble, Training Vision (Singapore), Pacific Bell, Stentor Group (Canada), Kaiser Permanente, Interstate Insurance, Omnitel-Olivetti (Italy), ENEL (Italy), U.S. Department of Labor, University of Missouri Kansas City, Nestle Beverage, Pilkington Barnes Hinde, 3Com, Progressive Insurance, and others.

Alfonso started, and is General Editor of, Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences at Hampton Press, which has published important works by Gregory Bateson, Gianluca Bocchi & Mauro Ceruti, Edgar Morin, Ervin Laszlo, and other leading thinkers; he is Associate Editor of World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution; and is on the editorial board of numerous academic journals. Alfonso is also a member of the  General Evolution Research Group, and on the scientific board of the Edgar Morin Center for Complexity at Ricardo Palma University in Lima, Peru.

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