Abstract
In today’s highly turbulent world, organizational leaders are largely adrift in an uncertain global interconnected economy, where not only cultures but also religions, their belief systems and their values, are in increasing interaction and potential conflict. The aims of this chapter are to (1) present concepts of wisdom and wise leadership that are based on both eastern and western philosophical, religious, and spiritual traditions; (2) discuss the relevance of wise leadership at work for stakeholders, including employees, managers, and local communities as well as the sustainability of the physical environment; and (3) propose implications for the development of effective wise long-term organizational leadership. This chapter aspires to provoke readers to conceive of how organizations can benefit from wise leader/managers, who utilize wisdom for both organizational and societal sustainability in their daily decision-making.
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Notes
- 1.
There have been an increasing number of books and articles addressing aspects of the topic. See Kanov et al. (2004) for an overview of major works on compassion in organizations. Also see Boyatzis and McKee (2005) and Senge et al. (2004) for related research and Daft and Lengel (1998), Quinn (1996), and Kouzes and Posner (2002) for representative applied works that have requisite spiritual underpinnings. Kriger and Seng (2005) and Fry and Kriger (2009) addressed related topics in their examinations of the salience of levels of being leaders as a source of effectiveness. Weick and his colleagues have written related discussions of the implications of mindfulness for organizations (Weick and Putnam 2006; Weick and Sutcliffe 2006).
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Kriger, M. (2013). Wise Leadership in Organizations: Integrating Eastern and Western Paradigms. In: Neal, J. (eds) Handbook of Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5233-1_16
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