Death or Resurrection? Christian Church Leader Responses to External Change

Christian churches in many Western countries have been confronted with a general decline in church membership and participation due to significant, society-wide shifts. This study seeks to better understand how church leaders at the local level work through the challenges posed by these external developments. Using a combination of semi-structured interviews and panel sessions conducted in The Netherlands, our analysis reveals a wide variety of change responses by local church leaders, even within church traditions. Based on these differences, we develop a process model of how and why local church leaders will differently engage with external change, thus opening up the debate around the contingencies and activities that may support local churches and their leaders in reversing local church decline. Our research also highlights the importance of local level processes and dynamics in understanding how Christian churches interact with their external contexts.

Workplace Well-being: An Experimental Investigation into Benefits of Consciousness-based Architecture

Consciousness is primary and unbounded and can be accessed through multiple modalities, including the qualities of the workplace environment. This research explored the proposition that a consciousness-based architecture could improve workplace well-being. It experimentally investigated the potential benefits of Maharishi Vastu Architecture® (MVA) in a business setting. MVA buildings deal with wholeness and the establishment of the parts in relation to the whole. They have a strict East-West directional orientation, and strict proportion and placement of its center and rooms, among other features. A technical consulting company relocated their offices from a conventional building into one designed according to the principles of MVA. All the available employees of the company were tested one month before and one month after the move to the MVA building using a Workplace Well-being Index specifically created for this research. Data analysis comparing the pre and post measurements showed a 8% improvement (p<0.05) in subjective well-being upon relocating to the MVA building. Organizations can thus enhance workforce well-being through holistic workplaces designed for development of consciousness.

(How) Does Religiousness Impact on Job Satisfaction? Results for Germany

Although research has established a positive link between spirituality or religiousness and job satisfaction, this influence’s pathways remain a ‘black box’. Whether it is an effect of a trait- relationship or of a need-satisfaction-relationship remains an open question. Additionally, data and results for West European countries are largely missing. Following King and Williamson (2005), and with a large-scale dataset for Germany (N = 2,551), we empirically assess the link between religiousness and job satisfaction, considering individual employees’ desire to express religiousness and actual expression at work in a serial mediation model, scrutinizing also the influences of discrimination experiences and perceived employers’ stances on religiousness at work. Results strongly support the needs-satisfaction perspective, implying high relevance of workplace spirituality for human resource management (HRM) but also of the research field of management, spirituality and religion in general. Contrary to our expectations, experiences of religious-based discrimination and the perception of a negative employer stance influence the desire to express religiousness at work and de facto expressions positively.

Sin and Missing the Mark in Management: A Lukan Perspective

This paper draws on biblical writings to contribute to our understanding of sin, a catchphrase commonly used in everyday discourse and the scholarly literature with little reference to its underlying meaning. A biblical understanding of “sin” draws attention to whether behaviors are consistent with religious teachings and/or with the will of God. This study develops a Lukan understanding of sin and management—grounded in the socio-economic context in which the biblical text was written—that calls for the development of management theory and practices that liberate relationships (rather than promote patron-client relationships), de-marginalize the poor and oppressed (rather than widen gaps between rich and poor), promote positive deviance (rather than stigmatize diversity), provide fresh ways of thinking (rather than perpetuate the status quo), and facilitate connection to the spiritual (rather than reject spirituality). The conclusion describes practical examples and implications associated with the Lukan approach.

Prospective Theorizing: Researching for Social Impact

Prospection—defined here as the mental representation and evaluation of possible futures—offers scholars a powerful new approach to researching with social impact. In this paper, we begin by reviewing the strengths and limitations of the kind of theory building long favored by the Academy. We do so to understand why management scholarship is perceived as falling short in terms of its relevance and social impact. We invite management scholars to re-examine what determines a theory’s assessed value in the face of social and global challenges distinguished by emergent complexity (Funtowicz & Ravetz 1994; Scharmer & Käufer, 2010). The advantages of prospective theorizing are presented in two variants: projective and envisioned. The first embraces prospection within the current bounds and editorial practices of the Academy. When viewed through a quantum lens, the second proposes a radically new approach to theory building. It contends that quantum science is giving powerful impetus and renewed legitimacy to the idea that prospective theorizing calls forth a reality rather than objectively studying a world “out there”. Such theorizing is not only about advancing knowledge about what exists. In a very real sense, it has agency to create the future it studies. We conclude with an inquiry into what it means for management research aimed at tackling wicked problems such as climate change and social justice.

Higher Consciousness Management: Transcendence for Spontaneous Right Action

Business organizations, managers, and all of us need to adapt to a rapidly evolving socio-technical environment and to the climate change and other environmental crises we are all facing. Managers, and all of us, need to engage with the opportunities and threats posed by exponential development of technologies of production, distribution, and consumption and with innovative, and sometimes, risky approaches to dealing with climate change and other aspects of global unsustainability. Managers, and all of us, would do well to unlearn self-limiting beliefs and utilize the highest potential of themselves and their teams to generate visionary designs that will guide pro-social and environmental behaviors toward a flourishing world. We call Higher Consciousness Management (HCM) a way of being and operating that enables managers and others to tap into the source of unbounded potential within themselves. In essence, managers could benefit from transcending surface-level reality and developing problem-solving capabilities with adaptability, creativity, empathy, and vision. The V-theory of transcendence models a wide range of contemplation and meditation techniques to transcend surface reality and connect with pure consciousness, which is the unified field of all the laws of nature. This paper presents three key principles for HCM, and some ways of developing those capabilities in organizations. We model HCM using two case studies, and outline a vision of what HCM might portend for the future.

Twelve Principles to Guide a Long-Overdue Paradigm Shift

If human behaviors are associated with climate change, it relates to how we consume, entertain, travel, do business, relate to “natural resources”, to ourselves and to each other. The authors posit that human behaviors are but the visible tip of the iceberg, sustained underwater by a voluminous mass comprised of our values, beliefs, assumptions, the anchors of our identity and shared paradigms. They trace back the history of a shared paradigm that has become dysfunctional and introduce the Sustainability Mindset Principles - a scaffolding to address the complexity of the paradigm. This paper describes how the dysfunctional paradigm can be brought back into balance by developing neglected aspects of a Western-Northern worldview that has been shaping our behaviors for centuries. By naming these aspects, the authors propose a language to incite the readers’ imagination of what is possible. Naming creates reality.

A Window of Our Own: Towards a Quantum Research Ontology

This article introduces the idea of quantum research as a way of approaching inquiry in spiritual/intuitive domains. This form of research combines scholarly and analytical knowledge with non-rational, non-analytical experiencing variously called direct/intuitive experiences (Tsao and Laszlo, 2019) or holistic consciousness (Goethe, in Bortoft, 1996). The article is written differently (Vachhani, 2019), and combines quantum theorizing with findings from an empirical postmodern text deconstruction study. The theorizing and empirical findings illuminate the beliefs, values, and norms of the Newtonian paradigm that continue to marginalize a quantum ontological perspective. Through a bricolage (Rogers, 2012) of interdisciplinary literature combined with findings from the postmodern (Beiser, 2011) deconstruction/imaginal study, the incommensurability between the Newtonian paradigm and quantum ontology is exposed. The bricolage illuminates the challenges and opportunities for legitimizing a quantum view of research. The article concludes with recommendations for future quantum research; for building a new window of our own.