Apologies for cross postings…
CROSS CULTURAL VALUES & SPIRITUALITY AS DRIVERS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND MEANINGFUL WORK
Location and Time:
8:00 am to 10:00 am
Friday, August 1, 2014
Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Tubman Room
Please join us for this reflective panel discussion and open dialogue!
Organizers:
Simon Dolan, ESADE University, Barcelona, Spain
Kristine Marin Kawamura, St. Georges University, Grenada, West Indies
Panelists:
Ben Capell, ESADE University, Barcelona, Spain
Carlos Losada Marrodán, ESADE University, Barcelona, Spain
Josep M Lozano Soler, ESADE University, Barcelona, Spain
Caroline Straub, Grenoble École de Management, Grenoble - France
Primary sponsor: Management Spirituality and Religion (MSR) Interest Group
Secondary sponsor: Gender and Diversity in Organizations (GDO)
Please contact Kristine Marin Kawamura at
kristinekawamura@yahoo.com with any questions!
OVERVIEW OF PDW
Our PDW seeks to bring together reflective scholars, practitioners, educators, business leaders, and students who want to explore compelling and meaningful questions around Spirituality, religion, values, and meaning in a panel discussion and open dialogue. Have you ever asked yourself the following questions?
• WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
• What is Spirituality? What are the differences and connections between values, spirituality, and religion? How do they connect to issues of meaning and meaningfulness in life and work?
• Why should business leaders care about creating safer, psychologically-better, and sustainable work environments?
• How does the spiritual empowerment of business leaders hold the key to the future of society and humanity?
• Why do studies show that embedding concepts of religiousness, spirituality and cross culture lead to enhanced quality of life?
• Why do women report greater feelings of spiritual connection and faith than men?
• How can business schools develop spirituality, a sense of inner self and consciousness, in managers and leaders?
• How can we be more in touch with our 'self', when “the system” does a good job of taking us further away from our 'self'?
This PDW is designed for scholars and practitioners who, professionally and/or personally are interested in exploring, dialoguing about, and awakening Spirituality in leadership, scholarship, business schools, and their lives. Spirituality, in our view, is all about awakening the 'consciousness' that is gifted to all humans—consciousness to recognize the 'truth' about ourselves, about the need and role of ‘relationship’ in all facets of life, and about the need to create a better more sustainable world.
During this PDW, a cross cultural panel representing distinct religious, spiritual ideas and practices, and paths to meaning will use storytelling and dialogue to describe a mosaic of experiences and explore the relationships between values, spirituality, religion, and meaningfulness of life and work. We will then break into discussion groups addressing provocative and meaningful questions surrounding spirituality, meaning, religion, relationships, and self.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The impetus for this PDW can be best summarized by the following two quotes:
"The world stands on the threshold of global change. Ecological, political, anthropological, economic and other crises are intensifying. Wars are waged, resources wasted senselessly, and the planet is being polluted. Society is experiencing a crisis of goals and values. National leaders are concerned with short-term internal stability, yet pay insufficient attention to the problems and opportunities of the future of civilization. Human civilization essentially faces this choice: slide into the abyss of global degradation, or realize a new model of development, a model capable of changing human consciousness and giving new meaning to life."
“Biological evolution has been summed up in the phrase of "survival of the fittest," but with overpopulation and overconsumption of resources, the future belongs to "survival of the wisest;…there can be no social or world transformation unless there is your own inner transformation”
Raich & Dolan (2008) and Raich, Eisler and Dolan (2014) argue that spiritual empowerment of business leaders hold the key to the future of society/humanity. Business leaders move economies and impact the lives of most inhabitants on earth; they shape the world. Thus, understanding the underlying values and spiritual consciousness of business leaders is critical for understanding their behavior and aspirations. Spiritual consciousness is awakening, and needs to awake, for individuals, organizations, and governments to create a better, more sustainable world. This consciousness will help us to recognize of the’ truth’ about ourselves and to be aware of the relationships between ourselves and others and the environment, This consciousness helps us to understand and become aware of all things that have an impact on our well-being and our inner peace and happiness. This awareness is empowering because, it is the beginning step for appreciating the need we all have to be happy and to live a meaningful life.
Join us to co-create this session as part of an engaged, conscious, and spiritual global community, dialoguing around questions such as:
• What are the roots of our consciences?
• Are they related to religious values, to societal or family values?
• Are they related to whatever we learn in schools and universities?
• How are values being shaped and transformed over the years, and how does cultural exposure aid in this process?
• Why does this consciousness need to be 'awakened' amongst managers (and managers-to-be)?
• What is the role of business schools in awakening or embedding these values?
• Could spiritually-oriented business schools be successful?
• How can we move from the paradigms that donate management education, business, and business leaders today (leading to exploitation, over-consumerism and over-possession of ’materialistic’ needs) to those that nurture the needs of the ‘soul’?
• Can spirituality change the traditional prevailing systems of society—be it education, economic, or any other social or cultural practice (where all the latter have been created without giving due regard to this very valuable aspect of 'spirituality'?
• How can we move back to our ‘inner truth’ or our ‘true self’, so that we reduce powerlessness, vulnerability to exploitation, and eroded self-esteem?
BACKGROUND OF PANELISTS
• Josep Lozano and Carlos Losada are connected with the Jesuit tradition of ESADE. In the past few years, they have developed methodologies to teach spiritualism to groups of undergraduate students and group of executives. They will share their methodology, content and observations about the efficacy of their methods, and will also set the agenda for future research in instilling spirituality in business education. Both are also co-organizers of the 2015 Spirituality and Creativity in Management World Congress that will be held April 23-25th, 2015, in Barcelona.
• Ben Capell and Caroline Straub are scholars of diversity. They have studied gender diversity from different angles. They will explore issues such as: Are women more spiritual then men? Do women in executive position care more about work-family balance then men? Are members of the gay community (LGBT) or other diverse groups more spiritual? Ben has completed a cross-cultural study of the gay community (LGBT) and will address the issue of spirituality from this angle.
• Simon Dolan and Kristine Marin Kawamura, the co-organizers of the session, are scholars of values and care, respectively. Both are also co-organizers of the 2015 Spirituality and Creativity in Management World Congress that will be held April 23-25th, 2015, in Barcelona.