Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 65 - May 2020): Faith, Spirituality and Business

This book examines the principles and procedures implemented by Moses for developing leaders. Using Exodus 18 as the basis, the author explores how leadership skills are best developed in small group settings. The author then delves into contemporary leadership principles, such as authentic leadership, and how organizations can develop leaders at every level of the organization. Issues such as accountability, ethics, and trust will be discussed at length, with an examination of the expected outcomes of training leaders at all levels. This book will be a valuable addition to the leadership literature in showing how biblical leadership principles can be used in contemporary organizations.

This book focuses on how employees should work and follow in contemporary organizations. It begins with the call from Col 3:22-24 for employees to treat work as worship to God and to conduct their work to the best of their ability (Prov 22:29). It then explains how employees should help each other but not to the point of self-defeat (Galatians 6). Employees are then cautioned for the need to be true followers but to know the extent to which being a follower might call them to be committed to both the organization and the leader/manager. This is the concept of Akoloutheo. The rewards of being diligent and faithful employees are conveyed through an examination of the Parable of the Talents. The book concludes with an admonishment to everyone to prepare versus plan for one's personal life. Managers plan for projects but should prepare for what God asks each of us to do and then to accept the opportunities that God presents to us. 

This edited book frames a new ethos of management that cares for society, future generations and nature whilst also serving the interests of business and the wider community. Employing the practical wisdom of faith traditions, the chapters develop the use of spirituality as a resource for creating business models that take pressing social problems - such as quality of life at work, over-consumption, environmental degradation and climate change - into account. Spanning entrepreneurship, leadership, management education and business models, the chapters in this book aim to develop a spiritually-based caring model of management to face the challenges and reality of the 21st century.

Though the majority of Americans claim faith in God and adults spend the majority of their time working, these two important dimensions of life are rarely effectively integrated. It is important for people of every faith tradition to consider how, when and if their faith and work are to be integrated. This is especially true as research shows that the integration of faith and spirituality in the workplace results in numerous benefits for individuals, organizations and society - if done respectfully. This book presents key research insights concerning integration influences and strategies for Christians who seek to integrate their faith and their work. Specifically, it discusses how individual, occupational and organizational factors influence faith and work integration, and suggests diverse ways to integrate the Christian faith at work. The Faith and Work Integration Spheres of Influence Model is presented as a tool to guide individuals in better understanding how to develop their own personal plan for faith and work integration within the context of limiting or enabling occupational and organizational factors. It also suggests areas for further research on this topic. Readers will learn how Christian faith and work integration can be maximized based on individual attributes, occupational characteristics, and organizational factors.           

This edited collection uses a biblical lens to explore how to lead effectively and grow in a crisis situation. The chapters examine topics such as communicating through crisis, developing organizations and leaders through crisis, personal crisis and leadership development, and ethics and morality in crisis. Case studies include David's response to Goliath's challenge, Joseph's leadership and management of Egypt, and the team leadership and resilience of Esther and Mordecai in navigating a possible Jewish genocide.This book makes a unique contribution to the crisis leadership literature by examining the topic from a Christian perspective and will foster future research into the role of spirituality in organizational crisis.

This open access book brings together works by specialists from different disciplines and continents to reflect on the nexus between leadership, spirituality and discernment, particularly with regard to a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). The book spells out, first of all, what our VUCA world entails, and how it affects businesses, organizations, and societies as a whole. Secondly, the book develops new perspectives on the processes of leadership, spirituality, and discernment, particularly in this VUCA context. These perspectives are interdisciplinary in nature, and are informed by e.g. management studies, leadership theory, philosophy, and theology.

This book offers a pragmatic approach to the benefits of spirituality and sustainability for both individual and organizational success. It introduces sustainability and workplace spirituality as contemporary solutions to the challenging organizational environment. The first few chapters introduce the fundamentals of spirituality, workplace spirituality, and sustainability. The author then demonstrates how the three qualities are beneficial in achieving personal and business success. Through the combination of synthesized research summaries and case studies of individuals and organizations, this book offers readers a fresh perspective on the importance of spirituality and sustainability to organizational performance.

With spirituality being brought to the fore of management and organisation studies, this timely collection takes a closer look at the relationship between religion and work in India. Bringing together experts from various backgrounds, this book provides a comprehensive review of the topic, addressing its key underpinnings and complexities. Spirituality in Management is divided into four sections, covering the evolution of workplace spirituality, its causes, characteristics and outcomes, and culminating in a critical analysis. A thought-provoking read for scholars, students and policy-makers, this book provides an Indian perspective on managing spirituality at work, and offers insights into successful organisational practice.

The book goes beyond theory to offer tools and suggestions for developing emerging leaders. Inspired by the pioneering work of leadership scholar Andre Delbecq, this book points towards an expanded model of leadership that incorporates an active inner life, and posits that such fully human models of leadership will be essential to meet the profound challenges of the 21st Century. Without presuming to provide definitive answers, the text explores central questions such as: What is the added value of spiritual maturity to leadership? Would the integration of mature spirituality with well-developed intellectual and emotional capacities produce more beneficial leadership outcomes for organizations and individuals? What would a spiritually and developmentally mature emerging leader look like in 10 to 20 years? How do we prepare emerging leaders for the challenges they may face; and how do we model spiritually and developmentally mature leadership in ways that resonate with them? Professor Andre Delbecq (1936-2016) of the University of Santa Clara created the heuristic of "spiritually and developmentally mature leaders" to encapsulate his observation that outstanding leaders often seemed to draw strength and wisdom from sources that are not typically studied or taught in leadership courses. Thirty scholars and practitioners accepted Delbecq's heuristic as the starting point to explore spiritual components of leadership that do not easily lend themselves to quantification or clear causal links. The analysis of their disciplined engagement with the heuristic forms the foundation of an exploratory, fully human understanding of leadership. This analysis is supported by literature reviews, including an overview of Andre Delbecq's relevant work. Ultimately, the authors call for further collaboration across disciplines and between research and practice to build on the conceptual constructs offered here, and, especially, to create pedagogies for the training of spiritually and developmentally mature leaders

This book contributes to the discussion on wisdom in management, leadership and strategy by developing a unique theoretical approach. Integrating rational-analytical, intuitive and philosophical dimensions of wise decision-making, it advocates a broadly Platonic-Socratic view on wisdom. Applying a developed framework of wisdom dynamics, it analyses a number of decision-making case studies in order to discuss the potential of and obstacles to the use of wisdom in broader organizational trends, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the downfall of Nokia.