David Steingard

This article presents theory and practical experiences related to classroom pedagogy focusing on spirituality and wholeness - the spiritually whole-system classroom. In it, spiritual principles help create a learning community founded on the experience of wholeness. The spiritually whole-system classroom allows participants the opportunity of "being connected with one's complete self, others, and the entire universe" in order to serve a meaningful, broader purpose. This type of transformation engages heads, hearts, spirits, and hands in the pursuit of a more enlightening experience of human organizing. The article concludes with a critically reflective discussion of spiritual applications to management education and practice.

This paper introduces a four-stage ethical learning model that we posit will augment the evaluation of the effectiveness of business ethics education. Using the Ignatian (Jesuit, Catholic) methodologies of self-reflection and discernment, comments by 195 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in an American university regarding the relationship between ethical attitudes and business conduct are examined before and after completing a business ethics course. Results suggest that ethics education can 1) raise students’ ethical awareness, and 2) shift ethical attitudes in either positive or negative directions, thus supporting the existence of levels of ethical understanding that our learning model proposes. Methodological challenges for current and future evaluation of the effectiveness of ethics education, including enhancement of the generalizability of findings across international borders, are considered. Several implications for linking business ethics education with the conduct and climate of business practice are also discussed.

Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab, discusses his vision for a “new economy” where business is a “force for good.” In this interview, Coen Gilbert provides an overview of how B Lab’s various initiatives—Certified B Corporations, the B Impact Assessment, B Analytics, GIIRS, and Benefit Corporations—function interdependently to accelerate a culture shift to redefine success in business. Coen Gilbert then focuses on the role of benefit corporations in this larger movement. The benefit corporation is a new legal form of business that requires a corporate purpose dedicated to “general public benefit” and the delivery of demonstrable “material positive impact on society and the environment.” Novel fiduciary and reporting requirements differentiate the benefit corporation from the traditional corporation founded on shareholder primacy. Coen Gilbert explains how the benefit corporation is better suited to create long-term shareholder value as well as sustainable value for society, the environment, and other stakeholders. He addresses critiques of and challenges to the benefit corporation as an agent of change for business.

This paper offers a new model of corporate purpose and applies it to the emerging legal form of the benefit corporation. First, corporate purpose is applied to the two currently dominant models of shareholder and stakeholder focus. Both are found inadequate to promote positive social and environmental impact because they remain anchored in a profit-seeking corporate purpose. Second, we offer an alterna­tive model of Integrative Corporate Purpose. Third, we apply ICP to benefit corporations as an ethically superior model for promoting the common good. The benefit corporation offers four advancements: positive duties to stakeholders; legal protections for managers and directors to manage for the common good; a requirement to have a purpose geared toward public benefit; and required report­ing of benefits to stakeholders and the environment. The implications of benefit corporations are discussed within the larger arena of corporate social responsibility.

This paper offers three contributions to the burgeoning movements of AI for Social Good (AI4SG) and AI and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First, we introduce the SDG-Intense Evaluation framework (SDGIE) that aims to situate variegated automated/AI models in a larger ecosystem of computational approaches to advance the SDGs. To foster knowledge collaboration for solving complex social and environmental problems encompassed by the SDGs, the SDGIE framework details a benchmark structure of data-algorithm-output to effectively standardize AI approaches to the SDGs. Second, as a specific instantiation of the SDGIE framework, the SDG Impact Intensity Model (SDGIIM) is theoretically and operationally established. SDGIIM embeds expert decision-making and SDG keyword banks in textual data processing to determine overall SDG “impact intensity.” Ideally, SDGIIM can be applied to textual data sets from any sector or discipline: academia, business, government, non-profit, civil society, etc. Third, the SDGIIM instantiation is applied to the specific domain of academic journal rating systems as a case study. Traditionally, academic journals have been evaluated on loosely conceived and empirically shaky notions of ‘quality.’ Aligned with the trend of AI4SG and broader calls to action, ‘impact’ is rapidly becoming the primary normative consideration for assessing academic journals. We hypothesize and demonstrate that SDGIIM is capable of producing evaluations aligned with experts’ expectations of SDG impact intensity; the consistent analysis and rating of textual data sets that embody the SDGs with varying degrees of meaning and, ultimately, promote positive impact on the actual material conditions of the world.

Environmental management is at a turning point in its evolution as a discipline. Daunting social, ecological and spiritual problems of global magnitude implore EM to be inspiring and efficacious in theory and practice. Ironically, the present EM movement, in its ontologically dualistic configuration—measuring and manipulating the environment as an abstract, objectified economic resource for human gain—is unknowingly contributing to the very ecological degradation it wishes to ameliorate. In order for EM to become a truly ‘transformative epistemology’,1 its praxis must ontologically transcend the narrow foundations of staunch empiricism, logical positivism and rationalism that now firmly gird it. As a possible alternative to EM’s ‘monological flatland’,2 we introduce a holistic praxiological system grounded in the ancient Indian vedanta wisdom tradition. Natural law-based environmental management portends a radical metamorphosis of EM into a discipline that makes a meaningful impact on today’s precarious global condition.

This paper introduces a four-stage ethical learning model that we posit will augment the evaluation of the effectiveness of business ethics education. Using the Ignatian (Jesuit, Catholic) methodologies of self-reflection and discernment, comments by 195 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in an American university regarding the relationship between ethical attitudes and business conduct are examined before and after completing a business ethics course. Results suggest that ethics education can 1) raise students’ ethical awareness, and 2) shift ethical attitudes in either positive or negative directions, thus supporting the existence of levels of ethical understanding that our learning model proposes. Methodological challenges for current and future evaluation of the effectiveness of ethics education, including enhancement of the generalizability of findings across international borders, are considered. Several implications for linking business ethics education with the conduct and climate of business practice are also discussed.

This chapter details how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used—and is very much needed—to reinvent academic research evaluation in terms of quality and impact. First, we review current literature on academic research assessment examining two overarching questions: What normative standards are employed to determine the quality of academic research? What explicit methodological rationales, unstated assumptions, and academic cultural dynamics determine the definition of quality? Second, we offer a literature review and alternative model for assessing the quality of academic research in terms of impact—that is, does academic research make a positive difference in the material conditions of humanity and sustain the natural environment, and how does academic research praxis transform “words into worlds”? Third, we examine how impact is being adopted by the publishing industry in a paradigm shift from limited notions of “quality” to the broader consequences of societal and sustainable “impact.” We critique how the Journal Impact Factor, as a gold standard of academic publication value, has eclipsed other possibilities for assessing real-world impacts of academic outputs: quantification without qualification. Fourth, we present a case study applying an AI rating system to ascertain degrees of impact for academic journals—SDG Impact Intensity. The AI system utilizes the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) criteria as normative standards to rate the impact of academic journals. We discuss the implications of such a system and SDG-focused research on business schools and scholarly outputs for academia. We critically consider the challenges of employing our algorithmic technique as a digital transformation technology for responsible management education, and ultimately to serve the Common Good and environmental sustainability.

Traditional capitalism subscribes to the "separation thesis" between business' core economic functions and wider concerns of social justice, environmental sustainability, and spiritual transformation. Alternatively, Socially Responsible Business transcends this dichotomy by incorporating uneconomic values into "one bottom-line" where "profits"--simultaneously embody and promote "principles." ;"Values integration" is a theoretical framework elucidating the dynamics and transformative possibilities of SRB's synthesis of "profits" and "principles," or "economic logic" and "spiritual logic," respectively. Values integration utilizes the nondualistic yin-yang theory of opposites and creative tension espoused in Chinese philosophical Taoism. The mechanistic, performative, masculine, and desacrilized values of "economic logic" , and the organic, celebratory, feminine, and sacred values of "spiritual logic" , combine to form an ideal relational field of unity and harmony, or Tao. Presently, the ideal balance and integration, or Tao, of global social and environmental interconnections is "Koyaanisqatsi"--Hopi expression for "life out of balance, life out of control." SRB is a systemic endeavor to restore a sustainable and sublime balance to planetary economic, social, and environmental systems. ;This study explores the inner workings of values integration at a socially responsible global retailer of skin and hair care preparations and cosmetics, Kosmotics, Inc. Grounded "participator" research and consulting were conducted by the researcher over a 2 year period. Two principal sets of findings result. ;First, experiential immersion in researching SRB provokes the metamorphosis of research methodology from detached observation--"making a judgement" to impassioned participation--"making a difference" in the world. A "responsible research" methodology offers a significant epistemological advancement and subsequent renaissance of research as a vital, generative act of global healing and transformation. ;Second, implications inspire an exploration of spirituality in organization studies even beyond SRB's values integration. "Twelve provocative propositions for spiritual relationality in organization studies" illuminate nondual organizational states of consciousness and life-world realities: sustainable stewardship; unity-in-diversity; enlightened contribution; love; catalytic androgyny; universal responsibility; collaborative interconnection; sacred craftspeople; right livelihood; living organizing; global healing and transformation; learning consciousness