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In the past six months Jerry has been practicing a form of meditation called Centering Prayer. His original decision to attend a workshop on meditation was to deal with his increased sense of work overload, stress and burnout associated with the demands of his position as CEO of Healthcare. However, he learned that meditation can also be prayer, and he has found his practice very helpful. Although during Centering Prayer he is often aware of the distractions of his busy “business mind,” nonetheless he has noticed that during the day he is able to focus more effectively at work, is less irritable, and more willing to listen to others as a result of incorporating contemplative practice as part of each day. Even his wife and children have remarked he “seems more mellow these days.”

This paper intends to explore the relationship between participants' eye fixations (a measure of attention) and durations (a measure of concentration) on areas of interest within a range of online articles and their levels of information discernment (a sub-process of information literacy characterising how participants make judgements about information).

Eye-tracking equipment was used as a proxy measure for reading behaviour by recording eye-fixations, dwell times and regressions in males aged 18–24 (n = 48). Participants' level of information discernment was determined using a quantitative questionnaire.

Data indicates a relationship between participants' level of information discernment and their viewing behaviours within the articles' area of interest. Those who score highly on an information discernment questionnaire tended to interrogate the online article in a structured and linear way. Those with high-level information discernment are more likely to pay attention to an article's textual and graphical information than those exhibiting low-level information discernment. Conversely, participants with low-level information discernment indicated a lack of curiosity by not interrogating the entire article. They were unsystematic in their saccadic movements spending significantly longer viewing irrelevant areas.

The most profound consequence is that those with low-level information discernment, through a lack of curiosity in particular, could base their health, workplace, political or everyday decisions on sub-optimal engagement with and comprehension of information or misinformation (such as fake news).

Ground-breaking analysis of the relationship between a persons' self-reported level of information literacy (information discernment specifically) and objective measures of reading behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to operationalize the concept of discernment and to present an instrument to measure it.

The approach takes the form of a mixed‐method exploratory design that relied on principal component analyses and internal consistency performed on the resultant data set from a pool of items developed from the literature, as well as from a panel of experts. The investigation employed in‐depth interviews conducted with eight purposively selected leaders about their decision‐making processes and augmented the findings with data from 240 leaders, generated via an online survey.

The result is a three‐factor self‐rating instrument that measures courage, intuition, and faith, with Cronbach alpha values of 0.85, 0.89, and 0.85, respectively. These three factors appear to operationalize the concept of discernment.

While the conceptual definition of the construct has merit, its completeness is subject to debate. If the conceptualization were incomplete, the results of the study would provide only a marginal understanding of the phenomenon. Moreover, an operational definition based on an incomplete conceptualization will fail to generate theory‐oriented propositions. Additional research is needed to establish population norms.

The study contributes to the ongoing task of appropriating spirituality in organizational life, demonstrates that discernment has value in contemporary leadership and organizational praxis, and provides an instrument for self‐evaluation by leaders as to how well each leader engages in discernment. The instrument offers a leadership development tool to help identify high or low discernment.

The study is original and makes the foundational contribution for a beginning stream of research.

The purpose of this paper is to help leaders to reflect on how to make difficult decisions by developing practical wisdom based on Indian traditions. In complex scenarios, when leaders are is crisis, they often tend to rush into decisions without proper reflection, rely too heavily on data and analytics, and demonstrate an inability to decide based on subtle, intangible and often very important elements like emotion, intuition and spiritual discernment. In this paper, the author discusses what it means to make wise decisions based on the Hindu concept of discrimination (viveka) – that is, the ability to perceive and make fine distinctions and also to notice and value quality which is very important part of spiritual discernment.

This paper uses four decision-making scenarios from an Indian epic Mahabharata to cast light on dilemmas that seem to trip up so many twenty-first century leaders. The author draws lessons from the four stories and highlight key challenges in decision making – developing spiritual discernment to support logic based and emotion-laden decision making.

Allowing crisis to drive decisions, failing to recognize and account for the biases and attachments, and not developing good role clarity keep leaders from making the decisions they need to, from a place of ethical clarity. The subtle but essential spirit of ethical decision making is discernment and quality of discernment increases when leaders develop “viveka” or discrimination capability and use it regularly.

It is important to remember that developing skills in using viveka in discernment suggested in this paper requires “unlearning” some of the beliefs and practices that served leaders in the past. This framework might be thought provoking and rich conceptually but only action and practice using this framework with awareness makes managers wise leaders.

This paper proposes a framework for making difficult decisions and has implications for developing managers and leaders who can make decisions with discernment. Especially in these days of complexity and turbulence, we need to develop people to resolve dilemmas wisely and effectively. The framework for developing discernment by using intuition, instinct and emotions along with data effectively can help leader using this framework make wise decisions. The stories of leadership success and failure in the Mahabharata serve to remind us that reactive or unreflective decision making are not the answer to rapid change and uncertainty. Yet, leaders need to be able to make sound decisions rapidly in a complex and changeable context by paying attention to both explicit and tacit factors. Stories open up other paths to cultivating this ability of paying attention to viveka that is at the root of spiritual discernment. With clear engagement with the role of leader; the will to detach from desired outcomes; and a stance of courage, humility and ethical clarity, we have the tools we need to manage accelerating complexity, whatever its source.

Decision-making process is examined holistically – by bringing in recent developments in brain research along with stories and lessons from an ancient epic from India to recognize that making decisions is complex and important element that distinguishes wise leaders from smart leaders. This paper could help smart leaders gain ethical clarity by developing discernment integrating fine qualities of discrimination.

The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent a person’s psychophysiological well-being is affected by misinformation and whether their level of information discernment has any positive or negative effect on the outcome.

Participants (n = 48) were randomly and blindly allocated to one of two groups: control group participants were told a person they were working with was a student; experimental group participants were additionally led to believe that this other participant had extreme religious views. This was both stigmatising and misinforming, as this other person was an actor. Participants completed a pre-screening booklet and a series of tasks. Participants’ cardiovascular responses were measured during the procedure.

Participants with high levels of information discernment, i.e. those who are curious, use multiple sources to verify information, are sceptical about search engine information, are cognisant of the importance of authority and are aware that knowledge changes and is contradictory at times exhibited an adaptive stress response, i.e. healthy psychophysiological outcomes and responded with positive emotions before and after a stressful task.

The findings indicate the potential harmful effects of misinformation and discuss how information literacy or Metaliteracy interventions may address this issue.

The first study to combine the hitherto unrelated theoretical areas of information discernment (a sub-set of information literacy), affective states (positive affect negative affect survey) and stress (challenge and threat cardiovascular measures).

The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of “discernment”.

The paper defines and presents discernment in a manner that sheds light on the construct and sets the stage for future research.

Discernment, is a significantly more involving kind of approach to decision making for the leader. It does not rely on precedents, best practices, or benchmarking. It is to understand the self and organization in a holistic way, inviting constant self‐evaluation and adjustments in order to make good judgments that serve the greater whole.

Additional research is needed to empirically validate the concept through systematic investigations and devise a means to measure it.

The paper assists leaders in understanding the “what” and “why” of discernment and provides an opportunity for self‐evaluation by leaders as to how well each leader engages in discernment.

The paper is original and makes the foundational contribution for a beginning stream of research.

Based on the authors’ study, the purpose of this paper is to establish a foundation for assessing and deciding the most feasible corruption prevention activities with significant impact in reducing corruption in the Indonesian public sector. To accomplish this objective, this paper applies multiple theoretical perspectives simultaneously to better understand the behavioral aspects of corruption prevention strategy in Indonesia.

This paper is part of the authors’ study to assess the corruption problem in the Indonesian public sector in the past decade primarily through examination of major corruption cases to highlight various behavioral issues that became the root causes of rampaging corruption in the country. This paper also discusses how such issues undermine the effectiveness of the existing corruption prevention strategy as well as how to properly address them.

The authors establish that there are numerous overlooked behavioral issues that have rendered existing corruption prevention measures in the Indonesian public sector ineffective in hampering the regeneration of corruption. Gaining sufficient understanding on how public officials’ view on corruption is shaped by their culture and society is crucial in ascertaining what needs to be done to prevent corruption from reoccurring in the future. This study demonstrates that transformative learning needs to be systematically carried out to re-engineer organizational mindset to make it intolerant to corruption which includes unlearning the embedded knowledge of corruption. To support the execution of organizational unlearning discernment must be exercised to enable anti-corruption messages to be sent to the target groups. Nevertheless, due to various inherent behavioral issues within the Indonesian public institutions stimulating anti-corruption discernment is in itself a profound challenge. To promote anti-corruption discernment in the Indonesian public sector, this study proposes the Shame-oriented Anti-corruption Discernment Stimulation (SADS) which focuses on the “management of shame” in stimulating anti-corruption discernment within public institutions in Indonesia.

This study is self-funded and is relying primarily on documentary analysis in highlighting the behavioral issues that determine the success and failure of corruption prevention strategy in Indonesia. Future studies may benefit from interviews with experts in Indonesian culture as well as indigenous people who can offer a broader view on how self-conscious emotions such as shame and guilt are actually experienced in different regions in Indonesia.

This paper contributes to the development of corruption prevention strategy by proposing a framework for systematically stimulating anti-corruption discernment within organizations that are part of collectivistic societies.

This paper highlights the importance of behavior-oriented approaches in mitigating corruption in the Indonesian public sector.

This paper aims to examine the meaning, use and practical application to management education and leadership development of the terms wisdom, practical wisdom, prudence, discretion and discernment as used in the Rule of Benedict.

After a detailed examination of the historical texts, the author draws on his personal experience of facilitating workshops with a number of senior executives. He applies this learning to current trends and issues in contemporary organisations in particular as they apply to the spiritual qualities of leadership.

The paper comes to a number of conclusions: spiritual discernment is an integral and indispensable part of practical wisdom; the acquisition, development of practical wisdom cannot be divorced from the individual's core spiritual and religious beliefs and practice; practical wisdom is not an end in itself but a means to discerning how to live a morally good life in relationship to other individuals and stakeholders.

Any workplace, irrespective of size and activity, must be a community of practice where practical wisdom can develop and flourish. In the frenetic workplace the exercise of practical wisdom needs protected time and contemplative leisure.

The ancient texts of the Rule of Benedict are translated into modern times; consequences for management practice and education are drawn.