Search results

This chapter invites leaders to tread the Noble Eightfold Path as a constructive and rewarding practice. It discusses two major instructional steps, each including a series of personal reflections and suggested exercises.

Step 1 explains the Four Noble Truths, which confronts us with the many ways we suffer through our challenges. Leader developers are encouraged to clarify the first Three Noble Truths through a process of contemplating, reflecting, meditating and sharing. Step 2 explains the fourth Noble Truth, also known as the Noble Eightfold Path, which offers a pathway to end our suffering. The Eightfold Path consists of eight contemplations we should practise at all times: (1) right view, (2) right intention, (3) right speech, (4) right action, (5) right livelihood, (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness and (8) right concentration. Participants may obtain best insight into step 2 by focussing on the issues they identified in step 1.

Using the Noble Eightfold Path in the development of leaders illustrates the importance of engaging in leadership practices that elevate wellbeing of the self and others, by practising a set of interrelated behaviours, which could be described as a process of connecting the heart with the mind. The strategy discussed in this chapter may appeal to leaders who aspire choosing the high road and aim to keep their conscience as clean as possible, while paving a constructive and sustainable global path towards acceptance, understanding, respect and collective wellbeing.

Social and environmental accounting research manifests varying levels of awareness of critical global problems and the need to develop alternative approaches to dealing with economy and society. This paper explores Buddhist thought and, specifically, Buddhist economics as a means to informing this debate. We draw on and expand Schumacher's ideas about ‘Buddhist economics’, first articulated in the 1960s. Our analysis centres on Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path and associated Buddhist teachings. The examination includes assumptions, means and ends of Buddhist approaches to economics; these are compared and contrasted with conventional economics.To consider how thought and practice may be bridged, we examine a practical application of Buddhism's Middle Way, in the form of Thailand's current work with ‘Sufficiency Economy’.Throughout the paper, we explore the implications for the development of social accounting, looking for mutual interactions between Buddhism and social accounting thought and practice.

This chapter investigates the central role that intention (cetanā) plays in Buddhist ethics, the unique perspective into the nature of the self and agency from a Theravāda Buddhist stance. Intention is paramount in determining every mental, verbal, and physical action as wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral in the Buddhist ethico-psychology. Buddhist ethics offer an inclusive, compassionate, and non-theistic perspective into the many moral dilemmas we face today as the mind and its processes, the underlying volition of a thought, context, and circumstances all determine the nature of an action. This is of relevance particularly in the digital age where agency is often imperceptible from societal, legal, and materialistic stances. The virtual world is perceived to be distinct from concrete reality and hence unethical actions considered to be less negative and destructive, and the perpetrators often difficult to trace or made to pay the consequences as societies and legal systems struggle to deal with this new reality. Buddhism has little to say about reforming society but on the other hand provides a refined investigative system of categorization of ethical and unethical actions through its theory of kamma (action) originating in a seed of positive or negative intention in the mind, and the consequences are said to be unavoidable although subject to manifold variations. Although the influence of Buddhism is still fragmented in the West with debates on its relevance, what to adopt, adapt, and discard, it can offer a fresh perspective on ethics, intention, agency, and the self.

In this chapter, we present a critical engagement with the methodology that each research team presenting a case study in this book from England, Arab Israel, Northern Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States adopted.

Education is a cultural project that consists of history, narrative and faith. The Black, Asian Minority Ethnicity (BAME) and senior leaders representing marginalised groups that we talked to in this research all stated that their faith, and religion was central to their service as an educational leader. The faiths represented in our research are Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and no faith where a humanitarian approach is taken. The chapter presents the scientific significance of what values underpin these leaders’ behaviours, and to understand how their values align with legislation, education policy and the values found in Education Governance Systems.

A constructivist comparative analysis approach was adopted to address four research questions. First, how do the senior-level leaders describe and understand how school governance systems and school commissioners empower them to develop school communities as societal innovators for equity and renewal for peace in our time? Second, how do they describe and understand the role mentors, and/or advocates play to support their navigation through the governance systems? Third, to what extent do they believe a cultural change is required to empower them in school communities to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal for peace in our time? Finally, how can the findings be theorised to generate a theory of knowledge to action through impact strategies within an international comparative analysis framework?

Each of the five international cases collected the narrative biographies of up to 15 superintendents, or chief executive officers of multi-academy trusts of colour. In the Northern Ireland case, eight religiously divided key agents of change were selected as an equivalence for the governance structures in the other five case studies. The total number of senior-level leaders participating in the five case studies was 40.

Each author read their findings through Gross’ (2014) Turbulence Theory and typology to categorise the level and the impact of the challenges the key agents of change need to navigate as they mediate between the governance systems. Gross (2014, p. 248) theory of turbulence is used as a metaphor and states that ‘turbulence can be described as “light” with little or no movement of the craft. “Moderate” with very noticeable waves. “Severe” with strong gusts that threaten control of the aircraft. “Extreme” with forces so great that control is lost and structure damage to the craft occurs’. The chapter identifies the findings were read through the theory of turbulence to reveal the state of the Education Governance Systems and their impact on empowering cosmopolitan citizens to participate fully and freely in societal interactions and cooperation between diverse groups. The authors’ chapters are subject to a comparative analysis that took place at the European Conference for Educational Research Annual Conference in two large seminars (Taysum et al., 2017) in Denmark, further developed by the editors and committed to peer-review.

This chapter critically explores the colonial model of education in a Buddhist society in postcolonial Bangladesh, as the Buddhist value-based contemplative learning and ethical practices have been constantly challenged due to the fact that the western value-based cultural knowledge is considered for economic development. In such a context, Buddhist learners are unable to learn the social history, cultural heritage, Buddhist/social economy, and spiritual values and practices in the educational institutions. Even teachers are not trained in preparing learners for cultivation of wisdom (Paññā in Pāli) and ecocentric development of the community in the country. On the other hand, Buddhist notion of contemplative learning pedagogy believes in decolonization of the mind and reflective practice for social transformation and development of wisdom through deep meditative mind by nurturing critical dialogue as opposed to capital accumulation and greed-based society. The Buddhist pedagogical approach focuses on mindful concentration (bhavana) and ethical (sila) practice within the learning context and environment, as emancipatory ideology to promote cultural diversity instead of political and social imposition. Such mindfulness would allow both the learners and teachers to create collaborative learning opportunities for life-sustaining practice and wholesome (kusala karma) activity in the community setting. The Buddhist learning pedagogy tends to nurture nonviolence (ahimsa) in order to develop mutual respect among the diverse communities to renewing ground for mind-expanding pursuits in the learning institutions for the wellbeing of all community members in the country.

The world needs more Eastern knowledge and, ergo, more consciousness. Humanity will unlikely experience a quantum leap in consciousness if we keep ignoring Eastern and other sources of perennial wisdom in the design and development of our socioeconomic and ecological systems. This chapter aims to bridge the consciousness gap by exploring the meaning and application of Buddhist and Taoist systems thinking to regenerative systemic leadership, design, development and sustainable transformation.

As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practitioners, and global leaders wrote brief essays for this curated chapter on the role of global leadership in this extreme example of a global crisis. Their thoughts span helpful theoretical breakthroughs to essential, pragmatic adaptations by companies.