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The purpose of this issue is to provide an overview of the special issue on practical wisdom for management from the Jewish traditions.

The guest editorial introduces the papers in this special issue, focusing in practical wisdom for management from the Jewish traditions.

The question on the relationship between the Jewish tradition and practical wisdom for management is answered in two different ways: first, providing a particular Jewish answer to managerial problems and second, presenting how Judaism can be a field of reflection learning for managerial praxis at both organizational and individual level.

The paper shows that the special issue offers insights into the value of practical wisdom of the Jewish traditions, from two particular points of view, as a guide for action and as an ethical approach to management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how traditional Jewish sources view workplace relations, with particular attention to how those sources may aid individuals to best meet the challenges of the contemporary organizational world.

This work examines the desired nature of employer‐employee relations via an examination of pertinent Jewish sources from a variety of time‐periods and locations.

Traditional Jewish sources address a wide array of topics associated with the respective obligations and rights of employers and employees at the workplace. These sources allow for an additional way to meet the challenges of a workplace plagued by the lack of trust and common purpose often associated with the contemporary business organization.

The paper provides a conceptual framework through which to understand workplace relations. It presents and explicates various aspects of employer and employee responsibilities, while suggesting possible means by which business leaders can best organize and maintain workplace relations.

There currently exists both an increasing interest in spirituality at the workplace and the acknowledgement that traditional sources may provide important insights into the challenges of contemporary organizations and those who lead them. The paper is the first piece of research addressing how traditional Jewish wisdom can be leveraged to advance on of the most vexing problems in contemporary organizations: the advancement of mutual trust between employer and employee.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a model of leadership based on the characteristics of the most highly acclaimed leader in Jewish history, Moses. The lessons from his leadership that are applicable to modern corporate leaders are identified and related to management development and education settings.

This paper relies on a direct reading of books 2–5 of the Old Testament (see notes) to propose a model based on Moses’ leadership. Using Moses’ journey toward and during his leadership, a model for present‐day leadership is proposed. Examples are given to anchor this model in biblical texts and reference it to modern leadership thoughts, spirituality and practical wisdom.

While the leadership of Moses is known and widely discussed within Jewish learning, it has not yet found a wider, secular audience. However, Moses’ leadership characteristics present an opportunity to reflect on how creative tensions between different leadership traits could be reconciled and an ethical model of leadership could be applied.

This paper does not look beyond books 2–5 of the Old Testament for further supporting evidence of the leadership of Moses. Future research could broaden the model through these sources. Moreover, research could test the four dimensions of leadership proposed in this paper in contemporary contexts, with performance as a dependent variable.

Moses’ leadership has been discussed by theologists but this paper suggests drawing on it as part of the ongoing academic discourse on corporate leadership. The biography of Moses sheds a light on the formative experiences of an ethical leader and his actions demonstrate how such a leader can act under challenging circumstances. If further developed, this research promises to be a useful addition to current leadership thinking and management education.

Corporate compliance practices are often “coercively” structured, coined by a legal discourse and derived from individualist normative concepts. Drawing on the “logic of the Decalogue”, the purpose of this paper is to design an “enabling” approach based on a covenantal logic present within the Decalogue.

The approach is interdisciplinary analysis summarizing exegetical, social science and business literature.

Within a covenantal and transcendental perspective, a morally literate community of employees, which have learned to reflect upon their responsibility, form the basis for compliance arrangements. They form a necessary complementary element of functional compliance systems.

The covenantal logic of the Decalogue can orientate the formulation of corporate compliance programs, which intend to follow an “enabling” approach. Normative claims should be rooted in an analysis of responsibilities towards relevant stakeholder groups. The potential of “spiritual capital” should be taken into consideration.

Reflecting one of the oldest ethical documents of human civilisation in the context of the contemporary management discussion on “coercive versus enabling control”, the orientating role of practical wisdom from the Jewish tradition becomes tangible.

One of the major exams of leadership skills of a leader is the challenge of managing conflicts within the organization or within society he heads. Perhaps, this is the biggest challenge especially when there is a situation of external threat on that society. In this situation when the leader who is unable to maintain internal cohesion, then the danger is that it will accelerate the breakdown in make it easier for the external enemy to destroy that society. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Jewish tradition, using formative ancient stories, tried to teach us how a leader should behave in a crisis, and how not to behave.

In this article, the author wants to show how Jewish tradition, using formative ancient stories, tried to teach us how a leader should behave in a crisis, and how not to behave. The rabbis of the Jewish tradition, that had written the Babylonian Talmud, reviewed the defeat of the Jewish people, in 70th as a failure of the leaders. Through the stories that tried to show us the responsibility of leadership, they pointed out the weaknesses of the leaders and saw them as the main person responsible for the loss occurred, when Jerusalem fell. In contrast, other stories show us how other leaders, deserved to overcome a major crisis and come out stronger.

The author wants to show how stories reveal three models of leadership: a weak and cowardly leadership that enables the growth of terrorist leadership, extreme and dogmatic leaders against tolerant leadership, leadership of nonviolent revolution. The situations in which leadership is being tested are varied. At the time of a great crisis of society at risk, during the siege of Jerusalem, one of the stories takes place precisely in the house, between two people, with the presence of leaders, to show the social disintegration among the common people, and the failure of leaders to build a moral society.

The positive example of overcoming the crisis and conflict, occurs after the destruction of Jerusalem in the Beit Midrash of the survivors in Yavneh. Perhaps the trauma of destruction leads the leaders to resolve the conflict in a nonviolent way.

The author tried to extract from the Jewish tradition the right model for managing crisis and conflict. The sages reflected on the serious crises that had happened to the Jewish people and they claimed that the leadership was the main cause of the failure.

The purpose of this paper is to study how representation is conceptualized in Jewish culture, and how this relates to management. More specifically, it seeks to discuss the banning of images and what can be learned from this in the field of management.

The paper explores the meaning of the prohibition of images in the sacred texts. This serves as a starting point to discuss representation of the world and different forms of thought in the management field.

A major element in the banning of images deals with the involvement of the manager in decision making. The authors argue that organisational images such as accounting numbers are oriented towards economising our attention and thereby allowing the relative absence of the decision maker. The authors suggest that the banning of images reminds us of the importance of the manager's presence and of active participation in decision making and organisational transformation.

The paper contributes to the literature on the roles of managerial representation, notably accounting figures, and supports the idea that accountability should not be limited to reporting (be it numbers or qualitative elements). This paper argues for developing the density of the account, for instance by using narratives. This research echoes recent practice turn in management, as the authors’ findings can inform management teaching by providing students with dense case‐studies of management as actually practised, analysed using sociological or psychological theories. Such dense case‐studies do not aim to give students parsimonious models for analysis, or expose them to best practices: rather they seek to help them develop practical wisdom through a better understanding of management. This paper calls then for an increased presence rather than representation in management teaching classes, which is the main limitation of e‐learning.

Rather than exploring the mechanism of accounting figures in the behaviour of organizational actors or taking a political perspective, this paper focuses on a deep representation of the organization often rooted in magical thought. Relying on the practical wisdom of the Hebraic biblical banning of images, this paper aims to deconstruct organizational thought so as to highlight its contradictions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how culture influences organizational behavior by connecting elements stemming from individuals’ social habitus with other elements pertaining to the organization itself; rejecting a “new age” approach, the paper studies how references drawn from Judaism can feed an organizational reflection process that impacts management practice.

The paper centers on a case study about the Graduate Unit of an academic institution, which trains in the field of educational leadership.

Developing a common social habitus during the formative years makes it more likely that compatible projects can be implemented within various complementary organizations to achieve significant impact. In this case, the common knowledge of Jewish philosophy, the common “Jewish wisdom,” served as a catalyst. Creating a common organizational culture without such common elements would be impossible.

The research presented here in the non‐profit field suggests that belief in a possible creation and sharing of an organizational culture to further a company's objectives is largely illusory.

The paper studies organizations in the third sector to understand elements in the business sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations between charisma and bureaucracy, as presented in rabbinic commentaries on Exodus 18 and Max Weber's Economics and Society. It aims to show that approaches developed in these texts have important practical implications for contemporary managers and leadership development professionals.

The paper is an interpretive study. It uses textual analysis to compare and contrast the dynamics of leadership portrayed in each document.

Like Weber, the Torah treats charisma and bureaucracy as mutually antagonistic forces that co‐exist in dynamic interaction. However, where Weber's account is descriptive, the Torah's is prescriptive, advocating forms of leadership that deliberately combine bureaucracy and charisma.

The paper's goal is not to review contemporary literature on charismatic versus bureaucratic leadership. Instead, it seeks to investigate approaches to leadership implicit in two “classics” of very different kinds. As such, the approaches explored here are just two among many other possible approaches. The interpretative method developed here could be used in future studies to examine approaches to leadership implicit not only in Jewish and sociological texts but also in other genres and “wisdom” literatures.

The paper presents three practical implications for contemporary leadership development.

The paper presents a novel perspective on leadership – Mosaic leadership – that highlights the multifaceted and dynamic nature of leadership development. In addition, it shows that management wisdom from the Jewish tradition can be meaningfully compared with ideas developed in other traditions – including the tradition of contemporary management studies.

Purpose: Ethical investing is considered to be the pinnacle of embedding environmental considerations in investing. Environmental considerations form a major part of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and CSR is considered to have a positive effect on investment returns. The purpose of this chapter is to assess the degree of environmental considerations embedded in faith-based funds investment criteria. The comparative analysis between principles and practice through faith-based investing is undertaken.

Design/Methodology: Prospectuses of selected faith-based mutual funds and other information around investment strategies provided on the Funds’ websites have been analyzed in detail. Content analysis has been undertaken in order to evaluate the existence and types of environmental related criteria demonstrated by the Funds. The criteria are compared to the faith principles on environmental responsibility.

Findings: It is generally assumed that CSR requirements form the premise of socially responsible investing. The authors find that faith-based investing criteria are narrowly defined and that they represent biases which do not promote environmentally responsible investing.

Implications: The major implication is that inspite of the availability of faith-based environmental responsibility principles, faith-based funds represent a case of economic returns prioritization over environmental considerations. Environment accountability principles that exist need to be promoted regularly so that they become an essential element of every day decision-making including faith-based economic decision-making.

Originality: This study contributes to the debate on ethical investing from the perspective of faith-based mutual funds.

This paper aims to explore if and how changes in social representations of conflict are designed and constructed in the formal political discourse.

Taking a psycho‐sociological approach and by relying on discourse analysis, it explores the discursive patterns used by the political leadership in order to legitimize either war or peace actions. Through the analysis of speeches that were given by Israeli prime ministers in the Knesset and in the context of warfare or peace processes, the paper traces changes in the historical narratives that frame Israel's cluster of societal beliefs in regards to the conflict, and further explores how these are being re‐narrated in light of the process of transition to peace.

The paper argues that both warfare and peace processes, representing the extreme options available in conflict, require broad public recruitment and immense rhetorical efforts on behalf of the political leadership to reason and legitimatize actions through the formal political discourse. The findings highlight the ways through which the political leadership in Israel justifies its actions and attempts to enlist public support as a prism to trace how societal beliefs have been narrated for the purpose of justifying warfare, and how the same beliefs are re‐narrated to justify conflict resolution.

The paper strives to shed light on the role played by the interplay between political discourse and societal beliefs in the context of transition to peace, and thus advances understandings of the linkage between internal processes and external circumstances, as mitigated by political discourse, in the context of conflict and conflict resolution.