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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the trends toward work being more suitable for machines than people, which promotes more addictive lifecycles. This paper suggests ways people can reverse this trend to cut them off from their humanity and create ways of working that are more natural, uplifting, life‐affirming and healthier for people.

The approach is to cite evidence of growing dysfunction, including facts and studies that support the trends; to explain how this has occurred; to describe how systems behave and misbehave; and to call for transformation.

This paper finds that people are suffering more stress, experiencing a reduced quality of life, getting sick more often and are less happy. And most of them don't realize why they are less happy because they seem to have so much (material wealth) to be grateful for. The findings include a way to reverse these trends and return to a life more suitable to human beings.

The practical implications are that people will start working in ways that are consistent with these new values and consciousness, finding newfound excitement and enthusiasm for their work, and reawakening their passions for living and working. This will produce happier people, more effective organizations and a healthier society.

The value of this paper is to provide a “wake‐up call” to those who find themselves entranced by convention and numbed by pressures from the systems they live and work in, so they start thinking less obsessively, working less mechanically and demanding more people‐friendly work and ways of living.

The emerging business model of value creation includes both social and environmental capital as well as human, structural, and customer capital.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of self as applied to leadership and propose an understanding of how a leader should form conceptions of self, and use these in his or her own development.

Based on self‐, personality‐ and developmental psychology, the paper examines a variety of theoretical foundations, and ties these into the context of leadership and self‐development.

The paper concludes that the self is core, consciousness, and action. The particular characteristics and qualities of the self determine the leader's comprehension of him or herself as a human entity, and is a leader's gateway to self‐confidence and self‐esteem. Leaders therefore need to cultivate an understanding of self by engaging in formative processes which are related to their ability to learn from defining situations, thus raising awareness of points of convergence in a leader's career.

The paper is limited to a conceptual discussion, and further research is needed to verify the proposed hypothesis. Future research should concentrate on empirical work.

The practical outcome is concrete advice, that leaders must engage in processes where their own willpower, beliefs, assumptions, values, principles, needs, relational patterns and social strategies are subject to feedback and testing if their aim is to develop themselves. Self‐development is not the training of skills, nor solely dependent on cognitive strategies.

Most leaders face pressure to develop themselves. The recommendations herein clarify what is a self concept applicable for leaders, and assist in identifying domains, processes and schemata applicable for leadership self‐development.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

Today, there is a global need for more effective leaders. The purpose of this paper is to present a model of human development which covers the psychological, physiological, and sociological dimensions of leadership.

The authors review three research studies in which they have investigated the relationships between consciousness, psycho‐physiological integration, and leadership performance using physiological measures, psychological tests, and self‐reports.

These studies support the model that leadership ability is closely related to psycho‐physiological refinement – the authors found that higher integration of the electrical brain activity, more mature moral reasoning, and more frequent peak experiences are found in top performers compared to average performers.

The high frequency of peak experiences among top performers reveals the importance of such gratifying inner experiences for the business community.

The research suggests that practical methods for psycho‐physiological refinement – such as the widely researched Transcendental Meditation technique – can be useful in developing more effective leadership. The brain integration scale presented here may be a reliable objective instrument for assessing an individual's leadership and performance capacity.

A unique contribution of the authors' research is to recognize that integrity – an essential requisite for leadership – has a physiological counterpart in the integration seen in the functioning of the brain through electroencephalography.

In transitioning to the 21st Century, the proces of planetisation is leading to the development of a world culture. With the landing of humans on the Moon in 1969, astronauts provided us with stunning pictures of our Earth as seen from outer space. The view challenges us to revise our images of our species — who are we as a human family? Space communication satellites and remote sensing technologies help us to appreciate our planet's resources, as well as its environmental and ecological problems. All this contributes, along with advances in telecommunications and mass transportation, to the breaking down of national borders and cultures and to the emergence of a global, information‐oriented culture. While this happens at the macro level, counterforces are at work that are evident in global tribalism and regression locally to “ethnic cleansing” of people who are different. Despite the latter negative trends, humanity's main‐stream is beginning to appreciate that our common survival and satisfaction of our universal needs and concerns are linked to other species and systems, so we should, as far as feasible protect our world and all its inhabitants. In contemplating the evolution and future of humans, the scientist/philosopher, Tielard de Chardin, described planetisation as a convergence of phenomenon such as, increased consciousness and homogenisation — people are beginning to realise their interdependence on each other, as well as upon all life in our universe.

Educators who work in community settings often encounter participants with a wide array of individual leadership beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. Given this situation, one of the challenges we face is to identify effective methods and tools to teach leadership in community and organizational settings. As an educator, it is important to understand and use quality scholarship and theory in leadership education. At the same time, it is important to use educational methods that respect the life experiences of the participants and that are easy to understand and communicate. At the University of Minnesota Extension Service U-Lead program, we seek to balance the academic and scholarship portion of our work with the application of practical tools and methods that connect with the real-life leadership experiences of our participants. The purpose of this paper is to review the comprehensive leadership education framework we currently use and outline how it addresses this balance.

Offers a number of insights into the nature of spirituality in organizations and how employees can gain greater spirituality and purpose in their work. Specifically, proposes that a recent leadership theory, thought self‐leadership, can assist employees in influencing or leading themselves towards experiencing more spirituality in their organizational life.

One important issue is whether spirituality in the workplace can be used only to benefit employees or can it be developed also to the advantage of organizations? The purpose of this article is to articulate a model of how spiritual values can be integrated into organizations and then assess how this model predicts organizational behavior in one company, Southwest Airlines (SWA). The application of this model provides insights into how and under what specific conditions spiritual values can positively impact both profitability and employee attitudes in organizations. Implications for both research and practice are discussed.

One important question in the field of workplace spirituality concerns the relationship of this construct with employee work attitudes. This study attempts to make a rigorous empirical examination of the relationship between workplace spirituality and five prevalent employee job attitudinal variables. It assesses the validity and reliability of the measures used and discusses the results of the analysis, which indicate that each of the three dimensions of spirituality used has a significant relationship with two or more of the five job attitude variables examined. While acknowledging that spirituality at work is an abstract concept, this study attempts to provide some of the first empirical support that there is a positive association between spirituality at work and employee job outcomes. The paper concludes with a number of implications and research directions for both academics and business managers, including the need to investigate the comprehensive impact of spirituality at work on individuals and organizations.