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Spirituality in organizations is currently a particularly salient issue in both the scientific and practitioner literature. The “S” factor (Klenke, 2003) has lead to a proliferation of books, special issues of journals, edited volumes, symposia at conferences, and popular press articles which collectively represents a struggle between science and marketing for the soul. Conlin (1999) concluded that “a spiritual revival is sweeping corporate America as executives of all stripes are mixing mysticism into their management, importing into office corridors the lessons usually doled out in churches, temples, and mosques” (p. 150). Recent scandals involving ethical lapses at major U.S. corporations and institutions have only served to reinforce the need for organizations to acknowledge employees' thirst for meaning, community, and connection with a higher purpose and/or power. As a result, tapping into the human spirit at work has become a flourishing business as companies are willing to invest money to sponsor seminars, workshops and retreats on spiritual growth, mediation, creativity, and authentic communication.

Assessment centres have been around for just over forty years now; however, their acceptance in industry, whilst increasing, is still rather sporadic. One reason for this is that the words “Assessment Centre” conjure up an image of mysticism. What is it? How does it work? etc. So, apart from the fact that many organisations are unwilling to commit the finance and resources to assessment centres, the other major obstacle is the scepticism and mistrust which surround the process, simply because it is misunderstood.

Historically, Asia was known for its history of ancient civilizations, philosophies and religions, performing arts and exotic lifestyles, and of course, spicy culinary specialties. The rest of the world made tremendous efforts to discover this land of charm and mysticism. Asia, however, was not known for its economic scores. In general, the Asian economies were preindustrialized, traditional, and agricultural. The share of gross domestic product (GDP) from the agricultural sector was relatively large as the industrial revolution had yet to reach Asia. People farmed with primitive indigenous tools and the marginal productivity of labor was low. Hence, the income of the individual farmer, man or woman, remained insignificant and poverty was the overall end product. As late as the 1970s, ranking economists questioned if Asia beyond Japan could ever industrialize (Krugman, 1994; Lau and Kim, 1994). The doubt is no more. The historic success of the import–export-led growth model in the context of Asia has been robustly explained (Klein, 1990). The world now marvels at the success of Asia's industrial revolution.

Purpose – This chapter introduces this volume's topics, purpose and key themes.

Methodology/approach – This chapter reviews literature and chapters and offers conceptual development.

Findings – The difficulties of CSR in theory and practice are mainly due to its incomplete conceptualisation because its inseparable counterpart CSI has been eventually neglected or ignored in the CSR theorising process. The CSI concept is as equally important as CSR. CSI offers a theoretical platform to avoid the vagueness, ambiguity, arbitrariness and mysticism of CSR. CSI deserves to be a serious subject of inquiry and demands more scholarly attention.

Practical/social implications – With the aid of the CSI concept, CSR becomes more realistic and effective, as it is now more focused, practical and operational. While CSI is clear-cut, CSR is clearly meant, at the very least, to do well by undoing CSI. It is easier to promote CSR by addressing CSI first. The concept of CSI may allow everyone, including business practitioners, to concentrate on resolving the most important and urgent issues of public concern. It also encourages people to address the root causes of CSI problems in a systematic way. Doing so undoubtedly expands and enriches the understanding of CSR.

Originality/value of chapter – The concept of CSI has been less developed in academic circles. While the contributors of this volume have made significant contributions to the understanding of CSI, this chapter adds fresh reasoning and explanations to the development of the CSI subject.

Third‐order change in organizations refers to attempts to help organizational members to transcend their shared schemata. It has not previously been explored in depth. Uses mystical experience as a model of how the third‐order change process may occur. Discusses several characteristics of mystical experience, focusing in particular on the central characteristic of transconceptual understanding. Presents an example of Teresa of Avila, a Spanish woman from the sixteenth century whose mystical life was reflected in her organizing activities. Suggests how mystical experience can inform understanding of the third‐order organizational change process and presents a preliminary model of ways in which the third‐order change capacity might be developed.

Explores the relevance of the nineteenth century Russian Christian‐mystical philosopher, Vladimir Soloviev, to the contemporary world. Demonstrates that his thought proved a harbinger of many of the concerns of the present. Breaking with the orthodoxies of the nineteenth century, Soloviev explored such questions as ecumenicalism, incarnational/ developmental mysticism, feminism, and social justice. He advocated a reformed, flexible, aesthetically aware Christianity unimagined by his contemporaries. Notes Soloviev′s relationship with Western and Eastern traditionality and his strategy for the reconciliation of the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. In essence, argues for the significance of the contribution of Vladimir Soloviev.

Three problematic issues followed by paradigm changes over the recent history of human intellectual endeavour are identified as 1. mysticism/superstition to – conventional science (of physics), 2. predominant use of qualitative/quantitative properties for analysis and design to – structural or systemic properties, and 3. current speculative/fragmented, multiple approaches to the “systemic view” to – a firmer knowledge-based approach reflecting the empirical and universal nature of this view. This paper aims to consider the problematic issues, to conclude that conventional science is inadequate to cope with the 2nd paradigm change and to introduce a “new science of systems” which can integrate conventional science and alleviate the 3rd problematic issue by suggesting three principles implemented by linguistic modelling as operational model.

The highly successful methodology of conventional science is followed with systemic content by suggesting three general principles of systems, namely, principle of existence (pervasiveness of structural description), principle of complexity (aggregates for emergence of outcomes) and principle of change (change by purpose or chance), and linguistic modelling of static and dynamic scenarios based on natural language as operational model. This language is processed to “elementary constituents”, of which complex structures can be constructed. These constituents are converted into reasoning schemes consisting of “ordered pairs” and “predicate logic statements” in static and dynamic states.

Stories of problematic scenarios are converted into the universal scheme of “management/producers” – “products” – “users/consumers” by constructing linguistic networks of products and semantic diagrams of organizations/user/consumers for investigating the emergence of outcomes in analysis and for designing prototypes. Problematic issues of individual objects in a scenario are resolved by methods of conventional science, which is thus integrated with systems science to form the “scientific enterprise”.

Once the new approach is debated, further developments in the mathematics of ordered pairs, predicate logic and uncertainties are needed. The linguistic basis is to be further investigated. Connection with AI and “logical atomism of Bertrand Russell” is to be explored.

Further applications to large-scale scenarios by practitioners using the “universal scheme” and development of software are needed.

The approach is rooted in accepted branches of knowledge, is highly teachable and should lead to be used by professionals and others once debated and accepted.