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Organisational responses to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals depend on the competency and mindset of business leaders to lead responsibly. This study is informed and underpinned by the Principles of Responsible Management Education. This study aims to examine how embedding the “sustainability mindset principles” within a university programme can contribute to responsible management education and, by extension, leadership development.

An illustrative case study using 84 students was applied, including undergraduate, postgraduate and executive Master of Business Administration students. An exploratory, qualitative design was followed, primarily adopting focus groups.

Evidenced learning gains in connecting sustainability knowledge with personal beliefs and behaviours, provide a compelling basis for educational and business practitioners to focus on the sustainability mindset principles (SMPs). Mapping of mindset against leading global competency frameworks provides important theoretical insight. Learning is illustrated through multiple dimensions (i.e. cognitive, behavioural and affective) to inform leadership development approaches.

The mapping of sustainability competency frameworks against the SMP, alongside qualitative research insights, provides a compelling basis for further research into the learning gains from embedding the mindset principles. The situated nature of the study and the lack of longitudinal measurement of what students take forward into their lives and workplaces is a limiting factor to be considered.

This study evidences the value of “whole-person” learning for responsible management, which can helpfully inform the design of both educational and workplace leadership development programmes.

This study is original in the pedagogic examination of the learning dimensions of the SMPs in a Business and Management programme. It also offers new insights in terms of the implications for leadership development.

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (Socrates). That is, without critically inquiring into the knowledge of life which is well-being and valuable, life is not worth living. Critical thinking questions existing theories and their unexamined and obsessive assumptions and generalizations, constraints, and “best” practices of the prevailing system of management and tries to replace them with more valid assumptions and generalizations that uphold the dignity, uniqueness, and inalienable rights of the individual person and the community. Better outcomes result from asking the right questions than from having the right answers. In the diverse, pluralist cultural environment of today, the promise of a truly generative dialog among Occidental (Western) and Oriental (Eastern) cultures and civilizations holds great hope for the future. Critical thinking (CT) is an “inclusive” thinking system that can facilitate this dialog such that all of us have a meaningful space and place in this universe. After defining CT and arguing its importance for executives, this chapter introduces CT in two parts: Part 1: Various Approaches to Critical Thinking; Part 2: Major Theories of Critical Thinking. Several contemporary business cases will be invoked to illustrate the need, nature, and scope of corporate CT.

This paper aims to assess the influence of emotional intelligence (EI) on the perceived internal control performance in the Lebanese companies.

The goal of this study is to decide whether there is a connection between “emotional intelligence” and perceived efficacy of “internal control” in Lebanese organizations. For the benefit and purpose of this research, a quantitative methodology will be applied. The data was collected by the use of self-directed and pre-coded questionnaires to test hypotheses made, making it a deductive research.

The findings showed that the personality traits of the members of the audit team play a key role in cultivating a control climate that is more conducive to effective control. Moreover, personality traits were key in boosting trust and openness in communication that can be seen as antecedents to having a system where all key auditing professionals within the organization can cooperate to boost the effectiveness of the internal control framework. These personality traits amplified the impact of the EI of audit manager on the overall effectiveness of the COSO framework, thus leading to improved efficiency of internal controls.

The exploratory aspect of this study have shown results that are general but create a basis for future comprehensive researches. This study was limited to a relatively small sample, due to the small size of Lebanon and due to the Pandemic that has limited our access to more data. This research did not regulate other relevant variables such as gender, experience, educational level and age. Nevertheless, the importance of the findings is they ascertain that internal control is not a rigid technical function that is primarily concerned with accounting and financial disciplines, rather it extends to organizational psychology and behavior.

The practical implication of studying EM and personality in Lebanese organizations is to describe and understand how it affects the effectiveness of the internal control and thus the survival of the organization. When organizations are aware of such a strong impact, they will try to increase their maturity level in this regard and further seeks more efforts in tackling the EI aspect. As a summary, the practical implication of this paper is to understand how all those variables affect the effectiveness of the internal control and thus the survival of the organization.

The subject of this study consists of many human-related aspects such as personality and human behavior. Once these elements are combined with the internal control framework, it will have an added value at the social level by enhancing the behavior of people and their perception of others' emotions and oneself emotions, in addition to improving their performance which reflects on enhancing the overall organizational performance. Studying EI allows to understand and manage emotions in order to create positive social interactions. The benefits of EI are vast in terms of personal, academic and professional success.

Due to the lack of research on this topic, this research will contribute to explore the field. Future studies will benefit from this analysis while using a larger sample. Future work should aim to include not only auditors but all staff of the company. Further research is required to decide whether the results of this analysis are generalized across various positions and industries and to determine whether EI is the only influential aspect involving a significant number of social interactions. In addition, this article can be used as a basis for the implementation of internal control with a COSO framework that involves the EQ of everyone in the organization.

It is becoming more generally accepted that there is a need to develop a new kind of leader to meet the needs of our 21st century VUCA world. The bookcases are full of volumes that describe “what” great leaders should do, but “how” to develop such leaders is usually limited to a macro or systemic solution rather than focusing on granular behavioural change of the individual. This paper describes the qualities and characteristics of Transpersonal Leaders, then focuses on developing these leaders through a new coaching process and finally explains how experienced coaches can be trained to coach these leaders.

Our research over the last 20 years of working with leaders individually and in teams has focused on this issue. We have been developing “21st century ready” leaders, referred to as Transpersonal Leaders, for over 10 years in teams, but only recently have we been developing such leaders through a new coaching process. We have also developed a methodology that codifies the development of Transpersonal Leaders which, in turn, allows us to replicate the programme by training other professionals, potentially in large numbers.

Graduates of the Transpersonal Coach Training Programme say that it has been a transformational personal experience, enabling them to take their leader clients to a new level. Leaders who have been coached say the programme has equipped them to learn a practical approach to becoming an authentic, ethical, caring and more effective leader.

This is a unique approach to coaching leaders but based on proven learning principles.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to trigger a transcendental concern toward building the spiritual capital (SC) particularly focused on the highly relevant domain of work. In doing so, this conceptual framework focuses on potential antecedents and outcomes of the SC.

Such an endeavor is premised on the Christian's teaching that advocates the need for gathering spiritual treasures (i.e. capital). Secondly, the foray into Spiritism Doctrine (SD) literature is due to the fact that this doctrine considers the spiritual construct as the cornerstone of its principles and tenets. Thirdly, it also examines the related perceptions and approaches from the fields of positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship, workplace spirituality and psychology of religion.

The model invites the individual to capitalize on salient virtues and remarkable human qualities so as to build a SC, namely: humility, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, positive emotions, connections/relationships and sense of cooperation. Finally, it is envisaged that the attempt to create a SC may lead the individual to a feeling of well-being and more resilience at work.

At last, the implications to develop a SC in the context of work are sizeable. After all, it implies to add more concerns to one's career much beyond those strictly functional or professional ones. Rather, it means to regard the work domain through unusual lens.

By bringing the conceptual framework of SC to the forefront of management, spirituality and religion studies through an interdisciplinary approach showed that it is not an elusive or mythical topic. On the contrary, this analysis revealed that this is a serious and surprisingly neglected issue that deserves further attention in light of the benefits that it can potentially yield.