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Human perceptions, attitudes, and relationships are shaped by worldviews and values. The rich mosaic of worldviews in today's fast-changing global village, where cultures interact and information flows freely, challenge educators and students. Worldviews influence problem modeling and solutions. Worldviews give us psychological confidence that the world is as we see it, safe, secure, and belonging. Each worldview is consistent with the assumptions, ideals, and analytical processes. Values define behavior, attitudes and decision-making. The global higher education system's long history and recent developments in globalization, technological innovations, and internationalization make it even more complex. Globally, higher education is evolving rapidly. Global political, economic, social, technological, and environmental factors promote rapid change. Higher education institutions have struggled to adapt to these developments due to limited resources and capacity. Growing demand has created new business models and institutions. Access, equity, inclusion, and quality are new issues that emerged. To be relevant in a rapidly changing environment, higher education institutions must adapt to the knowledge society and growing need for access. This anthology contains 14 thought-provoking studies on worldviews and values in teaching-learning, curricula, assessment, and outcomes.

A world renowned spiritual leader and mother Mata Amritanandamayi explained recently to a gathering that “education without any emphasis on values, sophistication without any emphasis on culture, development without any concern for nature, and lifestyle that disregards health” are the root causes of many of the problems faced by humanity today. More and more people are realizing that the problems which face us in current times are interlinked systemically. A compartmentalized approach to solving each problem has given way to looking at it as a whole system. This change in vision and approach has a fundamental transformative effect especially when the worldview is inclusive and holistic. In this chapter, we will present the thoughts and frameworks available in the Indian system to develop an inclusive worldview, which we call Shakthi Worldview, which sees the interconnectedness of things and events around us thereby making us conscious of how we interact with the environment and help us to take decisions which positively lead us to a sustainable future. Shakthi in the Indian context refers to the fundamental energy that permeates all things around us, animate and inanimate. Being in tune with this energy has been the way of life of many indigenous cultures. This chapter highlights the aspects of Shakthi Worldview and how the actions that come out of this worldview can create a sustainable future.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of sustainable development held by New Zealand “thought leaders” and “influencers” promoting sustainability, business, or sustainable business. It seeks to compare inductively derived worldviews with theories associated with sustainability and the humanity‐nature relationship.

Worldviews were explored through a cognitive mapping exercise. A total of 21 thought leaders and influencers constructed maps of their understanding of sustainable development. These maps were analysed to reveal commonalities and differences.

Participant maps illustrated disparate levels of detail and complexity. Those participants promoting business generally emphasized the economic domain, accepting economic growth and development as the key to sustainable development. An emphasis on the environmental domain, the future, limits to the Earth's resources, and achievement through various radical means, was more commonly articulated by those promoting sustainability. Participants promoting sustainable business held elements of both approaches, combining an emphasis on the environmental domain and achievement of sustainable development by various reformist means.

This study identified the range of worldviews expressed by 21 thought leaders and influencers across three main domains only – promoters of sustainability, business or both. Extending this sample and exploring how these and other views arise and are represented within a wider population could be the subject of further research.

Such divergence of opinion as to what connotes sustainable development across even a small sample does not bode well for its achievement. The elucidation of the worldview of promoters of sustainable business points to the need to consider more carefully the implications of environmentalism, and other aspects of sustainability, integrated into a business agenda.

This paper contributes to empirical research on environmental worldviews which has barely penetrated discussion of sustainability within the management and business literature. It shows cognitive mapping to be an effective technique for investigating the meaning of a conceptual theme like sustainable development.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the worldviews of leaders and their corresponding leadership styles. It also proposes a leadership development framework integrating training strategies and pertinent leadership skills.

The paper proposes a modeling of seven leader types and illustrates the predominant worldview of each leader type. Separately, a modeling of six distinct leadership skills is used to distil the strengths and weaknesses of each leader type, from which specific training implications are discussed.

First, autocratic and bureaucratic leaders tend to adopt a negative worldview which impinges on their level of power and influence. Second, charismatic and visionary leaders are well‐equipped with instrumental and creative imagination skills, reflecting their collaborative, global and transformative worldview. Third, both enabling and servant leaders display a quieter persona in terms of assertiveness, as they believe action speaks louder than words. They are highly consultative and participatory in their management approach.

CEOs and HRD professionals may now be able to assess their leaders' worldviews and match these with their leadership styles to design appropriate training programs for leadership development. A number of practical suggestions presented in this paper will provide pointers for training implementation.

The value of this paper lies in examining the root of a leader's attitude and behavior, that is, to focus on his/her worldview. The author's point of view is that a strategic leadership development program should first allow leaders to experience a variety of worldviews through simulation and other techniques, which will in turn influence the way they think and act.

This paper aims to show how environment-related worldview beliefs, in addition to specific persuasion knowledge, can influence how a consumer responds to ads about corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects.

Two experiments manipulated ad copy and consumers’ persuasion knowledge to examine the effects of consumers’ environmental worldview beliefs on their judgments of a firm’s CSR reforestation project.

When an ad presented ambiguous information, both consumers’ persuasion knowledge and their environmental worldview influenced the attribution of the firm’s motives. When an ad presented environment-specific information, however, consumers’ worldview did not influence their attribution of motives. Attributions, in turn, predicted attitudes toward the ad and attitudes toward the brand and were associated with intentions for information-seeking and referral behavior.

A consumer’s core beliefs can play an important role in understanding the application of persuasion knowledge, and the reinforcement-of-meaning principle expands the persuasion knowledge model’s explanatory power.

Marketing communications that involve social responsibility projects must take into account how core beliefs can influence the way consumers respond to projects.

This research demonstrates the importance of worldview beliefs in communication that takes place in the public sphere.

The experiments’ results contribute to a more robust understanding of the persuasion knowledge model, particularly as it applies to CSR messages and introduces the reinforcement-of-meaning principle.

This study analyzes which worldviews on the interrelatedness of the economic, environmental and social systems are adopted in the literature on responsible management education (RME) and explores how this affects the way business schools educate future responsible managers.

The sustainability-focused relational worldviews of Kurucz et al. (2014) were used to perform a content analysis on 100 articles from the field of RME to understand which worldviews are adopted and to distill potential implications of the prevalence of such worldviews in the RME field.

In the sample, the most adopted view was the intertwined view that imagines a balance between the economic, environmental, and social system (61% of the articles). The subsuming worldview (highlighting the business case for sustainability) accounted for 8% of articles in the sample. The embedded worldview (a new paradigm that respects the limitations of the environmental and social systems) accounted for 31% of the articles in the sample. The disparate view (representing classic economic views of discrete systems) was not adopted, indicating a rather uniform belief that RME is about moving management education away from this view. Examining the evolution of views over the last 20 years, it can be observed that the embedded view is growing in popularity. The continuing prevalence of the ambiguous and malleable intertwined view in the RME literature could explain why so many RME initiatives have been taken in the last two decades, while simultaneously critics remain vocal that business schools are not preparing future managers to engage with ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (ERS).

While sustainability-focused relational worldviews have been introduced in the RME literature, this study provides empirical evidence of the prevalence of such worldviews in the literature, allowing an exploration of the implications for the field. The presence of multiple — and at times competing — worldviews adds tension to the field of RME. Seen on the trajectory of increasingly progressive worldviews, the intertwined view is not limited by economic rationalism (like the subsuming view) but also stops short of requiring a full paradigm shift (like the embedded view).

Debates in US politics over abortion, homosexuality and other socio‐moral issues are increasingly explained by sociologists, politicians, policy advocates and the media as the result of a “culture war” in American society. Contained in this explanation is a theory that explains the moral value attitudes driving these debates as the product of conflicting worldviews. Since the worldviews that ultimately drive these debates cannot be compromised, the debates are said to be insoluble using normal democratic processes. The widespread dissemination of the hopeless aspect of this theory generates concern of self‐fulfilling prophesies. In this paper I outline the “culture war” and traditional “status group” theories and offer a critique. I conclude with an explanation of how the traditional “status group” explanations of these conflicts offers a more accurate — and more hopeful — vision of US society that avoids potentially self‐fulfilling prophesies of war.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the thesis that how an individual views the world – their worldview – is indicative of their acceptance of resource development. A definition of worldview is given and the significance of worldview to cultural and civilizational development is described. A methodology for testing the hypothesis is described and the results of a survey used to collect data are analyzed. At least for the approximately 300 respondents to the survey, there is a correlation between their responses to a series of worldview questions and their acceptance of resource development. Not surprisingly, the correlation becomes stronger as the homogeneity of the respondent group increases. The results of the survey analysis are then compared to a known resource development conflict in a case study to understand the potential significance of the results in a real-world setting.

A definition of worldview is given and the significance of worldview to cultural and civilizational development is described and evaluated. A methodology for testing the hypothesis is described and the results of a survey used to collect data are analyzed.

At least for the 300 respondents to the survey, there is a correlation between their responses to a series of worldview questions and their acceptance of resource development. The case study indicates that respondents can hold contradictory views depending upon the level of inquiry.

The sample size is too small to draw any but the most preliminary of conclusions. However, the correlations are high enough to encourage additional work.

The research may point to a relatively simple means of understanding the level of acceptance of resource development among all parties to a development proposal. This will allow proponents to identify issues early enough to address them in the design and negotiation phases of project development.

Resource developers and residents local to the proposed development are often talking at cross-purposes because the issues are not understood at a deep enough level. Once issues are understood at the deeper level of worldview opportunities for resolution may be identified.

As far as the researchers are aware this is the only published methodology for quantifying the acceptance of resource development. As identified by the case study, it is possible for a community to reject resource development for reasons that have little to do with resource development either in the particular or in the general.

Marketing students need better grounding in understanding major worldviews of the twenty-first century, given nearly guaranteed, international interactions with stakeholders. As such, the purpose of this paper is to develop a pedagogy focused upon secular and religious worldviews that can be used effectively in the classroom.

A cross-cultural study using data from the USA and China examines current worldview understanding among business school students. A training session in worldviews is then conducted, and a follow-up study is used to assess worldview learning and further interest in learning more about worldviews.

Student understanding of worldviews is increased through a 1.5-h teaching session. Students’ interest in learning more about worldviews significantly increased after the teaching session.

Worldview training is an effective way to prepare students for interacting with stakeholders in the increasingly global world in which these students will eventually work. Business schools need to incorporate worldview training in international marketing courses, at a minimum, or offer complete courses in worldviews and related applications to business operations.

Prior research has not tested worldview training on business students, especially when comparing student learning in a more religious-based culture (USA) and a more secular-based culture (China). Thus, this research shows that worldview training is effective regardless of the culture it is used in, which is important to informing students in a growing global marketplace.

This study takes the position that the concept of fraud is socially constructed. Moreover, it asks why and how different understandings of fraud have emerged. Insights from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003; Lakoff, 2002, 2004, 2009) are used to analyze language revealing dominant worldviews and metaphors regarding fraud. The research method is a case study (Yin, 2014), and the analytical approach used parallels the one described in O’Dwyer (2004). The research setting is a report issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which provides a context to study different understandings of fraud due to the report’s divided nature. The analysis reveals three alternative worldviews, representing different assumptions about reality, that are at the root of the different understandings of fraud. These worldviews also lead to the usage of different conceptual metaphors which allow the commissioners to interpret facts in a manner that supports each worldview’s assumptions. The paper also concludes by providing a nuanced and critical examination of the results of the commission concerning its understanding of fraud.