Wisdom Learning: Perspectives on Wising-Up Business and Management Education

In traditional business circles, wisdom is viewed with a certain scepticism, which is in part due to its historical associations with wisdom traditions and spiritual cultures. However, in business today, wisdom is emerging not only as a viable but also a necessary organizational and management practice. In particular, practical wisdom is being updated and retranslated for today’s issues and concerns in organizations. In recent years, leadership and organizational studies have initiated important changes in the way in which business-as-usual is conducted.

In response to the increasingly complex and uncertain conditions of our international business environment, a growing community of ‘scholar-practitioners’ are pushing the boundaries of traditional organizational and leadership thinking and acting, making inroads into processes and applications of practical wisdom and ways of wise leading and managing. Given the unprecedented levels of challenges, dynamics and uncertainties that today’s organizations are exposed to, there is a need for a more integrative and sustainable approach to managing.

Following the need for a reconsideration and revival of the meaning of wisdom, the editors explore vitalizing possibilities for the learning of wise practices in organizing and leading. This expansive range of domains where wisdom is currently being explored suggests a promising number of perspectives and possibilities for future inquiries and explorations into the nexus of wisdom and organization, leadership/management education and learning that benefits from cross-disciplinary synergies.

This book will be of interest to those seeking to understand the growing significance of wisdom in relation to learning and teaching, especially in business and management education.

Wendelin Küpers is Professor of Leadership and Organization Studies at Karlshochschule International University in Karlsruhe, Germany. Combining a phenomenological and cross-disciplinary orientation, his research focuses on embodied, emplaced, emotional, creative and aesthetic dimensions of organizing and managing. In his current research and teaching he is focusing on more responsive, responsible and wiser forms of organizations and management/ leadership that are contributing towards more integral and sustainable practices.

Olen Gunnlaugson is an Associate Professor in Leadership and Organizational Development within the Department of Management in the Business School at Université Laval, in Quebec City, Canada. He brings a cross-disciplinary approach to his current research in collective leadership training (i.e. conversational leadership, dynamic presencing, we-space practice and facilitation), wisdom-based learning methods, inner management skills and leadership coaching which have been published in several books as well as numerous international academic journals and presentations at leading conferences. He is currently collaborating with colleagues on a number of books, articles and consulting offerings. More recently, he was the chief co-editor of the management book, Perspectives on Theory U: Insights from the Field, an anthology featuring applied research on Theory U by 30 faculty members and associates from North America and Europe.