Building on a previous piece that harnessed both the handbook that Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1548/ 1991 ) authored to guide his work – the _Spiritual Exercises_ – and the account of his own transformation experience captured in the _Autobiography_ – to appropriate the dynamics of Ignatius’ _Spiritual Exercises_ into a series of life-affirming questions and delineate his transformation into four phases (Carey and Tran 2023 ), this essay continues our exploratory inquiry. Following a brief overview of the contemporary organizational (...) leadership context, our article positions Ignatius’ insights on transformation within the transformational leadership discourse and considers his contribution to the professional formation of business leaders. Our study concludes with qualitative examples of how insights from St. Ignatius’ conversion process has encouraged online graduate students of organizational leadership in their quest to transition from profession to purpose. To further fuse theory and practice, the student reflections are categorized according to the Ignatian-inspired questions that inaugurated our theoretical inquiry and guides our pedagogical practice as organizational leadership educators. (shrink)

This article, the first of a two-part series, examines how Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s (1548/ 1991 ) nearly 500 year-old approach to the transformation of others in their leadership journeys is still being actualized, with applications to transformations in workplaces and the graduate education of business leaders, by drawing upon both the handbook Ignatius wrote to guide his work—called the _Spiritual Exercises_—and upon the account of his own transformation experience captured in his _Autobiography_. Our exploratory prelude to practice is guided (...) by the following questions that approximate (both in content and order) Ignatius of Loyola’s approach to personal and spiritual transformation: First, “What are my deepest desires?” (and this question has two distinct parts: “What don’t I want?” and “What do I want?”); once that has been clarified, the next question is “What does this require of me?” (In other words, what must be done to avoid the things you don’t want and achieve the things that you do want?); and finally, the last question requires an answer that lasts a lifetime: “How does this shape the person I am becoming?”. After characterizing the stages of Ignatius of Loyola’s (1548/ 1991 ) own transformation as: Deconstruction (the cannonball at Pamplona); Choice (while convalescing at Loyola); Reconstruction (during his retreat at Montserrat); and Integration (actualized by his mystical experience in Manresa), our contribution concludes by returning to the questions that frame our interrogative inquiry, but with an eye toward the professional formation of online graduate students of organizational leadership. In the second article (Tran and Carey 2023 ), our exploration continues by integrating academic theory with andragogical practice. Particular attention is paid to the qualitative reflections from online graduate leadership education students at a Jesuit university in the Inland Northwest of the United States. (shrink)

Contemporary casuistry, informed by a centuries-old intellectual tradition within the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church, characteristically maintains that ethical judgment does not rely on abstract laws, general rules or universal principles. Ethical judgment is formed through a subtle activity of comparing prior, settled cases with the current problem one is experiencing. Judgment on moral matters is therefore thought to be highly context-dependent and requires a sensitivity to the unique facts and social circumstances of each case. This discussion reviews the (...) origins of casuistry within Jesuit thought and then examines the implications of casuistry for organizational ethics. Our central argument is that contemporary casuistry, while correct to emphasize the particularity of ethical judgment, is nonetheless compatible with an important role for general principles in ethical decision-making within organizations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between John XXIII and Robert K. Greenleaf’s understanding of leadership. By taking into consideration Greenleaf’s theory of servant-leadership – from conceptualization to model development – and Larry Spears’ influential rubric of ten servant-leadership characteristics, we will show how servant-leadership theory goes in line with that of John XXIII when both are based on a notion of the common good and human dignity.