Category Archives: Feature Articles

Leadership: Community, Relationship and Future

Feature Articles / January 2013

Paolo Vittozzi

Kung-fu lives in everything we do” says the Master to the pupil, who wants to know why he should put the jacket on and take it off… likewise with me, since I think that: ”leadership lives in everything we do”.

The kind of life I’ve lived so far has been permeated by leadership. After senior high school I joined a Military Academy, and I studied the following subjects: Art of Command, Law, Geopolitics, Organization …

Leadership and Politics in Italy

Feature Articles / January 2013

Lorenzo Santoro

Traditionally, Italy has maintained a reputation as a laboratory of new and original political phenomena, being generated in movements such as Risorgimento, Fascism, Togliatti’s Communism, Berlinguer’s Eurocommunism, and Berlusconi’s charismatic media-based power system. These new and original approaches to leadership made Italy a modern and large nation state, a mix of very ancient cultures and very new contradictions, a place where modernity came with a peculiar intensity and sometimes violence and unpredictability.

 In the last few months, this …

Religions and Leadership

Feature Articles / January 2013

Pedro Barrajon, L.C.

The role that religions play has been acknowledged recently in the fields of culture, politics, economics and the different domains of social life. In the Marxist doctrine, following the severe critic that Feuerbach made in his book The Essence of Christianity, religion was considered as the opium of the people or as Feuerbach said œthe vampire of humankind” as religions sucked the blood that the people needed to realize their own  self-realization.

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Mafia Organization: Governance Processes and Leadership Function

Feature Articles / January 2013

Franco Di Maria and Giorgio Falgares

Abstract

Even though Cosa Nostra is the most powerful criminal organization inthe world, few national and international studies have been carried out on this phenomenon so far. The main reasons are: a) the complexity of the study object. As a matter of fact, Cosa Nostra, in addition to being a criminal phenomenon, is also a psychic and an anthropological phenomenon at the same time, with its own distinctive features; b) Cosa Nostra is not …

A Mediterranean Adaptive Edge: Experiential Leadership across the Atlantic

Feature Articles / January 2013

Adriano Pianesi

“The mind grows through exposure to reality.”
– W. Bion

I grew up and was educated in Rome, Italy. Here are a few flashbacks about my life as a learner in the Italian school system:

  • Elementary School, 1972: Maestra Arena would consider any question from the class as a personal insult and refuse to answer.
  • 12th grade, 1977: Signor Pumo would simply not acknowledge our presence in the class as we walked in and would make fun

The Conscious Organization: Workplaces for the Self-Transcended

Feature Articles / October 2012

 John Renesch

Abraham Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs defines “self-actualization” as a state sought by all human beings once we have satisfied the more basic needs of survival, sexual gratification and belonging. Carl Rogers, a colleague of Maslow’s and one of the founders of humanistic psychology, defines it as people’s tendency to actualize themselves, to become their potentialities. But there is a still higher aspiration once people access this top level of Maslow’s pyramid, a level championed by Viktor Frankl …

Values Driven Leadership

Feature Articles / October 2012

Kenton Hyatt and Cheryl De Ciantis

Introduction

This exploration into leadership is not yet another leadership prescription, offering what should be done. It is an approach that offers a multi-prism lens that allows for a variety of leadership needs and styles, and yet keeps their description at manageable levels. It is descriptive, not prescriptive, and decidedly not judgmental. This approach promotes a clearer observation of what passes for leadership, which also provides some insight about how to proceed in the …

Three Steps to the Democratization of Enlightenment

Feature Articles / October 2012

Marc Gafni

Part One: Stepping Beyond “Local Means Global”

I was looking with my son at Google Earth the other morning. I wanted to show him my old neighborhood in Jerusalem, which I loved. We were able to find the exact location and see it – pretty clearly in front of us. Although I knew this was possible, I had never actually done it before and it kind of blew me away. For my son it was no big deal …

Expanding the Boundaries of Our Capacities through Working toward Experiencing Transformative Learning in Service

Feature Articles / October 2012

Oliver Ngodo

Introduction

Some people would recall that some time they simply become aware that they have gone through a ‘peak’ experience; they have reached an ecstatic moment – no, much more than just a moment, but a permanent state, resulting in greater clarity and understanding. That’s like when your consciousness expanded – and you knew it. You just see yourself as a fresh product! That’s me, coming out of some two years of situations and events that would invariably …

Leaning into Complexity: Supporting Leaders Through Transformative Learning

Feature Articles / October 2012

Nancy Southern,  Sylvia Gaffney, and Bernice Moore

Results of a qualitative study show how leaders experience complexity and how it is changing their understanding of their role and ways of engaging with and supporting others. Transformative learning theory and practice can aid leaders in shifting their meaning schemes and ways of being to enable organizational transformation.

IBM’s 2010 study of 1500 CEOs of organizations worldwide revealed that the greatest challenge facing leaders today is working in an increasingly volatile and …