PurposeThis manifesto aims to redefine knowledge management by integrating spiritual, ethical, cognitive and aesthetic dimensions to address the complexities and challenges of a volatile and complex (VUCA) world. It seeks to move beyond instrumental and technological paradigms to foster human flourishing, organizational resilience and sustainable societal well-being by establishing the field of Spiritual Knowledge Management (SpKM). Design/methodology/approachThis paper is the primary outcome of the 4th International Symposium on Spiritual Knowledge Management held in June 2025 in Joching, Austria. Twelve international experts engaged in intensive collaborative dialogue over two days to distill 12 foundational principles from previous research and real-time scholarly discourse. FindingsThe manifesto articulates 12 core principles of SpKM, including relational resonance, transformative processes and spaces (Ba and Ma), caring, future-orientedness and practical wisdom (phronesis). It positions knowing as a transformative process directed toward the “future best version” of individuals and collectives/organizations rather than a static transactional asset. Research limitations/implicationsAs a manifesto, the contribution is primarily conceptual. It proposes constructs and avenues for empirical work (e.g. “transformation dashboards,” measures of resonance, agency and aesthetic/space effects) and calls for comparative, cross-context/-cultural studies to validate and extend the framework. Practical implicationsGuidance for leaders and facilitators to design enabling spaces, integrate reflective and narrative practices, align knowledge processes with purpose and the common good and steward long-term transformation beyond short-term efficiency. Social implicationsSpiritual Knowledge Management supports human flourishing, organizational resilience and societal well-being by cultivating trust, meaning and cross-boundary collaboration aimed at sustainable, just futures. Originality/valueThis work establishes an original integrative and interdisciplinary framework that emphasizes the spiritual and future-oriented dimensions of knowing within the KM field. It uniquely identifies aesthetics and “caring” as strategic resources and proposes a shift from simple knowledge transfer to the deep transformation of the knower.

Spiritual Knowledge Management (SpKM) extends conventional Knowledge Management by understanding knowledge not merely as a resource to be captured, stored, shared, and applied, but as part of a transformative process through which individuals, teams, and organizations move from a current version toward a future best version. This creates a fundamental methodological challenge: if SpKM is concerned with meaning, resonance, responsibility, practical wisdom, psychological safety, and future-oriented transformation, how can it be assessed without reducing it to conventional performance indicators or superficial measures of spirituality? This conceptual paper addresses this question by developing first ideas toward a non-reductive assessment logic for SpKM. Building on the Joching Manifesto of Spiritual Knowledge Management, the paper argues that the assessment object of SpKM is not yet sufficiently clarified. Possible objects include progress toward the future best version, knowledge practices and enabling conditions, the tension or resonance between current and future versions, and the observable traces of transformation. To frame this problem, the paper introduces the viticultural concept of physiological balance as a heuristic. In viticulture, physiological balance refers to the relationship between vegetative growth and yield performance. Translated into SpKM, this metaphor suggests two analytical axes: the development–impact axis and the capacity–demand axis. The paper further discusses the limits of empirical measurability and identifies psychological safety as an enabling condition for making relevant SpKM signals communicable. The contribution of the paper is not a validated measurement instrument, but a conceptual direction for future SpKM assessment.

Purpose: This paper aims to conceptualize and explore Spiritual Knowledge Management (SpKM) as an advanced and transformative paradigm within the evolving field of Knowledge Management (KM). It shifts KM’s purpose from supporting predefined goals to enabling a learning journey toward the best version of the self or the organization, integrating spiritual, non-rational, and identity-forming dimensions of knowledge. Research Methodology: The study combines conceptual development grounded in interdisciplinary literature with empirical data from a large-scale quantitative survey on school pastoral care. The survey, conducted in the Archdiocese of Salzburg, included 844 valid student responses and explored the role of faith, identity, and expectations regarding school pastoral care. Findings: The empirical results confirm that spiritual aspects of knowledge are relevant and meaningful in the educational context. Students value faith and spiritual guidance particularly in times of personal challenge and see school pastoral care as a support for identity formation, hope, and holistic personal development—elements strongly aligned with the principles of Spiritual KM. Implications of the Study: These findings suggest that school pastoral care is a suitable and impactful domain for implementing Spiritual KM. Moreover, SpKM could inform broader educational strategies by integrating deeper learning processes and resonance-based reflection, thereby fostering wisdom and ethical orientation in knowledge development. Practicality of the Study: The study demonstrates how spiritual knowledge can be accessed and applied in real-world educational contexts. It proposes that SpKM principles be integrated into school systems through staff development, pedagogical methods, and strategic design of spiritual learning environments. Value/Originality of the Study: This is the first study to apply the emerging concept of Spiritual Knowledge Management to the context of school pastoral care. It contributes to the redefinition of KM by incorporating spirituality and purpose as central components and demonstrates its practical relevance through empirical validation.

This paper investigates whether AI can possess wisdom, a complex and deeply human capacity. We adopt an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on philosophy, 4E cognition, Material Engagement Theory, and engaged epistemology, to argue that wisdom is a dynamic force unfolding through meaningful life experiences and resonant interactions with the world. Central to our discussion is Rosa's concept of resonance, essential for fostering personal growth, emotional empathy, as well as existential and bodily connectedness to the world and its unfolding into an uncertain future. Despite the advanced capabilities of AI/Large Language Models (LLMs), we demonstrate their inability to embody wisdom due to their lack of deep sense-making, embodied interaction, and meaningful engagement with the world and future potentials. We emphasize the need for cultivating human wisdom to ensure technological advancements enrich rather than diminish the human experience, advocating for a balanced and reflective human-technology relationship.

Problems emerge when employees feel that their jobs are meaningless and unfulfilling. Often the possible best version of the employee does not match and correspond with the potential best version as viewed by the organization. This represents a knowledge management (KM) problem: essential types of knowledge must flow between organizations and their employees, which spans individual and organization KM, along the dimension referred to as reach. In this article, we outline an approach that fosters essential knowledge flow through two complementary techniques: 1) Vocation-coaching and 2) Enneagram dynamics.

Recent publications in the field of KM emphasize the importance of topics such as Spirituality (e.g. Bratianu, 2017; Kaiser, 2023; Rocha & Pinheiro, 2021), Phronesis (practical wisdom) (Kragulj, 2022; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 2019; Rocha et al., 2022; Serenko, 2024), Organizational Purpose (Kerschbaum, 2022), dealing with future potentials and future-oriented innovation (Peschl, 2018, 2020) and Responsible KM (Durst, 2021) as future avenues for KM research. However, it seems that these topics have not yet entirely found their way into practice, or, although the phenomena described are inherently present in organizations, they do not receive much attention from practitioners these days. With this paper we seek to initiate discussion on how to deploy research results on topics like Spirituality, Practical Wisdom, non-rational Knowledge, future-oriented knowledge work, and Organizational Purpose into applied contexts. We argue that an essential step is to adequately train students at universities with the new content. Todays students are the leaders, entrepreneurs, and managers of tomorrow. Therefore, we present selected educational concepts that help students build competencies in understanding and applying non-rational forms of knowledge. The intention of these newly designed teaching concepts is to move our field of research out of the metaphoric ivory tower towards the application in organizations. We argue that this is a necessary step for the development of the field of KM, enabling our research to remain relevant in modern-day business and organizational environments.

The field of knowledge management (KM) has undergone a fundamental transformation, and it seems a perfect time to reflect on new ideas to re-specify the future role of KM research and practice in a changing and increasingly dynamic world. One such new idea is presented in this paper by proposing the concept of Spiritual Knowledge Management. There is strong empirical evidence that the topics of purpose, spirituality, and self are more important than ever - for both individuals and organizations. At the same time a vast number of authors from very different fields all come to the same conclusion, that a fulfilling and successful life and work seeks to move from a current version of a self to a best version of oneself. Based on this the purpose of this paper is to define and conceptualize the concept of Spiritual Knowledge Management. We argue that the core process of Spiritual Knowledge Management is to enable, manage and organize the deep learning process in order to develop the best version of oneself (individual) or itself (organization). This paper is conceptual and its results should contribute to theory building in the field.

Recently, the field of Knowledge Management has seen some movements towards sustainability and more responsible business practices. Especially sustainability has become a hot topic for almost every organization. In this paper, we try to locate the concept of sustainability in the field of Knowledge Management. We argue that lived sustainability is built upon relatedness (the holistic understanding of interdependence and interconnectedness of complex systems) and futureness (adopting a long-term perspective for the management of organizations) that together promote sustainable organizing from the inside-out. We find that in particular two streams, Responsible Knowledge Management and Spiritual Knowledge Management, have taken up ideas that potentially lead to sustainable Knowledge-based Management. Those streams emphasize various forms of non-rational knowledge as a necessary, but previously underrepresented aspect of knowledge, as a counterpart to the instrumental-calculative rationality that has become predominant in the study of organizations and organizational knowledge.

The topics of purpose, spirituality, calling, and self are more important than ever. However, they currently hardly play any role in traditional knowledge management approaches. The field of knowledge management has undergone a fundamental transformation, and it seems a perfect time to reflect on new ideas to respecify the future role of KM research and practice in a changing and increasingly dynamic world. In this chapter, we present a visionary future path for knowledge management. In this chapter, we will not only explore if and how spirituality, calling, and knowledge management fit together, but we will also seek to answer the question why an organization’s knowledge management should focus on the future best self of its employees and how this can work and be implemented. We will argue that the key to this is the self and could be implemented with the concept of spiritual knowledge management.

The role of spirituality in organizations has received increasing attention over recent years. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to take up this shift and develop the foundations for an alternative approach to knowledge management: Spiritual Knowledge Management. A key question in spirituality concerns the unfolding of the identity (of an organization) or the self toward a “higher end” or purpose. We propose the concept of the phronetically enacted self (understood here both in an individual and an organizational sense) that helps us conceive of how this unfolding can be achieved in a thriving and sustainable manner. The self is conceptualized as a highly dynamic and emergent “entity” that is grounded in a continuous process of becoming and of transitions transforming a state of potentiality into a state of actuality and fulfillment. Insights from the theory of spirituality, enactive cognitive science, the theory of potentials/possibility studies, phronetic organizations, and resonance theory lead us to a novel understanding of knowledge-driven organizations embodying a spirituality-based and, as a consequence, (regenerative) sustainable approach. Finally, we will develop the basic characteristics and leverage points for transformative shifts toward sustainability in organizations.

What distinguishes a good vision?A knowledge perspective on organizational visions can be helpful in order to identify which content vision statements should include.Knowledge enablers aim to respond to the question what organizations need to know for planning effectively and performing their activities well.Previous studies identified three knowledge enablers in organizational visions: knowledge about organizational identity (OI), emerging potentiality (EP) and mutual embeddedness (ME).In this paper, we empirically tested these findings through a qualitative content analysis of a large number of Forbes-2000 companies vision statements.As a result, we detected all three knowledge enablers in our sample.Moreover, we found that the rank of companies in the Forbes 2000 list correlates not only with the occurrence of knowledge enablers, but also with the frequency of knowledge about emerging potentiality.Consequently, companies have to be supported to generate especially this knowledge enabler.Our results can contribute to research on knowledge-based vision development and inspire an ongoing discussion in the KM community about future research priorities.

Welcome to this, the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) conference.This Reports from the Field Minitrack, under the Knowledge Innovation and Entrepreneurial Systems Track, proudly brings you the latest research focused on the application of innovation of knowledge management issues as reported by both researchers and practitioners alike.With the focus on application, this minitrack helps practioners and theorists alike.It is here we examine how theory informs and impacts practice as well as how practice can influence theory from the practioner perspective.

In this paper we describe an approach to assess the impact that a shared vision has on the perceived meaningfulness of work in an organization. Our measurement system is based on the essential principles of performance measurement. Building on this assessment logic, we present the process and respective scales that allow us to measure changes in perceived meaningfulness that occur through a shared vision development process. With this work, we provide a practically applicable measure to evaluate whether the creation of a shared vision is beneficial for an organization.

This is a reissue of a paper which appeared in ACTA IMEKO 1985, Proceedings of the 10th World Congress of the International Measurement Confederation, "New measurement technology to serve mankind", 22.-26.4.1985, Prague, pp. 319-333. The question raised in this paper is: What is the meaning of a statement in which reference is made to measurements? Measuring a property of a system produces numbers. The question can be made more specific by considering the following aspects of these numbers: validity and purpose of numbers to be obtained; accuracy and stability of numbers obtained; possibility of obtaining numbers; meaningfulness of relations between numbers obtained; relation to numbers representing other properties; what is arbitrary and what not in what the numbers denote; in short: what do the numbers obtained in measurement signify.

This paper is based on the observation that literature on shared visions is either mainly dominated by top-down vision communication, which aims at followers taking over the vision of a leader, or accounts on shared visions are too narrow and too unspecific to be of much use for organizational practice. As a consequence, we currently lack an applicable process model that facilitates the creation of a shared organizational visions in a bottom-up manner. This paper aims at introducing and theoretically grounding such a process model. We find that the creation of a shared organizational vision can be seen as an instance of a knowledge creating and organizational learning process that transforms personal visions and personal organizational visions through a dialectic process towards a shared organizational vision. During this process, knowledge about needs, values, resources and desires is created and shared in the organization. In so doing, we summarize extant literature on developing shared visions and synthesize the literature into a process model which can be applied by academics and practitioners alike.