Towards a Universal Set of Values Bridging East and West: Global Positive Spirituality for World Peace

Abstract

The development of shared global values and virtues in organizations is necessary to build a more humane world of peace, love, cooperation and dialog in the 21st century. Humanity and world civilizations today experience problems not only in economic, political or material domains; but also in ethical, moral, social, or spiritual realms. The call for values and spirituality is currently echoing in organizations throughout every land, as we are increasingly concerned about social problems, wars, religious intolerance, racism, violence, poverty, pollution, crime, corruption, and global terror. We need holistic, overarching, and multidisciplinary paradigms and models about values to address complex problems of our world. By deriving a common set of values and principles across world religions; this reflection paper aims to build an integrative, multidimensional, and holistic framework for universal values bridging the East and West. This paper emphasizes a set of common universal values and spirituality for organizations which can potentially contribute to world peace and global dialogue. The emergent framework illustrates and celebrates unity, wholeness and balance of values across various cultures and religions of the globe.

Keywords: 21st century, global problems, complexity, values, peace, spirituality