Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to point out the suitability of enriching the Western managerial education with parts related to traditional East Asian thinking, values and chosen techniques of mind control such as meditation and yoga. There are several reasons supporting this suggestion. Despite increasingly intensive globalization, frequent incomprehension and misunderstandings occur in teams composed of workers from Western and Eastern cultures. They are often caused by the differences in key values and ways of thinking. Knowing these differences and particularly what conditions the feeling of well-being and happiness at work in different cultures can contribute to better mutual understanding. Even though the importance of well-being and happiness at work has recently been recognized, a considerable part of workers around the world are suffering from work-related stress. Not only does it cause stress and personal dissatisfaction, but it also has negative economic effects. For these reasons many companies, public institutions, and governments have started to introduce various measures and policies. Many actors are supposed to be involved in them; however, in general, they lie in influencing the external factors of work-related stress. In fact, it is East Asia that traditional techniques of mind control of an individual (meditation and yoga) come from. When practicing them, subjectively perceived stress decreases without any change to the external factors. Practicing these methods is neither costly nor time demanding, and besides the increase in subjective well-being, they have also other positive effects. These effects have been proven today using methods that are accepted in Western science and used by some companies in practice. Examples of these practices are also mentioned in this paper. Despite the increasing popularity of meditation and yoga exercises, their use in the business sphere is not generally widespread. Thus, the final part of this contribution brings up suggestions how to enrich university managerial studies with the topics of traditional Eastern thinking and mind control techniques. These topics should become a part of corporate education, and employees should be taught these mind control techniques, too. The paper is a conceptual study based on the synthesis of available sources. Its contribution lies in the proposal to interconnect Western scientific managerial education with East Asian wisdom.

Keywords:

Managerial education, work-related stress, mind control, meditation, yoga.