Spiritual Leadership in Baul Folk Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Framework for Creative Organisations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article explores the intersection of spiritual leadership principles and the Baul folk tradition of Bangladesh, proposing a cross-cultural framework that benefits creative organisations in North America and beyond. Drawing upon established scholarship in spiritual leadership and on Baul studies, the discussion revolves around eight core themes—Emphasis on Meaning and Purpose, Values-Centred Leadership, Culture of Compassion, Promotion of Inner Well-Being, Empowerment Through Service, Shared Vision, Ethical Orientation, and Fostering Hope and Faith. Each theme is illustrated with original songs by Baul composers, including Baul Lalon Shah (1774-1890), Baul Duddu Shah (1841-1911), Baul Panju Shah (1851-1914), Baul Shahadat Karim, Baul Mokoddos Alam Udasin (1948-2022), Baul Abdur Rahman, Baul Khoda Box (1928-1990), and Baul Shah Abdul Karim (1916-2009). Although these compositions are rooted in the Baul folk tradition, this article demonstrates how they can be applied to leadership development in North American creative organisations. By outlining the Bauls’ guru–disciple model and by integrating my own ethnographic research with Baul communities, the article underscores how Baul spirituality resonates with modern calls for workplace compassion, purpose, and ethical consciousness.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.041 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".