Guest editorialHumanistic leadership in different cultures: defining the field by pushing boundaries Introduction Global challenges and crises including environmental degradation, distributional inequality and societal distrust point to the need to rethink business strategies as well as management theories and practices (George et al., 2016). It is becoming increasingly clear that the sole focus on instrumental values, such as wealth, profit and growth is seriously flawed (Mackey and Sisodia, 2014). There has been considerable criticism of conventional management theories that are based on the fundamental assumptions of an "economistic" paradigm (e.g., Mel e 2007; von Kimakowitz et al., 2007;Pirson and Lawrence, 2010) and view humans as driven by rational interests aimed at maximizing utility (homo economicus). Both scholars and practitioners have called for the reincorporation of humanistic values into business theories, organizations and management practice (e.g., Dierksmeier, 2011;Mackey and Sisodia, 2014). Consequently, humanistic management, as a new management paradigm, is gaining increasing attention from academia as well as the business community. Google Scholar lists over 500 research papers and books on humanistic management, and a third of them were published in the past decade.Humanistic management (HM) was first introduced by Swart (1973) to refer to "a new way to cope with old problemsmotivation, work satisfaction, morale and productivity" (p. 42) and has since gone through several stages of development. Most of the earlier definitions regarded it as "a means for both productivity and for developing human potential" (Swart, 1973). Most notably, Pfeffer (1998) made it explicit when he suggested putting people first to achieve organizational success. The more recent people-focused definition was proposed by Mel e in the early 2000s when he defined HM as "a management that emphasizes the human condition and is oriented to the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent" (Mel e, 2003, p. 79). Over the past decade, Mel e has written extensively on the topic (e.g., 2009a, b, 2013, 2016), Aceved (2012) also explored the relationship between individualistic business ethics and humanistic management.In 2009, a group of scholars established the Humanistic Management Network (HMN) [1] as a global network of scholars, policy makers and management practitioners aiming to enhance the body of knowledge and promote humanistic management practices. To provide a common understanding and foundation for the work of the HMN, von Kimakowitz et al.(2011) defined humanistic management on the basis of unconditional respect for the dignity of life and formulated three interrelated pillars which are: (1) the unconditional respect for dignity; (2) the integration of ethical reflection in managerial decision making and (3) the active and ongoing engagement with stakeholders. In the past decade, many conceptual papers have included the integrated humanistic management model (Spitzeck, 2011), the theory ...