Session #23: Researching the Mystical: Spiritual Research and Evaluation Criteria

Presenters: Tianyuan Yu & Chris Laszlo This video is part of The 2026 MSR Research Colloquium, The Mystical and Research: Dwelling at the Threshold of Knowing, which took place on June 11–12, 2026. This session explores how spiritual research may be defined, practiced, and evaluated beyond conventional positivist assumptions. Tianyuan Yu will introduce a spiritual research framework organized around four dimensions, using a Zen-informed spiritual research paradigm as an example. She will also discuss evaluation criteria for non-positivist spiritual research. Building on Tianyuan’s framework, Chris Laszlo will offer a complementary phenomenological approach, focusing on neurophenomenology and the explicitation interview as practical methods for eliciting rigorous first-person data. The session will include an exchange between the presenters, followed by audience reflection and discussion. Speakers' Bio: Dr. Tianyuan Yu is an Associate Professor of Management at Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. She earned her first PhD in Management from Sun Yat-sen University, China (2012) and her second PhD in Management from Saint Mary’s University, Canada (2024). Her research spans management, spirituality & religion (MSR), diversity, equity & inclusion, and management history, with a current focus on Zen-informed approaches to spiritual research paradigms, management education, and feminist spiritual leadership. She received the 2023 Fetzer Scholarship from the MSR Division of the Academy of Management (AoM) and was keynote speaker at the 2023 Atlantic Schools of Business Conference. Her paper on Zen-informed spiritual research received the 2024 MSR Best Paper Award and was runner-up for the 2024 William H. Newman Award by AoM. She serves as Guest Editor of two Special Issues of Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion and as MSR Representative-at-Large (Research). Her recent work appears in leading journals, edited volumes, and conference proceedings. Dr. Chris Laszlo is Professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University, where he researches and teaches flourishing enterprise. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Drucker School of Management of Claremont Graduate University and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Benedictine University. He is the author of Flourishing Enterprise (2014), Embedded Sustainability (2011), and Sustainable Value (2008), all from Stanford University Press. Chris is also the managing partner of Sustainable Value Partners, a sustainability strategy consulting firm he co-founded in 2002. In 2012, he was selected a “Top 100 Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business Behavior” by Trust Across AmericaTM. He was later elected Fellow of the International Academy of Management and, in 2018, Chair of the Academy of Management MSR Interest Group. Chris has led hundreds of seminars at leading business schools and published widely in peer-reviewed journals. Previously, he held executive roles at Lafarge and consulted with Deloitte Touche. He holds a PhD from the University of Paris and degrees from Columbia and Swarthmore.