Salvation, theology and organizational practices across the centuries

Abstract

Humankind has a long history of seeking to be saved from suffering, although the understanding of just how to achieve this salvation has changed over time. Regardless of how it has been understood, throughout history the dominant understanding of salvation has been associated with how social structures and systems are organized. This article provides an historical review of the relationship between salvation and organizational practices, paying particular attention to various views of salvation within the Western Christian tradition over the past two millennia. Using a three dimensional analytical framework—the modality of salvation, the instantiation of salvation and the locus of ethical activity—we describe key changes in the meaning of salvation over time, and describe hallmark organizational practices associated with each meaning. We conclude by discussing implications of our analysis for examining relationships between organizational practices and salvation in other religious traditions, for developing a more nuanced understanding of emancipation, for developing counter-cultural approaches to management and for strengthening a ‘theological turn’ in organization and management theory.

Reconceptualizing Profit-Orientation in Management: A Karmic View on ‘Return on Investment’ Calculations

“…From the perspective of the present day, Puritan-inspired capitalism seems to have succeeded, not only in Europe and North-America (Dyck 2014;Dyck and Wiebe 2012), but globally, including in India. Connected to this, profit-orientation in management seems to constrain the scope of different management approaches in a tight ideological corset.…”

Civil Society Organizations and the Enduring Role of Religion in Promoting Democratic Engagement

“…Early research that drew on organizational theory to explain the distinct structural characteristics of congregations highlighted the primacy of belief systems in their causal models (Hinings and Foster 1973). Unique features of congregations emanating from their religious beliefs include: 1) the special authority bestowed on clergy (Dyck and Wiebe 2012); 2) the relatively stable presence of a religiously motivated volunteer base (Putnam and Campbell 2010); 3) religion's broad appeal to a diverse constituency (Warner 2005); 4) many congregations' religious impulse to partner with other community-based organizations (Ammerman 2005); and 5) resources (generated by some religious systems) for dealing with ambiguity and for balancing contestation and compromise (Wood 2002). Such research suggests that religion can contribute to democratic engagement via the structural characteristics of congregations; that is, via the moral resources of congregational leaders (Stout 2010;Wood 1994), the human resources of congregational members (Swarts 2008;Uslaner 2001) and the social resources embedded within congregations' extensive social networks (Foley et al 2001;Fulton 2011;Fulton 2016a).…”

Having Burned the Straw Man of Christian Spiritual Leadership, what can We Learn from Jesus About Leading Ethically?

“…By invoking spiritual and theological lenses, the very orthodoxy of neoliberal, capitalist organizations may be challenged. Dyck and Wiebe (2012) examine how views of salvation in Western Christianity have changed through four eras of history and how these changes are associated with variations in organizational practices. The value of this analysis, which does not presume religious allegiance nor require acceptance of the sacred scriptures in question, is that it creates the opportunity to learn from a theological perspective.…”