The spiritual organization: critical reflections on the instrumentality of workplace spirituality

Abstract

This article offers a theoretical contribution to the current debate on workplace spirituality by: (a) providing a selective critical review of scholarship, research and corporate practices which treat workplace spirituality in performative terms, that is, as a resource or means to be manipulated instrumentally and appropriated for economic ends; (b) extending Etzioni’s analysis of complex organizations and proposing a new category, the “spiritual organization”, and; (c) positing three alternative positions with respect to workplace spirituality that follow from the preceding critique. The spiritual organization can be taken to represent the development of a trajectory of social technologies that have sought, incrementally, to control the bodies, minds, emotions and souls of employees. Alternatively, it might be employed to conceptualize the way in which employees use the workplace as a site for pursuing their own spiritualities (a reverse instrumentalism). Finally, we consider the possible incommensurability of “work organization” and “spirituality” discourses.

Workplace spirituality and employee engagement

“…Workplace spirituality has been defined in many ways and as noted by Case and Gosling (2010), "is plagued by problems of definition" (p. 262). Although there is little consensus over the meaning of workplace spirituality (McKee et al 2008), it has been associated with a number of key dimensions such as meaning, purpose, and a sense of community and connection to others (Ashmos and Duchon 2000).…”

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

“…4 So while Tourish, among others (Carette and King 2005;Case and Gosling 2010) is persuasive in his suspicion of SAW and associated SLT, we suggest that what is being addressed is actually a 'straw man' of spiritual leadership as it pertains to Christian beliefs. The danger is that in highlighting the flaws in and dismissing the leadership theories arising from SAW and SLT, we risk overlooking or obfuscating the original wisdom upon which the Christian stream of such writing is supposedly based.…”

“…A second alternative to instrumentalizing spirituality raised by Case and Gosling (2010) is the view that spirituality and the workplace are incommensurate and that any intersection between them is incidental, just one other site among many where spiritual journeys may or may not be pursued. A Jesus-centred theology 11 would find this problematic because human work is deemed to be potentially reflective of God's work, comprising (i) the creation of things which have value and endure, (ii) sustaining that which already exists and (iii) redeeming that which requires healing, reconciliation and repair.…”

“…The growing literature on spiritual approaches to work (SAW) and spiritual leadership theory (SLT) (Delbecq 1999;Eisler and Montouori 2003;Freshman 1999;Fry and Cohen 2009;Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2003;WagnerMarsh and Conley 1999) has attracted criticism on a number of levels: its appropriation of spiritual approaches for instrumental purposes (Casey 2002;Bell and Taylor 2003;Zhuravleva and Jones 2006), its reduction to what Jacques Ellul calls 'technique', a limited form of economic rationality (Driscoll and Wiebe 2007), its attempt to theorize and operationalize workplace spiritually from a hypothetico-deductive standpoint (Case and Gosling 2010;Case et al 2012), the failure of leadership development to engage with non-functionalist ontologies (Lips-Wiersma and Mills 2014;Mabey 2013) and its treatment of spirituality devoid of historical and political context (Nash 2003a, b;Porth et al 2003). Perhaps the most strident and comprehensive critique comes from Tourish and Tourish (2010) who condemn the managerialist presumption underlying SAW literature.…”

�Visionaries � psychiatric wards are full of them�: Religious terms in management literature

“…Authors such as Bron (2003), Biberman and Coetzer (2005), Lips-Wiersma et al (2009), Case andGosling (2010) and Tourish (2013:59-70) have already published their critiques on workplace spirituality. Biberman and Coetzer (2005:70) mentioned the following concerns: (1) Spirituality can be used as a way to avoid or deny dealing with real organisational problems.…”