MBA Course Knowledge Center: Spirituality and Religion in Business Organizations

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Spirituality and Religion in Business Organizations

Knowledge workers and their organizations must ultimately come to own their "value contribution" by enlarging their perception to include the full humanity of their consumers (markets) and of themselves as producers. This enlarged perception is a form of spiritual awareness.
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Spirituality in organizations is emerging as a popular thought in organizational literature. What is this concept all about? We need to find out. A beginning is made in this knol with a brief posting.

What is Spirituality

In a 1998 “All Academy Symposium”, that was addressed to the entire Academy of Management, Ian Mitroff, Professor of Management at the University of Southern California, defined spirituality as “the desire to find ultimate purpose in life, and to live accordingly”.

(Gerald F. Cavanagh,Spirituality for managers: context and critique)

http://www.stthomas.edu/CathStudies/cst/conferences/goa/papers/goodpaster.pdf
According to Thomas Bausch

“Fulfillment comes through service to a cause, an idea, a mission, or others external to ourselves; best a purpose with a transcendent character. Each of us has the right to the dignity that comes from a job with real purpose. The role of the leader is to create this purpose for the unskilled worker as well as for the highly skilled technical workers or the executives in the organization. “

Three central characteristics of organizational spirituality are: value alignment, personal spirituality, and relationship-based organizing. (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3669/is_200010/ai_n8926490/)

Wilhelm Max Wundt (1897)

Two types of metaphysical psychology: The one is materialistic and regards psychical processes as the activities of matter or of certain material complexes, such as the brain-elements. The other is spiritualistic and looks upon these processes as states and changes in an extended and therefore invisible and permanent being of a specially spiritual nature. In this case matter is thought of as made up of similar atoms of a lower order (monistic, or monado-logicial spiritualism), or the mind-atom is regarded as specifically different from matter proper (dualistic spiritualism). (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Wundt/Outlines/sec22.htm)

Literature on Spirituality in Organizations

The academic literature on spirituality in organizations has evolved since the early 1990s. Early explorations (Bullis & Glaser, 1992; Boozer & Maddox, 1992; Lee, 1991) were followed by special issues of the Journal of Organizational Change Management (Boje, 1994) and the Journal of Managerial Psychology (Ottaway, 1994).

Craigie(1999), Mitroff & Denton (1999), and Pokora (1997) deal with definitions, Craigie (1999) and Witmer (1997) deal with conceptual models, and Nadesan (1999) deals with critical analysis of spirituality. Three topics are emerging to provide points for comparing different approaches: connectedness, spiritual traditions, and valence.

The paper by James S. Sass "Characterizing organizational spirituality: An organizational communication culture approach" in Communication Studies, Fall 2000 covers the concept of spirituality in organizations in a very comprehensive manner.

Religion in Business Organizations

Religious expression by employees is legally protected in the workplace in USA by the Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on religious grounds and requires them to make "reasonable accommodations" for employees' "sincerely held beliefs."

(http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1644)

Spiritual Leadership

Spiritual Leadership involves humbling yourself and doing the tasks that no one else wants to do. In Jesus's time, the act of washing feet was to be assigned to the lowest of servants. However, at the last supper, Jesus humbled Himself and washed the disciples' feet.

Afterwards he declared, "Do you understand what I have done for you? ... You call me "Teacher' and 'Lord', and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash on another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him."