Our Callings, Our Selves: Repositioning Religious and Entrepreneurial Discourses in Career Theory and Practice

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to integrate and extend career development theory by focusing on the metaphor of “calling.” In order to understand the impact of calling narratives on organizational life, I analyze how students understand and construct the meaning of work at a small Christian liberal arts college in the eastern United States. The study identified three themes in which religious and entrepreneurial discourses compete and collide: 1) the meaning of inner conviction; 2) the meaning of service, 3) the meaning of corporate. By incorporating the integrative concept of discursive positioning, this study alerts us to a more nuanced understanding of the tensions and contradictions that arise in and through calling narratives.

Keywords:

• Calling
• Career
• Career Development
• Identity
• Narrative
• Organizational Spirituality

I am sincerely grateful to Lynn M. Harter and Patrice Buzzanell and the anonymous reviewers for their supportive and challenging feedback. And I extend my deepest thanks to Jeffrey St. John and Kristin Mazzeo for many fruitful discussions and thoughtful reflections, the ideas of which reverberate herein. Portions of this manuscript were presented at the 2006 National Communication Association annual convention in San Antonio, TX and the 2005 Central Communication Association annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri.

Notes

We may also read entrepreneurialism in a wide sense as an activity that can be based in spheres other than business and that can be thought of in more general terms of symbolic market, symbolic capital, and symbolic profits (Bourdieu, 1977).

The Great Commandment can be found in the New Testament: “One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’” Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:28–30, New International Version (NIV).

Bakhtin's (1984) notion of hybridity is used in relation to his other term, dialogism, which he introduces in his study of discourse. For Bakhtin, modern subjectivity is not divided or fragmented but rather dialogic or hybrid—its multiple voices are never self-enclosed or dead to one another. They hear each other constantly, call back and forth to each other, and are reflected in one another.

In the Reformed understanding of calling, calling encompasses all forms of work, paid and unpaid, male and female, sacred and secular (Schuurman, 2004). As the results of this study attest, viewing work as calling reveals that Kirkwood's (1994) fears that spiritual talk will reify the bifurcation between the sacred/secular domains are unfounded. To be a whole person, according to these participants, is to find transcendent meaning in our work—to encounter a God who is present in the business world just as He is present in the rest of the world (Novak, 1996).

Although one must be cautious about forcing theologically simplified identifications across traditions, Arabic words with a meaning similar to “call” are indeed present in the Qur'an. For example, the word nada (to call) is used, most often in connection with individuals calling upon God and occasionally in terms of divine summons.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer A. Scott

Jennifer A. Scott is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Grove City College. This essay is dedicated to my students, who encouraged me to pursue my own calling by inspiring me to tell this story.