Know thy God: on Simmel’s philosophy, organizational spirituality and its critique

Abstract

‘Organizational spirituality’ has been conceptualized as a resource having a capacity to sustain lasting competitive advantage and superior organizational performance. Simultaneously, some scholars have remained critical towards such a discourse, perceiving it as typical for capitalist organizations and harmful to its participants. German thinker Georg Simmel offers an interesting source of insight for this critical-spiritual conjunction. Rather than seeing organization, capitalism, science and religion as distinct social forms, he accentuates their relationship to the subjects by revealing an element of norm-defining agency that they involve. The paper discusses the consequences of such a change in the terms of the debate, especially for researchers who are themselves subjected to norm-defining agencies.

Keywords:

• organizational spirituality
• Simmel
• critical theory
• capitalism
• agency

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Peter Case and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.