The numinosity of soul: Andre Delbecq’s legacy for MSR

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this piece is to offer a sense of Andre Delbecq as the pioneering founder of management, spirituality, and religion (MSR) as a field of scholarly inquiry. In his unique way, André, informed by his solid knowledge of organizational processes and his Christian faith, integrated spirituality into his teaching and scholarship. First I offer an overview of his early career roots which laid the foundation for this work and the impetus for his work on MSR, which defined the later years of his long and distinguished career. Then I review the context and motivations that led to his offering a seminar on Spirituality for Organizational Leadership, from which evolved what he saw as successful strategies for MSR scholarship and teaching. Next, comes an overview of his view of the fundamental role MSR should play in organizational design and culture, with an emphasis on teamwork and decision-making. Following this is an exploration of his groundbreaking work on leadership formation with a focus on the spiritual journey, discernment, and humility as an offset to hubris. Finally his thoughts concerning “Where do we go from here’ are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• Consciousness
• discernment
• leadership formation
• religion
• spiritual journey
• spirituality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. For more on Andre’s personal story that led to his underlying approach to MSR teaching, scholarship, and leadership formation, see Allen and Williams’ (2017) excellent interview, “Navigating the Study of Executive Leaders’ Spirituality: Andre Delbecq’s Journey.”

2. For more detail on the spiritual journey of leadership from the perspective of the Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Daoist, religious traditions, see Kriger and Senge (2005) and Fry and Kriger (2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louis W. Fry

Louis W. Fry, PhD is is a professor at Texas A & M University-Central Texas where he is program director of the  MS One Planet Leadership Program. Presently, he is a member of the editorial review boards of The Leadership Quarterly, a former editor of the Journal of Management Spirituality and Religion, and the editor for Information Age Publishing of a book series, Advances in Workplace Spirituality: Theory, Research, and Application. The author of two books, Maximizing the Triple Bottom Line Through Spiritual Leadership, published by Stanford University Press and Spiritual Leadership on Action: The CEL Story published by Information Age Publishing, he is the founder of the International Institute for Spiritual Leadership and a commissioned spiritual director. His present research, consulting and executive development interests are focused on maximizing the triple bottom line through spiritual leadership to co-create a conscious, flourishing world that.