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.

Keywords:

• workplace spirituality
• peformativity
• anti‐positivism
• Etzioni
• spiritual organization

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism XXV, “Signs of the Future”, Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, 1–4 July 2007; Ljubljana, Slovenia. While taking sole responsibility for the finished article, the authors would like to thank Fred Bird (University of Waterloo, CA), Gerardo A. Okhuysen (University of Utah, USA), and Scott Taylor (University of Exeter, UK) for their helpful comments on a draft version of the manuscript. We would also like to thank the co‐editor in chief of JMSR, Bob Giacalone, who, in association with two other editors, Jody Fry and Marjolein Lips‐Weirsma, offered help and support in developing this article for publication.

Notes

1. By way of illustration, popular publications include: Barrett (1998) Liberating the Corporate Soul, Conger (1994) The Spirit at Work, Howard and Welbourn (2004) The Spirit at Work Phenomenon, Jones (1996) Jesus CEO, Klein and Izzo (1999) Awakening Corporate Soul, Lodahl and Powell (1999) Embodied Holiness: A Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth, Mitroff and Denton (1999a) A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, Owen (2000) The Power of the Spirit: How Organisations Transform, and Wood (2006) Business the Bible Way. There are also sites dedicated to selling spiritual tools of personal and corporate success. For example, Vincent Roazzi’s website offers a book and series of CD audio products entitled, “Spirituality of Success: How to Get Rich with Integrity”, available from http://www.spirituality ofsuccess.com/Home.aspx?tabId=50 (accessed 14 June 2007).

2. The actual membership of this interest group at the time of writing is 640; a statistic which compares favourably, for example, with the 774 members of the “Critical Management Studies” AOM interest group and is more than one‐tenth the size of the long‐established generic “Organizational Behaviour” grouping of 5816 members. Data obtained from http://www.aomonline.org/aom.asp?id=18# (accessed 27 January 2010).

3. We shall treat this scholarly community’s claims to be contributing to a “new paradigm” on face value purely on the grounds that it has emic anthropological meaning. In other words, insofar as proponents of this discourse are engaged in a set of practices that they themselves understand to be paradigmatic, then it is appropriate for interested observers, such as ourselves, to accept that nomenclature (regardless of social scientific objections that might be raised regarding this claim).

4. See Case (2004) for further details of (and references to) “paradigm wars” with organization studies.

5. “Spirituality” according to the Oxford English Dictionary first appears in the English language around the middle of the fifteenth century and refers originally to, “The body of spiritual or ecclesiastical persons” (OED online). Among the meanings that it accrued during the intervening centuries is, “[A]ttachment to or regard for things of the spirit as opposed to material or worldly interests” (OED online). The word “spiritual” has a slightly older legacy, dating from the fourteenth century and, in addition to reflecting a structural differentiation between the numinous and material, means “Of or pertaining to … the spirit or higher moral qualities, esp. as regarded in a religious aspect” (OED online). Early meanings of the term also related to “breathing” and “respiration”, semantic associations which resonate with the concept of “inspiration” in Medieval Scholasticism. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “spirituality” became associated with more worldly qualities, such as, refinement of the senses and intellect (source: http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl, accessed 27 January 2010).

6. In the interests of balance, we should note that elsewhere Fry (2005) advances a normative argument which privileges the pursuit of “well‐being” over principles of acquisition and consumerism that, he contends, results from a perversion of the Protestant work ethic in the USA. Nonetheless, it seems that the move from selfish individualism to collective well‐being is to be achieved within reformed and more socially responsible forms of capitalist corporation. Spiritual leadership still plays a central role in harnessing collective corporate energies for the purposes of enhancing overall well‐being and, indirectly, improving productivity.