Personal development and religion in the workplace in Slovakia: from life meaning to religious selves

ABSTRACT

A growing number of studies on religion and spirituality in the workplace point towards religious functions of work and the importance of spirituality for managing employees. Yet, religion remains a blind spot for the sociology of personal development in the workplace. Based on two years of qualitative research on Slovak employees, CEOs and other professionals, this article explores how work engagement via personal development narratives is a source of meaningfulness in the respondents’ lives to the point that their relation to work has become sacralised. Moreover, personal development at work implies the mobilisation of religious selves, either theistic or holistic. The study thus highlights the role of religion in the context of work while shedding light on transformations of religion in the capitalist context.

KEYWORDS:

• Lived religion
• alternative spirituality
• new spirit of capitalism
• re-enchantment

Introduction

Personal development has become a central element of contemporary management (Birknerová et al. 2022; Brunel 2008; Rievajová, Stané, and Stanek 2016; Salman 2021; Stevens 2011; 2012). To develop themselves and improve their well-being, individuals are encouraged to read books (Marquis 2014), particularly self-help books (McGee 2005), and participate in different psychological and health procedures (Karbovnik 2019). Personal development can also be understood as a social value to express at work. From the point of view of the sociology of religion, this article asks what could be considered as religious in these expressions. Religion has remained a blind spot for the sociology of personal development at work so far. To answer the research question, it focuses on a case study of mostly high – and middle-skilled workers in Slovakia, a central-European country with a history under the communist regime until 1989. This country represents an interesting example of a European country with developed capitalism and still-dominant Christianity.

In Slovakia, Christianity has historically played an important role in defining the national identity (Tížik 2011). Over 70% of Slovaks declared to be a member of a Christian church, mostly Catholic in 2011 (Tížik 2011). This number was slightly reduced in 2021 (Tížik 2022). At the same time, around 25% of Slovaks considered themselves as having no religious affiliation and 4.5% identified as atheists. According to Tížik (2022), this relative low number of atheists is biased due to the social pressure to believe in God. Nevertheless, as in other European countries, the Slovak religious sphere has become plural (Podolinská, Krivý, and Bahna 2013). Especially in urban settings, alternative spiritualities¹ have developed in recent years via the New Age, astrology, female spirituality, neobuddhism, neopaganism, neoshamanism, neohinduism (Bužeková 2012; Deák 2010; Jerotijević and Hagovská 2020; Macháčková and Dojčár 2002; Nádská 2014). Podolinská, Krivý, and Bahna (2013, 239) also claim that non-Christian religious ideas have spread among a numerically significant minority.

This article retains the definition of religion as a concept that implies three levels (Gauthier 2017; 2020). On the macro-level, religion is understood as ‘the religious’. Its understanding requires functional approaches. Inspired by Durkheim, Gauthier defines it as follows:

Religion is tied to social functions of foundation, legitimation, naturalisation, totalisation, integration, production, and reproduction of social structures, imaginaries, and identities in a rapport with an invisible realm on the one hand, and the inviolable core of shared values on the other. (Gauthier 2020, 14)

In this way, we can speak about human rights as religion, the market as religion, political religion, secular religion and so on since they integrate individuals and ensure social cohesion. The individuals as a group are then collectively related to an invisible realm or, as Gauthier points out in another article on this topic (2017, 178), an alterity, infinity, eternity and the sacred. To work with this highly charged concept of the sacred, I propose to understand it following Husser, for whom the concept designates a specific type of shared experience (2017, 53–54), not the object of experience.

On the meso-level, religion(s) exist as autonomised and institutionalised religious forms such as Christianity, Islam, and animism. The category of religion on this level also includes holistic spiritualities as ‘institutionalised forms of highly personalised religion’ in a more anthropological way (Gauthier 2020, 24; see also Kapusta and Marie Kostićová 2021). This type of religion can best be analysed with a substantial definition of religion which focuses on the religious content including gods, worship, prayers (Weber 1963). Religion on this meso-level has progressively disconnected from other social spheres and is opposed to the secular.²

On the micro-level, the concept of religion designs individual religiosity in everyday life (Gauthier 2020). Meredith McGuire talks about a ‘lived religion’ (2008), a religion-as-lived that is practical and pragmatic. Gauthier (2020) conceives this individually experienced religion as embedded in other personal meanings and practices and developing both outside and inside religious organisations. Religion on this micro-level is not differentiated from spirituality. Such an epistemological position understands spirituality as a ‘trendy’ concept (Gauthier and Perreault 2008, 14–15) of which the use does not solve the critical evaluation addressed to the term of religion. Both concepts of spirituality and religion have been historically used as emic concepts and originated in the Western and Christian contexts (Obadia 2013; Vincett and Woodhead 2009).³

The article also uses the theoretical force of the concept of re-enchantment to grasp the transformations of contemporary religion. Re-enchantment, an undergoing process that does not follow any previous disenchantment, goes beyond the religious-secular divide (Poveda 2021). It designs the re-articulation of religion in the context of new sensibilities of the ‘porous’ self (Taylor 2007, 27) to different powers interacting in the world, in contrast to a Weberian rationalisation of the world (1963). The concept is also adapted to a study of religion under capitalism since the seminal work of Weber (2003) on the elective affinity between Calvinism and capitalism in the 17th century. Work was transformed into a vocation and became a central piece of the Protestant life ethic of self-control in the quest for salvation after death. This spirit enabled capitalism to rise. However, Christian justification of work as a calling has progressively disappeared from the capitalist endeavour (Berg, Grant, and Johnson 2010).

The research question cannot be unfolded without digging into the issue of religion in the workplace which has had more scholarly attention in recent years. Some researchers (Blair-Loy 2004; Kunda 1992) have addressed transformations of work using the religious language of ‘rituals’, ‘devotion’ and ‘transcendence’ to refer to emotional commitment, community making, life meaning and the search for ‘a secure connection to something outside ourselves’ at work (Blair-Loy 2004, 288). However, the use of religious references was not thoroughly analysed until the book Work Pray Code (2022) by the American sociologist Chen. Based on ethnographic research, Chen demonstrates how in Silicon Valley companies work has replaced religion. Instead of religious traditions, work proposes a place of belonging and collective identity via community-bonding activities for the workers who spend a huge amount of time working. By exercising power over individuals, work is also a source of meaning and this-worldly purpose: ‘Today, companies are not just economic institutions. They’ve become meaning-making institutions that offer a gospel of fulfilment and divine purpose in a capitalist cosmos.’ (Chen 2022, 10–11) Meaning should be understood as fulfilment of finding oneself: ‘[w]ork has become a spiritual practice that inspires religious fervour. People are not “selling their souls” at work. Rather, work is where they find their souls’ (2022, 4). While arguing that work is replacing religion, Chen suggests that work has turned into ‘the religion of work’ (2022, 26) because it is sacralised. Work is set aside and is an object of devotion and faith. In Chen's work, two conceptions of religion are mobilised. Throughout her book, she makes it clear that the status of religion is reserved only for institutional religions such as Christianity or Buddhism. At the same time, when she talks about the religion of work, she implies that work is sacred in the Durkheimian way. From the perspective adopted in this article, her analysis of the sacred corresponds to religion on the macro level.

On the meso-level of institutionalised forms of religion, researchers focus on different forms of discrimination due to belonging to Islam (Carcillo and Valfort 2018; Gaillard, Galindo, and Honoré 2022; Maillard 2017; Renaux-Personnic and Colonna 2018; Vickers 2016). Simultaneously, a growing number of studies examine how entrepreneurs use Christianity, Islam or Buddhism to encourage their capitalist endeavour (de Brémond d’Ars 2013; Köllner 2013; Luca and Madinier 2016). Similarly, researchers have analysed how alternative spiritualties in the workplace are mobilised to enforce employees’ well-being and productivity (Aupers and Houtman 2010; Baykal 2020; Bovbjerg 2010; Chen 2022).

The interconnection of personal development and religion at work is mostly tackled on the micro-level of lived religion. Disconnecting religion and spirituality and highlighting the blurring of borders between personal and public/professional life, numerous researchers in religious studies and management studies explore spirituality at work (Ashforth and Pratt 2010; Ashmos and Duchon 2000; Aupers and Houtman 2010; Bell and Taylor 2003; Chen 2022; Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2010; Gog 2020; Heelas 1992; Izoard-Allaux, Christians, and Lesch 2018; Lambert 2009; LoRusso 2017; McKee, Mills, and Driscoll 2008; Pfeffer 2010). They associate spirituality with the self and meaning, authenticity, happiness, interconnection and transcendence/sacred. Companies try to make work ‘more meaningful’ (Chen 2022, 223). Work has thus become sacred because it is an important source for existential concerns:

Existential questions about the purpose of life and suffering are translated into technical questions of self and organizational management. As a result, this discourse suggests we can achieve fulfilment by means of work rather than in spite of it. (Bell and Taylor 2003, 332)

Work provides purpose and fulfilment and a place to enhance the employee's inner self. Bell and Taylor consider the promotion of spirituality at work as a manoeuvre to transform work into a ‘secularised vocation’ (2003, 335) with an immanent purpose and without God and salvation after death. Chen talks about the ‘spirituality of authentic selfhood’ through which employees discover, connect and grow their ‘soul’, that is, the sacred self (2022, 91–100). While some authors (Ashforth and Pratt 2010; Ashmos and Duchon 2000; Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2010; McKee, Mills, and Driscoll 2008; Pfeffer 2010) advocate for spirituality at work, Bell and Taylor highlight how the elevation of the meaning of work masks unequal hierarchical relations and labour exploitation (Bell and Taylor 2003; see also LoRusso 2017).

This article does not aim to be an exhaustive analysis of the intersection of personal development and religion at work in Slovakia. Instead, it proposes to study several results arguing about the religious character of the phenomena, mostly on the meso – and micro-level of religion. To analyse this religious character, the article will be structured as follows: the first section portrays the economic situation in Slovakia and the contemporary labour market, before moving to the methodological section. The subsequent two sections will focus on the analysis of work as a life-meaningful practice of personal development. Special attention will then be given to work-related personal development that enhances the religious self of workers.

The local variant of capitalism in Slovakia and the contemporary labour market

Slovakia is a former socialist country with a neoliberal and transnational capitalist economy (Bohle and Greskovits 2012). As in other Central European countries, the post-communist transformation to a neoliberal market economy, encouraged by EU membership, has been completed. These countries have adapted to Western standards of capitalism (e.g., Dunn 2004). The current situation can be described as a stabilisation of a ‘dependent variant’ of financial capitalism (Gal and Schmidt 2017) in which the economy is dependent on foreign investment, technology and markets. In a continuous state of catching up (Gal and Schmidt 2017), local economies are oriented on exports and manufacturing (Bohle and Greskovits 2012). Political actors actively have attracted foreign investors through tax reforms and diverse incentives while maintaining more or less deficient welfare states.

This article focuses on the capitalist justification in the form of the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ (Boltanski and Chiappelo 1999) animating different capitalist practices. Studying managerial literature, Boltanski and Chiappelo show that after a period of hierarchical structures, formal authority and planning between the 1930s and 60s, management integrated criticism, including the artistic type. The organisation of work has become more flexible and project-oriented. Flexibility together with multitasking abilities are also expected from individuals. Moreover, workers should be passionate about their work, driven by intrinsic motivation, and find self-fulfilment at work. Increasingly, they are required to engage in self-development revolving around interpersonal skills. Only with such a type of engagement can they take advantage of the autonomy offered at work. These changes reflect a dominant capitalist value system that promotes flexibility, adaptability, activity, autonomy and self-development.

As demonstrated above, the new spirit of capitalism manifests at work.⁴ As a part of the European Union for twenty years and a member of the Eurozone since 2009, Slovakia also joined the globalised capitalist labour market (Bednárik 2018; Bohle and Greskovits 2012; Rievajová, Stané, and Stanek 2016; Štefánik 2018).⁵ Due to globalisation, technological advances, deregulation and union decline, the contemporary labour market is characterised by the growth of unemployment and job precariousness (Bednárik 2018; Kalleberg 2011; Rievajová, Stané, and Stanek 2016; Riutort 2019; Stevens 2011; 2012). More opportunities for entrepreneurship are coupled with more people participating in paid employment creating double-earning families and putting pressure on work-life balance.

Employees are also supposed to be involved in their work more than ever (Kalleberg 2011; Linhart 2015; Pagis 2021) as work is more demanding regarding time and energy. At the same time, work has become a central element for identity (Beck 2001, 268; Kalleberg 2011; Méda and Venramin 2013: 66; Riutort 2019) and a source of happiness, self-realisation and personal development (Berg, Grant, and Johnson 2010; Boltanski and Chiappelo 1999; Kalleberg 2011; Linhart 2015; Pagis 2021; Salman 2021), especially for upper classes (Méda and Venramin 2013).⁶

The emphasis on personal development explains the growing popularity of personal development practices such as coaching⁷ at work since the 1980s (Brunel 2008; Salman 2021; Stevens 2011; 2012), including in Slovakia for the last decade (Birknerová et al. 2022; Rievajová, Stané, and Stanek 2016).⁸ These forms of training in interpersonal and cognitive skills can be seen as a response to an individual demand in the face of work-related problems (Salman 2021; Stevens 2011; 2012). At the same time, they meet managerial expectations aiming at workers’ engagement and the company's profits. Brunel (2008) considers this trend positively as an expression of human needs for autonomy and self-realisation. For Linhart (2015), they are part of the growing over-humanisation of work in which managers disqualify professional skills and expertise in favour of intra – and intersubjective skills (cf. Boltanski and Chiappelo 1999). This negation of employees as professionals makes them vulnerable and miserable at work.

These changes may seem contradictory. Moreover, they do not concern all workers in the same way. These divergences can find their rationale in the theoretical framework that highlights the growing gap between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ jobs (Kalleberg 2011). According to this theory, high-skilled workers and good jobs are invested in ‘high-performance’ work organisations active mostly in knowledge-intensive industries. Workers are paid high earnings with a possibility of further increases. They have more control over their work (tasks and time), receive more training and participate in decision-making. These workers are also increasingly satisfied with their job, finding it meaningful, even though they are more likely to experience overwork. Work intensity is not perceived negatively because work is the source of meaning, identity and pleasure. In companies with ‘low-road strategies’, workers are considered as ‘costs to be minimised’: jobs are subcontracted, wages are stagnating or have been reduced. Workers have less or no autonomy over their work, are invested with less training and are not involved in the company's decisions. They experience an imposed drop in working hours. They are thus less satisfied with their jobs.

The following explorations into the Slovakian case study illustrate the connection between religion at work and the new spirit of capitalism and labour market transformations with their joined emphasis on personal development. They focus on those in good jobs.

Methodology

This analysis is based on the data from a two-year project about the personal development of Slovak employees from 2020 to 2022. To find respondents, I contacted by email twenty companies from Bratislava⁹ that mentioned personal development and wellbeing of employees in their job advertisements and websites. I requested to do research on ‘personal development and well-being at work’. Two companies with distinctive organisational structures and cultures responded positively. One was a small company with mostly high – and middle-skilled professionals and the other was a big corporate company. Both companies’ economic activities are to do with the service sector. The small company did not organise employee training. The corporate had a developed training structure and organised training workshops and seminars on personal development.¹⁰ Participants were recruited through the company's officials, a top-rank manager and a human resources manager charged with staff training and development. These officials put me in contact with the employees they selected, twenty-three in total. Two of the selected employees lived in other parts of Slovakia. To access the corporate employees, a non-disclosure contract had to be signed before research could begin.

In addition to these employees, I interviewed six top managers and self-employed professionals who were approached via a network of persons interested in personal development with a ‘spiritual dimension’. These were mostly professionals living in Bratislava, but one of them lived in the Czech Republic. An additional interview was conducted with a self-employed mentor based in Bratislava who was contacted via a personal acquittance.

The participants were sixteen females and fourteen males, ranging in age from 23 to 60. Most of them had a university education in comparison to 23% of the inhabitants of Bratislava and 18% in the rest of the country in 2021.¹¹ Two-thirds earned more than 2200 euros per month while the average salary was 1211 euros in 2021.¹² Fifteen of them were CEOs, top managers or other highly-ranked professionals. Ten of them occupied middle-level occupations. Five of them were lower rank employees. These indicators pointed to the position of considerable authority and privileged workplace identities. They belonged to the middle and upper classes. All participants were white.

Even though I relocated to Slovakia from January to July 2021, most interviews were either video discussions on the platform MS Teams, or over the phone because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Interviewees were usually at home, or in some cases alone in the office. The pandemic limited the extent of on-site ethnographic research¹³ but it enabled access to busy professionals due to the flexibility of the tools (interviews took place during working hours). Respondents were also familiar with mediated communication. This form of communication even seemed to make them comfortable and open to discussing private issues. Some online interviews were complemented by follow-up personal meetings.

The interviews were semi-structured and in-depth, allowing the participants to make sense of their work environment concerning the value of personal development. They were asked about their professional relationships, their relationship with work and the place of work in their lives. An important part of the interview was dedicated to personal development activities and the relationship of personal development to professional life. Religious belonging or attendance of institutional religion was not discussed unless respondents brought it up. Since I was vigilant of my interviews’ working schedules, interviews were set to last one hour. This was not always followed if interviewees were available and willing to talk longer. Half of the interviews were longer, up to three hours and a half. Pseudonyms are used throughout the article and I do not mention the company they were from to anonymise interviewees.

Personal development and religion via life meaning-full work

Respondents often saw work as a means to personal development with multiple expressions ranging from becoming an expert and career advancement to growing self-esteem and self-realisation. This conception of work corresponded to current management discourses and labour market pressures (Berg, Grant, and Johnson 2010; Boltanski and Chiappelo 1999; Kalleberg 2011; Linhart 2015; Méda and Venramin 2013; Pagis 2021; Salman 2021). In some of its conceptualisation, it also represented the first significant interconnection between personal development and religion at work since it may have been associated with the meaningfulness of work and life. For Ms Pažická, in a middle-level position in her thirties, work was a place for self-development for her and her colleagues thanks to highly intensive week-long projects she was entirely in charge of:

ZB: and when you said that one of those motivators is the meaning of what you do, can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Ms P: Um, the meaning of what I do is in the context that … we are approaching things in a new way with this new approach that we have currently adopted as [a company] […] Each of the participants in that journey of ours has to have a conversation with the client, like you’re having a conversation with me, and they’re really interested in it because these are their products, these are their [company's] kids which they think they’re the best, perfect, and they suddenly get in touch with the client: ‘Oh my god, the client said this to me and I didn't realise it all these years’, so I see the added value there, we open people's eyes and they see what the reality is and then they tend to do better and we actually walk them through the process of how to do better. […] And we actually design it, prototype it and at the end of that week we test it on clients and again, the person sees the sense of his work, whether people like it or not. […] So that's the meaning that I see that people are excited about it and that it's bearing fruit.

Ms Pažická felt useful at work as she emphasised the production of new services and an interest in clients as consumers. This feeling can be associated with the instrumental dimension of work (Méda and Vendramin 2013). Moreover, as an occupant of a middle-skilled position, she enjoyed a good deal of autonomy and participated in innovations and her colleagues’ pleasure, development and meaning-making. This encouraged her self-esteem, backed by bonuses and fringe benefits. Other forms of personal development were crucial in this process of self-development since she could mobilise different skills as a salesperson and the communicational skills of a moderator in these projects. Despite periodical overwork, she was highly satisfied with her work (cf. Kalleberg 2011).

However, she did not attribute to work the meaning of life since she insisted on other life priorities such as her family and personal relationships. This was not always the case. Several years before the interview, her then-boyfriend gave her a nickname associating the company's name with her first name. Work had been primordial for her identity and life. Since then, she reconsidered the place of work in her life. Her life meaning encompassed work, but it was not governed by it. She attributed it to destiny in terms of ‘karma’ and emotional, cognitive and communicational development at every level of her life via work, reading books, and following seminars and podcasts. Work was thus only a part of her ‘itinerary of meaning’ (Lemieux 2003). Lemieux defines the itinerary of meaning as a subjective life trajectory in which individuals give meaning to their lives. Ms Pažická constructed her identity and life meaning via her personal life journey using different resources: work, family, friends, destiny and personal development.

For some of the interviewees, mostly high-skilled professionals in good jobs (Kalleberg 2011) as managers, CEOs and self-employed, work represented a central means to personal development in terms of self-realisation in their lives. Work was meaningful because it was life-fulfilling. This life fulfilment could be encouraged by different practices of personal development. Ms Olšovká, a senior manager in her forties, used coaching sessions ‘as a form of individual development’ that led her to consider work in a more encompassing way:

Ms O: [D]efinitely it's so inclusive, there's personal stuff, but there's also work stuff. I mean, primarily it's always been about work, but you can't. One lives in one's ecosystem and if one doesn't have that balance, one can't be sustainably productive and happy. I want to be happy, both in my personal and professional life.

Thanks to coaching sessions, Ms Olšovská integrated her professional and personal life as she understood that professional happiness went hand in hand with personal happiness. This interrelation was also obvious in the example she gave. After the birth of her child, she hesitated to devote herself to charity activities within her professional tasks. A consultation with her coach made her clarify her life priorities and she decided to engage in such activities: ‘I was thrilled to work with foundations […] It was a great school of life. […] Obviously, it represents 0.002% [of my earnings], but two Roma college graduates got the job’.¹⁴ Spending less time with her children and family was rewarded by work-related self-esteem and fulfilment via valuable life experience and the social usefulness of her work. This experience also points out the blending between personal and professional life where non-work domains become a less important source for existential search (Bell and Taylor 2003, 337). At the same time, coaching helped her to handle a work-life balance question.

In the case of M. Jankovský, a former top manager in international companies and a current industry mentor in his sixties, personal development at work also contributed to life meaningfulness. As he told me at the end of our interview, he considered his professional engagement as a way ‘to have a fulfilling life and the sentiment of usefulness besides my grandchildren’. He put the meaningfulness of his work in his life at the same level as his family. Work used to have even more totalising power in his life in previous years because he shared with me his experience with burnout twenty years ago and his regret due to spending so much time away from his family. Work was a source of life-meaning, not God, even though M. Jankovský believed in God. This religious belief was compartmentalised to the moral domain of doing the right thing.

This life meaning of work was connected to personal development. When he was a top manager, he followed an expensive plan of personal development with coaches to improve his leadership: to work on ‘self-development’, ‘weaknesses’ and ‘problems of the team’. Since his current work consisted in advising a Slovak CEO, he had an opportunity to make this CEO develop on the professional and personal levels and to contribute to the success of the company.

Mr J: You hire a mentor when you’re mentally prepared for the counterarguments and ready [and] ‘open-minded’ [in English] to accept them, the other half [of success] is then the mentor himself. […] [A]s a mentor I take on responsibility for your development as a leader, for your personal development and your success.

Besides developing others, he could also self-realise at work since he worked in a company where its products corresponded to his ecological worldview: ‘I wouldn't work for anybody. This company has an ethos which is the ethos of the future, of this planet and people around’. The meaningfulness of his work was secured by personal identification with the company. He could be himself at work, respecting the value of authenticity.

Similarly, for Ms Kusá, a top manager in her fifties, work was central to her life-meaning via personal development of herself and her subordinates.

Ms K: I enjoy my work very much, even though sometimes I say to myself that this gets on my nerves. [smile] I enjoy pushing people … personally, mentally … and discovering something new in this work, because it is not as monotonous as a machine, I don't do one part all the time … but these people change over time as well, you get very excited about somebody, a manager, but whatever, even a person at a branch, just these people grow career-wise, they change in front of you, they grow personality-wise, not even the career, like the personality. […] … because it makes me happy, because I can discover new things. I can help others develop, and I can see them change and succeed. […] It's fulfilling.

Despite pressure and stress, work was a source of Ms Kusá's happiness and meaning due to its intellectually challenging character and the possibility to develop her subordinates. She could self-realise at work as it was fulfilling. Her itinerary of meaning was hugely inspired by work. This could also be induced from the whole narrative about work in her life: personal and professional life were blurring and she dedicated a lot of her spare time to personal development activities to be a better leader. Her own hierarchical position in this process remained a blind spot in her reflections (cf. Bell and Taylor 2003).

Several respondents valorised work as an opportunity for self-realisation. Self-fulfilment at work was a central source of life meaning in their autobiographical narrative, which transforms work into a calling (Bell and Taylor 2003; Berg, Grant, and Johnson 2010; Chen 2022; Weber 2003). However, the origin of this calling is work itself, not God. Chen (2022) calls it the sacralisation of work. Work is a place of lived sacred experience since it provides one of the main sources of a meaningful life. In this sense, work as an activity creating life-meaning is ‘secularised vocation’ without God, aiming for immanent salvation, for Bell and Taylor (2003:, 335). Others qualify it as spiritual (Chen 2022; McKee, Mills, and Driscoll 2008; Pfeffer 2010). Work is not only a part of an individual itinerary of meaning, but it is a ‘spiritual journey’ in itself for Chen (2022:, 118). According to the definition adopted in this article, this life-meaning-making quality of work sacralises work and makes it religious. For some workers, work is the main religious source of meaning.

The widespread discourse about the importance of personal development at work associated with life meaning can also be approached with collectively shared structures of plausibility defined by Berger (1967). A structure of plausibility is a socio-cultural system of meaning that orders human experience in the world and shows how to interpret this experience. It provides meaning to the world and makes it plausible. For Berger, the structure of plausibility is religious if it is associated with institutional religion. In that case, it provides a ‘sacred canopy’, a sacred frame of reference. From the perspective adopted here, personal development at work is religious for some respondents because it gives them a collective and totalising narrative of life meaning with the sacred universe of work. In this sacralised and totalising conception of work, the personal life of the worker is pushed even more into the professional realm, encouraging over-humanisation at work (Linhart 2015).

The religious in personal development at work is about the sacralisation of work in connection to the life meaning-making discourse of personal development. Personal development at work in Slovakia thus participates, in some cases, in re-enchantment.

The process of self-development and self-realisation at work also implies specific conceptions of the self. For Berger, the sacred canopy associates the individual with transcendence (1967: 54), i.e., God. Does it mean that God is absent from personal development at work in Slovakia? And what about other forms of alterity? The following section will develop this issue of alterity by analysing the religious character of the selves involved at work.

Religious selves in personal development at work

Personal development at work was at the centre of its meaningfulness. For some, it was also connected to self-realisation. Personal development at work thus mobilised the individual self. I argue that this self was sometimes religious.

Since a lot of Slovakians declare to be Christian, it was not surprising that the self developing at work was several times Christian and revolved around the relationship with God. Unlike M. Jakonvský, M. Vrábel, a senior manager in his thirties, spoke about God while talking about his personal development, including at work. Several years ago, he was looking for a job and had three job interviews among which was one in a huge company where he did not want to go.

Mr V: And I succeeded in the job interview at [a huge international company]. And I say, ‘You’re certainly kidding me … ' […] It was only after that that I understood why I had to come there. To really learn that I can't behave the way I was behaving before … […] You really have to be careful how you communicate it in a good way so you don't hurt those people, so that they’ll accept your feedback […] But I’m extremely grateful for that experience, at least, of learning a different way of communicating, of listening. […] [That's] a practical application of God in my life.

Thanks to God, who decided which job interview would be successful, M. Vrábel gained a job that proved to be formative for his personal development. He learned new managerial communicational skills, improving his employability. Personal development and belief in God were not in contradiction. In this continuous process of self-development, work could be exercised both to celebrate God and the self, contrary to Bovbjerg’s (2010) argument about the mutual exclusion of these two approaches. He also improved his employability

Nevertheless, another type of the self, different from the theistic self, was more likely to come into play, being the authentic self, touched on in the example of M. Jankovský. M. Belluš, a top manager in his forties, evoked authenticity in his decision-making at work. To be authentic, he decided to ‘coach himself’ instead of being coached. He resorted regularly to tarot cards that worked as a mirror for his innermost being and enabled him to take any kind of authentic decision necessary to a happy professional and personal life. Authenticity was about discovering and expressing the true self to be happy, productive and efficient at work.

Ms Černíková, a CEO in her forties, was also explicit about the authentic self at work when she explained changes she initiated in the company's communication: ‘I started to communicate more openly, by not having a problem talking about my injuries and being more authentic, so I feel that we started such open communication in the company’. As she did not hesitate to talk about her difficulties growing up, she expected the same from employees. A personal value that emphasises the subject (Taylor 2007), authenticity was presented as a communicational skill that was a prerequisite for good communication among colleagues. It implied open-mindedness, expressing opinions and sharing personal experiences in the hierarchical salaried work environment. This inequality remained a blind spot of Ms Černíková's reflection (cf. Bell and Taylor 2003).

To be more authentic in these situations, Ms. Černíková resorted to practices of alternative spirituality, including female spirituality, New Age seminars, mindfulness meditation and Theta therapy. These activities helped her in self-development in terms of ‘being aware’, doing ‘conscious work on my behaviour patterns’ and to ‘live here and now’. She was thus ‘spiritual’ even at work.¹⁵

M. Kopecký, a senior manager in his forties, connected personal development at work and beyond with different physical exercises in which he paid attention to his mindset:

Mr K: This is the best way to do it [yoga], so that it also has that meditative effect, not just an exercise effect, so that it is connected. Yoga actually means a connection, the mind–body connection, etc. So … I was interested not only in the fact that I am going to do exercise now, but also in things that are a little bit around that [exercise], so that it has some meditation-exercise effect, not only exercise. […] [In this way, one] has a chance to achieve that, to just throw away some weight, some things that are running around in one's mind, so one has a chance if one throws them behind one's head, and to feel differently, differently refreshed after that hour and a half [of exercise], […] to cut oneself off, but also to consolidate oneself in some way, to balance oneself.

While the physical part of the exercise was important for M. Kopecký, the meditation mindset was even more crucial. Thanks to it, he could cut off work and relax. Consequently, he said he was efficient during working hours and focused only on work. It also enabled him to overcome the duality of body and mind. He developed the intra-connected self that connected body and mind. Later on, he applied the same approach to his current physical exercise that is more focused on his health issues. He called it ‘meditation in movement’ that was helping his back and enabled him to be ‘mindful’.

The development of the authentic self at work was sometimes associated with the self being connected to the outside. For Ms Kusá, diverse personal development activities enabled her to work on the ‘huge amount of her energy inside her’. Consequently, she dealt differently with work issues as she was able to control the energy and attack the issue the next day in a more rational way. She thus was able to shape her authentic self. At the same time, this self was connected to the wider environment since she used crystals at her office and on her wrist to ‘clean energies’ around her. These crystals testified about her conception of the self being interconnected with the surrounding energy.

The respondents discover and express their true, more aware, intra-connected selves and selves connected to the world at work. According to Chen, the cultivation of the intra-connected self at work represents ‘spirituality of authentic selfhood’ (2022, 91). Employees find their deepest self, their ‘souls’, at work. From the point of view of the sociology of religion, the intra – and extra-connected selves can be analysed as sacred because they represent holistic selves. The self is holistic thanks to the sacredness of the connection between the self and other parts of the individual or the universe (Beckford 1984). Holism can also be about the interconnection and the unity that it creates (Vincett and Woodhead 2009) within the individual or with the social environment (Sointu and Woodhead 2008). The self has become ‘porous’ (Taylor 2007) to intra – and extra-subjective powers in a new way.

This focus on the theistic and holistic self represents another aspect that contributes to the over-emphasis on the individual's personal life at work. This can be called workers’ over-humanisation, to use Linhart's words (2015).

Besides being theistic and holistic, these selves also mobilised religious resources of Christianity and alternative spirituality. Consequently, respondents draw on religious selves at work on the micro – and meso-level of religion. Personal development discourse and practices at work thus contribute to re-enchantment via these religious selves and their new interactions with the world (cf. Poveda 2021).

Conclusion

Religion in Slovakia is not confined to Christian Churches. Religion is also at work. Considering different aspects of personal development related to the work environment, this paper demonstrates that work can be sacralised as a life-meaning activity focused on personal development for Slovak respondents. Work is a central component of their itinerary of meaning. These respondents also mobilise different religious resources in search of personal development at work, including Christianity and alternative spirituality. Finally, they rely on and develop lived religion at work as they resort to religious selves, related to God or the holistic self. Religion at work is thus present on the macro-, meso – and micro-levels.

By embodying personal development discourse and activities at work, respondents adopted the new spirit of capitalism with its accent on personal development and social skills. Due to this connection between the injunction to develop at work and religion, I argue that the new spirit of capitalism is potentially religious and contributes to re-enchantment as work can be vocation and new sensibilities of the self are encouraged. However, this re-enchantment concerns especially the middle – and upper classes to whose privileges and values it is adapted. Underscoring the material dimension of work, personal development at work revolves around individual communicational and cognitive skills and psychosocial values of self-development and authenticity (cf. Skeggs 2004). Contrary to the working-class self, this self can also be exchanged and capitalised on. It is not then surprising that the above-mentioned expressions of personal development at work were formulated by skilled workers.

For Chen (2022), the emphasis on spirituality of the authentic self at work means that spirituality is turned into productive labour in Silicon Valley companies. This process is congruent with over-humanisation described by Linhart (2015). As the example of Slovak respondents showed, the push of the personal into the professional realm goes as far as mobilising religion and religiosity at work. This transformation of religion at work deepens the over-humanisation of the workplace. Individuals are supposed to base their life meaning on work and bring together their religious self and personal development in unequal capitalist power relationships and the company's economic goals centred on efficiency and profit. However, personal development at work also helps individuals to deal with overwork, handle work-life balance, endure pressure and stress and provides them with new skills necessary in the competitive labour market. Linking personal development and religion then encourages self-realisation and integration of diverse individual aspects in professional life.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the helpful remarks from the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This publication is an outcome of the ERC CZ project no. LL2006 (‘ReEnchEu’), funded by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and led by Dr. Alessandro Testa at the Department of Sociological Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague.

Notes on contributors

Zuzana Bártová

Zuzana Bártová is a senior lecturer of sociology at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. She gained her PhD in the study of religion at the University of Strasbourg (2019). Her research focuses on the qualitative sociological study of contemporary Buddhism in Europe and personal development at work, including the impact of neoliberalism and consumer culture on religion and the links between religion and social class.

Notes

1 Alternative spiritualities include body-mind-spirit practices, New Age, paganism and theistic spiritualities (Vincett and Woodhead 2009).

2 I avoid the dichotomy of religious and secular in my analysis following Gauthier (2020). Based on the theory of social differentiation between religion and the rest of the society, the dichotomy is normative and ideological corresponding to the modern fight against religion.

3 However, if spirituality does not replace the scientific concept of religion, it remains a relevant term to be taken into consideration because it is widely used (Streib and Klein 2016).

4 This article understands work as a modern category that developed gradually from 16th and 17th centuries onwards to embrace diverse activities of production and exchange (Méda and Vendramin 2013: 14-17).

5 Contrary to other European Union countries, the industrial sector represents 30% of the labour market (Hrnčiar and Rievajová 2020) while the service sector stands for 62% (Bunčák et al. 2013). Slovakia also suffers from a substantial brain drain (Bednárik 2018; Bunčák et al. 2013).

6 A strong working identity is also encouraged by the absence of family obligations (Méda and Venramin 2013: 66).

7 Coaching is a process of guiding people and helping them to develop their potential and skills, mostly in professional life (Salman 2021, 9).

8 These are practices such as the transactional analysis, neuro-linguistic programming, the enneagram personality test, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, emotional intelligence, mindfulness and so on. Some of these practices have explicit religious origins in New Age and Buddhism (Chen 2022; Stevens 2011).

9 Bratislava is the capital and the dominant centre of Slovakia. There is substantial difference between Bratislava and other parts of Slovakia in terms of educated population, economic, social and cultural development and infrastructure (Gajdoš 2013).

10 Additional information could lead to the identification of companies. Because of the limited extend of ethnographic research, they are not necessary.

11 ‘Sčítanie obyvateľov, domov a bytov 2021,’ Štatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, https://www.scitanie.sk/#/. Accessed 22 June 2023.

12 The minimum wage in 2021 was 623 euros. (‘STATdat Verejná databáza údajov Public database,’ Štatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, http://statdat.statistics.sk/. Accessed 22 June 2023). Even the wage of the part-time student employee in the small company was bigger).

13 Participant observation was limited to four visits in the studied working places and one online seminar participation.

14 Roma population represents a large proportion of the lowest social class with unequal access to education in Slovakia (Bunčák et al. 2013; Gajdoš 2013).

15 According to Wilson (2014), mindfulness's roots in Buddhism can be made less overt in the process of mystification (psychologisation, scientisation, spiritualisation, whitening), but it does not mean that mindfulness meditation is not a Buddhist meditation.