Seeking the Spirit: Communication and the (Re)Development of a “Spiritual” Organization

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the results of a 10-month ethnographic case study of a Midwestern U.S. health care system's transition to an avowedly spiritual approach to organizing. Using structuration theory as our guiding framework, we identify and explore participants' meanings for “spiritual” organizing, the communicative processes through which spirituality was created and sustained, and the motives of organizational leaders for linking the spiritual with the corporate. We examine whether spirituality is used to create a system of unobtrusive control used to exploit and manipulate organizational members. We conclude that organizational leaders must balance a dialectic of inspiration and control in striving to create models of organizing that disrupt the subjugation of the spiritual in organizational life.

Keywords:

• Spirituality
• Communication
• Heath Care Organizations
• Structuration

The authors gratefully acknowledge Patrice Buzzanell, Lynn Harter, Kim Weller Gregory, Elena Strauman and their reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bethany Crandell Goodier

Bethany Crandell Goodier is an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston where she specializes in leadership and new models of organizing, particularly within the context of health care.

Eric M. Eisenberg

Eric M. Eisenberg is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida specializing in the strategic use of communication to promote positive organizational change. Data from this paper is drawn from Dr. Goodier's doctoral dissertation directed by Dr. Eisenberg.