Signs of the spirit: Critical reflections on the instrumentality of workplace spirituality
Peter Case, Bristol Business School
Jonathan Gosling, University of Exeter
To suggest that there has been a growing interest in workplace spirituality in recent years would be to court understatement. The early stirrings of attention given to the subject in the 1990s (Senge 1990, Management Education and Development 1992) has given way to a veritable flood of analysis, diagnosis and prescription on the part of organizational scholars and practitioners. Several academic journals, such as The Journal of Organizational Change Management (2003) and Leadership Quarterly (2005), for example, have dedicated special issues to the theme of spirituality and there is also a new journal - The Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion - launched in 2004, specifically tailored to what is rapidly emerging as a specialist subfield of organization and management studies. Similarly, the number of conferences and websites dedicated to workplace spirituality is proliferating. Indeed, ‘spirituality’ has even entered the heretofore relatively atheistic (or at least agnostic) confines of the Critical Management Studies (CMS) community in the guise of streams within the biannual international conference. If workplace spirituality has already become ‘critical’, what space might be left for a critical engagement with the subject matter? In short, what are scholars and practitioners who are skeptical about these developments to make of the current state of affairs and what do we read from these extant ‘signs of the spirit’ for the future of workplace relations and practices?
As two scholars with a personal and professional interest in ‘spirituality’ (acknowledging, from the outset, the semantic ambiguities of this term), we seek in this paper to outline some critical thoughts on the appropriation of matters spiritual within predominantly capitalist forms of organization. Despite what might be inferred from the burgeoning writing on spirituality, explorations of the relationship between the organization of work, religion and spiritual life is hardly new to social science. Indeed, analysis of this nexus of relationships is foundational to the social theorizing of Weber, Marx, Durkheim and Freud. It is also present, either explicitly or implicitly, in theories of post-modern social organization, such as propounded by Bauman, Beck and Giddens. Much of what passes as original contributions to the debate on spirituality appears to be written in blind ignorance of this legacy, preferring, instead, to treat spirituality in ahistorical and apolitical terms as yet another neutral resource to be harnessed and husbanded by the erstwhile custodians of organizational performance. In short, much of the contemporary literature on spirituality is narrowly utilitarian and instrumental in its intent, often concerned directly to commodify spirituality (Carrette and King 2005, Roberts 2001). For example, in a much cited paper which attempts to derive a comprehensive general theory of spiritual leadership, Louis Fry asserts:
The purpose of spiritual leadership is to create vision and value congruence across the strategic, empowered team, and individual levels and, ultimately, to foster higher levels of organizational commitment and productivity (Fry 2003: 693).
The key impetus here, as in many other works of this type, seems to be on enhancing organizational productivity by deepening the commitment of workers. There are clear unitarist echoes here of the Cultural Excellence programmes of the 1980s and 90s with, at its worst, sinister Orwellian overtones of seeking to manipulate and control the hearts and minds of employees ideological means (Willmott 1993). Indeed, this leads us to posit a theoretical and historical trajectory – along the lines first suggested by Etzioni (1961) – that leads from organizational technologies that seek primarily to control the body of the workforce, through those that try to elicit moral and ideological commitment and on, most recently, to those that would have work organizations appropriate the spirits and souls of employees. In his satirical entry in Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow, Case (2006) offers a quasi-science fiction parable as warning against the potential excesses and dangers inherent in spiritual commodification (see also Forray and Stork 2002). It is a cautionary tale that we seek here to model and elaborate in a more serious vein.
While being critical of the current fashion for the instrumental appropriation of spiritual energy within organizations, we nonetheless desire to address the question of what place a considered and nuanced understanding of spirituality might have within contemporary organizations. In other words, can such notions as spiritual practice, spiritual discipline and wisdom be meaningfully integrated within predominantly secular work regimes (Case and Gosling 2007)? Is there an ‘art of living’ available to the contemporary employee (Nehamas 1998)? Is there a philosophical way of life to be led (Hadot 1995)? Spiritus in Latin means ‘breath’, taken as the vital force, energy or immaterial substance which brings life, and with it the possibility of consciousness and self-awareness. Defined in this way, Spirit is not simply a development or outgrowth of human potential; it is something outside or beyond the individual, although becoming fully human – individually or collectively – involves becoming infused or inspired by the ‘breath’ of spirit. So it is strange that much popular writing on ‘spirituality’ is presented as a pain-free expression of ‘the human spirit’ or of connectedness, community or ‘self-actualisation’. It is as if a spiritual life is one that is an escape from rather a path through reality. On the other hand, we are faced with mountains of books and articles that describe organisational life as if it was purely rational; as if ideals and aspirations were irrelevant; and as if ‘personal objectives’ are really the limit of our aspirations. So let’s be clear: by ‘spirituality’ we do not mean wishful-thinking for a life without struggle; but we do refer to a life that is enthused with ideals, hope, sensitivity, and creativity.
References
Carrette, J. and King, R. (2005) Selling Spirituality: the silent takeover of religion, London: Routledge.
Case, P. (2005) ‘Xen’, in C. Jones and D. O’Doherty, eds., Manifestos For The Business School Of Tomorrow, Stockholm: Dvalin Press.
Case, P. and Gosling, J. (2007) ‘Wisdom of the Moment: Premodern Perspectives on Organizational Action’, Social Epistemology, 21(2-3).
Etzioni, A. (1961) Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations, London: Collier-Macmillan.
Forray, J.M. and Stork, D. (2002) ‘All for One: a Parable of Spirituality and Organization’, Organization, 9(3), pp.497-509.
Fry, L.W. (2003) ‘Toward a Theory of Spiritual Leadership’, Leadership Quarterly, 14, pp.693-727.
Hadot, P. (1995) Philosophy as a Way of Life, Oxford: Blackwell.
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Nehamas, A. (1998) The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault, London: University of California Press.
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