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Reviewed by
Rhonda R. Parmley, MS, CRC
President
Quaternia Services, LLC
Fort Collins, Colorado
E-mail: rrparmley@comcast.net

Ms. Parmley is a veteran professional with nearly two decades of experience in vocational rehabilitation and other aspects of business and the work world. She's also completing a Ph.D. at Colorado State University.

Introduction

In his forward to this voluminous work, Barry Z. Posner ponders the question of the perennial tension between the individual and the system. He asks "Can I be who I am regardless of whether I am at home, or at the workplace, or in a place of worship?" (p.xi) This fundamental question guides the volume. Posner reminds readers that employees who do work in a corporate environment in line with their personal beliefs will stay around.

Giacalone and Jurkiewicz provide a rich compilation of essays and research written by educators, human service workers, business consultants and leaders, and organizational researchers that address the incorporation of spirituality into organizational life. Like most of the contributing authors, I share a deep curiosity about, as well as a desire, not only for a meaningful, but also a transcendently-lived life. What does this look like? How do people follow their "bliss" as Joseph Campbell has said? Can one’s spiritual beliefs and work life be aligned?

I am a psychotherapist and business consultant and I'm currently completing my Ph.D. at Colorado State University in Education and Human Resource Studies. My dissertation research will ask counselor educators how they are effectively incorporating spirituality into their classrooms. I read the Giacalone and Jurkiewicz volume influenced by familiar language and names from psychotherapy and education, and from my own prolonged study of the great religious and spiritual traditions.

R. Elliott Ingersoll’s chapter on "Spiritual Wellness in the Workplace" and Gozdz and Frager’s chapter on "Using the Everyday Challenges of Business to Transform Individuals and Organizations" resonated most deeply for me, and I felt a kinship with Andrew Hoffman when he introduced the impact of environmental values as a strong link to spiritual values in "Reconciling Professional and Personal Value Systems."

I must surely be saturated by references on the subject by now, but not so much in the context of organizational development. Nonetheless, given that so many people spend so much of their lives at work, I believe that the corporate workplace is a viable and critically important setting for spiritual transformation.

Background

Giacalone and Jurkiewicz begin the preface of this first edition by reminding us that the majority of our waking hours--our hours of greatest effort--are spent at work. Work is integral to our self-concepts, and we seek satisfaction through it in terms of the contributions we make and the manner in which we make them. They believe work can help us align with what is meaningful in our lives.

The editors take a post-positivist stance in asserting that the spirit-work connection is based on definable, measurable aspects of the work environment. "Just as organizations can learn to more effectively motivate, lead, and manage people, so too can they excel at creating and sustaining the spirit-work connection toward the common end of maximizing organizational performance. It is not magic. It is not religion. It is not an idiosyncratic belief system. It requires objective investigation that is no less problematic or essential than the scientific pursuits of other areas of organizational study." (pp.xv-xvi)

However, can the science of workplace spirituality be approached through the lens of post-positivist research paradigms? The articles contained within this volume speak to the difficulty of this project, as subjective opinions abound. Just as there is a gap between those who do and do not value the idea of incorporating spirituality into the workplace, so, too, there is continued tension about how research on the topic might be done. The question of defining and measuring how spirituality is incorporated into the workplace is answered in a variety of ways, leaving readers to their own opinions regarding what model might be applied in individual situations, with no single model which can be applied in every situation.

Summary of Contents

Organizational managers and leaders in western capitalist culture who are comfortable working within complex and contradictory organizational contexts and who are grappling with the impact of emerging postmaterialist values in their workplaces will appreciate the contents of this text. The opening chapter, written by the editors, "Toward a Science of Workplace Spirituality," describes the complex backdrop of issues discussed in the rest of the volume, including efforts towards defining workplace spirituality, the difficulty of measuring its value, organizational value shifts from materialism to postmaterialism, and concerns about legal repercussions regarding discussions of workplace spirituality.

The editors support an integrated and objectively definable approach to spirituality and work, and the chapters that follow continue along this vein. They quote Sass, who helps explain why interest in workplace spirituality is growing. Sass purports that "spirituality can be understood at a variety of levels, ranging from the individual to the organizational. The interconnectedness of these levels provides us with a true systemic understanding of how spirituality can differentially impact the workplace at both the micro and macro levels. Thus, to comprehend the full utility of workplace spirituality, one must examine the interplay between individual and organizational spiritual values…Evidence of increasing divergence between individual and organizational values, both in the United States and abroad…is likely a key catalyst for the growing interest in workplace spirituality." (p.15) Thus, the conversation is opened for a variety of views to enter into the discussion.

This volume contextualizes workplace spirituality within discussions of capitalism and democracy, moral and spiritual development theories, management development theories, philosophy and psychology, and multiculturalism and diversity.

The authors hope their text will help those involved in organizational development work towards defining a broad organizational paradigm shift in which spirituality and work are integrated. Does this volume succeed in offering a viable paradigm for organizations? It doesn’t offer a single model, but, instead, offers many. The editors do a wonderful job of compiling research from prominent leaders in many fields concerned with this task.

The chapters on Theoretical Development of Workplace Spirituality include inspirational essays by professor of organizational behavior, Jeffrey Pfeffer: "Business and the Spirit", evolutionary theorist, Riane Eisler and professor and business consultant, Alfonso Montuori: "Business and the Spirit: Management Practices That Sustain Values", business professors, Blake Ashforth and Michael G. Pratt:"Institutionalized Spirituality: An Oxymoron?", and professor of business ethics and philosophy respectively, Rogene Buchholz and Sandra B. Rosenthal: "Spirituality, Consumption, and Business: A Pragmatic Perspective".

In this section, Buchholz and Rosenthal offer an ecological and philosophical explanation of the conflict between spirituality and current organizational culture. They argue that "Consumer culture with its emphasis on ever-increasing consumption to promote continued economic growth is not sustainable into the future." (p.161) "The spiritualizing of the workplace and the marketplace, based on a philosophic approach…can present a new vision that may wean both workers and consumers off the meaningless treadmill of every-continuing economic growth as the ultimate goal of society…companies must evaluate their products in terms of how they contribute to concrete growth, how they enrich the lives of consumers, not just whether money can be made through their sale on the marketplace." (p.162)

Chapters included in Conceptualizing Workplace Spirituality are the thoughtful work of organizational behavior professor, Andrew Hoffman: "Reconciling Professional and Personal Value Systems: The Spiritually Motivated Manager as Organizational Entrepreneur", the multidisciplinary team of Dong-Jin Lee, M. Joseph Sirgy, David Efraty, and Phillip Siegel: "A Study of Quality of Work Life, Spiritual Well-Being, and Life Satisfaction", psychology professor, Adrian Furnham: "Ethics as Work: Money, Spirituality, and Happiness", a valuable legal perspective from ethics professor, Richard D. White, Jr.: "Drawing the Line: Religion and Spirituality in the Workplace", a definition of "Spiritual Wellness in the Workplace" by counselor educator, R. Elliott Ingersoll, and "The Role of Spirituality in Occupational Stress and Well-Being" by management professors, Kelly L. Zellars and Pamela L. Perrewe.

Hoffman suggests organizations must participate in a process of helping employees align professional and personal values, suggesting that those values orient towards a "pristine ecosystem". This raises the question of whether or not there exist universalizing values, a conversation that has led to many unresolved or toxically resolved interpersonal, organizational and international conflicts.

Applied Theory in Workplace Spirituality contains chapters from the field of psychology, by Virgil Adams III, C.R. Snyder, Kevin L. Rand, Elisa A. King, David R. Sigmon, and Kim M. Pulvers: "Hope in the Workplace", from business management educator and consultant, Jerry Biberman: "How Workplace Spirituality Becomes Mainstreamed in a Scholarly Organization", and transpersonal organizational researchers and consultants, Kazimierz Gozdz and Robert Frager: "Using the Everyday Challenges of Business to Transform Individuals and Organizations". The Gozdz and Frager chapter offers perhaps the most comprehensive model and application to this topic to date, although it is not yet researched-based.

Evaluation and Conclusion

In the end, Giacalone and Jurkiewicz have given organizational leaders and managers a rich multidisciplinary sourcebook. All contributing authors grapple with offering an operational definition of spirituality as well as pointing out the lack of research concerning the intergration of spirituality in the workplace. Well-thought-out beliefs, models, philosophies, anecdotes from the field, and scant research are included and left me wondering whether common language and a singular model around spiritual integration within organizations should be the current goal for those in organizational development and management. The birth of a viable paradigm may succeed if it continues to move carefully and slowly through the change from materialist to postmaterialist values.

Perhaps, though, for now, the authors might cast their nets even wider. By doing this, they will continue to expand the multidisciplinary reaches of the topic at hand and may identify researched models that speak to this important shift in organizational development by bringing in more disciplinary diversity and international applications. The research of Mitroff and Denton and Ronald Ingerhart, the organizational psychology work of John Corlett and Carol Pearson, the application of non-linear moral and spiritual development theories to organizational development and change, such as those of Carol Gilligan and Vicky Genia, and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development are suggestions for the next edition.

In conclusion I would ask: Are the editors swimming upstream with their ideals? A friend of mine recently said, "Capitalism is a flawed economic system that totally devalues human rights". As many of us move into more spiritually led lives, we must continue to ask ourselves if there is truth in this sentiment, and we must consider its ongoing implications for those of us who carry the torch hailing integration of spirituality in the workforce and the rest of our world.

By publishing The Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance, Giacalone and Jurkiewicz have taken a brave step towards helping us look through the many lenses and processes through which business managers and organizational leaders can achieve the ideals of a postmaterialist and "worldcentric" world view.

Rhonda R. Parmley
E-mail: rrparmley@comcast.net

December 2005

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