Spiritualism at Workplace: A New Current of Thought

KSS KANHAIYA
BE, DCPA, MBA, MA(App. Psy.), PhD(Mgmt.)
CE (I), FIE (I), MIMA, MISCA, LMCSI, LMIIMM
kss.kanhaiya@gmail.com
http://ksskanhaiya.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/kss.kanhaiya
Introduction
Organisational culture provides employees an understanding of “the
way things are done around here.” So, they try to conform. The culture is
considered as a system of shared meaning held by the members of
organisation uniquely. It influences their perceptions, working, commitment,
productivity, levels of satisfaction and turnover. So, organisational culture
has been a topic of interest for students of Organisational Behaviour and
practitioners of management. They consider creating, sustaining and
augmenting of relevant organisational culture as important functions for
organisational success. Studies continue and paradigms keep taking shape.
Workplace Sprituality is one modern thought in this area and a
growing number of organisations like Hewlett-Packard and Southwest
Airlines have embraced this as a dimension of their culture.
In this article, we will examine the concept of sprituality, its relevance
and criticisms as well as ways to introduce it into the workplace.
Defining Spirituality
In Indian philosophy system that may be called adhyatmavidya, or
science of spirituality, the leading Advaita Vedanta philosopher Sankara,
laid down the principle that reasoning should be allowed freedom only as
long as it does not conflict with the scriptures. In matters regarding reality,
reasoning itself cannot deliver certainty; for, every thesis established by
reasoning may be countered by an opposite thesis supported by equally
strong reasoning. The results of intuitive experiences, therefore, should be
accepted as authoritative, and reasoning should be made subordinate to
them.
The word spirituality at once reminds us of God, religious practices,
theology, ethics and the like. However, Workplace spirituality does not refer
to organised religious practices. In order that we clearly understand the term
spirituality uniquely, let us take a look at concepts like religion, ethics etc.
Religion is the type of belief system one takes on faith; for example,
monotheism, polytheism, animism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism,
Hinduism, and so on. Ethics refers to custom or manner normally thought of
as principles in use, such as Utilitarianism -- the kind we study in formal
ethics classes (kantian ethics, aristotelian ethics, etc). Morals refer to

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the first order moral decision-making. While some morals are religiously
motivated rules, it would be a mistake to characterize morals as "religiously-
driven" or to conflate morality and religion. There are very robust and
rigorous moralities that are not connected with religion. Norms has various
nuances and technical meanings related to particular disciplines (e.g. law,
anthropology, ethics). In ethics, norms are moral premises considered
generally applicable to all people in all circumstances, such as kant's moral
premise that people are never to be treated as instruments but as ends in
themselves. Norms are in effect the way in which people are expected to act
in a group, varying within one standard deviation.
There are at least 4 definitions of spirituality as per Ken Wilber. The
most common definition is that spirituality is the highest level of any of the
developmental lines. For example, when talking about cognition, the higher
reach is “transrational”. It is not supposed that cognition is itself spiritual.
Only the higher levels of cognition - transverbal, transrational, and so on -
are considered a spiritual type of cognition. As another example, in moral
development, we could think of post-conventional morality, or world-centric
morality, as being spiritual.
As per Wilber’s second definition, spirituality is an altered state of
consciousness. He divides these states of consciousness into four major
types: waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the ever present, non-dual
consciousness. Some of the states of consciousness include the experience
of formless absorption, luminescent light, bliss, love, transcendence and so
on. Still other states can include the experience of oneness with the entire
world or with the natural world. One can consider these states to be
spiritual.
In third definition, Wilber considers spirituality as a developmental line
similar to the other lines of development like cognition or affect. This
definition is appealing because we can say that a given person is either
highly spiritually developed or not. But, it is very hard to come up with a
precise definition of a spiritual line. In other words it is very hard to say that
a development is just “spiritual”, and not, also, in part affective, emotional,
interpersonal, moral, cognitive and so on. For example, if one gives James
Fowler’s spiritual development test to people and also tests these people
using Lawrence Kohlberg’s procedure for moral development, scores
obtained are positively correlated. This suggests that the two tests are not
really testing different developmental lines.
The fourth definition of Wilber seems to be one of the most practical.
In this case spirituality is not a line of development, or a level of
development, or a state. It is simply an attitude that one can assume. This
tends to be attitude of openness or care or a loving attitude. Borrowing from
Erich Fromm, an attitude where the problem is not of being loved/ lovable
but that of loving, of becoming aware of one's capacity to love.

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 It has nothing to do with a religion. Spirituality is more a matter of
one’s own awareness or consciousness. This is basically an attitude of
awareness, of being sensitive and perceptive, moment-to-moment. Certain
awareness is brought to bear on a situation and is also going to play out on
how people will interact. This is a very human aspect of spirituality and a
very profound one as well.
Workplace Spirituality, as per Ashmos and Duchon, recognises that
people have an inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful
work that takes place in the context of community. Robbins observes that
organisations that promote spiritual culture recognise that people have both
mind and spirit; they seek to find meaning and purpose in their work, and
desire to connect with other human beings and be part of a community.
Why It Has Become Important Now
Freud suggests that the best to be hoped for is a life in which the
repressive burdens of civilization are in atleast a rough balance with the
realization of instinctual gratification and the sublimated love for mankind.
The price of any civilization is the guilt produced by the necessary thwarting
of man’s instinctual drives.
Erich Fromm presented the view that an understanding of basic
human needs is essential to the understanding of society and mankind. He
argued that social systems make it difficult to satisfy the different needs at
one time, thus creating both individual psychological and societal conflicts.
Fromm presented his argument in 1955, that modern man has become
alienated and estranged from himself within consumer-oriented industrial
society. He called for a rebirth of enlightenment in a new and perfect
society, which would allow each person to fulfill his individual needs while
maintaining his sense of belonging through bonds of social brotherhood.
Drawing upon both the psychiatric and the sociological traditions, he
attributed the appeal of mass movements to the gratifying escape they offer
from the sense of personal isolation and powerlessness that people
experience in the vast bureaucracies of modern life.
Hadley Cantril suggested participation in vital collectivities so that it
supplies a sense of meaning through group affirmation and action and
raises the member’s estimate of his social status, both of which are
important needs often frustrated in modern society.
Despite all the above, historical models of management did not have
any room for spirituality. The emphasis on rationality assumed that well-run
organisations eliminated feelings. Even in 1995, Ashforth and Humphry
reiterated the usual belief that emotions of any kind were disruptive.
Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence was published and triggered discussions
on the subject – giving due importance to all the five aspects of EI, namely
Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Self-Motivation, Empathy and Social
Skills. With the realisation that our study of emotions improves

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understanding of OB, gradually did the idea come up that awareness of
spirituality will help understand and improve employee behaviour in 21st
century. The reasons for current growth of interest in the inner life of
employees may be enumerated as below:
• Turbulent pace of life: Pressures and stresses of contemporary
lifestyles—family with both parents working to single-parent family,
geographic mobility, temporary nature of jobs, new technologies
that create distance between people etc.— increase the felt lack of
community and so people have started feeling more strongly the
need for involvement and connection.
• Ageing Baby-Boomers: The baby-boomers that entered the
workforce around mid-80s in India and earlier in the west have
reached mid-life and are looking for some meaning in their life
beyond the achievements and material success they attached
much emphasis to.
• Limitations of Formalised Religion: Many people have found
that they and formal religion do not work for each other. So, they
look for anchors to replace their lack of faith and fill their growing
feeling of emptiness.
• Quest for meaning of work: Job demands are continuously
making workplace dominant in people’s lives but at the same time
they are feeling the quest to find a meaning for their life and work.
• Desire to integrate personal and professional values: The more
professional demands permeat the personal life-space, the
stronger this desire becomes.
• Economic Security: Economic security and availability of material
satisfactions enable people to have the luxary of engaging in a
search to reach their full potential – as an attempt to satisfy the
higher order need that Maslow called self-actualisation.
Characteristics of Spritual Organisation
As organisations become part of an interconnected world of
partnerships, networks and clusters, the critical coordinating mechanism is
likely to embrace collaboration as opposed to competition. In the former
context, organisations interact together to co-create new forms of process,
product and technologies. The complex interface of linkages means that
there is strong influence on action, and no organisation functions in
complete isolation. This suggests that while the competitive paradigm
encourages organisational performance to focus primarily on increasing
value for shareholders, the collaborative context extends this purpose to
adding value to the broader organisational set. These partnerships need to
be based upon mutual respect and honour as they engage in co-
constructing new ways of doing business. Integral to this process is the
open sharing of information and technologies.

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 The universal law of cause and effect says that for every action, there
is a reaction. Thus, when organisations collaborate with their partners with
integrity, positive outcomes will be returned to them. This reinforces the
notion that our purpose is to function as an interconnected whole. This view
embraces a belief that the purpose of organisations is to enhance the
human condition, and we are moving into an age that sees organisations as
structures to enhance this process. Thus, in understanding the nature of
performance within a spiritual context, organisations will be asking, “How
can our activities contribute to the human condition” rather than the more
prevailing, “How can we increase our shareholder value”. This stance
reflects a consciousness of understanding why we are here.
From a spiritual perspective, it is intention, rather than the economic
value, that guides actions. This spiritual dimension introduces non-material
phenomena into the management context: relationships, processes, values
and integrity, which have an integral role in the structuring of organisational
activity. Collaborative endeavours then, through organisational partnerships,
assist the development of compassion, patience and tolerance in order to
achieve tangible outcomes. Thus, organisational situations provide the
context for the development of self-mastery.
In spiritual terms, our engagement with others is the essence of life
and knowledge is a living heritage of human existence in which we all
participate.
Spiritual organisations are concerned with helping their people
develop and reach their full potential. This is analogous to Maslow’s
description of self-actualisation. Such organisations are more likely to
address problems created by work/life conflicts.
Research on the question of identifying determinant characteristics of
spritual organisations is still preliminary, but Robbins has identified the
following five cultural characteristics that tend to be more evident in such
organisations than others.
• Strong Sense of Purpose: The culture is built around strong
meaningful purpose. Profit is important but not primary value. For
example, Southwest Airlines of USA is committed towards
providing on-time service, lowest airfares and a pleasant
experience for customers.
• Focus on Individual Development: Worth and value of people
are recognised and the culture facilitates them to continually learn
and grow. People are considered more important and not just
replaceable hands.
• Trust and Openness: Spritual organisations are characterised by
mutual trust, openness and honesty. Employees are open to admit
mistakes and are extremely upfront with associates, customers and
suppliers.

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 • Employee Empowerment: The high-trust climate combined with
the desire to promote growth and learning leads to management
empowering employees to make most of their work-related
decisions. Employees are empowered to make even those
decisions where established policies need to be compromised in
order to meet the meaningful purposes such as meeting customer
needs or helping a co-worker.
• Toleration of Employee Expression: Employees’ emotions are
valued and organisation does not stifle them. People are allowed to
be themselves and express their feelings, moods and views without
guilt or fear of reprimand or action.
Bringing Spirituality in Organisations
If we define spirituality as the highest level of any of the
developmental lines, the only way to bring spirituality into a business setting
is to transform individuals to reach the higher reaches of development. That
is a noble thing to do but this is also very difficult to achieve. It is very hard
to get an adult human being to transform. And this is even more difficult with
a collection of individuals, constituting an organization. This development is
possible but very hard to achieve.
To bring the altered state of consciousness aspect of spirituality in
business settings is, in a certain sense, easier than with the previous
endeavour. Various techniques or methods can be used to help people to
get an altered-state experience. There are powerful techniques to do this.
But, this can be very life-changing, very profound and sometimes very
disruptive experience.
Bringing the developmental line definition of spirituality in business
settings can make intuitive sense, but the difficulty of developing an
independent metric scale for spirituality is a very serious one. Many people
are actually introducing several developmental lines into business
leadership training: the emotional line, the interpersonal line, the physical
line, the cognitive line, etc. This allows to say to a business leader or a
manager that if they are very well developed in one or several areas, for
example the cognitive and interpersonal lines, they still need to develop
other areas, such as the moral and the spiritual ones. This is very helpful as
this can orient the kind of training to pursue. In some cases people who are
spiritually well developed are not doing too well in others areas. For
example, some people who are very highly developed in meditation
techniques are not well developed interpersonally or morally. It is often easy
to find someone who is really highly developed in one line and pathological
in one or two others. This is one of the mysteries of the psyche.
Many people are more comfortable to bring spirituality into business
when using it as simply an attitude. It is a good place to start in business
settings. It just starts where people are. One can talk about love as a

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development need, or love as a meditative state, but right now there is a
certain “is-ness” about own existence, a certain presence about what is
happening. Here spirituality is not really a set of beliefs or a set of doctrines.
It is a practice. It is actual and many people resonate with this. Spirituality is
just a way of being.
The employees and managers may be exposed to HRD interventions
and policies may be suitably developed so as to seek the characteristics of
spritual organisations enumerated above.
Spirituality is not a belief structure. To bring spirituality into business
organization, we do not require people to agree with any particular religious
belief system. The sense about spirituality is something about presence
right now. This presence is very profound and is the basic thread that leads
to full consciousness. If a team or a group of managers wants to discover
this presence, they need to stop intermittently during their work and be
present to the present and conscious to their consciousness.
Criticism
As far as religions get entwined in the context of spirituality, it may not
be out of place to recall Sigmund Freud who, in his 1907 essay “Obsessive
Actions and Religious Practices” contended that obsessional neuroses are
private religious systems and religions themselves are no more than the
obsessional neuroses of mankind. Twenty years later, in “The Future of an
Illusion” he even added that belief in God is a mythic reproduction of the
universal state of infantile helplessness. And in 1930, in “Civilization and Its
Discontents” Freud described the sense of indissoluble oneness with the
universe—something celebrated as the fundamental religious experience—
to have its origin in the nostalgia for the pre-Oedipal infant's sense of unity
with its mother.
Hence, there are criticisms of workplace spirituality that stem from
people’s connecting it with faith systems. The firm answer to this lies in the
belief that workplace spirituality may have something to do with ethics and
morality but does not have relations with religion. Rather than bringing God
to the workplace, its goal is to help employees find meaning and purpose in
their work and to use the workplace as a source of community.
Another criticism – that is important for managers, investors and also
the employees – concerns the question whether workplace spirituality and
business profit are compatible. This area requires more research. But the
limited evidence that is available shows that the two objectives are certainly
compatible. Robbins has cited some documented research findings
establishing that the companies that introduced sprituality based techniques
outperformed others and attained improved productivity as well as reduced
turnover. He mentions the findings of a number of other researches too that
show a positive correlation of organisational spirituality with creativity,
organisational commitment, team performance and employee satisfaction.

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Conclusion
Workplace Sprituality as a dimension of organisational culture is a
modern line of thought and is receiving active interest from both the
researchers and practitioners. Many organisations are using it and with time
its acceptance would perhaps increase in the same way as accepatance of
EI has increased during the past few years.
*************
References
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Reappraisal, Human Relations, Feb. 1995.
Ashmos, DP and Duchon, D, Sprituality at Work: A Conceptualisation and
Measure, Journal of Management Inquiry, June 2000
Encyclopadeia Britannica, 2003. Various Articles
Fowler, JW, Stages of Faith. The Psychology of Human Development and
the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco, CA.: Harper SanFrancisco,1995.
Kohlberg, L. and Ryncarz, RA, Beyond Justice Reasoning: Moral
Development and Consideration of a Seventh Stage. In Alexander, CE and
Langer, EJ (Eds.). Higher Stages of Human Development: Perspectives on
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Maslow, AH, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Arkana
,1993.
Pauchant, TC et al., Ethics and Spirituality at Work: Hopes and Pitfalls of
the Search for Meaning in Organizations. Wesport, Conn.: Quorum Books,
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Robbins, SP, Organizational Behaviour, 10th Edn. New Delhi: Pearson,
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Wilber, K. Sex, Ecology Spiritualiyt, The Spirit of Evolution. Boston, Mass.:
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Wilber, K. A Brief Theory of Everything. Boston, Mass.: Shambhala, 1996.
Wilber, K. Interview to Pauchant, T.C.. MSR Newsletter of Academy of
Management, Summer 2003.

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