Reconciling Complexity Theory in Organizations and Christian Spirituality (original) (raw)

The Place of Spirituality in Organizational Theory

Spirituality in the American work- place has been receiving increasing attention by the popular literature. However, the issue has received little consideration from manage- ment scholars. Although there are several definitions of spirituality, this paper discusses it as a cultural phenomenon that might influ- ence organizational behavior. The investigation of spirituality in the workplace demands the examination of organization theory and some of its concepts. Open systems, institu- tional isomorphism, open fields, in- stitutionalism, and neo-institutional theories are examined. Spirituality should not be neglected as a legiti- mate organizational topic of study, and more research on the impact of spirituality in the workplace should be conducted.

Spirituality in organizations?

Organizações & Sociedade, 2016

This article aims to describe how organizational spirituality has been dealt with in national and international research. Thus, a review of literature was carried out, based on a systematic search on literature on the Scopus and SciELO databases. The survey revealed 551 articles, but only 118 were available as full-documents. After reading the articles, 72 were selected for analysis. From the selected articles, seven major themes were identified and are covered in this article: factors that encourage spirituality to develop in organizations; the differences between spirituality and religion; the definition/concept of organizational spirituality; the benefits of spirituality for organizations; the dimensions of spirituality in organizations; the values of spirituality in organizations, and ways of identifying/measuring spirituality in organizations. In general, it was found that the theme of organizational spirituality is gaining momentum among academics and managers and can no longe...

Does Theology Need a Paradigm? Learning from Organization Science and Management Research

2004

Due to the multitude of theological disciplines and the very different confessional backgrounds, theology shows an enormous diversity of approaches. From this fact of fragmentation, one may raise at least two questions. (1) Is the divergence in theology productive or does theology need consensus about methods, theories and assumptions? (2) Can a paradigm in theology be developed or does the nature of theology prevent such paradigmatic consensus? To answer these questions, theology may learn from an instructive discussion concerning the need of a paradigm in organization theory. Some have been arguing that management research needs to develop consensus through the enforcement of theoretical and methodological conformity. Others have been responding that such a step would be a retrogression. Instead of focussing on the natural sciences, which is quite common in the field of studies in science and theology, I will thus give attention to one of the social sciences. The conclusion of thi...

67. Case, Peter, Eriksen, Matthew, Mills, Albert J., and Hope, Angela (2012) `Introduction to the Special Issue,’ Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 9/1: pp.1-7.