Beyond Accommodation: Avoiding Religious Expression Disputes in the Workplace (original) (raw)

Academy of Management Proceedings, 2012

Abstract

This study offers an empirical extension of Cash and Gray’s (2000) work that offered a framework for religious accommodation in the workplace. We analyzed all spirituality and religion in the workplace (SRW) legal disputes over a ten year period, using the case facts from 83 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decisions. Utilizing a two-step cluster analysis methodology and thematic coding, we found 15 distinct workplace behaviors that appear in SRW legal disputes, and discovered that over 50% of SRW problems actioned in the courts occurred at lower organizational levels. Accommodation activities, being openly hostile, undermining others, and retaliating behaviors were the most frequently occurring problems. Cluster analysis using Jaccard’s index revealed multiple behavioral co-occurrences, indicating that certain problematic behaviors take place together. Maps in both two- and three-dimensional space showed that accommodation activities co-occurred with open hostility, indicating that an employee’s accommodati...

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