Journal of Organizational Change Management

Mapping the terrain of spirituality in organizations research

Margaret Benefiel

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Mapping the terrain of

spirituality in organizations
research

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organizations
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Margaret Benefiel
Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre,
Massachusetts, USA

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Keywords Beliefs, Organizations, Research methods

Abstract Researchers in the burgeoning new field of spirituality in organizations face a number
of significant field-shaping questions, e.g. how should spirituality in organizations be defined and
what research methods are most appropriate for this work quantitative, qualitative, a
combination of the two, or entirely new methods? The answers given to these questions will
determine the shape of this new field and the direction research will take over the next several
decades. This article addresses these questions by mapping the terrain of current spirituality in
organizations research, in three stages. It begins by examining trails being blazed by pioneers
venturing into this new territory, considering the progress these pioneers have made and the work
remaining to be done. It then moves to questions lurking in the background of this pioneering work.
Finally, it articulates the new frontier in spirituality in organizations research, a frontier which
beckons adventurous pioneers to enter.

Introduction
Researchers in the burgeoning new field of spirituality in organizations face a
number of significant field-shaping questions. As they seek to define what this
field is and experiment with research methods appropriate to it, they find
themselves faced with such questions as:
.
How should spirituality be defined?
.
How should spirituality in organizations be defined?
.
What research methods are most appropriate for this work
quantitative, qualitative, or a combination of the two?
.
Is it appropriate to measure spirituality in quantifiable units?
.
Are new research methods needed, methods outside the boundaries of
mainstream management scholarship?
The answers given to these questions will determine the shape of this new field
and the direction research will take over the next several decades. Thus, it is
important that researchers address these questions consciously and carefully,
rather than slipping into an approach which inadvertently becomes normative.
This article will address these questions by mapping the terrain of current
spirituality in organizations research, in three stages. It will begin by
examining trails being blazed by pioneers venturing into this new territory,
considering the progress these pioneers have made and the work remaining to

Journal of Organizational Change

Management
Vol. 16 No. 4, 2003
pp. 367-377
q MCB UP Limited
0953-4814
DOI 10.1108/09534810310484136

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be done. It will then move to questions lurking in the background of this

pioneering work. Finally, it will articulate the new frontier in spirituality in
organizations research, a frontier which beckons adventurous pioneers to enter.
Four trails
Surveying the terrain of current spirituality in organizations research illumines
four trails being blazed. These might be named the quantitative trail, the broad
how and why trail, the deep how and why trail, and the radical how
and why trail. This section will examine each of these trails in turn,
considering representative pioneers on the trail, the trails destination, how
much progress has been made toward that destination, and what each trail
contributes to a map of the terrain.
The quantitative trail
What is the destination of the quantitative trail? To achieve a quantitative
demonstration of how spirituality in the workplace contributes to
organizational performance.
How much progress have the pioneers blazing this trail made toward their
destination? Trott (1996) has discovered high correlation between spiritual
wellbeing and organizational openness, self-efficacy, and organizational
commitment. Beazley (1997) has developed an instrument to measure
individual spirituality. He has discovered a correlation between a high level
of spirituality and honesty, humility, and service to others. Ashmos and
Duchon (2000) have constructed a definition of spirituality in the workplace
which, their study shows, is valid at the individual level. Each of these
quantitative researchers has done important foundational work. At the same
time, they have a long road ahead to their ultimate destination, demonstrating a
positive correlation between organizational spirituality and organizational
performance.
Some would critique this quantitative approach by claiming that it attempts
to compare apples and oranges. They conclude that this trail is a dead end. In
my view, it is too early to predict what might be gained by going down this
trail. The quantitative approach is important because it allows spirituality in
organizations researchers to be in dialogue with mainstream management
scholars. As quantitative researchers continue down this path, exploring to
what degree they can measure spirituality in the workplace quantitatively and
discover a correlation between spirituality and organizational performance,
they will discover to what degree they can present their case in a way that
speaks traditional management language. Researchers need to explore this
trail, even if they do discover ultimately that it is a dead end.
The broad why and how trail
While the quantitative researchers just examined proposed conceptual frames
and then tested them using quantitative research methods, Mitroff and Denton

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(1999) used their research methods (a combination of quantitative and

qualitative) to arrive at a conceptual frame. The destination of their trail? They
sought to answer the two broad questions, Why should spirituality be
integrated into organizations? and How can spirituality be integrated into
organizations?
How much progress have they made toward their destination? First, in
response to the question why should spirituality be integrated into
organizations? they found that people who perceive their organizations as
more spiritual also perceive them as more profitable, more caring, and
more ethical (Mitroff and Denton, 1999, pp. 39, 50). (Whether these
organizations actually are more profitable, more caring, and more ethical is a
question requiring more research, say Mitroff and Denton (1999, p. 241).)
Second, in response to the question how can spirituality be integrated into
organizations? they arrived at a composite best practice model through
outlining five basic models which they observed in their interviews and in their
review of the literature, and through examining the strengths and limitations of
each.
Mitroff and Dentons (1999) contribution is important because they have
succeeded in providing the first wide-ranging spiritual audit of business
organizations in America. They have arrived at a conceptual frame, a
best-practice model, grounded in their research. In my view, they have done a
good job with the broad sketch and the management side. I think their work
would be complemented by more work on the details and the spiritual side,
developing more fully their understanding of spirituality and drawing on
spiritual literature to flesh out their points. Perhaps stories from everyday life
getting at the texture of lived spirituality in organizations would be helpful. In
addition, in order to put their best practice model into practice, I think an
organization needs a critical mass of spiritual grounding. Exploring how to
nurture this spiritual depth in organizations would help answer Mitroff and
Dentons question of how lasting change comes to organizations.
The deep how and why trail
What is the destination of the deep how and why trail? This trail uses
qualitative research methods first, to discover how spirituality gets manifested
throughout an organization, and second, to discover the impact a spiritual
organization has both on individuals and on organizational performance.
How much progress have the pioneers blazing this trail made toward their
destination? Milliman et al. (1999) have discovered how spirituality gets
manifested throughout one organization, Southwest Airlines. Second, theyve
outlined three propositions hypothesizing the impact a spiritual organization
has on organizational performance (using the inductive approach based on
SWA and generating theory). Craigie (1999) has also discovered how
spirituality gets manifested throughout an organization by analyzing

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conversations with leaders in health care, business, and government, and

offering a three-part model to guide those who are asking the how question.
These pioneers have done important foundational work on the deep how and
why questions. At the same time, they acknowledge that their models and
hypotheses need extensive further testing to discover how they apply to other
organizations.
The deep how and why trail is important because it complements the
broad how and why trail by teasing out some of what lies beneath the
general principles of, for example, Mitroff and Dentons (1999) best practice
model. This approach gives more of a feel of how to actually operationalize
spirituality in the workplace, and what the people who are doing it need to be
like. Whereas Mitroff and Denton (1999) seek to provide a template that gives
an overview of how to bring spirituality into any organization Milliman et al.
(1999) and Craigie (1999) focus on the details. Mitroff and Dentons (1999)
approach might be likened to the work of a landscape architect, providing the
big picture, while Milliman et al. (1999) and Craigie (1999) are more like the
gardeners. They demonstrate how to plant the seeds and tend the shoots.
The radical how and why trail
What is the destination of the radical how and why trail? First, to get
beneath the explanatory theories of how organizational transformation occurs.
Second, to deepen the why of why spirituality should be integrated into
organizational life.
How much progress have these pioneers made toward their destination? For
the first aspect, Lichtenstein (1997) notes that, while three organizational
theorists he interviewed gave logical, step-by-step accounts of organizational
change, in their practice they spoke of magic, grace, and miracle when
describing the moment of transformation, conveying a sense of awe and
surprise that change was occurring. Neal (1999) demonstrates something
similar for individual transformation, both formulating theory based on her
research and at the same time building into the theory a recognition that
transformation usually does not follow a linear path, but includes disruption,
dark night, and unpredictability.
For the second aspect, Neal et al. (1999) provide a larger context for
organizational transformation than the mere survival of the organization itself.
They argue that organizational transformation is but one aspect of the larger
societal transformation that is needed if the planet is to survive.
By shifting the focus of both the how and why questions, these pioneers
have pointed out the deeper levels of organizational change and the deeper
motivations for organizational change. They help people understand that
messiness and unpredictability are integral parts of the process, and they help
them accept the inevitable birth pangs along the way. Furthermore, they begin
to show that there are other reasons besides profitability to bring spirituality

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into organizations. They have started a conversation which desperately needed

to be started, and have delineated important discussion threads. At the same
time, as they acknowledge, their theories need further testing in other settings,
and they need to find ways to communicate their vision to mainstream
management scholars.
The radical how and why trail is important because first, it provides
understanding, support and encouragement for individuals and organizations
experiencing the inevitable ups and downs along the path toward
transformation. Second, it is important because it shifts the focus to what is
most important. These pioneers are doing what many spirituality in
organizations scholars long to do showing that spiritual transformation is
important in and of itself. They invite their readers to catch this vision, and to
do it because it is the right thing to do, and then let the profits take care of
themselves. The challenge in this approach is to find a way to communicate
this vision to the bulk of organizations where they are today. The language and
concepts that will build bridges over the chasm between this trail and the trail
that most organizations are on still need to be discovered, so that this vision
can be heard and not just be written off.
These four research trails all represent important work in the new field of
spirituality in organizations. In these formative years of the field, it is
important that many research methods be explored. Each of these pioneers is
contributing something valuable, and their collective work represents a good
beginning for spirituality in organizations research. At the same time, a
number of questions remain.
Lurking questions
While the driving question behind most of the foregoing studies has been,
How does spirituality affect organizational performance? a different set of
questions lurks in the background (some of which are implicit in the radical
how and why trail): If spirituality is ultimately about nonmaterialistic
concerns, is it appropriate to focus on the material gains to be reaped by
integrating spirituality into organizational life? How can organizational
researchers do responsible empirical research and at the same time not
trivialize deep spiritual traditions? What happens when an organization that
chooses to follow a spiritual path hits the inevitable bumps on the spiritual
journey? Will it abandon the spiritual path because it has only a superficial
understanding of what spirituality is all about? Will it become cynical about
spirituality? Is more harm than good done by introducing spirituality to
organizations through tying spirituality to material gain? Can spirituality be
measured in units recognizable by quantitative or qualitative discourse
(Benefiel, 2003)?
Behind this set of questions stands an apparently irreconcilable dilemma:
Management scholars seeking to study critically spirituality in organizations

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have turned to the quantitative and qualitative research methods with which
their training has equipped them. They bring the discourse and method of
organizational science to bear on their questions about spirituality in
organizations. However, such an approach leaves many important questions
unaddressed because the discourse of spirituality differs fundamentally from
the discourse of organizational science. Practitioners of spirituality think that
the quantitative and qualitative approaches miss large chunks of what they are
seeking to bring into the workplace, and at their worst, trivialize spirituality.
Management scholars tend to think that whatever cant be defined and
measured in the terms of organizational science is irrelevant to the efficient and
effective functioning of organizations, and need not be part of discussion about
business and organizations (Benefiel, 2003).
This dilemma points to the new frontier in spirituality in organizations
research. While the aforementioned pioneers continue to blaze their trails, it is
also important to name the new frontier that is as yet unexplored. It will be
important, for the development of the field, for other pioneers to venture into
this new terrain.
The new frontier
What is this new frontier for spirituality in organizations research? The new
frontier consists of two unexplored territories:
(1) Philosophical work that heals the rift between the discourse of
spirituality and the discourse of organizational science.
(2) New research methods built on that philosophical scaffolding, methods
which will take seriously the significance and validity of spirituality in
and of itself.
Philosophical work
The roots of the aforementioned dilemma lie in what the academy has become.
They lie in the Enlightenment and in one particular manifestation of the
Enlightenment in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Germany. In
particular, as Schwehn (1993) points out in Exiles from Eden, they lie in Max
Webers concept of the academic vocation. Schwehn (1993) traces the history of
nineteenth-century German academic life, demonstrating how Webers concept
of the academic vocation as the production of objective knowledge gained
ascendancy over the manadarin school (represented by such thinkers as Karl
Jaspers), which emphasized Bildung, or character formation, the education of
the whole person, as the vocation of academics. Subsequently, Webers
approach also came to dominate higher education in the USA. Weber argued
that the academic could in principle master all things by calculation
(Schwehn, 1993, p. 9). Such mastery required an impersonal and objective
stance toward ones subject. Any personal involvement or judgment of value
about what one studied would taint ones scholarship.

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Although Webers influence has been strong, the Weberian academy is

merely the tip of the academic iceberg, merely a century old in the 2,500-year
history of the academy. As Schwehn (1993, p. 46) points out, the current
beginnings of questioning Webers approach may be Western cultures way of
awakening from a comparatively brief slumber. Meanwhile, in most academic
institutions, the awakening is occurring in fits and starts at best, and
spirituality in organizations scholars find themselves up against the
objectivist stance of the academy. They believe that their subject warrants
serious study and acceptance within the academy, yet they chafe against the
constructs of the Weberian academy within which they find themselves. The
field of spirituality in organizations needs a way of talking about spirituality in
organizations that is critical, analytical, and not reductionistic.
In Irreconcilable foes? The discourse of spirituality and the discourse of
organizational science (Benefiel, 2003), I suggested three thinkers whose work
has potential for moving the field of spirituality in organizations beyond this
dilemma:
(1) Sara Ruddick, a feminist philosopher whose work seeks to make peace
between warring academic disciplines;
(2) Ken Wilber, a philosopher whose integral science and integral
spirituality hold promise for building an integral organizational
science; and
(3) Bernard Lonergan, a philosopher who explodes the popular myth of
spirituality as inherently subjective and science as inherently objective,
thus providing a new foundation for the integration of spirituality and
organizational science.
Part of the exploration of the new frontier will involve delving more deeply into
the work of these and other philosophers who can help provide a sturdier
philosophical scaffolding for spirituality in organizations research.
New research methods
As some spirituality in organizations scholars erect the philosophical
scaffolding, others might simultaneouly explore new research methods
which can build on that scaffolding. Two fields which have potential for
pointing spirituality in organizations researchers toward new research
methods which take seriously the significance and validity of spirituality
are, I think, noetic sciences and the academic study of spirituality.
Noetic sciences. Noetic sciences, an umbrella term for research which takes
seriously multiple ways of knowing, includes research into the relationship
between science and spirituality. Such research, I think, holds promise for the
field of spirituality in organizations.
What would spirituality in organizations noetic research look like? First, its
research questions would be shaped by a worldview different from the

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dominant Western worldview. For example, Harman (1998, pp. 144-7) claims
that the new business of business is to serve the worlds evolution to a higher
state of consciousness. Thus rather than asking Does spirituality improve
organizational performance?, noetic research might ask How is this company
helping to move its internal culture and the society around it to a higher state of
consciousness?.
Second, its research methods would take seriously the spiritual realm.
Fornaciari and Lund Dean (2001, p. 335), for example, challenge the current
dominance of the quantitative, positivist research methods paradigm in
spirituality in organizations research, pointing out the absurdity of trying to
factor analyze God. Drawing lessons from the natural sciences, they challenge
spirituality in organizations researchers to consider evidence about the
phenomenon of spirituality at work based on non-positivist ways of knowing.
They suggest ethnomethodological techniques, qualitative techniques, and
tradition-based stories, as more appropriate research methods than positivist
methods.
Third, it might model itself after groundbreaking noetic research in other
fields. For example, Murphy and Donovan (1997) and Dossey (1993, 1996)
examine the effect of prayer and meditation on physical healing. Spirituality in
organizations researchers could, in like manner, examine the effect of prayer
and meditation on organizational health.
The academic study of spirituality. Scholars in the academic field of
spirituality have long done research which considers spirituality on its own
terms. Several examples follow.
Ken Wilbers work addresses not only the philosophical issues (see above), it
also points the way toward new research methods. A broad-based student of
spirituality, Wilber studies spirituality wherever it occurs, sometimes connected
with religious traditions, sometimes not. In Transformations of Consciousness,
for example, he and his colleagues report on research they have done on
transformations of consciousness in individuals, examining the effect of
meditation on states of consciousness (Wilber et al., 1986). The approach of their
team departs sharply from the approach of traditional scientific studies of
meditation. While traditional studies adopt a reductionistic approach (assuming
that because brain-wave analysis of meditators indicates relaxation, meditators
must be just relaxing), Wilber et al. adopt a both/and approach. They accept
both the validity of the brain-wave analysis and the validity of the meditators
spiritual reality. Their work might provide a model for spirituality in
organizations researchers to examine transformations of consciousness both of
individuals in organizations and of organizations as a whole.
Ruffing (1995) has done qualitative research on the spiritual development of
women, charting patterns of growth and defining a level of spiritual maturity
which she terms kataphatic mysticism. Her research method might be
extended by spirituality in organizations researchers to do a new kind of

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qualitative research in organizations, qualitative research which considers

spirituality on its own terms. Such research might measure the spiritual
development of individuals and the impact individuals development has on the
spiritual development of the organization, and vice versa. This research might
also examine gender differences in spiritual development and the impact of
gender difference on spiritual growth patterns in organizations.
Scholars in the cross-cultural study of mysticism (e.g. James, 1929; Huxley,
1945; Katz, 1978; McGinn, 1998; Ruffing, 2001) have done research on mystics
of different spiritual traditions and cultural backgrounds, seeking to establish
what these mystics have in common and where their differences lie. Such
studies might point spirituality in organizations scholars toward research
methods which take into account spiritual diversity in the workplace. Research
questions like How can the spiritual growth of individuals representing
diverse spiritual traditions best be cultivated in a single workplace? or What
do different spiritual traditions represented in a single workplace have in
common (if anything)? or How can a spiritually diverse organization grow
spiritually as a whole organization? might be addressed by this approach.
Finally, scholars of Christian spirituality over the past decade have engaged
in a lively discussion about method in the study of spirituality. Part of this
discussion has focused on research methods and the place of social scientific
research in the study of spirituality (Schneiders, 1998; Frohlich, 2001). These
discussions represent a figure/ground shift from the way most spirituality in
organizations researchers have approached their subject thus far. In Frohlichs
(2001) approach, for example, social scientific research methods serve the
discipline of spirituality, rather than spirituality being one variable measured
in the service of a social scientific inquiry. By modeling new research after this
approach, spirituality in organizations scholars might open new vistas onto
how we perceive spirituality in organizations and how we motivate
organizations to integrate spirituality into their daily operations.
Conclusion
This is an exciting time for the new field of spirituality in organizations as it
defines its territory and charts its course. Pioneering researchers play an
important role in blazing the trails that will lead theorists and practitioners into
the spirituality in organizations terrain. These pioneers are defining important
trails and making progress toward these trails destinations. At the same time,
the questions lurking behind current research efforts point spirituality in
organizations scholars toward the new frontier of deeper philosophical work
and new research methods. If the new field of spirituality in organizations is to
mature, it needs pioneers continuing along the trails already being blazed,
pioneers to do the deep philosophical work, pioneers who will explore new
research methods, and the bridge-builders who can help them all talk to one
another.

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