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Legal Aspects of Spirituality inthe WorkplaceDon G. Schley aa Department of Management , Colorado TechnicalUniversity , Colorado Springs, Colorado, USAPublished online: 13 Mar 2008.

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Intl Journal of Public Administration, 31: 342–358, 2008Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN 0190-0692 print / 1532-4265 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01900690701590744

LPAD0190-06921532-4265Intl Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 31, No. 4, Jan 2007: pp. 0–0Intl Journal of Public AdministrationLegal Aspects of Spirituality in the Workplace

Legal Aspects, Workplace SpiritualitySchley Don G. SchleyDepartment of Management, Colorado Technical University,

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Abstract: This paper treats management trends concerning the assumed dichotomybetween spirituality and religion in the workplace, and raises basic questions. (1) Areproposed nebulous definitions of spirituality realistic? (2) Does spirituality contrast toreligion as a purely private, internal matter or does it carry necessary external implica-tions? (3) Is there a connection between spirituality and religion? (4) If spirituality, likereligion, has a public dimension, what could that dimension entail? This inquiry utilizesclassical treatments such as those of William James, Gordon Allport, and AbrahamMaslow, as well as modern authors, to consider the potential benefits of both religionand spirituality in the workplace.

Keywords: spirituality, religion, workplace, rights, secularism

This article examines trends in the workplace regarding spirituality. It willconsider spirituality from the perspective of what happens when a person’sspirituality leads him or her to take a stance on public issues, as well as atdifferences in secular interpretations of spirituality and interpretations ofspirituality by religious persons. Basic issues will include

1. Is spirituality purely a private, internal matter or does it have necessaryexternal implications?

2. If spirituality goes beyond the purely personal and private, does Spiritualityhave a public dimension?

3. If so, what can and does that public dimension entail?4. Finally, what rights do religious persons have, practically speaking, in the

workplace?

Address correspondence to Don G. Schley, Department of Management, ColoradoTechnical University, 4435 North Chestnut St., Colorado Springs, CO 80907, USA;E-mail: dschley@coloradotech.edu

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This article raises issues once raised by the American psychologist, philosopherand religionist, William James in the Gifford lectures at the University ofEdinburgh, published as The Varieties of Religious Experiences,[1] namely, doreligious faith and practice have practical out-workings that can be of practicalbenefit to society? James, writing in a far different intellectual climatethan today’s, concluded that religious faith and experience did lead to practicalbenefits, but these benefits emerged relative to the personalities involved—i.e.,a “great-souled” man or woman would have far more beneficial effect that apetty person wrapped up in his or her own world.

Similar issues were raised by the social psychologist Gordon Allportin conjunction with the Civil Rights Movement in his classic, The Nature ofPrejudice (1954), in which he wrote a critical chapter titled “Religion and Preju-dice.” Allport reached more specific conclusions that did James, in a climatethat was rapidly developing a secular, even anti-religious caste out of aversionto the assumedly religious origins of southern segregation. Allport concludedthat prejudice was related to three separate personality types—intrinsic,extrinsic and mixed types. The largest group comprised the “mixed” types.

Where prejudice was concerned, the intrinsically religious types—those who were religious for reasons emerging from their own internalbeings—were the least likely to hold some form of prejudice. The extrin-sic types, however, those for whom religion primarily entailed conformityto an external world, were the most likely to be “prejudiced. The “mixed”types, those with both intrinsic and extrinsic concerns, were less inclinedto be prejudiced than the extrinsic types, but they were inclined to con-form with society’s outward rules. Allport concluded, accordingly, thatmost prejudice was the result of an effort to conform to outward socialnorms, and that it was not intrinsically rooted in religious faith but inhuman psychology. This paper examines more recent treatments of reli-gion and spirituality in the workplace to see whether one can make furtherjudgments today about the potential or actual practical benefits of religionin the workplace.

BEGINNINGS

The issues surrounding spirituality in the workplace, and its potential effects,either beneficent or harmful, go back to the very beginnings of civilization andan established legal order. The reign of Hammurabi of Babylon is especiallyimportant, since that king promulgated, late in his reign (ca. 1729–1686 B.C.),one of the most important law codes in human history.[2] This law code provedto be a watershed for Western civilization, since it brought into the foregroundthe religiously and theologically grounded idea that justice was a primaryconcern of the gods, and that the gods had delegated to the human king thetask of creating and enforcing a just order on earth. Thus, the stele on which

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Hammurabi had his code engraved depicted Shamash, the Babylonian SunGod, handing the tablets of the law to Hammurabi, the king.[3]

This moment in civilization provides the starting point for our discussion,since Hammurabi introduced to the West the idea of religion as inherently con-nected to practical actions, as enforcing a particular order of behavior, in allaspects of life. Thus, the code began with laws against business fraud, directlyaddressing issues of secular justice, but from the standpoint of religioussanctions. This historical moment flies in the face of two developing andconverging trends in the debate concerning religion and spirituality in theworkplace: first, the increasingly popular South Asian religious idea, promul-gated in the sixties in the United States, that religion is a purely private spiritualmatter; secondly, the legal idea that religion is a private matter that constitu-tionally is not allowed to have any place in public affairs because itmight cause offense. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, in fact, held thebizarre conviction that “religious believers should enjoy full liberty under theConstitution only so long as they accept their faith as purely personal andrefrain from making claims about its truth.”[4]

Today’s rising secularism, however, was entirely foreign to the foundingfathers of the United States. Even Thomas Jefferson, the alleged father of thisline of thought (through an 1801 letter he drafted to a Baptist Association inNew Hampshire, in which he coined the non-constitutional phrase “a wall ofseparation between church and state,”[5] proclaimed openly the necessity of apublic order founded on “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”[6] Publicinstitutions today openly contradict the constitutional order. For instance, onesees this trend in the recently filed case of Williams vs. Cupertino SchoolDistrict[7] in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California,Oakland Division. Here teacher Stephen J. Williams was forced to removefrom classroom materials excerpted from the Declaration of Independence, thediaries of George Washington and John Adams, the writings of William Penn,and various state constitutions on account of their theistic content.[8] The strictlysecular line of thought contradicts not only the entire historic American legaltradition, but also the development of Western civilization as a whole, in whichone of the driving forces has been the effort to develop a system of universallaw, in harmony with and reflective of a universal, created order.

Yet over the last fifty years this radical, anti-religious secularism hasarisen, proclaiming as its goal a society without religious expression—a stateRichard John Neuhaus[9] calls “the naked public square”—that is, the societywithout religious influence. The dichotomy between the free practice ofreligion, and the suppression of its public expression, is represented in theFirst Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which denies the establishment ofreligion, but which guarantees “the free practice thereof.”

The emergent secularism aimed at denying religious expression hasgained strength, particularly through the courts, the universities, and thepublic schools,[10] using the establishment clause to deny religious expression.

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Moreover, federal law since the sixties has legislated workplace protectionsfor categories of race, creed, color, religion or national origin, (U.S. CivilRights Act, Title VII, 1964) among a now growing list of special categories.These laws have run into conflict with the secularist doctrine of non-publicexpression of religious convictions and ideas.

Essentially, workplace conflicts over religion and spirituality derive fromtwo sources:

1. the developing constitutional conflict between the denial of an establish-ment of religion, while endorsing its free practice; and

2. the nearly 4000 year-old tradition that Western law is grounded in religion,and that religion thus plays a decisive role in the public order.

Indeed, in accordance with this second stream of thought, as well as with the “freepractice” clause of the Constitution, practitioners of religion tend to emphasize“free practice.” Secularists, on the other hand, break with the historic tradition inwhich religion was concerned with public issues, and seek to curtail religious prac-tice and expression in the workplace in the name of the “establishment clause.”

The idea of “giving offense” as a legally actionable concern was firstconcretized in the case law applying Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of1964, which imposes sanctions against actions that engender “a hostileworkplace” or work environment. Subsequent decisions developed this ideaas “an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.”[11] Thisnovel legal terminology entered into Title VII in the section detailing thenature of sexual harrassment, and has spread from this locus to other formsof workplace harrassment and discrimination. And this definition of “a hos-tile workplace” has made the workplace issues of spirituality and religion allthe more sticky, since employers, eager to avoid conflict, can then use thecriterion of “creating an offensive environment” as a tool to limit religiousexpression in the workplace, insofar as many persons seem to regardreligious expression as hostile or intimidating.

Of course, the employer in such cases has to choose which offended partyto defend, and this choice usually leans against religious expression, and infavor of the establishment clause, especially in public institutions, as Williamsv. Cupertino (above) illustrates. In this sense, the government actually takes anegative stance against public expressions of traditional religious faith, whichin Western civilization has come primarily to do with ethics, morality andorganizational associations.

MODERN UNDERSTANDINGS OF SPIRITUALITY

One cannot neglect here, however, the introduction of a new understanding ofspirituality into the mix—as distinct from an explicit religion as typically

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understood in the West. For instance, Henry Fielding’s[12] caricature of theformalistic understanding of religion, put in the mouth of the reprehensibleminister, Mr. Thwackum, is instructive:

“When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not onlythe Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only theProtestant religion, but the Church of England.”

This understanding of religion stands in contrast to the idea of spirituality as aprivate matter not associated with formal organizations, which got at least partof its impetus from South Asian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, andEast Asian religions such as Taoism and Zen, during the sixties. This dichot-omy between traditional, formalized religions, and as opposed to a privatespirituality, has led Giacalone & Jurkiewicz[13] to note that spirituality lacks adistinctive definition. For their study they thus write:

A…weakness, again due to the newness of the paradigm, lies in ourconception of spirituality. The discipline of spirituality is stillseeking a definitive character….and any scientific assessments mustbe carefully interpreted within the particular conceptual constraintsunder which the studies were conducted. In this study, spiritualitywas operationalized using a measure that characterizes it as staticand trait-like, similar to beliefs and attitudes, toward the end ofmaximizing the utility of the findings. This being so, it does limitthe extrapolation of these findings to more specific spiritualconstructs such as spiritual health…spiritual intelligence …or spiritualself-consciousness….

These two scholars go on to elaborate the distinction between religion andspirituality:

Some may question why religion, as a spiritual pursuit, was not a part ofthis research. First, religion and spirituality are not synonymous, and inparticular, the operationalization of religion is significantly differentfrom that of spirituality. Scientific studies of religion are characterizedby measures of church attendance, amount of prayer, involvement inchurch-related activities, and are geared toward the assessment of affili-ation rather than spirituality. Such measures have little overlap withmeasures of spirituality, which are driven by neither affiliation nordenominational ideals. Finally, studies using religious variables havenot demonstrated a clear relationship between religion and ethics, andlack consensus to the extent that Terpstra et al.,[14] among others, haveconcluded there is no difference between the ethical behaviors of believersand nonbelievers.

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Terpstra et al.[15] made their observations in connection with insider trad-ing scams. Here we get to the heart of the matter at hand: researchers treatreligion as having to do with external criteria such as organizational affili-ation, and with concomitant and other external behavioral results such asattending church or participating in church-related activities. They thenterm their studies “scientific,” as above, when in fact their definitions ofreligion constitute an arbitrary choice which flies in the face of thousandsof years of religious practice aimed at engendering “spirituality.” Thesesame scholars then define spirituality as something much less tangible thanand unrelated to religion. The latter aspect is telling. At best, Giacalone &Jurkiewicz define spirituality through negatives: i.e., spirituality is representedneither by “affiliation nor denominational ideals.” The authors also claim thatlittle behavioral distinction exists between the ethics of adherents to organizedreligion and those who are not regular participants in religious activities. Thequestion of what spirituality is, exactly, remains murky.

Indeed, Allport’s seminal work on The Nature of Prejudice[16] uncoveredsimilar problems in dealing with religion, yet Allport understood theseproblems as a paradox, not as evidence of a disjunction between spiritualityand religion. Thus he wrote:

The role of religion is paradoxical. It makes prejudice and it unmakesprejudice. While the creeds of the great religions are universalistic, allstressing brotherhood, the practice of these creeds is frequently divisiveand brutal. The sublimity of religious ideas is offset by the horrors ofpersecution in the name of these same ideals….Churchgoers are moreprejudiced than the average; they are also less prejudiced than theaverage.[17]

Allport went on in his investigation to show that two kinds of religiosityexist—one kind (which some might call “spirituality”) which is “infusedwith the character of ethics and philosophy,” and another, utilitarian kind,whose adherents “generally regard religion as a means rather than anend.”[18] In another place, Allport cut the distinction even closer—betweenthose who accept religious teachings out of fear of social ostracism ordivine punishment, and those who accept those same religious teachings asuniversal absolutes, and who thus “internalize” them. It is in the lattergroup that one finds great traits often associated with “spirituality” such astolerance and humility. Accordingly, the distinction Allport discoveredin his research and analysis is between two different ways of beingreligious—essentially an external way, based on enforced conformity, andan internal way, in which the person works to conform the inner being tothe higher ideals propounded by the religion.[19]

One could posit, then, that when speaking of spirituality today, onespeaks of this latter way of being, and not the former. Certainly the latter

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mode of being is conducive to personal harmony in the workplace (so long asethical norms are not broached, perhaps). And given the presumably greaterhumility of persons who embody this form of being than those who do not,one might reasonably expect such persons to be, in their work, a decidedlypositive workplace influence.

Yet spirituality also evinces characteristics beyond those identified byAllport, and by Giacalone & Jurkiewicz. Thus, William James,[20] in hisseminal treatment identified mysticism as an important aspect of religiousexperience, and specified four hallmarks for mystical experience which set itoff from other forms of religious experience. First, mystical experience isineffable—that is, it cannot be expressed in words. Second, it has a noeticquality; in other words, the persons feels as if he or she has gained a higherknowledge. Third, the experience is transient, and fourth, the recipient ispassive.[21] Modern management scholars have nothing at all this precise inmind when discussing spirituality, however.

While mysticism plays some role across nearly all religious traditions,it is only variously tolerated. Thus, in the Roman Catholic Middle Ages,mysticism was found and even expected in the monastic cloisters. Outsidethe monasteries, however, Catholic Christianity was largely a religion ofpraxis—attending regular worship and confession, for instance, and followingthe political, social, and moral dicta of the Church. Similarly, much of Protes-tantism has been inspired by persons one can only term “mystics”—i.e.,persons with strong internal religious experiences (e.g., Martin Luther, and inthe Puritan tradition, as Annie Hutchinson, expelled from the MassachusettsBay Colony along with Roger Williams for heresy, and many others)—yetProtestantism itself, outside the Holiness and Pentecostal denominations, hasbeen largely a matter following a particular, dictated social order, after givingone’s assent to a certain, rationalistically formulated body of theological andmoral teaching.

John Calvin, the father of “Reformed” Protestantism, distrusted thebreakthrough mystical experiences that resulted in conversions, includingLuther’s.[22] In the Calvinist tradition, accordingly, Western Christianitydivorced itself from much of its spiritual heritage, evolving instead as a com-plex of socio-ethnic organizations, a pattern most of Protestantism followed,especially as Protestant Reformation denominations were based aroundsocio-ethnic groups—Scots, some English and Swiss becoming Presbyterian,English becoming Anglican and Congregational, Dutch becoming DutchReformed, Germans and Scandinavians becoming Lutherans, etc.

While Eastern religions lay extreme weight on the quality of the internalexperience, and on the internalization of the teachings of whichever traditionone stands in, one cannot overlook the fact that Hinduism, by advocating con-formance with dharma—the social and legal norms of Hindu society—actuallyseeks a public role in society as well as stressing a private aspect. This factcould, as far as the workplace is concerned, set up organizations for conflict

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between different norms—Western vs. Eastern. Thus, many employers andmanagers, regardless of their own personal religious convictions and commit-ments, may side with the secularists in this struggle, simply as a mode ofconflict avoidance in their workplaces. And as Allport has noted, despite theuniversalism of nearly all major creeds, those personalities who are in it forexternal reasons (of social conformity, for instance) may turn out to be theones who abandon their own religious ideals to achieve that conformity, orpower, or whatever other end their religion might serve.

A mitigating element emerges from the discussion of this potentialconflict between Eastern and Western religious traditions in the workplace.That is the fact that many of the underlying norms of both Eastern and Westernreligions tend to be similar or complimentary. Thus, both Eastern and Westernreligions have historically taught an ethic of reciprocity. In the East, this teach-ing is associated with Confucius;[23] in the West, it was codified in the“Golden Rule” taught by Jesus (“do unto others as you would have others dounto you”), which teaching found its antecedents in 1st-century B.C. Jewishthought in the West, for instance, in the teaching of Rabbi Hillel, “What ishateful to thyself, do not do to another.”[24]

Eastern and Western religions have also taught an ethic of integrity. Forinstance, the Hebraic concept of righteousness does not in its earliest formhave to do with conformity to the Law, but with doing what one says one willdo.[25] Jesus likewise is recorded to have put forth such a position in the NewTestament: “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no…”[26] Both of thesereligiously based universal norms—i.e., reciprocity and integrity—tend tobetter workplace conduct and relations, rather than worsen them.

Nonetheless, Ian Mitroff[27] has written:

…spirituality, and not religion, will work in most workplaces. Religionis seen as dividing people through dogma and its emphasis on formalstructure. It is viewed as intolerant, closed-minded, and excluding allthose who do not believe in a particular point of view. Spirituality, onthe other hand, is viewed as both personal and universal. It is perceivedas tolerant, open-minded, and potentially including everyone.

Here Mitroff defines “spirituality” in perceptual-functional terms, i.e., as aparticular set of characteristics—“personal and universal”—regardless as towhether those characteristics have anything to do with spiritual phenomena ornot (in contrast to William James’ mysticism, which always has to do withanother dimension one may call spiritual). In this sense, Mitroff associates“spirituality” with a set of vague secular traits that a certain wing of culturetoday considers positive and desirable, while he associates religion with thosenegative features—“dividing people through dogma and…formal structure”—which Allport, in his much earlier analysis, identified with persons who sawreligion as a means to an end, and who did not internalize its teachings. Also,

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Mitroff ignores the fact that entire cultures have been constructed upon intrin-sic spiritual bases, such as the warrior culture of the North American PlainsIndians, which had at its center the mystical experience of the individual.[28]

Garcia-Zamora[29] likewise struggles with a definition of spirituality inhis important treatment, and notes the cryptic confusion between religion andspirituality that extends even to the dictionaries. He quotes Turner’s nebulousdefinition of spirituality indicating a locus of spirituality within, ratherthan external to the person (i.e., to exclude that negative aspect of religionidentified by Allport, above):

“It means engaging the world from a foundation of meaning and values.It pertains to our hopes and dreams, our patterns of thought, our emotions,feelings and behaviors. As with love, spirituality is multidimensional, andsome of its meaning is inevitably lost when attempts are made to captureit in a few words.”[30]

Nonetheless, Garcia-Zamora also identifies a phenomenon in Christianity thatparallels in some ways, but does not duplicate, Allport’s paradox. Thus, hesees Christian spirituality as having both positive internal and positiveexternal dimensions: “prayers and actions to improve the world and toincrease social justice.”[31] The positive practical and external influences ofChristianity are indirectly confirmed by the fact that of the “red states” of the2004 presidential election, i.e., those who voted for President Bush, 80% scoreabove the “blue states” in both percentages of charitable giving, and in abso-lute amounts. These were states with high turnouts of traditional religious per-sons. Similarly, the “red states” where the president had his narrowest marginshad commensurately lower levels of charitable giving.[32] One could deducefrom such evidence that traditional Christians (since the President carried thisvote by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1) are more likely to be charitable than are theirless traditional and more secularized counterparts on the Northeast Seaboard,the West Coast, and in the Great Lakes region.

Tredget[33] also recognizes the positive organizational outworkings ofreligion, noting the positive economic benefits generated by the BenedictineMonastic Order, founded around 526 A.D. and built upon the simple Rule ofSt. Benedict.[34] This religious institution, founded for religious purposes,inadvertently created the economic revival of the 10th century which led tothe period known as the 12th -century Renaissance, when the great Europeanuniversities—especially Bologna (1119 A.D.) and Paris (1150 A.D.)—wereestablished.[35] Despite the publication of such contrary viewpoints, even inthe management literature, Garcia-Zamora is compelled to note the retentionof the emerging distinction between religion and spirituality by other scholars,such as Cash and Gray: “…spirituality looks inward to an awareness ofuniversal values, while formal religion looks outward, using formal rites andscripture.”[36]

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WORKPLACE APPLICATIONS

Distinctions such as those made by Cash and Gray appear self-serving of aparticular anti-religous Tendenz, as religious teaching can and does leaddirectly and demonstrably to positive organizational benefits—as witness theentire “servant leadership” movement.[37] Indeed, the religious ethic of serviceled early Christians to set up hospitals to care for and nurse the sick, in theface of a harsh and almost social-Darwinist classical civilization. Thus, again,one is driven back to Allport’s paradox, that religion can be both good and badin terms of social and organizational values, and to Garcia-Zamora’s parallelrecognition that Christian spirituality can promote both positive internal andexternal outworkings.

The same aspect of positive applicative ethics within an organizationarises in other religions besides Christianity. Muslim piety, for instance,carries strong external concerns for business conduct, as in the deeply feltopposition to usury. In international project finance this piety results ininteresting types of loans based on a percentage ownership of the project,rather than on the receipt of interest. Indeed, while Muslim social practices areoften characterized as brutal or clannish, or even evil, in contradistinction tothe West (especially regarding women: general social suppression, honor kill-ings, clitoridectomies), the opposition to usury (which mirrors ancient Hebraicnorms as well) can result in significantly beneficial alliances, in which thelending party, because it retains an ownership interest in the undertaking,provides, as part of its contribution, expertise, advisors and project oversight,where needed, to guarantee the success of the venture. Still, Muslim moralopposition to usury might raise real conflict in the usury-based Western bank-ing system. A singular point of study here would be the financial practices ofdevout Muslim banks, and their performance vis-à-vis Western, usury-basedbanks.

Similarly, Hindu and Buddhist religion also have external consequences,in Hinduism the obligations of dharma weighing on the individual at least asheavily as karma (despite the sixties’ juxtaposition of Western dogma withEastern karma, e.g., in the bumper sticker, “My karma ran over yourdogma!”). Indeed, while Eastern, and especially South Asia religions tend tobe far more internal than their Western counterparts, the real problem withspirituality is that it cannot simply be reduced to internal motivational ele-ments, with the external elements of “religion”—even of religions that inducespirituality—eliminated to avoid conflict (save for the positive outworkings ofthe internal dimensions).

Still, Garcia-Zamora admits that it is naïve to demand that workers on theone hand devote themselves to their work and identify personally with theirrespective corporate cultures (and many corporations do speak of themselvesand their employees as a “family”) and at the same time to ask them to leavetheir personal lives and sentiments at home (a not infrequent request).

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Hicks[38] argues, too, that scholars who define spirituality in opposition toreligion fail to describe this complex interrelationship accurately. Thoseclaiming that the workplace requires the whole individual are thus inconsis-tent when on the one hand they claim spirituality is appropriate in the work-place, while on the other hand they deny the specific religious expressionsassociated with (and which may give rise to) that spirituality. (It remains to beseen whether and to what extent “spirituality” can be inculcated independentlyof any specifically religious system of thought and practice.)

Yet management seems to be moving in the direction of supporting both adefinition and a praxis of spirituality which are functionally innocuous, andbehaviorally positive, while banning religious expression as dysfunctional per se.Such an internal-external distinction—with the internal dimension reflecting apositive private spirituality, and the external reflecting negative external religiousconvictions—raises real questions about the place religious persons will find inmodern organizations. Indeed, as Whitehead[39] notes, many Americans already“believe that any mention of religion in the public education classroom and/or onthe campus is unconstitutional.”[40] The public schools are relevant here preciselybecause they comprise a microcosm of American public life to come, and thevast majority of young people are socialized in that context. Public school atti-tudes and practices thus establish the tone and expectations with which bothworkers and managers approach these issues in the workplace.

Since spirituality, moreover, is understood in such non-specific andnon-substantive terms, executive managers can infer that spirituality meansanything that they want the term to mean. Since religion, moreover, is widelydefined as negative per se, as in the treatment by Mitroff,[41] the corporate cul-ture would seem to be moving toward discrimination against overtly religiouspersons (as if “religion” were acceptable so long as it had no dimensionof external expression). Such a direction would seem to lead directly to amanagement- or corporate-led suppression of religious expression, withunpredictable consequences for the coveted “spirituality” which in all creedshas historically been nourished by religious practice.

Thus, the management trend expressed by Mitroff [42] and others (above),seems to be heading in the direction of a view that desires and supports the internaloutcomes of a bona-fide spiritual life, while ignoring, or suppressing, the actualsocial and behavioral religious structures, practices and associations on whichsuch spirituality is commonly built. Yet American law on this issue began with arecognition of the outward expressions of religious faith—for instance, Sabbathworship—that directly impacted the workplace. Such suppression would thuspotentially involve constitutional violations of employees’ rights.

Management’s ultimate interest in spirituality is summed up inGarcia-Zamora’s[43] conclusion:

There has been ample empirical evidence that spirituality in the work-place creates a new organizational culture in which employees feel

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happier and perform better. Bringing together the motivation for workand the meaning in work increases retention. Employees also may feelthat belonging to a work community, which is an important aspect ofspirituality, will help them when things get rough in the future. Further-more, a culture of sharing and caring eventually will reach all of theorganization’s stakeholders: suppliers, customers, and shareholders. Insuch a humanistic work environment, employees are more creativeand have higher morale, two factors that are closely linked to goodorganizational performance.

While Maslow, regarded as “the father of humanistic psychology,”[44]

recognized a distinctive side of human nature that dealt with the Spiritual[45]

Garcia-Zamora sees “spirituality” as leading to the creation of a “humanistic”work environment, a goal long espoused by such stalwarts of organizationaltheory as Douglas McGregor,[46] without any overt appeal to “spirituality”One must thus ask whether “spirituality” in this sense means anything otherthan “humane, internally motivated behavior.” If this equation is all thatscholars who distinguish “spirituality” from “religion” mean when discussingspirituality in the workplace, perhaps they should drop the term altogether andgo back to earlier usages. Maslow recognized the nexus of behavior, religion,and spirituality and treated these in his own critical work Religions, Values,and Peak Experiences,[47] which straddles the issues as well as any treatmentsince William James attempted the feat in the Gifford Lectures.[48]

CONCLUSIONS

Despite the general tendency to dilute “spirituality” into a common pool of“humanistic values” then, certain scholars have tried and are trying to grapplewith something more than “humane, internally motivated behavior”. If suchbe the case, future discussions should penetrate into the subject more deeply.As Allport recognized, religion per se is not bad; the paradox is that religioncan be both good and bad. And as Garcia-Zamora demonstrates, spiritualityhas positive imperatives in both the internal and external human dimensions,just as religion does (above). Consequently, management must move awayfrom the seemingly easy, internal-external distinction between spirituality andreligion, thence to ask the deeper, more difficult questions. These include,which aspects of religion are beneficial, and which may not be? How far canmanagement legally go in promoting those aspects that it sees as beneficialand in suppressing those aspects it sees as harmful? And, finally, whatrelationship exists between religion and spirituality?

In the course of these further investigations, one ought not forget thatfrom its historical inception, Western religion has demanded integrity in dailylife, in public and business dealings, as well as in private dealings. And this

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emphasis came into the public sphere first from religious sources, and remainsreinforced from that direction today, however weakly. If integrity is less valuedor less prevalent today than a century ago, even that reality may have variantcauses. Perhaps that perception is less a function of religion, than of thepossibility that sacred texts are read and valued commensurately less from thestandpoint of direct practical application than they were in that earlier time.

Perhaps, too, the ethical aspects of religion are less apparent today[49] thana century ago because the emphasis, even within organized Christianity, liesmore on the inner personal experience, than on the demands for a rigorousethical conduct in the context of one’s life in common with others. And perhapsthe increasing compartmentalization of life, which cuts across religions andcommunities, precisely because modern secular pluralism is endemic to oursociety, leaves no one immune from its scourge. Thus, even devoutly religiouspersons may find themselves compartmentalizing their behavior into discretefacets of life, since persons today are judged by their peers in theirprofessional contexts, which are generally not viewed holistically, in terms ofthe context of their overall lives.[50]

Management scholars must delve into such issues more deeply, ratherthan following the increasing tendency in secular academic culture to dismissreligion as a negative external influence or factor, while embracing anebulous, ill-defined and all-encompassing and purely internal spirituality assomehow positive (as long as it serves their purposes). Danger lies in thatdirection, too, as expressed by John Whitehead:

“…any attempts to impose (either directly or indirectly) a commonvalue system will violate equal protection principles inherent in theAmerican system of justice.”[51]

That is, the generalistic principles espoused under the guise of “spirituality”or even organizational unity, may in fact violate a number of religiousimperatives, including the ethical imperatives—for resistance to fraud,promotion of truth-telling, support of an unpopular co-worker in a justcause, or whistle-blowing.

One must always remember that ethical behavior may necessarily lead tosacrificial behavior—standing up to one’s organization or leadership for whatis right. In corporate culture, such truth-tellers, such iconoclasts, despite thelip service currently being paid to ethical norms and behavior, are hardly everwelcome. Freud[52] was the first to recognize the propensity of the group tooverride the moral will of the individual. Moreover, the question may beposed as to whether an employee informing on the misbehavior or fraud ofa teammate or superior is actually acting in the company’s interests, or isbreaking the genial spirit of team camaraderie. The ethical tendencies to insiston honest comportment may not be welcomed by mainstream corporatemanagers. Whistleblowers go down hard, and legal protections are thin at

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best—just witness the plight of CPA Betty Vinson, who with other colleaguesbrought to light the fraud at MCI/WorldComm, and ended up being chargedas an accessory.[53] Similarly, a vapid and eviscerated spirituality, stripped ofany substantive religious foundation, may result in nothing more than a kindof feel-good, organizational group-think. Again, one finds oneself back atAllport’s paradox, having to parse issues which do not lend themselves toeasy definition or distinction.

In the end, the religion-spirituality distinction may not be helpful wherethe workplace is concerned. Corporate leadership and management mightbetter concern themselves with cultivating a specific ethical ethos which sup-ports diverse religious practices, but which aims at specific ethical outcomes.The strength of such a plan would be that it would recognize the commonalityof the great religions in insisting on just social behavior, including acting withintegrity in the conduct of corporate business. Of course, such an approachwould require in-depth organizational support for persons making ethicalstands, and that element, perhaps, will be the hardest of all to achieve,the basic rule of the corporate bureaucracy being first and foremost, self-preservation within the system.

AREAS OF FURTHER RESEARCH

This brief overview of the difficult problem of spirituality in the workplaceidentifies several prospective areas for fruitful research. The first area wouldbe an in-depth examination of the artificial distinction between religion andspirituality being made in the literature today. Specifically, research needs toidentify real connectives and/or real disjunctions between these two relatedphenomena. For instance, spirituality historically has been cultivated throughreligious praxis—fasting, praying, meditating, reading sacred texts, and otherdisciplines of self-abnegation—meant to bring the practitioner to a deeperspiritual awareness of himself or herself, of the universe, and of the higherrealities which share this domain with us. None of the recent studies make thisconnection, save Garcia-Zamora[54] and Tredget[55].

The second area would entail an examination of the fates of ethicalpersons who actually take the risk of “blowing the whistle” on unethical orirresponsible corporate and organizational chiefs, such as those at MCI/WorldComm and Enron before their falls, and those in the FBI who tried towarn of the developing aerial attacks that would culminate in the horror of9/11. Indeed, study needs to be made of hard ethical choices and their corpo-rate consequences and any connections that might have existed in those casesbetween the given behaviors and religious or spiritual values. To speak ofethics in the idealistic and generalizing sense one commonly finds in the studyof spirituality and the workplace profits nothing. Finally, the question of spe-cific cultural-ethical outworkings of religion in the business realm should be

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pursued in the context of the practices of Muslim Banks vis-à-vis the practicesof Western banks, which rely heavily on usury (which Martin Luther specifi-cally condemned).

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2. von Soden, W. (1994). The ancient Orient. Trans. Donald G. Schley. GrandRapids: Eerdmans, pp. 50, 135–136; Saggs, H.W.F. (1962). The greatnessthat was Babylon. New York: Hawthorn Books, pp. 198, 206–212; pl. 21B;Meek, T. J. (1969). The Code of Hammurabi. In Pritchard, J. B. AncientNear Eastern texts relating to the Old Testament (ANET). Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, pp. 163b–180a.

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16. Allport, G. (1979). Religion and Prejudice. In The nature of prejudice.New York: Addison-Wesley (original publication date, 1954), pp. 444–460.

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37. Sendjaya, S., & Sarros, J. C. (2002). Servant leadership: Its origin,development, and application in organizations. Journal of Leadership &Organizational Studies. 9 (2), 57.

38. Hicks, D. A. (2002). Spiritual and religious diversity in the workplace:Implications for leadership. Leadership Quarterly. 13 (4), 379.

39. Whitehead, J. (1991). The Rights of Religious Persons in PublicEducation. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, p. xi.

40. See Williams v. Cupertino, 2004, op. cit.41. Mitroff, 2003, op. cit.

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42. Mitroff, 2003, op. cit.43. Garcia-Zamora, 2003, op. cit.44. Maslow, A. (1998). Maslow on management. New York: John Wiley and

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53. Pulliam, S. (2003). Ordered to commit fraud, a staffer balked, then caved.New York: The Wall Street Journal, 23 June. Retrieved January 28, 2008,from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB105631811322355600.html

54. Garcia-Zamora, 2003, op. cit.55. Tredget, D. (2002) The Rule of Benedict’ and its relevance to the world

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