Organizational spirituality: a literature review and research agenda

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether the organizational spirituality (OS) also called for spiritually-based organization (SBO) concept continues to be, in fact, a source of refreshing ideas to the organizational studies.

Design/methodology/approach

Regarding that OS is a theme that does not pertain to the scientific mainstream, the criteria to select valuable work were broader. On this basis, this literature review focused on a set of distinct sources: empirical and theoretical-conceptual papers (i.e. peer-reviewed), books, book chapters and doctoral dissertations. The material should be written in English and matched specifically the terms “spiritually-based organization,” “organizational spirituality” and “spiritual organization” in the websites of prominent scientific publications such as Google Scholar, EBSCO, Emerald, Sage and Elsevier. The premise was to portray an ample overview about what the scientific research has been yielded on this topic covering the period of 23 years (i.e. 1999–2022).

Findings

Data revealed that a large portion of the scholarly work of OS has been largely published in journals of modest factor impact or in books/book chapters. Such evidence indicates that OS definitively is not embraced by the scientific mainstream, despite the relevance of this topic. Further, it appears that the study, research and writings about SBOs, despite their positive effects and features, do not draw the attention of the majority of academic community. As a result, this field of knowledge has been characterized by scant work. This conclusion sounds somewhat astonishing considering that companies strongly driven by financial and economic concerns have proved not to be useful to humankind well-being and the planet.

Originality/value

This review sought to concentrate only on scholarly work that could bring something noteworthy to the debate of the OS concept. By the same token, other related concepts such as workplace spirituality and spirituality in the workplace, which have been properly explored, were not approached here. The author surmises that such path may account for somewhat the reduced number of work found about this topic, despite the fact this review drew on Google Scholar as well.

Citation

Vasconcelos, A.F. (2023), "Organizational spirituality: a literature review and research agenda", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 31 No. 7, pp. 2979-3001. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-04-2022-3230