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Research was conducted to empirically demonstrate the relationships between personal meaning, calling and organizational commitment in the context of spiritual leadership. Wong's Personal Meaning Profile was used to establish the various sources of personal meaning and identify those that predict calling. The results showed significant positive correlations between self‐transcendent personal meaning and calling. Further, calling was also positively correlated with organizational commitment and contrasted with work‐as‐job as a predictor of commitment. The study suggests that not all sources of personal meaning are predictive of calling, and that calling mediates the relationship between self‐transcendent personal meaning and organizational commitment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to present the experiences and findings of a university course in workplace spirituality in a time and stage where corporate greed and organizational instability run rampant.

The authors analyzed workshop dialogues and reviewed of participants' findings on corporations as well as their own changed perceptions.

There are some interesting common factors in corporations that perform according to spiritual guidelines and a highly interactive program on organizational analysis contributes tremendously to the levels of responsibility and awareness of participants.

Limitations to the research are: the population used for data was limited, as it consisted of business and management students at the MBA level; and the findings were only gathered from one cohort, and might provide increased themes when extended over multiple courses in multiple semesters. Future research could apply this study on other populations for a greater foundation in findings.

Organizations that adhere to the spiritual mindset are more successful, have happier employees, and are more aware of their environmental responsibilities.

The paper shows that in these times when corporate greed, dishonesty, and environmental neglect have been exposed so dramatically, courses on workplace spirituality are of high importance and lead to valuable insights for immediate and non‐immediate stakeholders.

Empirical research in spirituality and religion in work (SRW) offers special challenges in construct conceptualization, operationalization, and data analysis. For this special research methods issue, accomplished researcher and SRW champion Ian I. Mitroff shares his thoughts, criticisms, and models for current research as well as his hopes for SRW's empirical future. Mitroff, co‐author of the most prominent empirical SRW study to date (Mitroff, I.I. and Denton, E.A., A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America: A Hard Look at Spirituality, Religion, and Values in the Workplace, Jossey‐Bass, San Francisco, CA, 1999), holds trans‐disciplinarily grounded views of how SRW researchers need to overcome methodological impasses to stay interesting and relevant. This article contains excerpts from three recent interviews with Mitroff about the current and future states of SRW research, and how such research can move forward with integrity and respect for SRW's special subject matter.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to existing critiques of workplace spirituality and organizational culture. The paper links the two by problematising definitions of workplace spirituality that employ a “culture approach” to change, in which the construct is limited to a set of values that gives particular meaning to the workplace.

Properties of Weick's sensemaking model combined with a critical sensemaking approach are used to analyze texts in order to show how a spiritual culture may shape the actions of its members by serving as an implicit form of managerial control.

The paper reveals how some texts, Mitroff and Denton's, in particular, advocate workplace spirituality as necessary for organizations and the individuals who work in them to prosper. Simultaneously, such texts may imply a form of pastoral power, the purpose of which is to re‐affirm a positive self‐image, due to the cueing effects of language that is voiced in specific contexts.

The paper suggests that a cultural approach to understanding workplace spirituality influences how people can make sense of the organization in which they are members. The potential inordinate reverence of work and one's contribution toward enhanced organizational performance is of interest to all members of organizations because it highlights how control is achieved.

The paper offers some insights into the conditions that promulgate the linkage between work and spiritual fulfilment, and it promotes the continuing development of critical spirituality in organizations in order to overcome the potential managerial instrumentality that is highlighted in this paper.

Managers in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) carry responsibility for achieving government targets on the provision of quality care and service to patients. The demands on managers to achieve these targets is significant in itself, but are often multiplied because of having to cope with the conflicting pressures of an organisation that operates with a ‘business’ focus, yet is essentially a caring body that is service‐oriented at heart. These two areas of business and service are not naturally compatible and can create tension. Leaders are expected to bridge the two with ease, with little preparation on how to cope with the conflict that these two paradigms can create.This paper, detailing the authors' work with managers in an NHS acute trust, provides unique insights into ways of dealing with the tensions and challenges that leaders experience. The authors argue that a holistic approach to leadership is required to enable this tension to be managed effectively, which considers the physical, mental and spiritual. Of these three elements it is the spiritual dimension that is the most contentious, difficult and most often avoided aspect to leadership and the authors also found this in their work with this NHS acute trust. The paper introduces a model that highlights the three elements to the holistic approach, and goes on to use it in an analysis of the situation faced by managers. The analysis highlights the importance of balance and need for including more consideration of the spiritual dimension in leaders' activities.

The purpose of this paper is to review the implementation of two strategies that are actually un-teachable yet highly effective in higher education: meditation and storytelling.

Specifically focussing on workplace spirituality as a movement from corporate workers, and consequently, also a teaching topic in management education, the paper first indicates some problems faced in today's world, and relates these to the need for facilitating college courses in more compelling and comprehensive ways.

Spirituality and spiritual concepts can involve emotional and other non-cognitive experiences which cannot be taught using traditional teaching approaches such as reading and lecture. Specific approaches, such as meditation and storytelling are useful for teaching spirituality and spiritual concepts in a business school classroom setting. These two strategies provide an opportunity for students to reflect on their experiences and to become more self-aware.

Using the practical strategies discussed in this paper in management classes turns out to be a positive experience for both the course facilitators and the students.

Reflecting on the overhaul attempts of management education in universities, even those with the prestige of Harvard and Stanford, the authors discuss some interesting strategies that can help management educators take their course experiences and the results attained to the next level.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Following September 11, 2001, spirituality has become an even more important issue. Research projects have been done to address the need of spirituality in the corporate workplace. The issue of spirituality in the academic workplace is even more vital since it is from within the higher academic institutions that the leaders of tomorrow emerge. Yet, little has been done. This research is an attempt to fulfill this need. This project examined the spirituality of professors and the spiritual culture found in a private secular college, a private Christian college and a state university, all located in southern California. The design of the research was based on the work of Ian Mitroff and Parker Palmer. The results showed that there was a difference in the spiritual culture between these three campuses and that the spirituality of the professors was a reflection of the spiritual culture found on the campuses.

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.

This paper aims to examine the role of two mediating variables in the relationship between spiritual leadership with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The two mediating variables used in the study were organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and workplace spirituality as followers’ intrinsic motivation and self-concept factors. Furthermore, the research also examined the role of perceived organizational support as moderating variable on the relationship between spiritual leadership and workplace spirituality.

A survey was conducted using questionnaires via a face-to-face method. The five-point Likert scale was used to assess the variables and to measure the items. The tool of analysis used was partial least square. The sample consisted of 234 respondents encompassing teachers and educational staffs of an Islamic based education institution in Indonesia.

The results supported five out of the eight proposed hypotheses. It was apparent that there was a partial mediating role of the OBSE as followers’ motivational concept on the relationship between spiritual leadership and organization citizenship behavior.

The dearth of literature on the adoption of spiritual leadership in Islamic schools makes the depth of discussion on the study framework somewhat limited.

The insight provided by this study into understanding and link between spiritual leadership and OCB among Muslim education practitioners. While a large body of leadership research has adopted a variation of leadership theories, the results shifted the focus of attention to the adoption of spiritual leadership as an essential determinant of discretionary behavior in a religious-based institution.

Islamic schools are in dire need of teachers with discretionary behavior. Spiritual leadership proved to have a significant relationship with organizational based self-esteem and OCB. It promotes the intrinsic well-being of the follower by creating a vision where people can achieve their higher purposes of life and contributing to society by performing services to others, and by giving people a feeling of being appreciated.

The study extends scholarly understanding on the role of spiritual leadership, which is a relatively new and growing area of interest for academics and practitioners, in shaping teachers and academic staffs’ OCBs regarding both theory and practice.