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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.

Based on themes the authors observed in workplace spirituality texts, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the historicity of these texts and induce a model to help them understand how this discourse of workplace spirituality came into being.

The authors perform intertextual analysis to show how authors draw upon concepts available in the broader discursive context, from which the authors produced a textscape of the workplace spirituality discourse to depict these layers of discursive interconnections.

The expressed novelty and recency of workplace spirituality as a form of management knowledge, the authors argue, is made ambiguous by its heavy borrowing from other discourses. The authors show how existent spiritual, organizational and societal-level discourses create the conditions of possibility for the discourse of workplace spirituality to emerge. Most of the authors within the corpus engaged the same theories in organizational studies that created the kind of workplaces they now seek to change.

The power of the workplace spirituality discourse to improve the state of workers and work and achieve the expressed desire for change may be diminished through the discursive practices of its authors.

The authors offer a visual “textscape” in which the findings are framed and hence operationalize this idea in a novel manner that contributes to the methods of discourse analysis. The findings also call for more critical reflection into whether workplace spirituality represents a solution to organizational problems when neither the workers nor work it constructs are particularly new.

Lees's “ten faces” description of organizational rationales for investing in management development reflected a personal assessment which was not grounded in empirical data. Although frequently discussed and cited since, no critique of the model, or discussion of the ethics of organizational investment in management development, has been offered. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the rationale of a management development programme, particularly on programme participants.

An ethnographic approach was utilized in the collection of data on reactions to the rationale for deploying a spiritual management development initiative in a large Irish services organization.

The research conducted on the programme found the programme's rationale to be “hetero‐ethical” in that it suggested multiple possible outcomes for participants which they were encouraged to identify and pursue on an individual level.

The implications of this for participants and organizations are considered.

The concept of the hetero‐ethical rationale for management development, and its implications, are discussed and potential avenues for further research are identified. This concept differs from previous ones in that it considers how rationales for management are received and appreciated by participants.

The concept of “career” has become the dominant mode of thinking about the “lifespan” of one's working life in contemporary late capitalist society. The research literature on the concept of “vocation” and/or “calling” has grown in recent years, but has not yet received extensive treatment in the area of management career development. The purpose of this paper is to address this lacuna by outlining and describing the practice of vocational ideation (or considering one's work as calling, as opposed to a career or a job) in relation to its potential utilization in contemporary management and career development.

The paper is essentially conceptual and is informed by an extensive review of research literature and theory which examines how the concept of the “calling” has been integrated with learning, educational and developmental activities.

The paper discusses the implications of the return to the concept of “vocation” in HR and Management Development theory and demonstrates why “calling” is a small but significant nuance which can change the way in which managers engage with career development practices. The literature on introducing the concept of vocational ideation to career development activities has grown in research years. However, the literature review found that this body of work tends to focus on pre-experience college students, which indicates that it has not often been considered as a viable avenue for management development practice or research.

As the paper is purely conceptual, and most of the literature in this field tends to focus on pre-experience students, potential implications for practice and avenues for future research are outlined. One of the two main categories of research need which emerged from the conceptual work described in this paper in relation to vocationally oriented career ideation was concerned with developing an understanding the dynamics of introducing the concept of vocational calling into management career development interventions.

A template for “doing” for vocational ideation in a management career development or management development context was offered. This outline may be altered to assist management development practitioners to develop and augment vocational ideation initiatives as part of their work and professional practice.

Another area of research need emerging from this work was concerned with understanding changing perspectives on non-economic aspects of work as a social practice, the impact of culture on how vocations are understood, and the relationship between spirituality and meaningfulness and career behavior. In summary there appears to be a need for more studies which demonstrate how changed understandings of the vocation is reflective of broader social change.

The concept of vocational ideation is original and does not exist as a concept or a practice in the professional or research literature. It is discussed here in the context of the growth of interest in spirituality and religion in workplaces. Specific attention is given to how it can be applied in contemporary workplaces and organizations as part of management development practices.

This study aims to demonstrate how critical realism (CR) can be used in spirituality at work (SAW) research and to provide a practical example of CR in SAW research.

CR is a philosophical meta-theory that allows the stratification of spirituality into different levels of reality, advocates for research methods matching the ontology of the level investigated and provides complementary methods of exploring this phenomenon’s causal power in social contexts. The authors present a study where CR was used to explain how and why SAW influences ethics in organisational contexts.

The results demonstrate that CR provides a useful approach to bridging the positivist-interpretivist difference in SAW research. Moreover, a CR approach helped explain the underlying conditions and causal mechanisms that power SAW to influence ethical decision-making and behaviour in the workplace.

While CR has been applied in the management literature, negligible SAW research has used this approach. That which exists is either conceptual or does not discuss methods of data analysis, or describe how critical realist concepts resulted in their findings. This paper addresses that lacuna. CR also provides value, as an alternative approach to SAW research, in that it allows the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods as complementary, not confrontational methods while providing a more integrated and deeper view of SAW and its effects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current outcomes of the empirical research on workplace spirituality (WS) theory, that is, it provides an updated review about the knowledge of this managerial domain, as well as its limitations, problems and opportunities.

This study has searched for empirical articles of WS in the websites of relevant scientific publications such as Emerald, Sage, Taylor & Francis, as well as Google Academic, ProQuest and EBSCO. It has analyzed 882 published works, including books and book chapters. Overall, it has gathered 78 useful empirical studies.

Although WS theory is strongly linked to management studies, the research output has been published by a set of outlets from different domains. As a consequence, WS has made inroads through an interdisciplinary view. Findings indicated that quantitative method was the most preferred alternative by WS researchers, whereas qualitative and mixed-methods were less used. Data revealed the shortage of experimental studies in this area. As expected, the USA has been the most studied country in terms of the WS theory. Factor analysis is the most commonly utilized statistical technique followed by regression analysis. Data also suggested that Pearson correlation and structural equation modeling continue to be valuable statistic techniques for researchers in this area of knowledge. At last, the content analysis has identified five themes: positive effects, experiences/perceptions, uncertainties, measures and outcomes.

Unlike previous work, this study focuses exclusively on research output over a 16-year period (2000-2015). In doing so, it contributes to theory development by addressing the preferences of research designs, data collection methods, statistical techniques, countries surveyed, top journals of this field and major themes of research.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a model of leadership based on the characteristics of the most highly acclaimed leader in Jewish history, Moses. The lessons from his leadership that are applicable to modern corporate leaders are identified and related to management development and education settings.

This paper relies on a direct reading of books 2–5 of the Old Testament (see notes) to propose a model based on Moses’ leadership. Using Moses’ journey toward and during his leadership, a model for present‐day leadership is proposed. Examples are given to anchor this model in biblical texts and reference it to modern leadership thoughts, spirituality and practical wisdom.

While the leadership of Moses is known and widely discussed within Jewish learning, it has not yet found a wider, secular audience. However, Moses’ leadership characteristics present an opportunity to reflect on how creative tensions between different leadership traits could be reconciled and an ethical model of leadership could be applied.

This paper does not look beyond books 2–5 of the Old Testament for further supporting evidence of the leadership of Moses. Future research could broaden the model through these sources. Moreover, research could test the four dimensions of leadership proposed in this paper in contemporary contexts, with performance as a dependent variable.

Moses’ leadership has been discussed by theologists but this paper suggests drawing on it as part of the ongoing academic discourse on corporate leadership. The biography of Moses sheds a light on the formative experiences of an ethical leader and his actions demonstrate how such a leader can act under challenging circumstances. If further developed, this research promises to be a useful addition to current leadership thinking and management education.

The purpose of this research is to enable the examination of sensemaking mechanisms, inherent in the discourse of organizational spirituality (OS), which embed meanings this discourse creates. In order to achieve this goal the paper explores the pivotal notion of “spirituality” in OS, examines the conditions of emergence of its main characteristics, and inquires into OS participants' mental processes which help to sustain it. Thus, the conceptual space is critically explored in which organizational actors make their commitments to attain goals by spiritual means and in which the alleged causal mechanisms operate.

The approach taken is a critical analysis of literature and empirical material.

The logic of OS conceptual framework is vastly inconsistent with rationalism, which underpins typical functionalist assertions of OS proponents. The central OS notion – spirituality – lacks concrete and independent characteristics. It can be perceived as a mere classification tool which groups together certain “positive” phenomena, perspectives or outcomes. The legitimacy of this operation within the discourse is guaranteed by its episteme – the set of rules, which makes certain moves possible and excludes some others. It may easily enforce or preclude the particular interpretations of organizational reality or validity of certain initiatives. The latter hints at the political dimension of OS.

Potential researchers should be sensitive to the issues of logical circularity of OS discourse and its degree of incoherence with rationalist assumptions. The design of research on OS should attempt to delve into meanings created by OS discourse profiting from proximity to research subjects ensured by careful application of qualitative methods. Research could focus more on the political dimension: issues of power relations; methods of exerting influence; gaining support, etc., instead of contemplating more vague territories which OS studies seem inclined to explore. These results refer to a limited number of participants and organizations and are not fully generalizable, which is inevitable in qualitative research. The geographical concentration of the research sample might have affected the results to some extent, however this fact is innocuous to the overall validity of this study.

Beyond the scope of many recent papers that emphasize the positive role of organizational spirituality as a means of attaining particular objectives, the paper offers an alternative approach in which OS makes such calculations very difficult, and yet creates conditions which are conducive to advancing OS participants' political agendas.

The primary purpose of this study is to determine the level of spirituality in the workplace for faculty members at public universities in Jordan.

The paper uses a survey design as the basis for the research.

The results indicate that participants perceived an overall moderate‐to‐high level of workplace spirituality in their work settings. Whereas the dimensions of “self level of spirituality in the workplace”, “group level of workplace spirituality”, and “the community and spirituality in the workplace” received moderate to high agreement, the dimensions of “family and spirituality in the workplace” and “management systems that encourage personal and spiritual transformation” received moderate agreement. Moreover, based on t‐test and ANOVA analyses, significant differences were not found in faculty members' perceptions based on gender, experience, academic rank and university affiliation.

The paper adds to the growing field of literature on spirituality in the workplace in higher education institutions.

Describes the development of a leadership approach in which the outdoors became an environment for personal reflection.

Reports on the pilot findings from research conducted with 50 managers from Airbus UK and TOTAL and contribute to knowledge about reflective approaches to leadership development

A process of retreat became a catalyst for reflective learning about leadership among 50 managers from Airbus UK and TOTAL. The findings challenge OMD and SMD and their specific use of the outdoors as a medium for individual learning.

Evidence was found that wilderness thinking represents an innovation in reflective learning which challenges the main trends in the use of the outdoors to develop leaders