Cathy Driscoll

Exploring linkages among transformational leadership, workplace spirituality and well-being in health care workers

Considerable data have accumulated showing positive relationships between leadership and well-being, and spirituality and well-being, but few have explored relationships among all three phenomena. In the current study, multilevel modeling was used to analyze survey data from a sample of 178 health care workers and test a proposed mediation model. As hypothesized, regression and mediation analyses revealed the effects of transformational leadership on measures of employees’ mental and spiritual well-being were fully mediated by workplace spirituality and, more specifically, respondents’ sense of community. Our results suggest that leaders influence individual well-being through their ability to enhance employees’ sense of community in the workplace.

Stakeholder legitimacy management and the qualified good neighbor: The case of Nova Nada and JDI

This article focuses on the company-stakeholder relationship between a large pulp and paper company and a small monastery and nature retreat center. The literature on stakeholder management and organizational legitimacy provides a theoretical foundation. The analysis demonstrates how organizational power and legitimacy can influence stakeholder legitimacy. The authors illustrate the ways that a company can manage the legitimacy of stakeholders through the use of political language and symbolic activity. The results contribute to a better understanding of stakeholder identification, salience, and the different contexts of legitimacy in the company-stakeholder relationship. Implications for stakeholder research and practice are also discussed.

Technical Spirituality at Work Jacques Ellul on Workplace Spirituality

The authors assess the current state of workplace spirituality from the philosophical perspective of Jacques Ellul and show how the workplace spirituality movement has not escaped the infiltration and pervasiveness of technique. First, they describe Elluls notion of technique. They then demonstrate how the workplace spirituality movement presently displays the hallmarks of technique in its quest for results and facts, in its use of experts, and in the broadening and hence dissolution of the notion of spirituality. The authors highlight several scholars who have raised concerns and critiques of the movement in its technical form. They suggest some possibilities for moving toward an authentic spirituality at work followed by some implications for undertaking scholarly research on workplace spirituality that explicitly recognizes technical dominance in spirituality. It is incumbent on those of us involved in workplace spirituality to resist its domination and find ways of fostering authenticity in spirituality at work.

The not so clear-cut nature of organizational legitimating mechanisms in the canadian forest sector

The Canadian forest sector provides a rich contextual basis for examining organizational legitimacy and legitimating mechanisms. The author used qualitative methods and discourse analysis to explore how the Canadian forest sector exhibits a hybrid mix of substantive and symbolic management of legitimacy and of procedural and symbolic processes of legitimation. Findings support the mystifying nature of “green” legitimation and the superficial and mystifying nature of some of the discourse that is being used in this sector. In some cases, language is being used to attempt to change definitions of social legitimacy to enhance a record of sustainable forest management practice.

Making Sense of Workplace Spirituality: Towards a New Methodology

The study of workplace spirituality is a relatively new area in the field of organizational theory. Although interest in the topic has grown significantly over the last 10 years, many of the traditional research methods are not well suited to study workplace spirituality at the organizational level. We propose that sensemaking offers a useful heuristic for understanding the process of institutionalizing workplace spirituality, as well as a way to study how and why workplace spirituality initiatives are wholly accepted by some individuals and resisted by others.

Varieties of organizational soul: The ethics of belief in organizations

This article argues that the expression of religious beliefs within organizations, often made manifest through the notion of soul, provides insight into the ethics of organization in postsecular society. Using examples to illustrate the discursive representation of organizational soul in three US-based multinational companies, we argue that religious organizational beliefs must be located within cultural and material contexts of practice in order to fully appreciate their ethical implications. We show how the use of soul is a contemporary reiteration of the 19th century religious attitude that William James termed ‘healthy-mindedness’. We suggest that this variety of religious experience is limiting through its neglect of the social and political contexts of ethical thought and action and the definition of evil or harm as external to the believer and the organization. Drawing on a pragmatist perspective, we critique this approach to belief-led business and propose that the Jamesian notion of a ‘sick soul’ constitutes a more robust ethical framework for belief-led businesses by encouraging ethical skepticism concerning the nature of organizational activities. We conclude by exploring what our analysis means for the development of postsecular critical organization theory.

A discursive textscape of workplace spirituality

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – 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. Findings – 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 creat...

Banking on the church: thoughts on re-infusing virtues into church culture and leadership in response to clergy sexual abuse

ABSTRACT We provide a cross-disciplinary and cross-contextual analysis to explore comparisons between the church and big banks regarding leader power structures, response to moral failure, relationships with members/stakeholders, and resistance to structural change. Although we largely focus on the context of clergy sexual abuse, we show how perceived uniqueness of individuals and institutions (whether in banks or churches) has been used to thwart the potential for improved understanding of moral failures across organizations and institutions. We provide a discussion and implications for church leaders in the context of a virtues-infused organizational culture. We also discuss what non-religious organizations, such as banks, and their leaders can learn about these issues from what we believe is distinct about the church as a spirit-infused and virtues-infused entity. We conclude with some key areas for future reflection and research.