Marjolein Lips-Wiersma

The influence of spiritual “meaning‐making” on career behavior

This paper presents the results of a participative psycho‐biographical study that investigated the effect of spirituality on career behavior. This study shows that spirituality influences career purpose, sense‐making and coherence. Spirituality was found to inspire four purposes of “developing and becoming self”, “unity with others”, “expressing self”, and “serving others”. Spirituality was also found to influence an ongoing process of sense‐making through discovering, prioritizing and balancing the four purposes over a lifespan, in response to ongoing tensions between “being” and “doing” as well as “self‐ versus other‐orientation”. Spirituality furthermore influences perceived career‐coherence as individuals align their careers with perceived spiritual orderings outside of themselves. The paper concludes with suggestions for practice and future research.

Theorizing the Dark Side of the Workplace Spirituality Movement

This article constructs an alternative analytic lens by which to consider the “everyone wins” conclusions drawn within most workplace spirituality (WPS) research. The article offers a critical 2 × 2 matrix that makes visible two potentially negative organizational dimensions of WPS: control and instrumentality. The article investigates into the four quadrants of WPS: seduction, evangelization, manipulation, and subjugation, through practical examples. It concludes with implications for the workplace and offers an agenda for future research.

Coming out of the closet: negotiating spiritual expression in the workplace

Current spirit at work literature often assumes spirituality needs to be introduced to the workplace. This paper offers an additional perspective, arguing that spirituality is already present, as many individuals have spiritual beliefs but struggle to articulate or enact these beliefs at work. Exploratory narrative research revealed frequent references to a lack of safety in expressing spirituality at work. The question is why and how do individuals silence their spiritual expression. This paper explores this question and presents a model that captures the ongoing experiential nature of spirituality and proposes that decisions about spiritual expression in the workplace are complex meshes of stimulus, decision‐making and action cycles (SDAs) that are embedded in the individual’s sensemaking, interpersonal relationships and group dynamics. Findings are explained through different theoretical lenses such as diversity management, social identity theory, social penetration theory and affective sensemaking theory.

Measuring the Meaning of Meaningful Work Development and Validation of the Comprehensive Meaningful Work Scale (CMWS)

In this article we build on two in-depth qualitative studies to systematically develop and validate a comprehensive measure of meaningful work. This scale provides a multidimensional, process-oriented measure of meaningful work that captures the complexity of the construct. It measures the dimensions of “developing the inner self”; “unity with others”; “serving others” and “expressing full potential” and the dynamic tensions between these through items on “being versus doing” and “self versus others.” The scale also measures inspiration and it’s relationship to the existential need to be real and grounded. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using multicultural samples from a broad range of occupations provide construct validity for the measure. Future research opportunities on the basis of our measure are outlined.

Making conscious choices in doing research on workplace spirituality: Utilizing the "holistic development model" to articulate values, assumptions and dogmas of the knower.

An increasing range of research methods emphasize the socially situated nature of knowledge and hence the need to specify the knower. As such we need to account for the ways in which assumptions, feelings, biases, and anticipated outcomes might influence research questions, interpretation and representation of the experiences of the research participants. While these ideas are extensively discussed in relation to other influences on identity, such as race, gender, and class, there is as yet little discussion on how spiritual and religious identity might influence research. This paper argues that in researching workplace spirituality, a topic that is saturated with subjectivity, it is not only legitimate but central to safeguard the quality of our work that we articulate the dogmas, definitions, fears and desires we bring to the research. It discusses several literature‐based examples of how our assumptions influence our research. Using the authors own research as an example the paper utilizes the “holistic development model” to show how spirituality and religion influence various research choices and practices.

Analysing the career concerns of spiritually oriented people: lessons for contemporary organizations

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of the meaning of work. The study is concerned with eliciting work meanings of spiritually oriented individuals with a view of establishing whether there is a common agenda identifiable and whether spirituality influences work behavior. It was found that in spite of their diversity, all research participants desired to express spiritual life purposes of “developing and becoming self”, “unity with others”, “expressing self” and “serving others” in the workplace. A second finding is that they seek to balance these over time. Furthermore it was found that spirituality clearly influences work behavior as research participants make career transitions if they cannot express their spirituality. Lessons are explored for contemporary organizations interested in retaining spiritually oriented employees.

Furthering Management and Spirituality Education through the Use of Paradox.

At present it is implicitly or explicitly recognized that various paradoxes surface in the application of spirituality in the management field. In this article, instead of acknowledging this and moving on to provide clarity, I articulate and stay with the paradoxes inherent in the area of study. Management education that engages with contradictions, shadow sides, and tensions is important as it assists students to understand the complex nature of spirituality itself, and the ambiguous work environment in which it is enacted. It is also consistent with the early developmental stage of this new field of scholarship. This article addresses the paradoxes of appropriate ends and means, of authenticity, of unity, and of definition. Three interrelated means of engaging with paradox are suggested as pedagogical tools to enhance self-awareness as well as theoretical understanding in relation to management and spirituality.

Understanding the Basic Assumptions About Human Nature in Workplace Spirituality: Beyond the Critical Versus Positive Divide

The very existence of workplace spirituality (WPS) is based on distinct assumptions about what it is to be human. However, to date, WPS has largely ignored ontological and epistemological roots that underpin how we theorize the person in management. This leaves WPS without a sound and distinct theoretical base. To address this important lacuna, we argue for a turn to existentialism, which, with its focus on the essence of the self, offers the opportunity to address this lacuna. We base our arguments on the analysis of a grounded theory study of spiritual retreats in a tertiary education institute in which participants attempted to (re)gain a sense of self. After analyzing the results through contrasting positive and critical approaches to WPS, we make our case for an existential approach to workplace spirituality.

Meaningful work: differences among blue-, pink-, and white-collar occupations

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare the importance currently placed on meaningful work (MFW), and determine the frequency by which it is experienced in blue-, pink-, and white-collar occupations. Design/methodology/approachs Using the comprehensive meaningful work scale (Lips-Wiersma and Wright, 2012) with 1,683 workers across two studies, ANOVAs were conducted to examine differences in dimensions of MFW. Findings While unity with others and developing the inner self were regarded as equally important for white-, blue-, and pink-collar workers, the authors data suggest that white-collar workers placed more importance on expressing full potential and serving others than blue-collar workers. The frequency of experiencing MFW differed across the three groups with white-collar workers experiencing higher levels of unity with others, expressing full potential, and serving others; however no mean differences were found for developing the inner self. Originality/value This study is the first to empirically investigate an oft-discussed but previously untested question: does the experience of MFW differ across white-, blue-, and pink-collar jobs?

When spirituality meets hierarchy: leader spirituality as a double-edged sword

This study explores the effects of SL on the organization as perceived by both leaders and followers. As per the intention of the leaders, the employees found the company a good place to work. However, we also found that the exact same practices associated with SL such as connection, participation, and altruism created some anxiety and distrust in followers. We explain these findings through power differentials which lead to SL becoming a double-edged sword. Unless SL takes the impact of organizational hierarchy into account, theoretical understanding of SL remains incomplete and practical suggestions remain somewhat unrealistic.