Prelims

Half Title Page

Inspiring Workplace Spirituality

Series Title Page

The Future of Work

The future of work is a vital contemporary area of debate both in business and management research, and in wider social, political and economic discourse. Globally relevant issues, including the aging workforce, rise of the gig economy, workplace automation, and changing forms of business ownership, are all regularly the subject of discussion in both academic research and the mainstream media, having wider professional and public policy implications.

The Future of Work series features books examining key issues or challenges in the modern workplace, synthesizing prior developments in critical thinking, alongside current practical challenges in order to interrogate possible future developments in the world of work.

Offering future research agendas and suggesting practical outcomes for today's and tomorrow's businesses and workforce, the books in this series present powerful, challenging, and polemical analysis of a diverse range of subjects in their potential to address future challenges and possible new trajectories.

The series highlights what changes still need to be made to core areas of business practice and theory in order for them to be forward facing, more representative, and able to fulfill the industrial challenges of the future.

Title Page

Inspiring Workplace Spirituality

By

Judi Neal

Edgewalkers International, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2024

Copyright © 2024 Judi Neal.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: www.copyright.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83753-615-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-612-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-614-6 (Epub)

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all my teachers, especially Jack Gibb, Mel Toomey, Daryl Conner, Barry Heermann, Michele Austin, and Monica Ross. You have each made a transformational difference in my life, supported me in playing a bigger game, and guided me toward greater wholeness and authenticity.

I also dedicate this book to all my students. I have taught thousands of students over the years, from my time as a university management Professor to the workshops and programs I have taught in person and online. I have been greatly inspired by so many of them, especially those who ask questions I can't answer and thus turn me into a student again. The Fetzer Scholars at the Management, Spirituality and Religion Division of the Academy of Management deserve special mention because their work and their leadership are making a significant impact on inspiring the field of workplace spirituality.

About the Author

Judi Neal is an author, scholar, speaker, and consultant. Her primary focus has been on workplace spirituality, transformation, and global consciousness. After receiving her PhD in organizational behavior from Yale University, she served as an internal consultant to Honeywell for eight years. Judi then taught management at the University of New Haven for 17 years. Her research was on business leaders who have a strong commitment to their spirituality, and she researched the ways in which they bridged the invisible world of spirituality and the material world of business.

Judi was founding Director of the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace at the University of Arkansas. She serves on the boards of OCTAVE Institute, INDICA Academy, and MCCG.org, and is the Executive Director of the Global Consciousness Institute. She was a cofounder of the Management, Spirituality and Religion (MSR) division at the Academy of Management.

Judi is the author of 10 books on workplace spirituality and transformation. She is the President of Edgewalkers International, a workplace spirituality community.

In her spare time, she writes songs and plays guitar and electric bass in an all-woman band called She's Us, and in a duo called Good Medicine with her husband Ellis Ralph.

Preface and Introduction

This book is about workplace spirituality. Most of the books on workplace spirituality are research based, including my previous nine books, such as Edgewalkers (2006), Creating Enlightened Organizations (2012), and the Handbook of Personal and Organizational Transformation (2018). However, Inspiring Workplace Spirituality is a different sort of book because it invites deeper reflections on the actual experience of trying to live one's faith or spirituality at work. It is a useful supplement to the research and practice in the field of workplace spirituality because it explores the profound questions and issues that can't be covered in a research book or a how-to practitioner book. Inspiring Workplace Spirituality is meant to be contemplative and thought provoking in addition to being educational. At the same time is also meant to be practical as specific practices, tools, and applications are offered.

It is my hope that this book brings wisdom to the mainstream ways of knowing what we know about workplace spirituality.

“Mainstream ways of knowing” are usually based on quantitative and qualitative research and tend to be fairly granular. That kind of traditional research tends to focus on how a small number of variables are related to each other. A mainstream research question might be something like “How are organizational commitment and job satisfaction related to workplace spirituality?” Each of these variables is measured, correlations calculated, and results interpreted. Progress in mainstream ways of knowing occurs in small and incremental ways, and this kind of research tends to not to have much impact except on small problems (Storberg-Walker, 2022).

Recently scholars and practitioners are exploring “other ways of knowing” that can lead to deeper wisdom and have the potential to be more transformative (Mayer, 2007; Neal, 2018; Tsao, 2023). One of the best ways of transferring wisdom is through contemplation, stories, and reflections. John Milton is an ecologist who says that political, legal, and economic approaches to progress simply do not go deep enough. He says, “By themselves they won't bring about the penetrating changes in human culture that we need for people to live in true harmony and balance with one another and the earth. The next great opening of an ecological worldview will have to be an internal one” (Zajonc, 2009, p. 15).

The topic of this book is the practice of workplace spirituality. Some of the essays are specifically on workplace spirituality, such as the idea of seeing work as sacred and an exploration of the importance of the spiritual value of forgiveness at work. Other essays cover topics that are broader, such as the importance of spiritual values in the workplace like compassion and gratitude.

These essays take every day real life situations and explore them from a spiritual perspective.

Spirituality in the workplace is about people seeing their work as a spiritual path, as an opportunity to grow personally, and to contribute to the society in a meaningful way. It is about learning to be more caring and compassionate with fellow employees, with bosses, with subordinates, and customers. It is about integrity, being true to oneself, and telling the truth to others. It means attempting to live your values more fully in your work. It can refer to the ways in which organizations structure themselves to support the spiritual development of employees (Neal, 1998).

This book is a resource for those students and leaders who want to take the internal journey in their own leadership in order to have the presence and self-awareness to make a positive difference wherever they are.

Practitioners, MBAs, and those in Executive Education, all have significant work experience. They have had to deal with the challenges of leadership, ethical dilemmas, and questions around calling and vocation. Seldom, except perhaps in the case of workplace chaplains and spiritual directors, are there any spiritual resources that can provide guidance to these current and future leaders. It is rare that workplace challenges are seen from a spiritual perspective, but research and experience have shown that this spiritual perspective can provide real breakthroughs and transformation for people who might otherwise feel stuck and who suffer in silence.

This book can be used as supplementary reading for graduate courses that focus on leadership and organizational change. It can be used as a companion for the workplace spirituality textbook I wrote; Creating Enlightened Organizations. Currently, there are only a handful of courses on Workplace Spirituality, but the number of courses is growing and this is a trend that is not going away. Supplementary readings can be assigned to be in alignment with the course syllabus, or students can be assigned to read and journal about a certain number of essays that call to them. It could also be used in a “lunch and learn” book discussion group in the corporate, nonprofit, and religious organization worlds, much the way Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work has been used.

After 40 years of teaching, researching, and writing academically about workplace spirituality, it feels very fulfilling at this stage of life to be able to delve more deeply into the spiritual, theological, and philosophical underpinnings of this field, and to offer inspiration to those who strive to be authentically whole in their work. My prayer is that this book inspires you to see the interconnections between your own spirituality, the spirituality of others, and the work you do in the world.

Judi Neal

Fayetteville, Arkansas

February 2023

Acknowledgments

Twenty years ago, Tom Brown encouraged me to write essays on topics that were on the leading edge for me and to post them on Amazon.com. Those original essays led to many of the ideas in my first book, Edgewalkers: People Who Take Risks, Build Bridges, and Break New Ground. Thank you, Tom, for encouraging me to write and publish short pieces. This has become a lifelong practice.

Around the same time, I was editing the Spirit at Work newsletter, published by the Center for Spirit at Work that I founded. I would write an editorial about some workplace spirituality topic each month, such as the value of a moment of silence in groups, or the power of forgiveness in the workplace. Bill Staines, one of my oldest friends from the music world, told me that he kept a bookcase in his home of all his creative work – his many albums, CDs, music books, and other books. It inspired him to have it all in one place. That got me thinking that maybe someday I would pull all these essays and editorials into a single book. Bill passed away last year, but I'd like to think he would be happy that I have finally created this collection of essays.

I want to acknowledge Becca Martin, Features Editor at the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. When I first moved to Arkansas and became the founding Director of the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace at the University of Arkansas, the previous Features Editor, Bettina Lehovic, asked me to write a column for the Faith at Work series in the newspaper. I have now been doing that one every other month for about 15 years. When Becca took over as Features Editor, she became a real cheerleader for my columns, and her appreciation and support have kept me going. Many of those columns have been adapted for inclusion in this book.

I want to express my gratitude to Paul Kwiecinski. Paul has been my writing buddy for about as long as I have been writing these essays. Every Friday morning, I call Paul up at 9 a.m. and we talk about what we are going to work on that morning. We offer each other encouragement, ask questions, and share ideas for about 10 minutes. Then we hang up and go to work. I call him back at 11 a.m. and we report in on what we accomplished and what we are going to do next. This book is my 10th book, and I think I have acknowledged Paul in every one of them, since he has been a regular support system for all of these projects.

I also acknowledge my sister, Marie Wolny, who is my best friend and spiritual companion on this journey called life. She has been by my side through all the ups and downs of this spiritual graduate school, as I have been by hers. We're still here, so we haven't graduated yet!

My husband, Ellis Ralph, deserves my greatest gratitude for all his loving support, from offering ideas on the essays, to editing, to celebrating with Japanese food and sake at the end of a project and all the little things in between that make my life so much easier.