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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.

Mitroff's proposal that we exercise all our wits and not just half of them, i.e. the portion presumed to reside in the left hemisphere of the brain, is indisputable. One would like to conclude from the scenario that he has drawn that (a) management information systems are not necessarily synonymous with managerial knowhow; (b) there is no magic in macro‐models; and (c) the computer, despite having achieved Man‐of‐the‐Year status on the cover of Time, cannot father a daughter (to whom marriage at one time would have assured swift ascent in a business career). But I am not sure that this is Mitroff's message nor am I clear as to what it really is, for although he starts out by agreeing with me, that society may be getting the short end of a Faustian bargain with respect to information technology, his line of argument veers off in a direction that would logically lead to a very different conclusion. If I read him correctly, he looks more to the machine than to the man in the man/machine relationship. He wants us to build better men via machine so that electronic games, Disneylands, and other such contrivances will provide us with more salubrious feedback in the way of improved information about everything from the workings of our private psyche to the running of our business.

The central statement of Mitroff's article is that “… a Faustian bargain is indeed involved in obtaining the positive benefits of office technology.” Mitroff says that “… the Faustian tradoff may be far deeper and onerous than has been envisioned so far.”

In their well‐known classic article, Mason and Mitroff proposed that individual psychological type be recognized as an information system (IS) variable of fundamental importance. The authors also speculated that because designers tend to be “thinking‐sensation” types, that this psychological type may frequently be falsely projected onto managers who are in fact other types by nature. In subsequent work, a story‐telling IS was thus proposed to appeal to the “feeling side” of management, in particular.

Having been trained in both engineering and philosophy, I am extremely sensitive to the use of words. I choose words as a result very carefully. One of the key words in my article was clearly “speculation.” No one was more aware than I that I was offering a bold speculation. Given this recognition, I was well aware of the “evidential support base” of my speculation.

I was most interested in reading the article on “Creating the Managers' Plan Book” by Messrs. Mason, Mitroff and Barabba, in the July 1980 issue of the Planning Review.

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.

Even highly competitive, successful organizations face crisis, defined as “a low‐probability, high‐impact event that threatens the viability of the organization and is characterized by ambiguity of cause, effect, and means of resolution, as well as by a belief that decisions must be made swiftly” (Pearson & Clair, 1998; p. 60.). This paper describes the challenges facing leaders and managers attempting to prepare their organizations to engage in effective crisis management. The paper contends that when behavioral readiness is absent, crisis management effectiveness is a matter of chance. The behavioral model draws salient contributions from role theory, learning theory, and multilevel theory and applies them to the body of crisis management theory developed over the past two decades by Mitroff and his associates as well as the recent work of Pearson and Carr (1998). Five propositions are developed and implications for research and practice are presented.

The management of organizational conflict involves the diagnosis of and intervention in affective and substantive conflicts at the interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup levels and the styles (strategies) used to handle these conflicts. A diagnosis should indicate whether there is need for an intervention and the type of intervention needed. In general, an intervention is designed (a) to attain and maintain a moderate amount of substantive conflict in nonroutine tasks at various levels, (b) to reduce affective conflict at all levels, and (c) to enable the organizational members to select and use the appropriate styles of handling conflict so that various situations can be effectively dealt with. Organizational learning and effectiveness can be enhanced through an appropriate diagnosis of and process and structural interventions in conflict.

This study attempts to explore the meaning and implication of spirituality in an accounting firm by using a Buddhist perspective of interbeing. It explains how the happiness of individuals (auditors, partners, clients and auditor family members); organisational performance and growth and auditors' commitment are interconnected and impermanent.

This study employed an interpretive case study in an Indonesian accounting firm. The researchers explored the collective and individual feelings, thoughts, actions and experiences of the firm's actors. The data collection methods were interviews, participant observations and documentary analysis.

Leadership plays a major role in cultivating spirituality in an accounting firm. The spirituality increases auditors' commitment, (conditional) happiness and performance resulting in client satisfaction and the firm's growth. From an interbeing perspective, partners, auditors and clients are interconnected and impermanent. A firm's growth creates a growing sense of unhappiness due to the diminishing of auditors' comfort zone. Spirituality in the workplace can only engender conditional happiness and organisational commitment that offset the importance of material rewards and career prospects. To reach ultimate (unconditional) happiness, one requires a continuous spiritual development.

The insights gained from this study need enrichment from cases in different contexts, e.g. multinational firms with members from different countries and cultures.

This study develops the discourse of emancipation in the accounting literature by taking into account spirituality and happiness.