"Soul." "Spirit." A host of organizations - among them Lucent Technologies, the Boeing Company, and Southwest Airlines - have recently begun to ponder such intangibles in an effort to attract and maintain a motivated, performance-boosting workforce. Books about the "ensoulment" of corporate life have been hitting best-seller lists lately, and conferences on spirituality and business have been springing up all over the United States and Canada. Web sites dedicated to such topics now pepper the Internet. Even the World Economic Forum devoted a session at its February meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to "spiritual anchors for the new millennium." Clearly, something of a nonmaterial nature is stirring in the corporate temple.
But questions abound. Just what does it mean to bring spirituality into the workplace? Is this an appropriate way to help people feel more stimulated by their jobs? Is it a fad that amounts to little more than sensitivity training in New Age clothing, or does it reflect something more profound about the way we are beginning to conceive of and relate to work? In the following pages six HBS alumni who are exploring the intersection of work and spirituality and three HBS faculty members with various perspectives on the issue provide some insights on these questions.
A Sense of Purpose
"I see the movement to incorporate more of a spiritual feeling in business as a reflection of people's age-old need to find meaning in what they're doing," says Michael Beer, the School's Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration and an expert on organizational behavior. "Quite simply, without a sense of purpose, we become alienated from our work and find it harder to motivate ourselves." Senior Lecturer William ("Scotty") McLennan, Jr., who teaches the MBA elective The Business World: Moral and Spiritual Inquiry Through Literature, adds, "What we're seeing is an increasingly felt need for people to integrate the spiritual dimension of their lives into what they do for most of the day. People are starting to realize that if they're going to spend a good part of their lives in the office, they'd like that time to be spiritually as well as materially rewarding."
Leading experts on the topic, including Peter B. Vaill (MBA '60, DBA '64), a professor at the University of St. Thomas business school in Minneapolis, agree that a hunger to nourish the spirit indeed seems to be driving the movement to find greater meaning in work. In his book Spirited Leading and Learning, Vaill describes many of the economic and cultural stresses he believes have spurred this trend, among them the destabilizing of the corporation as a lifelong employer due to global competition and downsizing; rapid turnover of executives and employees; growing concern about the environment; and the crumbling of institutions such as schools and the family. "We're searching for new ways of grounding to sustain us through very turbulent times," he observes.
Richard C. Whiteley (MBA '68), a management consultant and author who is writing a book titled "ReSpiriting Work," notes, "Another important factor is the aging of the American population. The baby boomers are coming into their fifties, which is a natural time to start reassessing one's life and asking the big questions like 'Why am I here?' Coupled with this, you have many people looking for a renewed sense of community. They're searching for a sense of belonging."
The "S" Word
For many people, work and spirituality call for such different -and sometimes contradictory-mindsets that the idea of melding the two seems almost absurd. Moreover, in a culture that counts religious pluralism and the separation of church and state among its most hallowed principles, integrating the two makes some people understandably nervous. Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., the School's John Shad Professor of Business Ethics, sums it up this way: "I wouldn't want a Fortune 500 company bringing me religion."
Echoes Vaill: "Talking about spirituality in the business context feels risky and awkward, and people tend to question the motivation behind it." Still, companies around the country are managing to pick their way through such uncomfortable territory in an effort to respond to their employees' deeper yearnings. While spirituality is a highly individual and personal matter, managers and employees alike seem to find common themes emerging when they begin thinking in terms of what it means to create deeper meaning in the workplace.
"Rather than defining spirituality for people," says Whiteley, "I ask them to think of a time, be it at work, volunteering, playing on a sports team, whatever, when they were totally absorbed, when everything was cooking for them. They generally say things like 'I felt incredibly motivated. I felt productive. I had no sense of time. I had fun.' That, to me, is beginning to articulate what spirituality, in terms of self-engagement and fulfillment, is all about."
Jennifer F. Lawrence (MBA '87), a marketing consultant and professor at Boston University, says, "Spirituality should not be confused with 'religion.' To me, spirituality is simply having a sense of inner calm and a willingness to reflect carefully on yourself and the world around you. Integrating spirituality into the workplace means creating a place where it's all right for people to bring their whole selves, with all their talents and complex emotions; where there's enough safety so that people can speak the truth openly at meetings, rather than secretly in the hallway afterward; where there's an elevated sense of integrity. These ideas are not new, and may even seem obvious, but it's amazing how infrequently they are applied in the corporate environment and how harmful their absence can be."
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