A Ghost in the Machine: The Important Role of Workplace Spirituality

Abstract

In today's multi-cultural business organizations, management paradigms must be shifted and expanded to include a broader spectrum of variables, particularly when these paradigms affect decisions that significantly impact the organization's culture. As research has demonstrated, the sum total of all employee's perceptions and behaviors constitute the organization's culture. Consequently, important managerial decisions must include variables that hinge on their employee's emotional intelligence, academic intelligence, and spiritual intelligence. Both emotional intelligence and academic intelligence have been thoroughly researched in the past and this paper will concentrate on employee spiritual intelligence as it relates to workplace spirituality. Developing and encouraging workplace spirituality promises to provide several positive outcomes related to organizational performance including higher productivity, increased job satisfaction, lower turnover rates, positive ethical values, better attendance rates, and higher customer satisfaction. Consequently, developing an organizational culture that is founded upon workplace spirituality is of tremendous importance to leaders due to its positive implications toward organizational performance. This paper focuses on the various aspects of workplace spirituality which as the title calls A Ghost in the Machine, its relationship to organizational culture, and its implications on productivity and performance.