Abstract
This article considers the recent upsurge of interest in workplace spirituality through an analysis of three cultural movements – late 19th-century spiritualism, early 20th-century surrealism, and late 20th-/early 21st-century ‘spirituality at work’.These movements share a common interest in harnessing the power of the human spirit in the transformation and ‘betterment’ of social life. It is argued that these movements have successively adopted and de-radicalized invocations of the spirit world such that the proto-feminism and utopianism of spiritualism and the revolutionary pretensions of surrealism have been usurped by a strongly managerialist discourse of workplace spirituality. The paper ends with a consideration of the implications of these developments for the critical study of spirituality, management and organization.
Highlights
Spiritualism: a cultural movement devoted to communication between living persons and those who had passed to the Other Side, or "Summerland"
Surrealism: a cultural movement devoted to communication between the human spirit and the world beyond the façade of reality
Since the 1990s there has been a noticeable upsurge in both managerial and scholarly interest in workplace spirituality. Major business corporations such as Apple, Ford and Shell Oil have shown a keen interest in harnessing the power of the spiritual to achieve material gains in employee performance, and academic journals regularly publish special issues and individual papers on workplace spirituality
Summary
Spiritualism: a cultural movement devoted to communication between living persons and those who had passed to the Other Side, or "Summerland".Surrealism: a cultural movement devoted to communication between the human spirit and the world beyond the façade of reality.Spirituality at work: a cultural movement devoted to the promotion of spirituality in the workplace.Since the 1990s there has been a noticeable upsurge in both managerial and scholarly interest in workplace spirituality. This paper attempts to understand workplace spirituality through an analysis of two cultural movements – late nineteenth century spiritualism and early twentieth century surrealism – which, along with the spirituality at work movement, share a common interest in harnessing the power of the human spirit in the transformation and 'betterment' of social life.
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