Salvation, theology and organizational practices across the centuries

Abstract

Humankind has a long history of seeking to be saved from suffering, although the understanding of just how to achieve this salvation has changed over time. Regardless of how it has been understood, throughout history the dominant understanding of salvation has been associated with how social structures and systems are organized. This article provides an historical review of the relationship between salvation and organizational practices, paying particular attention to various views of salvation within the Western Christian tradition over the past two millennia. Using a three dimensional analytical framework—the modality of salvation, the instantiation of salvation and the locus of ethical activity—we describe key changes in the meaning of salvation over time, and describe hallmark organizational practices associated with each meaning. We conclude by discussing implications of our analysis for examining relationships between organizational practices and salvation in other religious traditions, for developing a more nuanced understanding of emancipation, for developing counter-cultural approaches to management and for strengthening a ‘theological turn’ in organization and management theory.