Strengthening Methodology in Workplace Religion and Spirituality Research

Abstract

Religion and spirituality from the world’s faith traditions are a rich source of meaningfulness in today’s organizations, yet better conceptual and methodological guidance is needed on how the basic content of this meaning- cross-cultural religio-spiritual beliefs-should be explored in the workplace context. Drawing from cross-cultural psychology, the psychology of religion, and the cognitive science of religion, this interdisciplinary discussion presents a methodological framework that advances inquiry into the nature and structure of individual-level religiousness and spirituality in the workplace. The contributions of this approach are sensitive to cognitive-affective processes, emic and etic aspects, organizational boundaries, and accurate conceptualization. To promote theory building, the paper presents an explicit case for the grounded theory approach and concludes that research methods must be domain-specific, attentive to levels of meaning, and focused on the cognitive relevance that makes the sup...