Script:
C: Hi Karla, I heard that you are doing research on spiritual management. It’s a subject I know nothing about and I would love to learn more about it. Can I ask you some questions?
K: Yes, of course!
C: Okay, so first of all what is the definition of spirituality? And how can it be used in a managerial setting?
K: Very good question! As far as the definition is concerned, it is very difficult to observe a consensus around this notion in the literature. However, it should be noted that it is divided into four conceptions: religious, existentialist, intrinsic and atheist. The authors admit that the notion of spirituality is multidimensional, that it is objectifiable and that it corresponds to an intrinsic subjective experience. It is integrated into work-related issues as the mechanistic view of the professional world is heavily criticised. A holistic approach to managing enterprises is encouraged. Researchers and practitioners are advocating that spirituality be taken into account in the field of management at work. Today, the desire for modern companies to consider wellbeing in all circumstances has led to a strong interest in spirituality at work. Spiritual management allows us to value the personal issues of others, to recognise the dignity of each individual, to reconcile private and professional aspects and to take the well-being and values of employees as the focus.
C: It sounds very interesting and relevant in the current professional context! But what exactly is your research about? Is it just a study that describes how spirituality works at work?
K: So I first explain the concept of spirituality to explain its relevance in the world of work and then I make the link with the benefits that spirituality can bring to employees in their daily lives. Because well-being at work encompasses all the risk factors that can develop at work, such as stress for example. In today’s organisations, stress in the workplace is a common experience that every employee has had. It is interesting to look at the close relationship between spirituality at work and occupational stress. This research is all the more innovative because French-speaking psychology has very little interest in this field of research. The literature is based almost exclusively on the Indian and English models.
C: Right! But when you set up your study, wasn’t it too complicated to talk about spiritual management with the participants? There must have been some misconceptions about it!
K: As I told you before, it is true that this notion is very much linked to religion and ultimately a somewhat mystical universe in the collective consciousness. In order to carry out my research I created a questionnaire which asked employees working in various companies who all had a manager or superior at the time of the survey. The aim was to find out what type of management these managers adopted, i.e. whether it was more or less far from spiritual management and where the individuals’ perceived stress level was on a stress scale. This questionnaire was written entirely without the word spiritual in it. This is so that people’s hasty judgements and stereotypes do not bias my analysis. But to complete it further, I added a section on the evaluation of the social representations that people have towards the concept of spiritual management. This allowed me to see that many people are still completely unaware of this practice, even when their manager exercises a management style close to this one, i.e. taking into account the values and well-being of the individual above all else.
C: Finally, in your study, are employees with less spiritual managers more stressed than those with more spiritual managers?
K: Well, the results of my study cannot confirm that spiritual management positively influences the perceived stress of employees. However, given the originality of my study, I have a rather small sample of participants. This study should therefore be extended to see whether the results are scalable or not.
C: Thank you very much for all your answers, now I know a bit more about the concept of spiritual management!
K: My pleasure!