This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Bell, E. Articles by Taylor, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

The Elevation of Work: Pastoral Power and the New Age Work Ethic

Warwick Business School, UK and Birmingham Business School, UK

Scott Taylor

Warwick Business School, UK and Birmingham Business School, UK

This paper seeks to establish the contours of the popular workplace spirituality discourse through analysis of academic and practitioner texts and accounts of organizational practice. We identify several themes, drawing attention to potential contradictions in the notions of meaning, measurement and community, which the discourse seeks to promote. In seeking to understand the means whereby it is embodied as a source of administrative power we draw on a range of historical and contemporary organizational examples, illustrating how pastoral power is reinforced through the construction of disciplinary technologies. We argue that the workplace spirituality discourse shares Weber's acceptance of the structural conditions of capitalism and seeks to resolve the dilemmas this creates for the individual through developing an inner sense of meaning and virtue. In this respect, it represents a revival of the Protestant ethic in a way that involves re-visioning the ambivalent relationship between self and organization. We conclude that the `social ethic' has given way to a New Age work ethic, which relies on the management of individual metaphysics as a source of organizational, as well as personal, transformation.

Key Words: culture • New Age management • pastoral power • Protestant ethic • workplace spirituality

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				C. Driscoll and E. Wiebe Technical Spirituality at Work: Jacques Ellul on Workplace Spirituality Journal of Management Inquiry, December 1, 2007; 16(4): 333 - 348. [Abstract] [PDF]

				E. Bell Whose side are they on? Patterns of religious resource mobilization in British industrial mission Management & Organizational History, November 1, 2006; 1(4): 331 - 347. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. Singhal and L. Chatterjee A Person-Organization Fit-based Approach for Spirituality at Work: Development of a Conceptual Framework Journal of Human Values, October 1, 2006; 12(2): 161 - 178. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. P. e Cunha, A. Rego, and T. D'Oliveira Organizational Spiritualities: An Ideology-Based Typology Business Society, June 1, 2006; 45(2): 211 - 234. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. Driver From empty speech to full speech? Reconceptualizing spirituality in organizations based on a psychoanalytically-grounded understanding of the self Human Relations, September 1, 2005; 58(9): 1091 - 1110. [Abstract] [PDF]

				E. Bell and S. Taylor From Outward Bound to Inward Bound': the Prophetic Voices and Discursive Practices of Spiritual Management Development Human Relations, April 1, 2004; 57(4): 439 - 466. [Abstract] [PDF]