Spirituality and identity at work

• Main Author: Tzouramani, Eleni
• Published: Nottingham Trent University 2008
• Subjects: 158.7
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.510172

This thesis investigates the relationship between people's notion of 'spirituality' and their identities in relation to their work. It is mainly concerned with identity processes of people who consider themselves 'spiritual' and shape their working lives to accommodate what they portray as the spiritual aspects of their identities. Overall, the literature on 'Spirituality at Work' (SaW) is increasing, but as the phenomenon is new and amorphous there are still many gaps that call for empirical research. Moreover, most of the academic literature on SaW is polarised between the affirmative side arguing for introducing 'Spirituality at Work' and the critical side cautioning against the oppressive potential of 'spirituality' adopted as a management initiative. This research, however, places the emphasis on participants' identity processes within contexts of work, providing insights that can suggest implications about identity construction within the more general phenomenon of 'Spirituality at Work'. Based on the analysis of 16 life stories the research examines participants? identity processes in the context of their whole life stories and within the socio-cultural discourses surrounding them. During the course of this research, it has emerged that participants engage in identity work to incorporate ideas of "unity" into "who they are". In this, they draw on spiritual and other cultural resources to construct aspects of their identities which will enable them to act as 'whole persons' in everyday situations they encounter. The identity processes investigated in this research involve participants' understandings of breaking free from societal impositions and at the same time of being one with everything. Despite these seeming antithetical processes, participants construct ways in which this makes sense for them and find ways to enact it in their everyday lives. Subsequently, participants tend to leave formal work organisations to pursue more 'spiritual' types of work where drawing on spiritual discursive resources, they generate discursive and structural platforms for new ways of organising work.