Biblical Organizational Spirituality

This book expands on the New Testament leadership principles introduced in Volume 1 and draws connections to the contemporary organizational leadership literature. By applying these principles to analyze modern organizations and leaders, it aims to uncover how they are manifested within an organization and their impact on both the organization and individual employees. Through interviews with leaders and coding of the transcripts, the chapter authors develop scale-development items to measure the concept of organizational spirituality within organizations. This volume offers theoretical framing and practical applications for scholars and practitioners in the field of organizational leadership, particularly those interested in the Christian perspective.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of various New Testament passages with the purpose of identifying lessons, values, and behaviors that can contribute to an understanding of organizational spirituality from a Christian worldview. Covering contemporary concepts such as women in leadership, cross-cultural leadership, transparency, and authenticity, each chapter examines an organizational leadership topic through the lens of specific New Testament principles. This volume with a fresh perspective provides theoretical and practical applications for scholars and practitioners in the field of organizational leadership.

This volume introduces scales for measuring organizational spirituality culture and climate. Based on interviews with employees, the chapters present empirical studies confirming the scales' validity and reliability, rooted in principles aligned with Biblical concepts of love. The authors conduct concurrent and discriminant validity studies, comparing these scales with measures of servant leadership, person-supervisor fit, altruistic love, inner life, vision, person-organization fit, affective commitment, continuance commitment, normative commitment, and work-state anxiety in contemporary organizations. This book offers researchers with two reliable instruments to assess New Testament-based organizational spirituality culture and climate, contributing new insights to the field of organizational spirituality literature and aiding in diagnosing organizational spirituality-related issues.

This book explores how spirituality can improve an organization’s ability to respond to a crisis. It presents biblical examples of leading during a crisis to show how faith can be relied upon to lead during crisis situations. Further, it presents examples of leaders using their faith during trying times. In recent years, organizations have begun to prepare for crises, but scholarly research has not kept up with their efforts. Exploring topics such as communication, servant leadership, and resilience, this work stakes new ground in leadership theory and will foster future research into the role of spirituality during organizational crisis.

Though the majority of Americans claim faith in God and adults spend the majority of their time working, these two important dimensions of life are rarely effectively integrated. It is important for people of every faith tradition to consider how, when and if their faith and work are to be integrated. This is especially true as research shows that the integration of faith and spirituality in the workplace results in numerous benefits for individuals, organizations and society - if done respectfully. This book presents key research insights concerning integration influences and strategies for Christians who seek to integrate their faith and their work. Specifically, it discusses how individual, occupational and organizational factors influence faith and work integration, and suggests diverse ways to integrate the Christian faith at work. The Faith and Work Integration Spheres of Influence Model is presented as a tool to guide individuals in better understanding how to develop their own personal plan for faith and work integration within the context of limiting or enabling occupational and organizational factors. It also suggests areas for further research on this topic. Readers will learn how Christian faith and work integration can be maximized based on individual attributes, occupational characteristics, and organizational factors.

This edited work expands the theory of followership by drawing on biblical examples to illustrate the role of faith in being a better follower. Building on previous scholarship, the book identifies different types of followers and explores how each type meets the needs of a leader in various scenarios. The authors analyze various principles from the lives of followers of Jesus and demonstrate how they apply to modern workplaces. Building upon the growing scholarship on workplace spirituality and organizational leadership, this book offers practical and theoretical perspectives on integrating faith at work.

Biblical Perspectives on Leadership and Organizations links biblically-based principles to the study of organizational practices by examining topics including motives, meaningful work, and spiritual leadership from a biblical perspective integrated with findings from contemporary research.

Authors from eighteen countries give us their perspectives on biblical principles and cultural expressions of spirituality particularly as the church engages in God’s mission. The anthology of texts enriches our understanding of the depth and the meaning of being spiritual and the diversity of forms to live out the Christian faith. The issue today is how spirituality should direct and guide a daily life as followers of Jesus in the engagement in the mission of God. No doubt that it has to do with our inner life and our relationship to God, but it is in showing our love and concern to others that we prove our love to God, according to the Apostle John (1 John 4). Mission without spirituality will only be a human effort to convince people of religious theories. Spirituality without a missionary involvement of the church will not express God’s desire that the transforming gospel reaches every person. This book will help you rethink your understanding of what is spiritual, revisit your own spiritual journey, and appreciate the different forms of spirituality as they are described and performed around the globe.