Spirituality in the workplace: evidence in three cases

Abstract

The objective of this work is to analyze the understanding and presence of the concept of spirituality in the organizational context. For this, we sought to: (a) verify the understanding of managers and employees of the organizations studied about this concept; (b) investigate the presence or not of practices associated with the dimensions of spirituality; (c) understand the role of the leader in this context. An exploratory and descriptive, qualitative and field research was carried out. Data collection took place through semi-structured interviews in three companies in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre (RS): one in the area of education, named Empresa S; a department store, called Company C; and a women's shoe factory, called Empresa I. The main results show that managers and employees of these companies have an understanding of spirituality based on common sense, and few have knowledge about spirituality applied to management; it is possible to identify practices in companies that can be considered and classified within the five dimensions of spirituality.