While the attention to workplace spirituality is growing, there is debate as to what exactly this term “spirituality” means. There seems to be multiple views of workplace spirituality. It could be argued that there are different definitions for the meaning of “spirituality” due to the very strong personal nature of the word itself. We argue that this multiple view of spirituality is a positive thing for organizations if managers attempt to understand differing spiritual views and also encourage all views within an organization. In this paper, we summarize the different perspectives of spirituality, discuss the benefits of encouraging spirituality within organizations, and examine different perspectives of implementing a spirituality‐based culture within firms.

Over the past two decades, conceptual and empirical research on the concept of workplace spirituality has increased and expanded significantly. An early and influential article by Krishnakumar and Neck (2002, Journal of Managerial Psychology 17 (3): 153–164) helped provide direction and structure to the nascent field of workplace spirituality by examining the “what” – the definitions and meanings of multiple views of workplace spirituality, the “why” – the potential benefits for organizations from encouraging such differing views of workplace spirituality among their members, and the “how” – the ways in which spirituality may be encouraged or implemented within organizations. The current paper provides a retrospective update and extension of the Krishnakumar and Neck (2002) “what, why, and how” framework and “spiritual freedom” model. More specifically, the paper reviews the development and expansion of the workplace spirituality literature over the past decade and a half and considers the potential contributions of a number of contemporary leadership approaches including self-leadership, shared leadership, and authentic leadership to spirituality in the workplace. The paper concludes with an examination of key directions for future research in the workplace spirituality domain.

Existing measures of Emotional Intelligence (EI), defined as the ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions for productive purposes, have displayed limitations in predicting workplace outcomes, likely in part because they do not target this context. Such considerations led to the development of an ability EI measure with work-related scenarios in which respondents infer the likely emotions (perception) and combinations of emotion (understanding) that would occur to protagonists while rating the effectiveness of ways of responding (management). Study 1 (n = 290 undergraduates) used item-total correlations to select scenarios from a larger pool and Study 2 (n = 578) reduced the measure-termed the NEAT-to 30 scenarios on the basis of structural equation modeling. Study 3 (n = 96) then showed that the NEAT had expected correlations with personality and cognitive ability and Study 4 (n = 85) demonstrated convergent validity with other ability EI measures. Last, study 5 (n = 91) established that the NEAT had predictive validity with respect to job satisfaction, job stress, and job performance. The findings affirm the importance of EI in the workplace in the context of a valid new instrument for assessing relevant skills.

This paper develops and presents a spiritual contingency model of spiritual leadership that includes spiritual leadership characteristics such as follower’s feelings of interconnectedness, religious or existential faith, and leader charisma along with such boundary conditions and contingencies (moderators) as narcissism, pro-social motivation to lead, follower perceptions of leader integrity (ethics), and perceived organizational support. In exploring these contingency factors, the paper also examines the potential “dark side” of spiritual leadership and concludes with implications for future research and managerial practice as suggested by the model.