Spiritual Capital in Modern Organizations

  • Richard J. Martinez
  • Robin Rogers
  • Gaynor Yancey
  • Jon Singletary

Abstract

Modern firms succeed and fail primarily on the strength of their stores and use of various types of capital, such as financial, social, human, physical, etc. In light of a resurgence of interest in the spiritual element ever present in all organizations, we add spiritual capital to the lexicon of organizational assets. Our goals in this paper are three-fold. First, we introduce and explore spiritual capital as an organizational asset. Second, we explore the organizational design issues that lead to a lack of spiritual capital in modern organizations. Third, we consider for illustration purposes the example of strongly community-oriented organizations that exhibit high levels of spiritual capital. Specifically regarding spiritual capital, it is defined in this paper as assets, both tangible and intangible, that emanate from the spirit of an organization’s managers, employees, staff and volunteers, and that impact the spiritual condition of all organizational participants (internal and external). Spiritual capital is understood in this paper to consist of five elements – spiritual sensitivity, spiritual leadership, spiritual survival, spiritual outreach, and spiritual motivation. Further, in order to understand better the implications of spiritual capital, we consider possible organizational and individual outcomes associated with high levels of spiritual capital.
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