AbstractSpirituality continues to exert a strong influence in people’s lives both in work and beyond. However, given that spirituality is often non-formalized and personal, we continue to know little about how moral reasoning is strategized. In this paper, we examine how Buddhist leader-practitioners interpret and operationalize a process of self-decentralization based upon Buddhist emptiness theory as a form of moral reasoning. We find that Buddhist leader-practitioners share a common understanding of a self-decentralized identity and operationalize self-decentralization through two practices in (...) Buddhist philosophy—skillful means and the middle way—to foreground social outcomes. However, we also find that practitioners face tensions and challenges in moral reasoning relates to agency—the ‘re-centering’ of the self as an enlightened self and the use of karmic reasoning to justify (un)ethical behavior—and contextual constraints that lead to feelings of vulnerability and exclusion. We present a model that elaborates these processes and invite further research that examines novel approaches and dynamic interpretations of the self in moral reasoning. (shrink)

The literature on meaningful work often highlights the role of leaders in creating a sense of meaning in the work or tasks that their staff or followers carry out. However, a fundamental question arises about whether or not leaders are morally responsible for providing meaningful work when perceptions of what is meaningful may differ between leaders and followers. Drawing on Buddhist ethics and interviews with thirty-eight leaders in Vietnam who practise ‘engaged Buddhism’ in their leadership, we explore how leaders understand (...) their roles in creating meaningfulness at work and their perceptions of how employees experience their leadership approach in this respect. On the basis of Buddhist ontology on the sense of meaningfulness, we introduce a number of leadership approaches in cultivating meaning at work that question the argument that leaders are primarily responsible for enabling or satisfying employees’ search for meaning. The study provides an alternative lens through which to examine the role of leadership from a Buddhist ethics perspective and shows how an insight from this particular tradition can enrich secular interpretations of meaningful work and leadership. (shrink)

Moral injury has primarily been studied from a clinical perspective to assess, diagnose and treat the outcomes of morally injurious experiences in healthcare and military settings. Little is known about the lived experiences of those who have had their moral values transgressed in business settings. Public scandals such as Enron suggest that moral injury may also occur in for-profit business settings. In this qualitative study, we examine the lived experiences of 16 employees in for-profit business organisations who identified as having (...) suffered moral injury. Using semi-structured narrative interviews, our findings offer insights into the values that employees feel are transgressed and the pathways between morally injurious experiences and the long-term outcomes. Based on our findings, we propose a conceptual pathway to moral injury, which suggests that experiencing moral transgressions has a profound impact on employees as they feel a threat to their “good-me” identity, however, employees employ various coping strategies to minimise the impact during the event. Employees exited the organisation and often changed career paths to protect themselves from further injury and to make up for moral failure. This study advances our understanding of the experience of moral injury in business settings and the pathway explaining how and why people react differently to moral transgressions. (shrink)

Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of ‘calling’ have multiplied in recent years. At the same time, concerns have been expressed about the conceptual coherence of the notion as studies have posited a wide variety of senses in which both workers and scholars understand what it means for workers to be called, what they are called to do and who is doing the ‘calling’. This paper makes both conceptual and empirical contributions to the field. We argue that Bellah et (...) al.’s (Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life, University of California Press, 1996) contrast between tradition-based and expressivist understandings of ‘calling’ highlights a fundamental but neglected fissure in the literature. Expressivist accounts amongst both scholars and research participants require only that ‘calling’ be deeply felt by those who experience it. However, tradition-based accounts require an external caller. Exemplifying this, workers who attest to a divine call and scholars who write about ‘calling’ in the context of particular Christian traditions understand ‘calling’ in terms of a relationship with God. These accounts cannot but be in radical tension. We suggest that this conceptual confusion can be understood in terms of MacIntyre’s notion of ‘tradition-constituted rationality.’ The implications of this argument for practice are evidenced in our report of a study of adherents to one such tradition, workers at a Christian organization that supports people in poverty. Through in-depth interviews with long-term volunteers, we seek to assess if tradition-based ‘calling’ can be evidenced in unpaid work for the lack of pay and career progression opportunities strongly suggest the presence of ‘calling.’ This study demonstrates that even in the context of work that exhibits duty and altruism associated with expressivist accounts of ‘calling,’ these workers’ understanding of the relationships between themselves, their clients and Jesus Christ dominate their work choices. It is the meaning derived from a divine caller, understood in terms of Christian tradition, that accounts for their decision to begin and to continue this work. (shrink)