Towards developing a model for spirituality in the workplace

D.Phil. (Leadership in Performance and Change)Orientation: This thesis presents a model of spirituality in the workplace. Spirituality in the workplace has largely been avoided or neglected in the banking sector and is therefore ill understood. It shows little theoretical development and could very well be the next competitive advantage for business. Research question: A general research question guided the study, namely: "What are the subjective experiences of spirituality of a manager in a South African retail bank and how can these assist scholars in reaching an understanding of spirituality at work?” Research aim and objectives: The aim of the study was to explore and describe the concrete experiences and views of a branch manager of a retail bank with regard to spirituality in the workplace and to develop a model of it. The key objectives of the study were: · To develop an appropriate qualitative research approach to capture and unravel the experiences and views of the bank manager; · To study the work of prominent scholars in associated study fields in order to infer abstract constructs that could be used as analytic tools to illuminate the world of the bank manager, and · To develop a model of spirituality in the workplace by applying first-order constructs, that is, the concrete experiences and viewpoints of the manager, as well as second-order constructs, that is, the abstract concepts of scholars. Motivation for the study: Knowledge of spirituality in the workplace is in its infancy in the banking sector. Interest in the topic was raised by existential questions such as: Who are you? Where are you going? Why are you going there? The fact that human beings ask these questions, seek meaning and ask about the purpose of life fascinated me. This fascination was not limited to individuals' personal lives; I wanted to know more about spirituality as it is lived and felt in the workplace where workers spend a third of their lives; I also wanted to know the value of spirituality in the workplace for organisations. This finally led to my submission of a research proposal titled "Towards developing a model for spirituality in the workplace". The model I developed for spirituality in the workplace organises information in such a way that the relationships among the various elements are clarified. This theoretical framework provides an understanding for spirituality in the workplace. Research approach: A modernist qualitative research approach was employed, since I wanted to give my research participant a voice regarding spirituality in the workplace. The interpretive-constructivist research philosophy, and more particularly the assumption that reality is constructed by individuals interacting with their social worlds, underpinned my research. The research data were collected by means of a life history and analysed using Strauss and Corbin’s grounded theory. Regarding data management and storage, I followed Bogdan and Biklen’s (2007, p. 118) advice: pledge to keep your data physically well organised; develop a plan on how to achieve this; ensure that you stick to your plan; create a back-up system; have hard copies of all the recorded data in a manual filing system to secure valuable and often irreplaceable data should your computer become infected with a virus or dysfunctional for some other reason. I also ensured that all the data, whether paper-based or electronic, were kept safe and confidential. The writing style was mainly the scientific tale, but confessional, realist and autoethnographic tales were also used. The entire research process was influenced by symbolic interactionism, that is, seeing meaning as something that arises from the interaction between people, especially when they seek understanding of the world in which they work and live. Meaning was constructed through the researcher’s questions to, and discussions and interactions with the research participant