Title: Management control in a spiritually-charged organisation

Authors: Suresh Kalagnanam; Rosemary Venne

Addresses: Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, 25 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A7, Canada ' Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, 25 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A7, Canada

Abstract: Recent research suggests that there is considerable interest among scholars to integrate spirituality into the workplace. One gap in the literature pertains to management control in organisations with a collection of spiritually-oriented employees (a spiritually-charged organisation); our paper fills this gap. This conceptual paper employs a hermeneutic methodology by reviewing and interpreting spiritual literature, applying selected concepts to the modern workplace and designing a management control system to align with the values of such organisations. It conceptualises spirituality from the perspectives of the important concepts of Dharma and Nishkama Karma. This paper offers the position that the management control process would be different in a spiritually-charged organisation where employees are likely to be intrinsically motivated and the firm's values and goals would appeal to the moral values of its employees. We argue that workplace spirituality should be considered an important contingency factor for organisational management, in particular related to managing with the concept of Dharma in mind. Finally, we discuss transformational leadership practices, such as inspiring a shared vision, which are consistent with the nature of such organisations.

Keywords: workplace spirituality; management control systems; MCS; transformational leadership; intrinsic motivation; business management; Dharma; Nishkama Karma; spiritually-oriented employees; spiritually-oriented workers; spiritually-charged organisations; hermeneutics; firm values; firm goals; moral values; shared visions; HRM; human resource management; human resources; HR; human capital.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2015.066113

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2015 Vol.10 No.1, pp.1 - 15

Received: 06 Jun 2013
Accepted: 05 Aug 2013

Published online: 30 Apr 2015 *

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