40 / 48
|
Campus capers
|
|
38
magis
|
february 2017
Workplace
Spirituality for All:
Current Challenges
and Imperatives
Introduction
For several millennia we lived in a slow-paced
agronomic world of work that united us inti-
mately and spiritually with home, nature and
humanity, planet and the universe. Then we
were forced into the baron age, the feudal age,
the aristocratic and monarchical era, when our
social equality got progressively destroyed
into the landed and landless, the masters
and the slaves, the rich and the poor, the
powerful and the powerful, the rulers and the
ruled classes, and work and the workers got
estranged from home, nature, and humanity.
We have now been quickly catapulted to the
world of rapid industrialisation, digitisation
and globalisation that, in turn, have mecha-
nised and monetised human work, and further
alienated us from home, nature and the cos-
mos. It has made work burdensome, boring,
commoditised and progressively dehumanis-
ing. Most of humanity is 'employed' today as
a mere factor of production, distribution and
consumption. During the last 100 years or so,
labour movements and unions have strived to
reverse this trend by restoring workers of their
basic human dignity, rights and privileges, but
have not been very successful.
Currently, management under the projects
of Industrial Relations (IR), Personnel Man-
agement (PM), organisational behavior (OB),
human resources management (HRM) and
human resources development (HRD) has
systematically tried to develop a scientific
approach of concepts and constructs, theories
and measures, models and paradigms to re-
cruit, develop, reward and retain human skills
and talent, but primarily for profit-maximising
goals and objectives. We now feel the urgent
need of rediscovering the dignity, sanctity and
humanity of work through various ideologies
and philosophies, and one of these is work-
place spirituality.
WhyWorkplace
Spirituality
What has spirituality to do with work, or work
with spirituality? Why spirituality at the
workplace? We wrestle with these age-old
questions by arguing that we cannot preserve
the meaning of work in a rapidly industrialis-
ing society unless through a workplace spir-
ituality. More than anything else, workplace
spirituality can understand and assign the
proper role of work in an industrialised soci-
ety we live in. It can understand, assign and
safeguard the proper rights and duties, roles
and responsibilities of employers and employ-
ees. A spirituality of the workplace can even
understand and prescribe proper relationship
between employers and employees, and the
type of community they should create in the
workplace.
What is Work?
Scholars have conceived and understood work
differently. Work is understood as a mean-
ingful avocation that satisfies our inner self,
our conscience, our collective pride and our
corporate citizenship. Jane Addams, one of the
foremost US scholars on work, viewed work as
the foundation of not only a personal sense
of identity, but also a collective democratic
character and workplace. She considered the
workplace to be the model of a cooperative
community, providing a venue for creating
social solidarity and civic reciprocity.
Thus so far we have developed the earth
by domesticating animals, rearing them and
pitch perfect
Fr Oswald AJ Mascarenhas, SJ, PhD,
discusses managerial implications of
workplace spirituality on work, wages,
industry, human resources
management, and cosmic development