A number of scholars mentioned a paradigm shift in organisational sciences, management theory and practice in the past three decades (Capra, 1996; Giacalone and Dafna, 2000; Harman & Hormann, 1990). These changes in management include a shift from an economic focus to a balance of profits, quality of life, spirituality, and social responsibility concerns, a shift from self-centeredness to interconnectedness , a shift from self-interest to service and stewardship, and a change from materialistic to a spiritual orientation.  In line with this paradigm shift, we have witnessed that organizations and managers have been discovering and experimenting with new ways and methods to help employees balance work and family, such as flexible work arrangements and telecommuting. In relation to these practices, organizations in the US have been increasing their focus on strategies of empowerment to enable and increase employee involvement and participation (Hyman and Mason, 1995). These innovations and new ways of working aim to be mind-enriching, heart-fulfilling, and spirit-growing for employees, and effective leading for top management, and still be financially rewarding at the same time.

This new paradigm that is emerging in organizations has also been called as “the spirituality movement”. Ashmos and Duchon (2000) have described the spirituality movement as “a major transformation” where organizations make room for the spiritual dimension, which has to do with meaning, purpose, and a sense of community.

For a start, it would be useful to review the growing interest in spirituality at work literature and some definitions of spirituality.

Over the last decade, scholars report a steady increase of interest in spirituality at work issues amongst management researchers and practitioners in North America.

Howard (2002) argues the “explosion of interest in spirituality as a new dimension of

Management was probably the most significant trend in management since the 1950s.”

Wagner-Marsh and Conley (1999) suggested that there has been “an organizational fourth wave”, referring to an aftermath of Toffler’s (1980) technological third wave and they called this “the spiritually based firm”.

The growing interest in workplace spirituality is also evident in both brick-and-mortar and virtual bookstores worldwide, and the recent spirituality books on the issue.

Finally, the growing interest in spirituality is evident in organisations, and the corporate world as well. For example, a growing numbers of organizations, including large corporations such as Intel, Coca-Cola, Boeing, and Sears, are reported to have incorporated spirituality in their workplaces, strategies, or cultures. Some  corporate spiritual practices include holding Bible, Quran, or Torah study groups; forming voluntary prayer groups; having “higher power lunches”; forming cross-cultural and interfaith dialog groups; organizing self-reflection sessions; and starting servant and humility leadership development programs.

Some corporations incorporate spirituality into their strategies within the framework of corporate social responsibility and sustainability. For example, Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, is committed to contributing to Glasgow through social responsibility projects aimed at solving the problems of high unemployment, crime rates and urban decay in the region. She invests a quarter of net profits back to the community to ‘keep the soul of the company alive’. Many companies that are grounded in spiritual values and principles also are committed to social responsibility and community service. Anecdotal evidence like this suggests how organizations can incorporate spirituality and social responsibility into their mission while still performing well.

Leaders who bring their spirituality to work transform organizations from merely mission-driven activities into places where individual and collective spirituality are encouraged and spiritual development is integrated into the day-to-day work life. Such leaders inspire and energize behavior in employees based on meaning and purpose rather than rewards and security, thus compelling employees to transcend their self-interests for the welfare of their organizational members, the sake of the mission, and for the good of humanity and the natural world.

We also discovered many similarities between workplace spirituality theory and leadership theory. These links and theoretical connections are discussed throughout the paper and are further examined for their relationship to leadership   theory in the Spiritual Leadership Theory Development section.

Fairholm (1996, 1998) was one of the first scholars to put the terms spiritual and leadership together to explain spirituality in context of workplace leadership, and since then others have attempted to validate his model in order to move the field toward a theory of spiritual leadership (e.g., Fairholm, 2002; Fry, 2003). Other authors have put forth spiritual leadership models that relate to constructs such as emotional intelligence, ethics, values, and to leadership models such as charismatic, stewardship, transformational and servant (Biberman, Whitty, & Robbins, 1999; Cacioppe, 2000a; Tischler, Biberman, & McKeage, 2002). To date, these constructs have been confounded and need conceptual distinction (Fry, 2003).

Konz & Ryan (1999) have conducted a meta-analysis of the literature applying the tenets of qualitative narrative analysis (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Miles & Huberman, 1984) to narrow the scope and to discern whether definitions and other assumptions about workplace spirituality converged around common themes or categories, which could then advance the theory of workplace spirituality and leadership.

Some in the field push for rapid closure on a common definition of spirituality at work, seeing this as a necessary prelude to development of spirituality and its relationship to the theory of leadership.

Using qualitative narrative analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1984) to surface emergent categories, it may be possible to make explicit the major concepts of difference in which theory development is still necessary (Dent, et al. 2005.).